The Grand Parade

Short episode this week as Matt gets ready for Budget Season. In this episode, some hope, a budget season preview, preview, and another week where I go tell you to watch that video by Kevin over at HFX by Bike. This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8kCed6o4Bc&t=17s

In this episode host Matt Stickland recaps a relatively uneventful week in city politics. A lot of information about strategic plans, from HalifACT to Snow Clearing but not a lot of ACTion on any thing yet. Also in this episode, last week's board of police commissioners meeting happened and Matt talks about Eastern Passage's new police expense. Built to Fail YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/l8kCed6o4Bc?si=9BjkcecFQJAQbtCH The city's housing strategy survey: https://engagehalifax.ca/housing-strategy

In this special episode of the Grand Parade podcast, we feature the spooky YouTube video made by Kevin over at HFX By Bike. In that video (linked below) he explains in great detail how and why the city is fiscally unsustainable. Also linked below, as mentioned in the intro, is the city's housing strategy public engagement survey. Have a safe and dry Halloween Built to Fail YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/l8kCed6o4Bc?si=9BjkcecFQJAQbtCH The city's housing strategy survey: https://engagehalifax.ca/housing-strategy

This week is all about Road Safety and how Halifax has killed a record number of people this year on our roads. This violence is both publically funded at great expense and completely avoidable. In this episode, host Matt Stickland struggles to keep it together as he tries to mimic all of the mental gymnastics on display last week. As promised, here is the piece by Josh over on CPL.ca: https://www.canpl.ca/news/healey-madness-and-late-playoff-magic-at-the-wanderers-grounds Here's one of the articles about the Parisian cyclist that was murdered: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/10/18/cyclist-killed-in-paris-this-case-is-stirring-up-a-great-deal-of-emotion-among-people-who-travel-by-bike_6729762_7.html Here's a safestreetblog (an American road safety news outlet) article about that famously incorrect crosswalk study: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/02/12/traffic-engineers-still-rely-on-a-flawed-1970s-study-to-refuse-crosswalks Here is Ottawa's road safety Strategy: https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?documentid=27362 Here is Hoboken's: https://www.vzhoboken.com/_files/ugd/365b92_c415cf40a108488d981e0609bd9a19f9.pdf And here is Hoboken's vision zero driver pledge: https://www.vzhoboken.com/ And here is Helsinki's plan: https://www.hel.fi/static/liitteet/kaupunkiymparisto/julkaisut/julkaisut/julkaisu-25-23.pdf And here is Halifax's: https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/transportation/streets-sidewalks/attachment-1-road-safety-strategy.pdf So now that you have seen the other student's homework, would you give Halifax a passing grade? No seriously, would you? Let us know, info@grandparade.news

Hey, our road safety strategy is working as designed, which means it's working against it's intended outcome. As a result children and their parents are dying and only you can prevent it from getting worse. Here are the links promised in the show: https://thehappyurbanist.substack.com/p/more-cars-in-body-shops-less-kids The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNSgmm9FX2s https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/boards-committees-commissions/231116atac921pres.pdf https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/boards-committees-commissions/231116atac921waleshandout.pdf https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/boards-committees-commissions/231116atac921.pdf https://nation.cymru/opinion/20mph-one-year-on-welsh-road-casualties-falling-considerably-faster-than-rest-of-gb/ https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/london-hits-historic-clean-air-32584488

I gotta be honest here. It's 7pm on Sunday night and I have a beer league hockey game to go to and I can't skip it because I'm the goalie. If there is information you wanted in these show notes but is not here please send all your complaints to matt@grandparade.news. Enjoy this week's show!

Another week at city hall and another week of the Grand Parade podcast. This week is a far less... let's say excited episode that runs back over the relatively mild municipal news since last Monday Here are the links promised in the show notes from the ep itself: The rise of Canadian Women's Rugby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foq1rCWiYuA&t=1041s Get involved with your city planning here: https://engagehalifax.ca/2025-planning-changes

Fair warning, the failure of the Bus Rapid Transit pilot in 2022 (but formally at the last Transportation Standing Committee meeting) combined with the failures of council to do tax reform in the 28 years since amalgamation, and the failure to learn any lessons from the Bus Rapid Transit Pilot for the “improved” 2024 Road Safety Strategy sent me spiralling down a rabbit hole. Would you too like to come through the looking glass? No? Well, maybe you should avoid this episode. For everyone else, he's an angry explanation for just how badly the council has failed us for the past 28 years.

