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Halifax shipyard gets government financial aide package for navy ships

The Canadian Press — -0400

HALIFAX - The Nova Scotia government is making more than $300 million available to Irving Shipbuilding Inc. to help it prepare for the construction of the Royal Canadian Navy's next fleet of vessels.

The government's financial assistance package consists of a forgivable capital loan worth up to $260 million and a repayable marine industry loan of $44 million for human resources development.

Irving Shipbuilding says it will spend between $5 million and $10 million annually on capital improvements to its operations over the next 30 years.

That money is over and above what the company is spending to build new infrastructure that's needed to complete the project.

The Irving-owned Halifax Shipyard was the successful bidder for a $25-billion contract to build 21 combat vessels.

The contract is expected to maintain a steady flow of work at the shipyard over the next 20 to 30 years.

Penny-pinching Tories open for business

Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press — -0400

OTTAWA - A penny-pinching Conservative government is loosening the reins on Canada's business community in a budget it says will position the country for unbridled commercial opportunity.

With an eye to the long game after years of politically attractive, minority budgets, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is trimming $5.2 billion in annual federal spending — scrapping the money-losing penny in the process — while raising the age of eligibility for old age security to 67 from 65, starting a decade from now.

Thursday's federal budget, the seventh since Stephen Harper took office, is the first with an overtly pro-trade and resource development bent and a dearth of voter-friendly goodies. A majority mandate with three full years before the next election will do that for a conservative-minded prime minister.

"We are a moderate, pragmatic government that responds to the facts as they are, and not as we might wish them to be," Flaherty said in the budget lockup Thursday.

"We are fiscal conservatives, we are a majority now, the economy is growing — albeit modestly.... We're looking to the future."

Flaherty said Canada "wants to be in the next league. We want to be with the emerging economies. We want to be with the economies of Asia and South America that are growing, and we're in a position in this country to get there."

The blowback was immediate: a noisy group of protesters perched in the House of Commons public gallery began to chant slogans as Flaherty delivered his speech.

"Where are we in your budget? This is not our budget!" they shouted before being led out by security guards.

The budget's business-friendly measures include streamlining environmental assessments to speed major resource projects — think pipelines — into existence; recasting research and development funds; tailoring the labour market, including immigration, to specific job shortages; and a focus on new free-trade deals.

There's $500 million in government largesse for venture capital, $1.1 billion in directed research and development funding, and $205 million for a one-year extension of a temporary hiring credit for small businesses.

"What the budget is doing is handing off the baton from government to the private sector to carry economic growth," said Craig Alexander, chief economist at TD Bank.

The transformation will come from a shuffling of priorities, not big new spending programs. Research funding, for instance, will be shifted dramatically away from pure science to more commercial applications.

"It's a whole bunch of little things around the edges," said Alexander.

Not so, said Greenpeace Canada, which issued a release claiming "big oil is the big winner in today's budget."

It's also an austerity budget, whatever the government claims.

Total spending, including debt servicing charges, will rise to $276.1 billion in 2012-13, a marginal increase of 0.11 per cent on the current $272.9 billion envelope. Program spending is projected to rise just 2.1 per cent annually for years, effectively flatlining in real terms after inflation and population growth.

"It's going to take an awful lot of tough decisions to restrain to that degree on such a long period of time," said Alexander.

"In actual fact, it's more fiscal restraint than we had in the '90s (under the former Liberal government) because in that period we had very sharp cuts followed by a rebound in spending. This time it's going to be slow spending for many years.

"It's easy to say, extraordinarily difficult to do."

The Conservatives had been signalling even deeper cuts, but Flaherty rejected recommendations from cabinet's strategic operating review committee for cuts totalling $7.5 billion. An improving economy that lowered deficit projections convinced Flaherty and Harper more draconian cuts weren't needed.

Thomas Mulcair, the newly installed NDP leader, nonetheless likened the budget to a "clear cut."

Conservatives, said Mulcair, "like being in power, but they're not very good ... managers, so they're not going to go at this with a scalpel. They'll always go at it with a rusty machete."

Liberals said the spending blueprint sets the country on a collision course.

"This is a budget of division that not only pits one generation against another, but also prosperous regions against regions that are suffering," said Liberal finance critic Scott Brison.

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand said the cuts are worrying in view of the global economic uncertainty.

"The federal government must secure Canada's economic stability," he said. "The cuts announced today (Thursday) must not endanger the already fragile economic recovery," he told reporters in Quebec City.

But others were equally adamant the government didn't go far enough.

"Spending cuts announced today are a drop in the bucket," sniffed Gregory Thomas of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Catherine Swift, head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, lauded the government for enacting at least parts of eight of her group's 12 recommendations, but added the budget "was too tame in terms of its actual cuts."

