I have vented previously, here and here, about the quiet acquiescence of municipal and provincial leaders to the destruction of Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. Why haven't the Premier, the Minister of Economic Development, the Leader of the Opposition, and other provincial leaders spoken out against the elimination of an institution, enshrined in an Act of Parliament, whose dismantling will cost Cape Breton tens of millions of dollars a year for the foreseeable future? Cape Breton is still part of Nova Scotia, after all. My purpose in this post is not to belabour the point, but to direct readers' attention to a striking...

24 March, 2014

A lot of people who ought to know better have been whistling past the graveyard in response to the Harper government's plan to scrap Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation and assign responsibility for federal development assistance to the remote and largely indifferent Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Make no mistake: this marks the end of a direct federal pipeline Cape Breton has enjoyed since the Donald Commission Report in the Pearson Administration. Anyone who claims it's not grim news for the island is either naive or disingenuous. ACOA minister Rob Moore managed the spin with adroitness we have rarely seen from the Harper government. He...

20 March, 2014