We are back fully recharged to talk about a wet and wild council meeting. It actually wasn't all that wet or wild, as the Dartmouth Cove motion was dealt with early and largely without incident. Most of the interesting debates, and therefor most of this show is about the city's budget. The upcoming budget season, and our massive amount of debt, and our really high future tax rate. And when you get to the end, let me know what you think about a Grand Parade meetup and/or faux council award ceremony.

Apologies. Due to personal circumstances, physical illness and mental health, there will be no issue with the paper this week. More details on this and local roads in this week's abridged show.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week's show, there's not much in these show notes this week. In this episode Matt covers the three water issues council debated last Tuesday before shining a light on the city's sunshine list. In the paper this week we've asked our reader for some feed back, check it out in store.

Do you ever have one of those things where it's like a thing you do every week, but some weeks it's just like "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO DO THIS THING AGAIN!?" Not sure why I thought that was relevant, but this week's episode is a format that was a bit easier to manage. Join host Matt Stickland as he walks his dog and plans for the American invasion of Canada, all while singing Acadian pop songs.

The show notes will be as short as this week's routine meetings. What does Mortal Kombat have to do with underground parking? Listen to city hall reporter Matt Stickland break it all down. Contest? What contest? I haven't the foggiest.

This week we get back to the more neo-traditional clipped show format, recapping the last week of council meetings. Sportswashing, fiscal sustainability, road safety, park lighting, this week really had it all. Also this week host Matt Stickland explains what the plans for the future of this paper are, should we continue to be successful in this endeavour. Don't forget to rate and review this show and share it with your friends, and to the three of you who are reading this, hey, thanks for paying attention to the details.

Hey folks, I know I promised real show notes, but it turns out that was a lie. I find these hard to do and so far the feedback I've gotten on show notes is that no one reads these things anyway. You read this thing? Shoot me a message (matt(at)grandparade(dot)news, first one to do so gets one month's free subscription to the paper. That said, if you're looking for the text of the amendment I've suggested for emails-to-councillors purposes, here it is from the script: And I think it's as simple as amending clause 21 from quote (1) Staff shall prepare a traffic calming plan for each project on the annual proposed implementation list and shall consider the physical characteristics of each street. End quote to read quote (1) Staff shall prepare an evidence based traffic calming plan in line with Intergrated Mobility Plan and/or Vision Zero's and/or HalifaACT's desired outcomes for each project on the annual proposed implementation list and shall align council priorities and the physical characteristics of each street when trying to determine how to reduce the danger of car traffic.

Big week in Halifax politics as Morris Street bikeway was killed and then immediately reanimated by Halifax's council. More people are homeless now than they were last year and Matt details the 20 some odd years of Halifax failing to accomplish real tax reform. By way of apology for the rougher than normal edit, here's the world anvil page for the D&D world my friend and I created. It's a North American pre-European contact-inspired world. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/nd26dp-landofsticks

As threatened, we've taken the week off but to fill the void left by our absence, we're re-airing a fan favourite. Here are the show noted from the episode In this week's episode of The Grand Parade podcast, Coast reporters Matt Stickland and Martin Bauman chat with economist Deny Sullivan about Halifax's HAF blunders and why a labour shortage isn't to blame for the city's housing crisis. Plus, they delve into Halifax's deferred plans to abandon its Strategic Road Safety Framework in favour of a new plan that is worse than the old one.

Last council meeting in July council started some pretty beefy discussions about tax reform. During that debate in early July, mayor Andy Fillmore suggested Halifax could learn lessons from how Hamilton and Winnipeg do their budgets. Since council isn't meeting this week, it gave city hall reporter Matt Stickland time to go read other cities' budget documents and bring you a budgetary book report about what Halifax can learn about sustainable budgeting from Winnipeg and Hamilton.

Council is on vacation, but Matt is not, and the last council meeting on July 8 was a beefy one with a lot of really important debates. Among those debates was one about strong mayor powers in which our city councillors performed really well! So we've put together a highlight reel of the strong mayor debate.

We are back with another full show covering last Tuesday's (and Thursday's) council meeting.

Hello it's summer vacation season and I've been taking full advantage. This is a live to tape episode with a recap of last week's one meeting and a preview of Tuesday's council meeting.

