Update: Mark Carney will be Canada’s next prime minister, following his overwhelming win—85.9% of the vote—at the Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention yesterday, Sunday, March 9. Carney must be sworn in by the Governor General (no date’s been announced for that yet) and has to form a cabinet, then he can call a general […]
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Halifax is finally able to think about non-car options
Halifax’s budget debates, specifically the Department of Public Works budget, is where hope for the future goes to die. Even though there are reasons for optimism, it’s hard to maintain that optimism in the face of Halifax’s dire affliction: This city is suffering from a severe case of the tragedy of the commons. Before the […]
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What’s next for Bloomfield?
Mountains of rubble piled high on Thursday morning at the same site where, less than a week ago, the former Bloomfield School stood. A hydraulic excavator sat parked inside temporary fencing off Agricola Street, its engine running. All around it, work crews shuffled about, cleaning up the wreckage from a weekend fire that tore through […]
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Auditor general’s university report in limbo as Tories bring forth sweeping changes in bill
Premier Tim Houston’s supermajority government could fire Nova Scotia’s top watchdog and censor her office’s reports as early as next week. The development comes just weeks before provincial auditor general Kim Adair is set to share the findings of her investigation into university funding in Nova Scotia. The audit, scheduled for release on March 4, […]
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“We are not going to get quieter,” advocates vow at march to end gender-based violence
You could hear the voices coming from two blocks away as dozens of demonstrators made their way down Barrington Street on Wednesday, Feb 19, descending on Grand Parade. Shouts of “End the silence, end the violence,” “No excuse for abuse” and “Education is prevention; systemic failures must be mentioned!” reverberated through Halifax’s downtown on the […]
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Halifax mayor vacations in the Caribbean as council debates homelessness
Last week, most of Halifax’s city council tried to debate the future of public safety services in the HRM. Only they were missing one key voice from those discussions: The mayor’s. While council waded through a bevy of issues over the course of two days, ranging from emergency response times to Halifax’s approach to homelessness, […]
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Council approves capital budget, staff corruption
Halifax’s municipal council doesn’t normally meet on Fridays, except during budget season. That’s when Fridays are held open as a contingency meeting day, to be used as necessary when the debates about how to spend Halifax’s $1 billion-plus budget go long. This year, councillors are asking good questions to ensure that things are settled with […]
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Trade war, transportation, and you: A Halifax budget season preview
At the 11th hour, a temporary ceasefire deal was reached in the dumbest trade war in history. Hostilities between Canada and the USA are set to resume next month. Should the cold trade war become hot, it will have catastrophic impacts on the Canadian economy, although since most of our economic models are designed to […]
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Council kills Windsor Street Exchange redesign plan
At Halifax Regional Council’s Tuesday, Jan 28 meeting, by a tight vote of 8 to 6, councillors made a tough decision to do the right thing. For the past six years or so the city has been working on a plan to re-do the Windsor Street Exchange. At first it was supposed to be a […]
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Everything you need to know about Halifax council’s Jan 14 meeting
Halifax’s city council met on Tuesday, Jan 14, for a painfully boring meeting. A lot of the debate was on things like survey methodology, what the Property Valuation Services Corporation does, and not double-checking technical documents. If this meeting were a game of soccer, it’d be a comfortable 1-0 victory against a team we should […]
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It’s time for gender-based violence campaigns to target men
On January 9, the provincial government—via justice minister Becky Druhan—announced a new public awareness advertising campaign to combat gender-based violence. The move comes after six women—and one victim’s father—have died at the hands of their partners over the past three months in Nova Scotia. “People need to understand that they’re not alone, and that resources […]