1. Live off -campusLiving in campus housing can be a great way to meet new people in your first year, but after that, ditch the expensive $1,000-per-month room, overpriced meal plan and restrictive quiet hours for a spot of your own or with friends. The more roommates you have, the less expensive your rent will […]
Finance
Posted inNews + Opinion
Taxes are just another “culture shock” to living in Canada
The white wall in my room is always full of coloured sticky notes. Lots of them have new words I have learned in English, and some are notes to self: Do and do not. In the middle of last March, a new red sticky note has joined the others on the wall, it says: “income […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Divest from damage and invest in a healthier future
[Image-1] If people keep rapidly extracting and burning fossil fuels, there’s no hope of meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement climate change commitments. To ensure a healthy, hopeful future for humanity, governments must stick to their pledge to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Many experts agree that to […]
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Council approves new economic strategy for HRM
[Image-1] Bust out your vision boards, HRM has a new five-year plan for economic growth. On Tuesday city council approved a new strategic framework that will attempt to increase HRM’s population by 50,000 people and boost the gross domestic product by $3.5 billion before 2021. Consultant firm KPMG developed the new strategy, guided by an […]
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Salary freeze proposed for Halifax council
[Image-1] The mayor and city councillors are making too much money, says HRM’s council compensation committee. A newly-released report from the group—specially created by council in 2014 to study this very issue—recommends freezing salaries for elected HRM officials and instituting several changes to how that compensation is tabulated. If approved, the recommendations will have city […]
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NSCAD’s board approves tuition hike by email vote
[Image-1] It just became more expensive to be an arts student in Halifax. The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design has approved a three-year tuition increase for students. Combined with NSCAD’s annual three percent cost-of-living increase, undergraduate tuition could rise as much as 36 percent by 2018. A press release from NSCAD’s board of […]
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Will HRM start offering severance packages for city councillors?
[Image-1] Halifax has some problems. There’s an affordable housing crisis bearing down, executives are fleeing city hall and winter is coming. At least Regional Council will be able to keep warm during the oncoming snowstorms by stoking the fires of public outrage. If there’s one thing people love to hate more than donair debate, it’s […]
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What’s the best way to file your taxes?
Mimi Cahill says she knew “absolutely nothing” when she first started filing taxes. But who can blame her? “How to do taxes” usually isn’t a high school course. She was only 15. “The people I babysat for actually put it in their taxes to get a credit for me, because they were paying me so […]
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It’s not all talking Christmas trees
When councillor Brad Johns decided to spend $25,000 of the city’s money on an 18-foot-tall robotic Christmas tree, some of us had questions. Why? And, how? The how at least, is that Johns used his district discretionary funds for the purchase. Each fiscal year councillors receive $94,000 in district capital funds, and about $4,000 in […]
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Halifax Public Libraries forgiving all outstanding fines
[Image-1] As if everyone wasn’t already sickeningly in love with the new Halifax Central Library, they’ve gone and announced that for the rest of December any outstanding fines from overdue items will be cleared. Starting this Saturday, December 13, anyone with a library card can visit any public library and erase their debt. It’s part […]
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Bitcoin sets up at Dalhousie
[Image-1] Eastern Canada’s first on-campus Bitcoin ATM will power-on this evening in Dalhousie’s Student Union buiilding. The student union is partnering with Canadian virtual currency exchange CAVIRTEX to present the new machine in a ribbon-cutting event and documentary screening. It will be the first two-way Bitcoin ATM on a Canadian campus. Bitcoin is the crypto-currency […]
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Sobering times for Nova Scotia’s film industry
[Image-1] The morning after the Atlantic Film Festival’s closing gala is always one of strange beds, wicked headaches and feet sore from dancing. How to best cure that hangover? For film industry professionals, the province’s tax credit review could jolt them to their senses faster than even the strongest cup of coffee. Back before the […]