Just a quick programming note from Matt this week

On Saturday May 31, 2025 Halifax Wanderers travelled to Quebec City, to play York United in a Canadian Premier League on tour, regular season game. The Halifax Wanderers put on a bus to Quebec City. Grand Parade reporter Matt Stickland embedded with the fans and watched the game. This is that story.

As promised during the episode, here is how, in my opinion, the Traffic Calming Administrative Order should be amended. It would be beneficial to get rid of the TCAO all together so road safety money could be spend on more efficient strategies, like the Integrated Mobility Plan, however, since politicans seem to want to keep it, clause 21 of the TCAO should be amended (changes in bold) to read “staff shall prepare an evidence based traffic calming plan, in line with the Road Safety Strategy and Integrated Mobility Plan, for each project on the annual proposed implementation list and shall consider the physical characteristics of each street.” That's it. That's how we could save money and make roads safer in the process. Write your councillor and ask them to change the TCAO.

Enough is enough please share this episode with everyone you know in Halifax.

In this podcast Grand Parade's city hall reporter Matt Stickland recaps what went down at city hall last week. There's a development on a heritage property, Halifax is making slow progress police reform thanks to an unlikely hero. And there's also a pop quiz! We trust you can find any legislation yourself, and if you can't, you should be able to, but otherwise here are the sources mentioned in the show: https://timharford.com/2023/07/cautionary-tales-the-v2-trilogy/ https://www.smithsonianbooks.com/store/aviation-military-history/the-rocket-and-the-reich-peenemunde-and-the-coming-of-the-ballistic-missile-era/ https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/f229e86a-a3f0-4899-9631-71335f654f79/content https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119020300899 https://news.mit.edu/2021/ride-sharing-intensifies-urban-road-congestion-0423 https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/ride-hailing-makes-road-congestion-worse-study-finds-again https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652621042694

In this episode a recap of everything that happened last week. Can you tell that I'm writing this blurb too late on a Sunday? Yes, probably. For more info about city hall, head over to www.grandparade.news To follow Matt on Social media, find him @landofsticks Tootles

Short one this week as the Board of Police Commissioners meeting was cancelled.

Hey folks, bit of a lighter show notes this week because I've done a bonus show and had to put a newspaper to bed. See ya next week, don't forget to grab a copy of the first issue of the paper this week at Atlantic News in Halifax and The Dart Gallery in Dartmouth

Since journalism is homework the job, after last episode where I explained in great details the issues with the HRM's planning, I felt obligated to explain how I'd fix it. For this bonus episode I invited Kevin Wilson aka HFX By Bike and the two of us work through fixing the BRT. Over on his YouTube Channel, Kevin does this sort of thing on a regular basis in his let's fix video. Recently he took a look at the Halifax Commons. Check it out: https://youtu.be/iwIj95vOHpY?si=_mZ6A-pb-O1zzqkV In this episode, we talk a lot about pedestrian safety, and the more you look into it, you'll realize that crosswalk safety is mostly a convenient lie. Check it out for yourself though, here's what I'm basing my opinion on: https://ggwash.org/view/40788/traffic-engineers-still-rely-on-a-flawed-1970s-study-to-reject-crosswalks https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/driving/article/id/28343/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847821002503 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332300079_Eye_Contact_Between_Pedestrians_and_Drivers https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361198118790645

I suspect most people don't usually read the show notes, but if you're here for the study, scroll down. If you're here for information in this episode Matt Stickland, recaps council and goes deep into the weeds of Halifax's Bus Rapid Transit Plan. Here's the promised study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920919314026?via%3Dihub

Bit of a light week at city hall and since I forgot it was Good Friday, a bit of a lighter episode. Councillor Janet Steele is trying to get the city to protect and create more heritage districts. Councillor Cathy Deagle Gammon is trying to remove parking spots in land use bylaws because toddlers don't drive cars. All of that and a deep dive into the difference between Halifax's transportation planning and that of the Dutch. Here's a link to the YouTube video referenced in the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpo98dhpgZI&t=2s Please consider becoming a paid subscriber over at www.grandparade.news.

Last week was a relatively slow one as far as the schedule was concerned, with only a Tuesday council meeting and Thursday's African descent advisory committee.  Halifax now has a budget, and thanks to Mayor Andy Fillmore, next year's budget will be wildly different from this year's. Also, last week, Halifax once again found itself standing in the long shadow of its more than slightly racist history.

