Halifax will have a new mayor after October 19’s election day, and there are lots of candidates to choose from. But on an unseasonably warm Monday, September 16 afternoon, Halifax’s voters got to see just three of them debate. The mayor’s field for the municipal election sits at 16 people long. The debate featured just […]
Matt Stickland
Matt spent 10 years in the Navy where he deployed to Libya with HMCS Charlottetown and then became a submariner until ‘retiring’ in 2018. In 2019 he completed his Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College. Matt is an almost award winning opinion writer.
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to choose a candidate in Halifax’s 2024 municipal election
In October, Haligonians will go to the polls to elect a new council. For democratically engaged citizens in the HRM, voting has a few parts. There are some easy parts like knowing where and when to vote. That’s the easy part because the city creates websites informing everyone that voting happens between October 8 and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A real step forward on police reform
Police reform featured heavily in Halifax Regional Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Sep. 10. Council gave first reading to an amendment to bylaw P-100, formally known as the Police Board By-law. This amendment will add the position of Commissioner of Public Safety, a person to act as a liaison between the HRM, the Halifax Regional […]
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Cops shouldn’t respond to mental health calls
Wednesday, September fourth’s Board of Police Commissioners agenda was weighty: cops for sale, suicide prevention, and a report criticizing the police. At the last meeting, the Board was supposed to talk about HRP officers working extra duty (i.e. protecting Superstore’s profits while in uniform) and off duty (i.e. working at Superstore), but it was deferred […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Taking the bus from Halifax to Truro
Discussions about transportation dominated this week’s regular meeting of Halifax Regional Council, Tuesday Sep. 3. There was some bad, which will be covered in the Notable Debates section below, but there was also the foreshadowing of a better world. It all started when councillor Trish Purdy pulled an item off the consent agenda, a list […]
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Traffic to south end tennis club makes residents fear street improvements
Halifax’s Transportation Standing Committee started its Thursday Aug. 29 meeting as it always does, with the public participation section. For the past few Transportation Standing Committee meetings, the public participation section has been dominated by residents of Coburg Road who are absolutely furious that the city is making improvements. Essentially the very end of Coburg […]
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Halifax does not value librarians
Even though the ongoing strike by Halifax’s librarians might indicate otherwise, the city of Halifax is supposed to be a great place to work. The HRM’s bureaucracy frequently wins awards as one of Canada’s top 100 employers. One of the big reasons Halifax wins so much is that the HRM is an employer that embodies […]
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City needs help to punish delinquent developers
The regularly scheduled Halifax Regional Council meeting of Tuesday, August 20 was dominated by wildfire. In the Committee of the Whole section of the meeting, councillors got a report about last year’s Upper Tantallon fire from the Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency Department. The report is the result of HRFE’s internal after-action policies, which they […]
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Lessons of the Tantallon wildfire one year later
Fires need four things to exist, and last year on May 28, 2024, Halifax was a tinderbox waiting to explode. When the temperature gets high and the humidity gets low, it’s easier for fire to stay burning. This condition, known as crossover, is occurring more frequently as the earth’s climate changes. When there hasn’t been […]
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The unfareness of raising Halifax Transit fees
The city of Halifax takes fiscal responsibility seriously, but only when it wants to punish people for doing the right thing. This is why bus fares are going up 9.1% to $3 as of September 1, 2024. For those who may need the refresher, this 25-cent fare increase has been in the works since last […]
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Making the case for more red tape
It’s no secret that Canadian governmental bureaucracies are mind-numbingly complex. It’s one of the big reasons that politicians are having a lot of success taking political potshots at all three levels of Canadian public service. The Conservative Party of Canada has put out press releases saying that it will build homes by cutting bureaucracy. Provincial […]
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Halifax to start environmental stewardship of watersheds
The city’s Environment and Sustainability Committee met on the first day of August, and started that meeting with two presentations before moving on to their agenda of making sure we have enough clean drinking water. The first presentation was from LungNSPEI, which gave the committee a look at the dangers of radon, the second-leading cause […]