Editorial

The WikiLeaks release of the chilling video “Collateral Murder” in April was one of the most significant news events of 2010. The footage shows the US Apache helicopter, “Crazyhorse 18,” slaughtering Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. One of the first nine victims worked for the Reuters news agency. When the driver of a minivan arrives […]

Residents of Cornwallis last week received an unwelcome Christmas gift: The town’s largest employer, Convergys Corporation, announced that it would soon close its call centre operation, throwing 300 people out of work. This isn’t the first time Convergys has disrupted a Nova Scotian workforce; in June, the company shut its Millbrook operation, which had employed […]

In August 2000, freelance writer Barry Boyce came down with a typical case of the Hospital Blues. In a column for the Halifax Daily News, he wrote that he “stepped in a hole in the floor of an old country barn,” twisted his ankle, “and within minutes my foot was the size of a small […]

Last week we learned that in 2008 and 2009 the US Federal Reserve Bank had lent out $9 trillion—yes, that’s trillion, with a T—to the world’s largest banks (including Canadian banks) and corporations. Hedge funds made good use of the money; “the program generated big returns for investors—as high as 48 percent in some cases […]

A beaming Darrell Dexter told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce last week that the $6.2 billion mega-project to import power from the lower Churchill river in Labrador “truly is Atlantic Canada’s CPR.” The NS premier was referring to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. He might do well to remember the Pacific […]

On July 14, 1965, as the US marched into Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson stepped into a White House staff meeting. “Don’t let me interrupt,” the American president said. “But there’s one thing you ought to know. Vietnam is like being in a plane without a parachute when all the engines go out. If you jump, you’ll […]

The only people I know who aren’t cynical are the most annoying head-in-the-sand Pollyannas, people who spam kitten videos and use “partner” as a verb. I mean, these are trying times—the economic, resource and climate challenges we’re facing would be enormous, even if we had the very best imaginable political and managerial classes, but, unfortunately, […]

“Businesses aren’t going to locate downtown until their employees can afford to live on the peninsula,” Ross Cantwell tells me. Cantwell is a real estate consultant who works for some of the biggest property owners in Halifax, and specializes in the economics of development. He knows the local market as well as anyone, and matches […]

I worry when my 10-year-old twins stand on neighbours’ doorsteps shouting, “Trick or treat!” Last Halloween, Jimmy and Joanie collected six razor-blade-bearing apples. Admittedly, the twins were courting disaster. Joanie was garbed in a Stephen Harper outfit complete with a motorized Pinocchio snout that lengthened every time she prorogued, while Jimmy masqueraded as Maggie Thatcher […]

To their great credit, Halifax councillors have over the last few years made the hard political choices needed to fund an ambitious expansion of Metro Transit, resulting in the growing Link system, establishing rural routes, building bigger terminals and, most importantly, bringing 15 new articulated buses into service over each of three years, starting this […]

OK, here comes my $250- million question: Who the heck is running this province, fat-cat business tycoons or our new NDP government? Warning: Before answering, consider the evidence presented two weeks ago to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board. It concerned the huge profits the auto insurance companies raked in after the Tories and […]