In a week dominated by breathless international news Halifax's city hall had a relatively slow week. This week there were only two meetings of consequence, which allowed the Board of Police Commissioners to do a deep dive into intimate partner violence and the Envrionment and Sustainability Committee to learn about the failures of the green network plan.

Now that budget season is done, as threatened, this show will now become a weekly roundup of what happened at City Hall last week. The obvious high/lowlight of last week was when council finished the budget adjustment list debates on Wednesday, March 26, but did you know that other meetings also happened last week? There was an audit that missed some key financial information, public housing grants were awarded, and next summer, there might be a bus to HRM's beaches! This weekly recap show takes a whirlwind rip through all of council's meetings (except budget committee) from the past week.

Halifax's budget playoffs wrapped on Wednesday March 26 and Halifax has a budget! The budget itself was a political victory for our new mayor, Andy Fillmore, who promised to keep Halifax's property tax rate flat, which the council did. However, property values went up by 4.7 percent, and so will property taxes.      Those property taxes will pay for Halifax's $1.3 billion operating budget and $318 million. Thanks to the final debate day in Halifax's budget playoffs, we learned more about our new council's politics than we did about the budget. The city doesn't care for its workers, but it does care for its sports heroes and biodiversity. Some rookie councillors showed some expected inexperience, and a veteran councillor earned their first wooden spoon. 

Halifax council's budget meeting on monday March 24th was a stinker, quite literally, and also because council almost voted to make Halifax's poorest people just a little hungrier because of how Canadian governments divvied up their power and responsibilities. But the good news is that your odds of dying in a fire are going to decrease slightly in the next few years, probably. Still, the bad news is that your taxes in five years are going to be astronomically expensive. You're not going to get better programs and services for those crazy high taxes because that money will have to go to debt because this council just can't stop themselves from making terrible fiscal decisions.

It's the second intermission of the budget playoffs and a lot happened in Friday's debate. Council approved an armoured personnel carrier, the central library got it's reserves cut and council avoided making a terrible cut. All that and more in this budget playoffs' second intermission update!

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt flys solo to update folks on the future of the podcast and the future of Halifax's budget.

The wait is over, it's finally here budget season started on Wednesday. In this episode Matt and Martin dive into what's being going on at city hall from strategic plans, to Windsor street exchange and of course, the start of budget season.

This past week has been a huge one in municipal politics with Halifax's city council getting an update about how their strategic planning is going. Spoiler alert, it's going very bad. In this emergency episode, Matt and Martin break down the failures of Halifax's bureaucracy

It's been a busy start to the new year with with a few big ticket events for the hosts Matt Stickland and Martin Baumen to break down. The Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, December 8th, was one of the best meetings in HRM's recent history, which included five little piggies and some light-hearted civil disobedience. Matt's been doing a lot of research into road safety and tells Martin all about how much liability the city might have been putting itself in for the past few decades. Also, in this episode, a Grand Parade exclusive: Did Andy Fillmore think he would win the vote to de-designate encampments? And a debute of our new segment, Question Period.

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt and Martin look back at the past two weeks in municipal politics and answer some hard hitting questions like: Will transit ever get better in this city? How do you cook a crow? And is there any point to the city's advisory committees? Plus, we also have a new show format! Except for the any other business segment at the end your listening experience should be largely unchanged but we'd like any feedback if you have any. Please send it to matt@thecoast.ca

At long last Coast reporter Martin is back after his paternity leave and he joins Coast city hall reporter Matt Stickland to catch up on everything he'd missed since being out. In this episode, the two talk about how the council is shaping up three meetings into their term. Which councillors are making mistakes? Who's looking promising? The conversation then turns to the HRM's committees and the upcoming budget season. Matt explains why he's mostly optimistic about the city's future, even if some shakey debate performances have sown some early seeds of doubt. All of that plus traffic planning, boomer assumptions and sneaky good provincial legislation in this first episode of Season 2 of the Grand Parade

After an impromptu summer break the Grand Parade is back! Host Matt Stickland sits down with the owner of Atlantic New Chris Greene to talk about how to interview candidates for the upcoming fall election. Chris will be sitting down the candidates of District 7 to interview them and find out who would be the best candidate for his district and wanted to advice. Happy to oblige, Matt explains how he and The Coast are vetting candidates for the fall election.

