A headline in Saturday's Chronicle-Herald called Premier Darrell Dexter's churlish attack on a member of the Electoral Boundaries Commission "out-of-character." It was certainly at odds with the avuncular tone we came to expect from Dexter in opposition -- as premier-in-waiting, he took pains to maintain an aura of moderation and reasonableness -- but it is of a piece with the increasingly partisan tone in statements from the premier's office this summer. The previous Friday, when it appeared the deal to reopen the Point Tupper paper mill had come a cropper, the premier's official announement included this incongruous paragraph: There are some who...

30 September, 2012

Like many Cape Bretoners, I cringe when fellow islanders, egged on by CBRM's outgoing mayor, blame all our problems on Halifax. It's unbecoming, it's untrue, and it's a lazy excuse for avoiding the hard work of re-imagining Cape Breton's economy. Just for the moment, however, I'm more annoyed by the volley of stones hurled these last 24 hours from the glass mansions of our capital city at the Dexter Government's on-again, off-again, on-again rescue of the paper mill in Point Tupper, Richmond County. There's no question Dexter made a huge gamble on this bailout.* It's natural for taxpayers to be nervous. No...

23 September, 2012

"One of this government's least admirable traits," said a friend who admires much the Dexter Government has done, "is its refusal to ever admit it made a mistake." The impulse to stay an obviously incorrect course is common enough in government, and it commonly leads to even greater error. This month, the Dexter Government's refusal to admit mistakes in its reprehensible treatment of a Cape Breton addiction recovery centre led to further error in the form of a dishonest procurement process. On Friday, the Board of Directors of Talbot House announced it would not submit a tender to supply the addiction recovery services...

27 August, 2012

Contrarian reader Denis Falvey, a physician and retired Armed Forces Major, responds to our curmudgeonly friend's tale of abuse at the hands of the province's doctor and patient monitoring program prescription monitoring program: Your curmudgeonly friend is correct, on pretty much all points. The so-called war on drugs, like any war, is having serious consequences for innocent bystanders. And, like most wars, it has devolved into destructive nonsense. Drugs are illegal as a result of a misguided attempt to impose morality, back in the early 20th century. After a generation of murder and mayhem, alcohol prohibition was seen by virtually everyone to be...

23 August, 2012

A curmudgeonly friend writes: Last winter, the Nova Scotia Prescription Monitoring Program ruined my wife’s first vacation in eight years. The Program exists to restrain the abuse of prescription drugs, something I thought prescriptions themselves were for. To this end, among other things, the Program provides the police with information about legal (that is to say legal) drugs you are taking (you may have thought that information was confidential). But the hammer in the Program’s toolbox is its ability to intimidate doctors out of doing what they believe is right for their patients. To wit, from the Program’s FAQ: “If the Program has reason to believe...

22 August, 2012

Now that we have freed the 2011 election donations data from the deadening grasp of Elections Nova Scotia, there's no end to the interesting things one can do with it. For example: In 2011, 4130 Nova Scotians...

16 August, 2012

Former Talbot House resident Greg Carter writes: I'm writing in response to the department of community services' refusal to meet with the board and at least let them reopen. After all, the allegations against Fr. Paul Abbass were unfounded and in my opinion malicious. I spent 18 months at talbot house and never once felt or saw any inappropriate behaivior on any of the staff's part. The staff and Fr. Paul always acted with professionalism and care for the residents. Once my stay was over, I was able to come out to the house for a little work during the back shift,...

13 August, 2012

Here at last is Contrarian's searchable map of 2011 political donations in Nova Scotia: [Direct link to map] Each dot represents a donation. The dots are color-coded by party: orange (and brown) for NDP; red for Liberal; blue for PC; green for Green; and white for Atlantica. The larger dots stand for donations of $1,000 or more. Clicking on an individual dot reveals a pop-up table listing the name and address of the donor, the party to whom they donated, and the amount and type of donation. Use the + and – slider on the left side of the map to zoom...

12 August, 2012

TV producer John Wesley Chisholm,  whose Arcadia Entertainment production company is located on Halifax's Quinnpool Road, wonders why the street never quite achieves its potential as a great urban neighborhood. In some ways it’s a classic mainstreet. But it’s schizophrenic. It’s a highway with a hundred hidden driveways. It’s a shopping district and residential street. It’s six lanes wide in places, narrow in others. It’s a pedestrian arcade yet almost impossible to cross conveniently. It’s highspeed traffic and slow drag. It’s a parking lot and a thoroughfare. One thing is certain, it’s tired. The faces of the buildings are tired. The wires,...

08 August, 2012

On Wednesday, the Department of Community Services made good on Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse's vindictive plan to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to replace the residential addiction treatment services so ably provided by the Talbot House Recovery Centre for the last half century. Those services came screeching to a halt last February, after a biased and incompetent "organizational review" by the department's  director of family and youth services, Marika Lathem, lent temporary credence to what turned out to be false charges of sexual misconduct against the home's executive director. Peterson-Rafuse and her officials are variously quoted as saying the Talbot House Society is welcome to...

02 August, 2012
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