Halifax needs a new Board of Police Commissioners chair

I hope you enjoyed your weekend! For a while now, I’ve been on a (mostly unsuccessful) crusade to change the name of three-day weekends like our just-finished Labour Day holiday weekend. I am a firm believer that we should not call three-day weekends “long” weekends but instead should call two-day weekends “short” weekends. I would encourage you all to start calling two-day weekends short weekends in what I am considering a very low-stakes, slow-burning path to labour law reform and the start of a four-day work week in Nova Scotia. 

It was a big week in municipal politics outside of council’s regular meetings. The guy who runs HRMFireNews over on Twitter “retired,” and there’s no municipal or provincial equivalent replacement as of yet. News about fires in the HRM will now be harder to find. The best thing at this point is probably signing up for hfxALERT. 

There was an independent review of Halifax’s actions on August 18, 2021—that eviction of a homeless encampment that was a disaster.

The report itself (found here) is an interesting read and highlights some new and old issues with police in the HRM. The first big one is that the police’s command and control structure probably needs to be replaced. The report details how the police planned to evict three encampments, which they did largely without incident. When the HRP rocked up to the fourth encampment, the one at the old library, which turned into a disaster. HRM staff and lower-ranking HRP officers told the HRP brass that evicting this encampment was a bad idea. The brass did not listen to this good advice, and as the situation deteriorated/escalated the police decided that it became “a test of wills with the HRP seeing withdrawal as a ‘loss’ for police and a ‘win’ for the protesters.

Accordingly, they persisted with the clearing of the site and rejected the possibility of withdrawing and coming back another day.”

Just to harp on this for a moment, one of the reasons the HRP likely made this decision is due to a theory of power that says if you set terms, you can’t then let those terms be broken because your power is eroded forevermore to the lower standard of the broken terms. In this case, it meant that the police decided to escalate the situation and continue with the evictions, otherwise they would demonstrate that if people protested enough, it could negate the police’s power. The issue here is that persisting with these evictions resulted in the loss of power the police initially hoped to avoid. Because they screwed up so badly the police lost a lot of their soft power—the trust and respect we give to the institution of police in the HRM. They also lost a lot of their hard power because we now know the police struggled to contain a disorganized, relatively docile protest. If the police’s 500ish officers ever had to contain a more organized or more militant protest, we now know they would also likely “lose” that one too.

One of the other things the report found is something that I’ve been banging on about for years: Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners is failing at its task of holding police accountable. This is due to two big reasons. First, the city’s lawyers and politicians seem to think they can’t tell the police what to do. This isn’t true. It is accurate to say that the BOPC can’t tell police to set up speed traps on specific streets, but the BOPC can tell the police chief that road safety is a priority and expect the police to beef up enforcement of the motor vehicle act on the HRM’s roads. 

Former BOPC commissioner Harry Critchley pointed out that HRM’s lawyers—in his opinion as a lawyer—were misinterpreting the board's power to direct police. That’s why he asked for and got this independent legal opinion about HRP’s eviction on Aug. 18, 2021. It’s the report that dropped last week and that I’m writing about right here. Now, I’m not a lawyer, just a guy who reads a lot of policy, and I also believed the HRM’s lawyers were reading the legislation wrong, and that’s also what this report found. 

Page 86 reads, in part: “The Board can have its own policies and establish guidelines and protocols for how police chiefs and forces should operate, including providing guidance on the overall direction of HRP policies.” 

And that “It is also entirely appropriate for the Board to monitor the performance of police chiefs and forces to ensure that they are following the established policies and procedures.”

And that “a police board is also entitled to know about critical police operations before and after they occur and oversee those operations to ensure they are in accordance with the priorities, objectives, and goals of the Board and the police. Indeed, prior systemic reviews have come to exactly that conclusion.”

