by Gillian Steward
Will one of the tallest buildings in Calgary soon be emblazoned with the initials of a Chinese state-owned oil company?
That’s just one of the many questions that hangs over the proposed takeover of Nexen, a major oilsands player, by the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC).
by Bill Tieleman
Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards.
– Neil Kinnock, ex-British Labour Party leader
The wild political shootout at the BC Conservative Party corral last weekend didn’t produce any fatalities, but it may have shaped the province’s political future by laying the groundwork for yet another party — or a BC Liberal leadership revolt.
by Stephen Kimber
I have rewritten this column three times in the past three days as the on, then off, then on-again deal to re-start the NewPage paper mill in Point Tupper played itself out in after-hours news releases and hastily convened press conferences. But my essential question hasn’t changed.
How much is more than too much? It’s far from the first time Nova Scotia governments have — or should have — smacked up against that question.
The notions of transparency and accountability in government are good ones. Government operates on behalf of the people of a jurisdiction with money that the people have pooled together for that purpose. It only makes sense, therefore, that the people themselves should be able to see how that money is being spent and ensure that there is no abuse or malfeasance taking place.
That's the theory. In the day-to-day world of politics, spin and sensationalist reporting, genuine transparency can be much harder to come by.
by Bill Tieleman
Stonewalling is a good term to use to describe this situation overall and in this case.
– John van Dongen, B.C. Conservative MLA
How did two former ministerial aides charged with breach of trust and fraud get their $6 million legal fees paid by the BC Liberal government despite pleading guilty in the BC Legislature raid case?
We may never know, despite the provincial independent Auditor-General John Doyle attempting to find out through a BC Supreme Court application heard for five days last week.
by Stephen Kimber
Or perhaps humanize it as HeRM?
Uh… Unlikely on all counts.
Most of us — especially when speaking to outsiders — probably say we’re from Halifax. If we’re being more particular or talking among ourselves, we employ the traditional pre-amalgamation names for our communities: Dartmouth, Bedford, Moose River, etc.
So it’s no surprise Corporate Research Associates’ latest Halifax Urban Report finds 56 per cent of us (margin of error: 4.8 per cent) favouring changing the clunky by-committee name of our geographic entity to the “City of Halifax.”
More than half of us — 54 per cent yes, 37 per cent no — want to re-redivide HRM back into one city and one county.
Support was unsurprisingly strongest (62 per cent) among those who lived in the city formerly known as Halifax and considerably weaker (49 per cent) among the still-resentful citizens of what was, before the 1996 amalgamation, the proud sort-of city of Dartmouth, not to forget in all those far-flung outposts the pollsters lump together as “Other HRM.”
While such a name change would be welcomed, relatively easy and inexpensive — new stationery, a little legislative search-and-replace — talking about changing the name begs the far more challenging, conundrum question: What do the residents of Uniacke Square and Musquodoboit Harbour have in common and why are they part of the same municipality?
When the provincial government of the day shoe-horned 200 communities from Necum Teuch to Hubbards — spread out over a land mass the size of Prince Edward Island with local economies based on everything from hunting moose to selling Moosehead beer to college students — into one municipality, the idea was to save money and end the wasteful competition for economic development, especially among the larger units.
But the result has been an unwieldy agglomeration of urban and rural interests that have never connected.
According to the same poll, more than half of us — 54 per cent yes, 37 per cent no — want to re-redivide HRM back into one city and one county.
This is the time to ask: Where do our now too-many-to-count-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand mayoralty candidates stand on the issue? And what, if anything would they do to fix it?
by Gillian Steward
For more than a year now, parents in Alberta have had the right to compel a teacher to defend herself before a human rights tribunal for discussing topics such as gay marriage or aboriginal spirituality in the classroom.
So far, no formal complaints have made their way through the HRC labyrinth. But that doesn’t mean that this highly controversial legislation isn’t having an impact in the classroom, especially in high schools.
by Bill Tieleman
Oh! The good old hockey game/Is the best game you can name.
– Stompin’ Tom Connors, The Hockey Song
A group of dedicated National Hockey League fans won’t cry in their beer if team owners lock out their players. They are planning to take billionaire owners into the boards very hard.
How? By launching a consumer boycott of NHL team owners’ other businesses — including breweries and restaurant chains — to penalize them for high sticking fans.
by Stephen Kimber
With nominations closing and the municipal election less than a month away, it is time — past time — for the campaign for mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality to begin in earnest.
from Inside Queen's Park, Bulletin No 18 September 7, 2012
It was just 11 months ago, on October 6, 2011, that Dalton McGuinty's provincial government won its third consecutive election. But by contrast with 2003 and 2011, the Liberals failed to win with a working majority of seats in the 107-member Legislature.
