Halifax’s recent very poor showing as a city that attracts business should have been expected. Would you open a business in a city where spending by council is totally out of control?
Where they seem to put all their effort into finding the next economic black hole to dump tax dollars into? Where tax increases are an annual event and $55 million will be spent on a grandiose building, when $20 million, more or less, would give them what they need? Where they want you to locate on a gridlocked peninsula in a 20-square-block area with almost no parking, instead of across the harbour, avoiding the snarled bridge traffic in the morning? Where weeks are spent by that council fighting over a cat law? Where drive-by shootings, swarmings and murder place the city high on the crime ladder of Canadian cities?
I wouldn’t even consider opening a business in an environment like that.—B.D
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.
It’s not just the city with high taxes. It’s also the provincial government taxes (corporate, income, HST) and red tape.
there is business in nova scotia, it ia all in your imaginations.
It does need to be pointed out that this is a great municipality in which to be a politician, bureaucrat or creeping psychopath. Excuse the redundancies.
HRM Council goes with the “build it and they will come” theory. It’s time to face the facts, big business is not interested in Halifax. Boston YES, Montreal YES, everything north and and to the east respectively is unprofitable for business.