This finding also means that councillor Becky Kent needs to be removed as chair of the BOPC. Because if the role of the board is oversight (which it is), and if the board needs to direct police to be better (which they do), we can’t trust that the ardently pro-police Kent is up for the job. We can’t trust her to do oversight because she spends her political capital arguing for things the police have lobbied her for. Even if her intentions are pure, she is a pro-police mouthpiece on the board. For example, during Halifax Fire’s Upper Tantallon wildfire after-action debate, her main contribution was saying we needed to do more police spending. Do you have faith that she’s independent enough from the police to do the oversight this report says is required? I don’t. She’s eroded that trust through her constant unquestioning support of police and their requests of her. The bad news is that in non-election years, only other councillors can fix this and only if they clock it as a problem that the head of the police’s independent oversight body has a perceived/real conflict of interest. The good news is that it is an election year, and the voters of Eastern Passage can also fix this in October by voting her out of office. 

TL;DR

Scary south end bike lanes

HRM value statements and policy failures

A buntoss to determine heritage status

What happened last week

Monday, August 26

The Executive Standing Committee met and voted on motions about the Women’s Advisory Committee. For recipients of the free version of this newsletter, let me bring you up to speed. For a few months, the Women’s Advisory Committee had intensive debates about their work plan and name, and they generally grappled with why the committee existed in the first place. A lot of these debates have been resolved enough to start work, and the committee has asked for permission to change its terms of reference and get its work plan approved to start doing the work. These changes were approved by the executive committee and now will go to council for final approval. If council also approves these motions, then the Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee will meet at some point in the future and dig into their planned work of addressing public safety risks and getting more women involved in governance. After that five minutes, the committee went in camera for an hour or so and then the meeting was done. 

Wednesday, August 28

The Grants Committee had a special very short meeting to recommend a less-than-market-value lease to the Youth Women’s Christian Association of Halifax. 

The Heritage Advisory Committee met and set a date for 6105 Willow Street to have a public hearing to become a heritage property. The church at 5522 Russell Street might get a 10-storey building attached to it; the committee is recommending council approve the planned development. This committee probably shouldn’t exist in the way it does. I forgot that this committee determines what a heritage property is by listening to a staff report, and then everyone shouts out what they think the building scores in each category. The Willow Street property was designated using less of an evidence-based approach to heritage designations and more like a bunch of soccer podcasters rating player performances after the match based on vibes. The Russell Street property is a church with a big old apartment next to it. HRM rules say when a modern building goes next to a heritage building, the new build either needs to incorporate the heritage property or be separate and distinct from the heritage building. This development went with the latter and is planning to put a 10-storey building beside, but separate and distinct from, the church. That didn’t stop a committee member from voting against it just because he didn’t like it. This was a brutal meeting. 

The Women’s Advisory Committee met and got some reports on the HRM’s approach to harm reduction, and training policies. In this debate committee member Liz Fraser demonstrated once again that she might be the best legislator on any of HRM’s committees. In the presentation on harm reduction, the presenter explained that the HRM does harm reduction and said that this is something we are all familiar with, because we all buckle up our seatbelts and that’s harm reduction. Fraser asked if the city actually knew what harm reduction was, because the seatbelt thing is an example of risk reduction. She explained that harm reduction is limiting harm you know will happen. For example, back when gas had lead in it, whenever anyone drove it was extra polluting. Removing the lead reduced some of the ongoing harm of car pollution. Whereas a seatbelt is risk-reducing because most of us drive without crashing, so buckling a seatbelt is not reducing any ongoing harm. 

During the presentation, the HRM’s director of housing and homelessness, Max Chauvin, told the committee that the HRM has a housing-first approach to homelessness. Fraser once again jumped in to say, Do we? Do we really? and she pointed out that even though we say we have a housing-first approach, the HRM doesn’t fund any wet shelters, meaning people need to stop doing drugs in order to get housing. This is quite explicitly housing second. Chauvin clarified that the HRM aspires to a housing-first approach, but since the province and the feds aren’t interested in funding that stuff, the city doesn’t actually have housing-first policies and programs. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d call myself a vegetarian if I ate meat every day just because someone else was helping me pay for steaks and a BBQ. But honestly, what could be more Halifax than the city proudly stating some feel-good ideals without really understanding what living those ideals would entail or enacting policies to achieve them? This is the city saying it wants more kids to bike to school but then repaving Gregory Drive this summer without a bike lane for students of Joseph Giles Elementary to ride their bikes on. This is the new Road Safety Framework all over again. This is another symptom of the HRM’s endemic failure of governance. The city promises change for the better and then delivers the status quo that’s making things worse. 