The federal deficit, which Flaherty projected just five months ago would come in at $31 billion this year, will actually be $24.9 billion, falling to $21.1 billion in 2012-13 and $10.2 billion the year after.

The government continues to maintain the books will be balanced in 2015, although the spending and revenue track suggests it could come in a year ahead of schedule.

Indeed, the budget lays out a course that will put the federal books back where they were before the deep global recession of 2008 knocked governments askew from Ottawa to Canberra.

The budget document, for the most part, is careful to obscure exactly where the greatest pain will come from spending cuts, while broadly outlining that 19,200 federal jobs are to be cut — some 4.8 per cent of the federal workforce.

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy is being eliminated, as is the youth program Katimavik, along with a travelling leadership program for civil servants and Harper's own, stillborn public appointments commission from his 2006 campaign platform. The CBC faces a 10 per cent budget cut.

Other significant cuts will only be felt as individual departments wield the knife internally.

National Defence will see its budget fall by more than $1.1 billion by 2014-15, Public Safety will take a $688-million haircut and international assistance falls $377 million annually within three years. Both the health portfolio — including Health Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Assisted Human Reproduction Canada — and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada will lose $310 million by 2014-15.

There are some budget winners.

While the overall budget of Aboriginal Affairs is to be cut $165 million by 2015, there's $275 million in new money over three years for native schools and education, and almost $331 million over two years to improve water systems on reserves.

The Canadian Coast Guard gets $5.2 billion over the next decade to renew boats and helicopters.

There's also an injection of $482 million over two years for the unemployment insurance system, including incentives for accepting work and ensuring benefit levels align with local labour market conditions.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version contained a figure for projected program spending that has since been revised.

Bail denied for Halifax navy officer accused in rare case of espionage

The Canadian Press — -0400

HALIFAX - A Halifax navy intelligence officer accused in a case of espionage has been denied bail.

Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle is charged with communicating information that could harm national interests.

Delisle has been in custody at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility since his arrest in January.

Delisle was charged under a section of the Security of Information Act that was passed by the House of Commons after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The RCMP say the charges against Delisle mark the first time that anyone has been charged under that section of the act.

Court documents say one of the alleged offences happened between July 6, 2007, and Jan. 13, 2012, while the other offence is alleged to have happened between Jan. 10 and Jan. 13 of this year.

Delisle also faces a breach of trust charge under the Criminal Code that is alleged to have happened between July 6, 2007, and Jan. 13, 2012.

All the offences are alleged to have happened in or near Halifax, Ottawa and Kingston, Ont.

Up until 2010, Delisle worked for both the Chief of Defence Intelligence and at the Strategic Joint Staff, which oversees virtually every major aspect of the military's domestic and international plans and operations.

He joined the military as a reservist private in 1996 and was posted to the 3 Intelligence Company in Halifax.

He went on to join the regular forces in 2001, was promoted to sergeant before being accepted at university for two years in Kingston as an officer candidate and eventually landed back in Halifax at the army's Atlantic headquarters.

In August of last year, Delisle was posted to Trinity, a highly secure naval intelligence centre in Halifax.

US jackpot increases to world record $640 million

The Associated Press — -0400

ATLANTA - U.S. lottery officials say they are increasing the MegaMillions lottery jackpot to $640 million, raising what was already a world record prize.

Kimberly Starks, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Lottery, said Friday the jackpot had increased. The jackpot had stood at $540 million before the announcement. The previous record jackpot was $390 million in 2007.

A drawing for the fortune is set for late Friday night in Atlanta.

The odds of winning the jackpot had been set at about 1 in 176 million.

MegaMillions has drawn long lines of lottery players in stores in the 42 states plus Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands where tickets are sold.

Officer who found Tori's body takes the stand

The Canadian Press — -0400

LONDON, Ont. - The police officer who found eight-year-old Victoria Stafford's body says he wasn't searching for her that day, but came across a scene that looked very familiar.

Terri-Lynne McClintic, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Tori's death, had drawn sketches of the crime scene to try to help police find the girl's remains.

Ontario Provincial Police Det. Staff Sgt. Jim Smyth is testifying today at the trial of Michael Rafferty, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.

Smyth says police learned on July 17, 2009, that Rafferty's cellphone had pinged off a tower near Mount Forest, Ont., on the evening of April 8, 2009 — the day Tori was killed.

Smyth decided to drive through the rural area two days later to get an idea of the landscape, then saw a house that was nearly identical to a house McClintic had described.

He says he drove down a laneway across from the house, saw a rock pile as McClintic had described, and smelled the odour of decomposition.

