The article is behind the Halifax Examiner's paywall for now, but they have a section about it in today's free Morning File (it's not in the headline there).

But before debate even started on Morse’s motion [to send the letter], Coun. Trish Purdy asked for a point of order, saying issues around guaranteed basic income aren’t under municipal jurisdiction.

Mayor Andy Fillmore supported Purdy’s point of order, saying any decisions about a guaranteed basic income are up to the federal government with assistance from the provinces.

Fillmore pointed to section 70 of Administrative Order (AO) One that says “a motion in respect of a matter which is not within the jurisdiction of the Council shall not be in order.”

Municipal solicitor John Traves said while Fillmore is correct about the point of order, if two-thirds of councillors want to disregard the rule, they could do so.

Objecting because of the rules. OK, sure. But:

Purdy doubled-down, saying she wants council to always focus only on issues under municipal jurisdiction.

“What are we now? The giver of all magic money to all people?” Purdy said.

Still, she said while she doesn’t support a basic income, she thinks it will become a reality because of artificial intelligence (AI) in the labour force.

“I’m going to resist it until the very end,” Purdy said. “I have so many red flags about this.”

Purdy said if her children needed money, she’d tell them to go get another job.

“You get three jobs, you get five jobs. You don’t sleep; you make money, you save it, and you figure it out,” Purdy said. “That’s where I come from with these things.”

Fillmore said he does support universal basic income (UBI), adding he has attended and spoken at the BIG-NS conference in the past when he served as the MP for Halifax.

According to his LinkedIn page, [Nova Scotia Independent Energy System Operator CEO Johnny] Johnston started and built his career in the methane industry. For over 21 years, he worked for National Grid plc, a British company that also owns utilities in the northeastern U.S.

By 2016, Johnston worked at National Grid’s SVP Gas Business Enablement, where he “Led the envisioning, development and delivery of an industry leading multi-$100M transformation, to deliver a step change in how National Grid serves its 7 million customers, how its 5,500 front line employees manage their work, and its engineers manage more than $10B in gas assets.”

After leaving National Grid, from August 2023 to August 2024 Johnston was a board member of the American Gas Association, which says that it “represents more than 200 energy companies that provide natural gas [methane] service to 189 million Americans.”

Memory-maker Micron has found a way to keep prices for its products sky-high for another five years, by signing 16 “strategic customer agreements” (SCAs) that include a floor price the company says comes with “a very robust gross margin for Micron, well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle.”

Micron CEO, president and chairman Sanjay Mehrotra explained the SCAs in prepared remarks delivered during the company’s Q3 earnings call. He explained that Micron has signed 16 SCAs, most of them covering 2026 to 2030, and that they involve a commitment to buy a certain quantity of product and pay for it in a pricing band that has a floor and a ceiling price. The floor price covers the historically high gross margins mentioned above, and the ceiling price means those who commit to an SCA are insulated if memory prices go even higher.

Just the three big revenue streams that Houston cancelled — $272.4 million for HST (that benefits those with the money to allow them to be big spenders), $160 million for income tax bracket changes, $40 million for bridge tolls (that primarily benefit people in HRM but have to be made up for by everyone in the province) — add up to $472.4 million.

The cuts save the provincial government just $304.9 million.

With the tolls now gone, the province is budgeting $120.1 million for Halifax Harbour Bridges.

No matter how you slice and dice it all, the fact is that Houston-the-professional-accountant seems to have badly messed up the province’s accounts.

There was a time when sneering at international law would not have been a good look for someone aspiring to be Prime Minister of Canada.

But, charting new territory, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre contemptuously called Justin Trudeau “woke” for indicating Canada would abide by a ruling of the International Criminal Court (ICC) — a court that Canada helped establish to punish war criminals.

Poilievre specifically rejects the legitimacy of the ICC charges against Netanyahu, on the specious grounds that Netanyahu was democratically elected.

Poilievre's tweet with an interview clip