Our HRM Alliance calls on the municipality to take a strong stance on promoting fairness, accountability, and public participation in the new by-law on election campaign financing regulations. In the 2016 Halifax Regional Municipal election, Councillors received 34% of their donations from corporations.[i] This means that over ⅓ of total donations came not from individuals, but from industries. Many of … Read More

HRM has scheduled the Public Engagement sessions for the Halifax Green Network Plan, where they are looking to gather information from the public about how we can best implement data collected in the first two phases of the Plan. We’re advocating for the HGNP to create a Green Network (the same as a Greenbelt) to protect all our beautiful natural landscapes … Read More

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to CBC’s Pam Berman about the latest draft of the Centre Plan and expressed that my primary concern with the Plan, which is intended to direct growth in the Regional Centre for the next 15 years, is the somewhat ambiguous directions on affordable housing. The city is limited in what they can do about … Read More

Engagement in municipal government is crucial for all the work of our many member groups. But successive Regional Plan reviews and elected changed at council can make the whole process confusing. Here are a few of the easiest ways to follow what’s happening and stay engaged: This is an Feature List Item that is part of an Feature List. Notice … Read More

Support the Ecology Action Centre and Our HRM Alliance’s greenbelt initiative! Why should you run for the Greenbelt? The answer is simple: we don’t have one yet! Our HRM Alliance has been working toward this goal for a long time now, and in the coming months we’ll all get our chance to have a say in the Halifax Green Network Plan. Our number … Read More

Back in the summer of 2015, we Hiked, Biked, Canoed, Kayaked, Swam, Ran and Camped to show Halifax the nature we have—and what we can protect. The Halifax Greenbelt exists, and it is beautiful. Halifax’s Green Network Plan, currently in development, is our chance to keep it. This plan is an opportunity to create an inspiring system of protected natural … Read More

In 2012, Our HRM Alliance launched a set of proposals for the future of the region that we called our Seven Solutions. These solutions helped shape the discourse during that campaign and all seven of them have since made progress or were enacted in some form. Notably, the Regional Plan contained a commitment to our first solution, implementing “greenbelting” to … Read More

The car bottomed out multiple times with the weight of all our gear as we drove the dirt road up to Otter Lake, just north of Lake Echo. We said goodbye to our friends who drove us and took a breath: this was going to be the most challenging leg of Hike the Greenbelt, a 25km, two-day adventure through bush … Read More

Living on peninsular Halifax, (a subpeninsula of the Chebucto Peninsula), I regard this lovely piece of rock as my bioregion. Most of the bedrock is South Mountain Batholith, that hard granitic stuff that covers a lot of western Nova Scotia; in the area of Halifax it gives way to the black slates and siltstones of the “Meguma Supergroup”. In the … Read More

40 years. Bedford residents have worked for 40 years on getting Sandy Lake protected—9 years longer than I have been alive. Heck, even the Great Pyramid only took 20 years to build. These people have perseverance. And on Tuesday August 4th, Council almost decided to protect 160 acres of the area’s best land, a place that looks like this: But … Read More