City hopes new bike routes will attract commuters

Jon Tattrie, Metro Halifax — -0400

About 100 people packed the Bloomfield Centre on Thursday night for an HRM presentation on the possible locations for a north-south bike corridor on peninsular Halifax.

David MacIssaac, the HRM staffer making the presentation, said the municipality wants to pull in as many thoughts on the routes as possible.

“What are their priorities for where cycling routes should be on the peninsula?” he said. “We want to hear what type of routes they think would attract more people to ride their bikes.”

The corridors being looked at are Novalea and Gottingen streets; Agricola Street to Bell Road; Windsor Street to Vernon Street; and Connaught Avenue.

About eight per cent of commuter trips on the peninsula are on a bike. HRM wants to double that figure within 20 years.

The new route could be laid as soon as next year, although it could take longer if the selected route is more complicated. The route would be painted on the road and signed.

Depending on where it goes, it would involve losing parking spaces used by residents and businesses, having cyclists riding with varying levels of traffic and having differing levels of connectivity to other bike routes.

Scott Grundy is a north-end resident and frequent cycler. He backs the Argricola route, but says any bike lanes would be an improvement.

“It’s not the safest,” he said.

MacKinnon ranked number one for 2013 NHL draft

Matthew Wuest, Metro Halifax — -0400

Cole Harbour’s Nathan MacKinnon of the Halifax Mooseheads is ranked No. 1 for the 2013 NHL draft, according to Red Line Report, an independent scouting publication.

Red Line’s 70-player list is its first monthly ranking for the 2013 draft.

MacKinnon, 16, had 31 goals and 47 assists for 78 points in 58 games this season and dominated in the Mooseheads’ first-round sweep of the Moncton Wildcats. He is tied for second in QMJHL playoff goal-scoring with six tallies in four games and also has two assists to lead the Mooseheads in points.

The only other Nova Scotian to go No. 1 in the NHL draft was Cole Harbour’s Sidney Crosby in 2005.

Lower Sackville’s James Sheppard was the next highest Bluenose selection, going ninth overall in 2006. Seth Jones, a defenceman with the United States development team, Ottawa 67’s centre Sean Monahan and Finnish defenceman Aleksander Barkov are MacKinnon’s closest competitors, Red Line chief scout Kyle Woodlief said.

NDP throne speech divides parties

Jennifer Taplin, Metro Halifax — -0400

The opposition called it a work of fiction, but the governing NDP called it The Future Starts Here.
Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis delivered her last throne speech to open the fourth session of the 61st general assembly on Thursday.

Employment and economic growth is booming in Nova Scotia, she said.
“Nova Scotia is heading into an era of what promises to be great prosperity,” she said.

Most of the speech revolved around upcoming plans and strategies like the Welcome Home to Nova Scotia, the province’s new immigration strategy, and the Cape Breton Strategic Framework Advancement project.

The province will establish a special operating agency to involve tourism operators and experts to create a long-term tourism strategy. There will also be strategies on improving mental-health and addictions care, fisheries and a mineral incentive program providing financial assistance to prospectors.

In terms of legislation, Status of the Artist legislation will be introduced this spring session to “reflect the importance of art and culture to Nova Scotians.” There’s also a new cleaner-energy framework and a Fish Harvesters Registration and Certification Act on the way.

At best lacking and at worst “fiction,” Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil and Tory Leader Jamie Baillie were not at all impressed with this direction of government.

“Nova Scotians will be disappointed from what they heard today,” McNeil said. “There’s nothing in this throne speech that addresses rising power costs in the province of Nova Scotia. Nothing in this helps Nova Scotians with the rising cost of gasoline.”

Baillie said the promises within the speech are misleading.

“To tell all Nova Scotians they’re putting more money back in their pockets when they’ve taken out $743 from each of us in extra HST is a work of fiction.”

Trayvon Martin: Is George Zimmerman's story crumbling?

Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press — -0400

WASHINGTON - A new police surveillance video showing the killer of an unarmed black teen sporting no obvious injuries despite claims of self-defence has heightened calls for the man's arrest, with Trayvon Martin's grief-stricken mother calling it "the icing on the cake."

"Thank God for surveillance video," Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for Martin's family, told "CBS This Morning" on Thursday, "because obviously there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth and sweep Trayvon Martin's death under the rug."

Crump said the video refutes the claims of police and George Zimmerman that the 140-pound Martin, 17, beat him up so badly his nose was broken, and that he shot the boy in the chest in self-defence on a rainy Florida evening a month ago.

"This certainly doesn't look like a man who police said had his nose broken and his head repeatedly smashed into the sidewalk," he said.

Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, said the video was yet further proof that Zimmerman's story doesn't add up.

