Commentary on Business, Politics and Culture in Atlantic Canada
Lisa Coates is a driver. She was born in Los Angeles in 1964. Her mother was a white Scottish Cape Bretoner and her father a black musician and teacher. Lisa moved back to Cape Breton with her mother and then on to Boston as a teenager to complete her education and begin work. Being a …
Small business is offering some constructive advice to municipalities. A new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is calling on municipalities to compensate businesses beaten up by infrastructure projects and major projects. The new national report had its genesis in complaints from businesses in downtown Halifax decimated by adjacent infrastructure upgrades and …
Continue reading "Small Businesses Face Construction Destruction"
Last week, I participated in the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council panel discussion asking the question; what is the right minimum wage for Atlantic Canada? Certainly, one way to get to good public policy is asking the right question. Asking what the right minimum wage for the region is a fair academic question, but we should …
Continue reading "Let’s Tone Down the Hyperbole and Have a Sensible Discussion of Minimum Wage"
In another 12 months, we'll be dealing with the real world impact of the federal government's legalization of marijuana. There are still lots of unanswered questions about how this will roll out. These are questions with huge economic and social implications. While the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has conducted only one survey of …
Continue reading "Let’s Start Clearing the Smoke on Cannabis"
Atlantic Canadian small business owners should start bracing themselves for the 15 dollar minimum wage campaign. The governments in Alberta and Ontario have both bought into the idea, and now British Columbia’s new 'GreeNDP' coalition is putting it on the table. It’s being driven principally by Canada’s largest labour unions and a coalition of the …
Continue reading "Why Small Business is Concerned About the 15 Dollar Minimum Wage"
In 1997 Brian Titus was in the Navy working as a diver in Halifax…but he had a passion for making beer. At the time, the craft brew market hadn’t washed up on the east coast and he saw an opportunity. Over the last 20 years, Garrison, along with Halifax’s other well-established brand Propeller, settled as …
As an advocate for small business, job one is getting issues in front of politicians. Prior to this election, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) presented each of the parties in the Nova Scotia election a small business “platform’ outlining key areas our 5,200 members in Nova Scotia have identified as priorities. We sent …
Continue reading "What the parties are saying about small business in the Nova Scotia election"
Nova Scotia’s electoral Game of Thrones is in full swing and while it may lack the dramatic flair of the HBO series, it has one thing in common, winter is coming. Unfortunately, the parties are either unaware of it or are seemingly oblivious to a stark reality. All of the parties have launched their offensives …
The Nova Scotia government’s decision to go it alone with cap-and-trade to put a price on carbon raises more questions than answers. This spring, government released a discussion paper, looking for feedback. They gave less than a month for responses and you needed a degree in environmental science to make any sense of what was …
Continue reading "Cap and Trade for Nova Scotia Still Fuzzy for Small Business"
I was having coffee with an old political warhorse recently and we were talking about red tape. He told me a story about how after John Buchanan won the 1981 election, his government promised to cut red tape. The classic line from Digby Liberal Joe Casey in the legislature was, “He sure is cutting, but …
Continue reading "Cutting Red Tape: An old problem finding new solutions"
Commentary on Business, Politics and Culture in Atlantic Canada
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