In what was supposed to be the last episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election podcast series The Coast's city hall reporter Matt Stickland sat down with The Coast's newsletter editor Julie Lawrence to answer some listener questions.  The conversation bounces around as the two try to answer as many questions as possible. There are a bunch of simple questions like “Does Halifax have enough parking?” that have relatively simple answers like “Yes.”   But some questions sparked more interesting and nuanced conversations, like ‘Should Halifax reduce the size of its bureaucracy?' and ‘What makes a suburb?' There is also a definitely real award given out to the listener who asked the best question.  But this will not be the last episode in the series, I heard back from the infrastructure expert I was trying to interview, and we're in the process of setting up the interview. So stay tuned for that in your podcast feeds.

There are two types of people in this world. There are people who think that headline is needlessly dramatic, and then there are people who understand risk management. The Coast has covered risk management extensively since Halifax's Auditor General released his scathing indictments of the city's Risk Management Team, but this is one of those things that just can't be talked about enough until the issues are fixed.  In this episode of the Grand Parade, Matt talks through his research to date from a 2014 Halifax Transit oil spill to today. The conversation covers the big things like Halifax's risk management team being the wrong people for the job to the minutia, like taxing under-utilized parking lots near transit terminals.  The long and short of it is that this city is not taking Risk Management seriously, and your future is in jeopardy in the most boring possible way. The next crop of councillors needs to do a better job of addressing these risks, which means we need to do a better job of vetting them when they come to our doors. This, unfortunately, requires you to consume the civic education version of your least favourite vegetable and gain a baseline understanding of what risk management is and how it affects your life. You can do this by listening to the latest episode of the Grand Parade here.

In this penultimate episode of the HFX Votes 2024 election explainer series, Matt interviews Risk Management expert Bruce Manion. This episode is a direct result of Halifax's Auditor General's recent audits in which he found the HRM's risk management framework to be a bit of a hot mess.  In this episode, Bruce explains to Matt how the city should be thinking about Risk Management and the problem with the city moving its risk management team from the accountants to the lawyers back in 2021. This conversation moves around a lot, from crashing ships to various levels of government approving the building of death trap subdivisions.   This conversation also launched Matt into the rabbit hole of the municipal Enterprise Risk Register, and it looks like how the city identifies risks in the first place is fundamentally flawed. More on this when Matt finishes reporting it out, but subscribers of The Coast will get a little preview of what Matt is investigating in City Hall Insider, which hits inboxes at 10:30 on Monday mornings.

The HFX Votes 2024 series is in the process of wrapping up, with three episodes recorded yesterday to be released over the next few days. Up first is an interview with Céo Gaudet, a former member of the Regional Watersheds Advisory Board.  For a little bit of history, the RWAB had a predecessor, the Dartmouth Lakes Advisory Board, which started in the 1970s. At the time, there was a lot of development going on and very few, if any, environmental assessments of procedures. But what was noticeable was the increase in silt in Dartmouth Lakes.  So, the city of Dartmouth helped form this board, which was filled out with scientific, environmental, and local experts and organizations. Once formed, the board advised Dartmouth's city council and the city of Dartmouth listened. In the intervening years, the city has professionalized its bureaucracy and added some in-house environmental assessments to the development agreement process. This led to the city trying to disband the RWAB last council term, but councillors voted to keep it because they deemed independent oversight as important. Now, thanks to some provincial legislation, the RWAB is gone for good. In this episode, Matt and Céo take a deep dive into what the city of Halifax has lost in losing its independent environmental oversight. Just an administrative note: We got sidetracked, so Ceo never finished explaining the issues with blue-green algae. When plants and/or blue-green algae die, they fall to the bottom and decompose. That takes up a lot of oxygen and makes the lake anoxic, which kills other lake life, like the eels mentioned.

In this episode of the Grand Parade Matt Stickland sits down with Wes Marshall, the author of Killed by a Traffic Engineer. His book is a meta analysis of traffic engineering studies, and he tells Matt how to determine if Halifax's traffic engineers are doing a good job. Just one note: In the episode Matt says that the HRM has made it's traffic impact statements better, and Wes points out that if they were an improvement they would consider safety. The good news is that the new traffic impact statements consider non-car modes of travel, but only consider safety in the context of car on car collisions. Not driver vs pedestrian. There's still a long way to go before Halifax's traffic impact statements are good, even if they are slightly improved from 2017