To the editor,
Re: "Game Over," October 4: Wow! Congratulations Tim Bousquet and congratulations, Coast. Your report on the Commonwealth Games is certainly one of the most important, useful and insightful documents on local politics in recent memory. What a project! It's great work.
Your investigation here will survive for many years as a marker and summary of all that has happened. You are literally kicking ass and taking names. It's brilliant. Required reading for everyone in HRM. You've redefined yourselves and your role in the community with this work. The online backup documentation is priceless.
Of course the content of Tim's report is not so sunny. It paints a picture of an entire community overrun by an unaccountable bureaucracy so brazen in its power hungry largesse that it took all three levels of elected officials and a citizen revolt to cut through the dissembling mass and bring it into check.
And sadly, no one was held accountable, none of the political fiefdoms or petty potentates were brought to account, though the money and time wasted is staggering, and, in spite of the bits of detail you've uncovered, nothing was revealed about who profited or how we got to this point.
Most telling from your report are the people who still feel immune to accountability. Why wouldn't Dan English and other unelected civil "servants" speak to Tim? How could they dare not? We are in a position now where the only way to improve the democratic process and find a balance in this town is to decrease the size of government bureaucracy.
If we don't do it now and effectively this will just happen over and over. In fact, we've already seen skirmishes on new fronts like the Common concerts.
Every one of the characters exposed in your report is still out there doing their thing. The unelected courtesans---would-be emperors---that are ruling this city can pile us all into an HRM if they like, they can dream of stadiums and castles as tall as they like. They can operate the whole thing like Oz. They can bully the elected councillors, treat them like cannon-fodder finger-
puppets and make them look like fools to the citizenry.
They can try and set a crazy "cats and cars" agenda. But for goodness sake, there are only a few of us. We see each other everyday on the street. We know who we are. We all love Halifax for what it is. We all see the emperors have no clothes.
By John Wesley Chisholm