"This video is the icing on the cake," she said. "This is not the first part of the evidence that they have had. They have had the 911 tapes and they have also had witnesses. This video is clear evidence that there is some problem with this case and he needs to be arrested."

Zimmerman's lawyer, Craig Sonner, argued the video, obtained by ABC News, was inconclusive and called the footage "very grainy."

He pointed out that four hours had lapsed between the time of the slaying and when his client was captured on video being led into police headquarters in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman had received first-aid during that time and had been "cleaned up," he said.

In the video, Zimmerman's head and face are clearly visible, and there appear to be no obvious signs of any external injuries. There's also no evidence of blood on the front of his T-shirt, often the byproduct of a broken nose.

The developments — dubbed "George Zimmerman's crumbling story" by the Washington Post on Thursday — are the latest in the heartbreaking case that has riveted a country that grapples with ever-simmering racial tensions.

Martin's parents believe Zimmerman, patrolling his neighbourhood in an SUV, deemed the boy suspicious because of the colour of his skin as the teen walked through a Florida gated community wearing a hoodie.

The case has become a lightning rod for many African-Americans, prompting them to relive years of grievances about the troubled ties between police, the courts and the black community.

Protests have been held across the country, with Americans ranging from professional athletes to lawmakers donning hoodies while demanding Zimmerman's arrest. One hoodie-wearing state legislator in Illinois, Democrat Bobby Rush, was kicked off the floor on Wednesday in an incident that caused a mini-uproar all its own.

In the U.S. capital on Thursday, yet another demonstration was held, this one outside of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group that has long promoted laws like Florida's Stand Your Ground legislation with the help of its allies in the National Rifle Association.

"Pull back the curtain on these ghostwriters who write kill-at-will laws, who poison our communities and suppress the vote," one protester told the crowd in downtown D.C.

Sanford police have said they had no grounds to charge Zimmerman because of the law, which essentially allows people to use deadly force if they believe they're being threatened.

Martin's parents have argued, however, that if anyone was within his rights under Stand Your Ground, it would have been their son if it's true he attacked Zimmerman as he walked back to the home of his father's girlfriend following a visit to a nearby 7-Eleven.

But they doubt their boy — described by friends, family and his teachers as gentle and non-confrontational — aggressively confronted Zimmerman at all.

Tracy Martin, Trayon's father, recounted what a detective told him had happened in the days following his boy's slaying.

The detective said Martin, after noticing he was being followed, appeared from behind a building in the gated community, approached Zimmerman and demanded: "What's your problem, homie?" Martin recalled in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

When Zimmerman replied that he didn't have a problem, the detective told Tracy Martin, his son replied: "You do now" and proceeded to attack him.

"That was bull," Tracy Martin said. "No way. At that point, I knew there was something terribly wrong."

One of the lead investigators on the case also doubts Zimmerman's version of events and wanted to charge him that night with manslaughter. Chris Serino was over-ruled by the Florida attorney's office.

Richard Kurtz, the funeral director who prepared Martin's body, has also weighed in, saying there were no signs of injuries on the boy's hands that might have suggested he'd punched someone.

"The only thing that I was able to see was the gunshot wound," Kurtz said. "I could not see evidence like he had been punching somebody as the news media say he was punching .... It just did not add up to me."

A 911 call made by Zimmerman that night has also done little to bolster his story. The dispatcher is heard telling him not to follow Trayvon, but he ignores the instruction. Martin, meantime, was on his cellphone with his girlfriend, telling her someone was following him and that he was frightened.

Zimmerman can be heard running after Martin on the tape, telling the dispatcher at one point in short breaths: "These ...(expletive), they always get away."

In recent days, details have emerged about Martin being suspended from school three times, including for having a baggie with marijuana remnants in this backpack.

But Zimmerman's past brushes with the law were arguably more serious. He was charged in 2005 with resisting arrest with violence and battery of a law enforcement officer, and his ex-fiancee also successfully filed for a domestic violence restraining order against him.

Neighbours have also complained that he had a habit of targeting young black boys in his neighbourhood watch duties.

Dartmouth man charged for selling drugs door-to-door

Drew Casford, Metro Halifax — -0400

Police say a 43-year-old Dartmouth man tried his luck at selling drugs door-to-door on Wednesday night - and it didn’t turn out very well.

Halifax Regional Police say they responded to a report of a suspicious male who had been going door-to-door in the 0 to 100 block of Albro Lake Road in Dartmouth.

Police say when they located the male he had a variety of prescription drugs and a brass knuckle switchblade combo in his possession.

The man was arrested and police say once in booking he caused minor property damage.

He will appear in court on charges of possession of a prohibited weapon, four counts of illegal possession of a controlled substance and mischief under $5,000.