This committee also received an update on their work plan and name-change motion. Staff explained the bureaucratic processes each motion must undergo and that it takes about 46 days to get a finished report through the bureaucracy. This is not good enough.   

The Regional Centre Community Council was cancelled. 

And the Western Common Advisory Committee was cancelled. 

Thursday, August 29

The Transportation Standing Committee met and got a report about the implementation of making University Avenue a complete street. There is no agenda item about the Spring Garden Road transit-only pilot project, which was scheduled to start again, for real this time, a few months ago. And honestly, shame on you for expecting your municipal government to demonstrate basic competency in governance. You should know better by now. This meeting also featured a poppin’ public participation section. Grab your popcorn and dig into my full report here:

What’s happening this week

Tuesday, September 3: Council day!

Halifax regional council is meeting and they’re likely to update the micro-mobility bylaws. We can expect bike and scooter share starting in the spring, and the HRM hopes to announce which companies will be operating the bike and scooter services by the end of summer 2024. Which is coming up really really soon, if September’s arrival and the return to school doesn't mean summer is already over.   

Dane Ordway, KC Mangali and Will Irvine will become building officials in the HRM. Congratulations. 

The Cogswell redevelopment needs and is likely to get more money for the next phase, but overall the cost of the project is expected to go down by $9.7 million. 

As part of the housing accelerator fund process, the city is also fundamentally rethinking what the suburbs will look like. On top of that there have been a few special planning areas designated by the province. In order to better incorporate those areas with the suburban plan work, the city is standing up a new temporary community council. In the report, staff say it’s cheaper and easier to stand up a new council rather than jamming this work into the existing community councils. 

The city is likely going to update some street names. 

The HRM is likely to apply for some federal money to buy more electric buses and generally invest in better transit infrastructure. 

City staff are recommending that council not approve giving money to the province to build an active transit connection between Lower Sackville and Burnside. In the report, staff write that the province wants to put the AT lane next to the highway and it will now cost $5-$9 million instead of the expected $1 million. Staff are instead recommending building this lane next to trunk 7, aka Magazine Hill, for $3 million in 2030. Staff are recommending this even though they also write that this plan could be blown up because the city still needs to do a survey of the land and make sure there are no explosives from the range next door on the planned AT route.  

Council will get an update on last year’s municipal finances. The city had a bit of a surplus, but since the city can’t have a deficit or a surplus, they moved the extra money into some capital funding reserves and replenished the “operating stabilization reserve,” which is the money used after emergencies like the upper Tantallon Wildfire. 

Council’s likely to approve the less-than-market-value lease from the YWCA from earlier on the newsletter. 

Councillor Kathryn Morse is going to ask for a staff report to reconnect Briarwood Crescent and Bayview Road. 

Councillors Tim Outhit and Pam Lovelace are teaming up to ask for a pump track to be installed in Brookline Drive Park. Nothing says good governance quite like putting a bike track for kids at a park people have to drive to. 

And some in-camera stuff too. Property matters, intergovernmental relations and labour relations and contract negotiations. 

Wednesday, September 4

The Board of Police Commissioners will meet, and they’ll once again discuss the extra- and off-duty employment of HRP officers. This was deferred at the last meeting so the BOPC could make a better motion. They’ll get a presentation from Nancy Saunders, who will tell them about reducing mental illness and addiction distress in the HRM. They’ll also talk about the report I wrote about in the intro to this newsletter and likely approve $25,000 to conduct a monthly independent community survey on policing. 

The African Decent Advisory Committee will meet and they’ll get a report from Halifax Transit on their planning and from the African Nova Scotian Affairs Integration Office. They’ll also get an update on their workplan meeting format. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services wrote a handbook on how to sabotage progress using formal mechanisms of bureaucracy. I’m not saying that the HRM is trying to placate African Nova Scotians by seeming to give them access to power but not letting them touch any of the levers of power. But I am saying that if the OSS wanted to keep African Nova Scotians down and used the instructions in this sabotage handbook, it would look a lot like how the HRM set up this advisory committee. I suppose it must be a coincidence. 

The Regional Centre Community council is meeting to do some housekeeping amendments to land-use bylaws. For those who are reading this because it’s a free version, you should know that the city’s been working its way through the community councils with these changes, and they include things reducing parking requirements for self-storage facilities, allowing duplexes in ER-3 zones and allowing one-to-four-unit homes to be exempt from maximum building dimensions. 

Thursday, September 5

The Appeals Standing Committee will meet to talk about some derelict or unsightly properties. 

The Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee has been cancelled. 

The Point Pleasant Park Advisory Committee will meet and get an update on park operations (city staff are fighting invasive species and installing water management equipment to prevent flooding). They’ll also discuss the potential use of Point Pleasant Park as a designated encampment. 

The Women’s Advisory Committee has been rescheduled to Sep. 19. 

The Harbour East-Marine Drive Community council has been cancelled. 

Friday, September 6

The Audit and Finance Standing Committee will meet to renew the municipal contributions to the Discovery Centre.

The Special Events Advisory Committee has been cancelled.  

Gov’t Tendies

The municipal government tenders website can be found right here, and here’s what’s on it as I’m writing this newsletter on Friday afternoon: 

The city now wants four one-ton pickup trucks with plows, one crew cab with a dump bed and one 4x4 truck with fuel storage and pump. 

The city is looking for someone to do the next phase of asphalt overlays. 

Chocolate Lake dam needs some renovations. 

The city’s putting out snow and ice control tenders for a few places in the HRM. 

The city is looking to change the heating in the Gray Memorial Arena. 

The city is looking for some garbage cans that can be attached to posts. 

The HRM needs some air compressors. 

The Scotiabank Centre is likely to get new change rooms. 

The city is looking to buy bus charging and energy management software for Halifax Transit. 

The city’s looking for micromobility vendors for a pilot. 

The city is looking for janitorial supplies and equipment, as well as PPE and rescue equipment. 

The Shannon Park bus stop is getting an upgrade if the city can find someone for that work. 

The city has a tender out to hire Veeam to back up municipal data. It's still weird to me that the city has to put out a tender to buy something from a company that it knows it wants. This is like if you found something on Facebook Marketplace that you wanted to buy but then asked the person to sell it to you via Amazon instead of just picking it up yourself. 

Princess Margaret Boulevard and Hudson Way are getting new sidewalks and bus stop upgrades. 

The HRM is looking for some air filters and belts for some of its facilities. 

The North Memorial Public Library will eventually be rebuilt. The city is putting out a tender for a design. 

Lockview High School is getting an all-weather field and the site needs some work. Here’s a fun fact: all-weather fields are often sexist pieces of infrastructure. 

The city is putting together a list of qualified tradespeople it can call on and has a tender out for that.

The city is looking to pay someone too much to clean the insides of busses at Ragged Lake (this would be cheaper to do in-house). 

The city is looking for some tree-climbing gear for the city’s arborists. 

The city needs some drain cleaner vacuum trucks, sewer flushing and mobile wash trucks and operators for HRM facilities. This is a long way of saying the HRM is hiring someone to clean it’s sewers. 

The city is looking to hire someone to help make the Shearwater Flyer off-leash dog park a reality. 

The city is also looking to get some real estate appraised.

And finally, the city is no longer looking to fill out a list of pre-qualified vendors it can call on for emergency road repairs when the climate emergency returns to Nova Scotia like it did with last year’s fires, floods and hurricanes. This feels like something we should consider bringing in-house instead of contracting out due to the plethora of employment opportunities the climate emergency will provide as it repeatedly destroys our infrastructure in the decades and generations to come. But this tender is now officially gone after months of being open. 

That’s it! Since you made it to the end, I’ve got to ask:

Thank you for helping to make our City Hall coverage possible.