Health Minister Randy Delorey says his government “will pursue and act upon” the five recommendations and 22 action items in last week’s expert-panel report into the province’s flat-lining long-term care system. The backdrop: in September, a woman with untreated, infected bedsores died in a long-term care facility. She wasn’t the first. And questionable patient deaths...
The Fang-less Five, the McNeil government, and (un)accountability
In his own Trumpian, alternate-fact world, MLA Gordon Wilson wants us to believe the Public Accounts Committee can’t venture beyond the narrow confines of published auditor general’s reports when examining public spending because… well, that would be against the law. Time for Wilson to re-read the "law."
Stephen McNeil’s Fang-less Five, also known as the Craven Cabal of Liberal Nobodies, are up to their usual tricks. Still. Again. Let’s recap. Last April, a 19-year-old student, innocently looking for government information releases relating to an ongoing dispute between the provincial government and its teachers (you may remember that), was accidentally able to download...
Hard conversations: Why was “fantastic principal” Lamar Eason suspended from his job?
“People don’t like to talk about race, culture, bias,” Bayview Community School principal Lamar Eason explains, adding elliptically: “Doing your job can lead to questioning the people employing you. Understandably, people get defensive. But [race relations officers] are not there just to support schools; we’re also there to support students and their families. There can be some hard conversations.”
Just as the school day was winding down on Monday, Nov. 5, 2018, the human resources director of the South Shore Regional Centre for Education (SSRCE) showed up, unannounced, at Mahone Bay’s Bayview Community School. Brian Bonia proceeded directly to the office of the school’s principal, Lamar Eason, where he delivered a copy of an […]
Gerald Regan and the legacy of our #MeToo moment
It isn't the jury's verdict from 1998 we should be remembering today, but the fact the RCMP and prosecutors finally chose to believe women over one of the country's most powerful political men. And, more important, that women — lots of them — stood up for other women, and said #MeToo.
“Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdicts?” The court clerk asked her rote question with a wavering, tell-me-don’t-tell-me tone that seemed to capture perfectly the nervous, nerve-wracked mood among the more than three dozen men and women sitting in the Halifax Law Court’s Courtroom 3-1 on the blustery afternoon of December 18,...
Shrubsall: Andy Fillmore’s challenge and opportunity
Is Halifax Liberal MP Andy Fillmore just one more mindlessly reliable yes-vote for whatever Justin Trudeau’s Liberals propose or oppose? Or could he fill what is now a political void and champion a non-partisan attempt to make sure our parole system helps those who deserve it while protecting the rest of us from dangerous offenders like William Shrubsall? T.C. — and the rest of us — are waiting.
It is not just a done deal. The deal, in fact, is almost certainly already past the point of reconsideration. But that shouldn’t stop the rest of us from demanding answers from those who made the deal, or accountability from those responsible for allowing it to happen. On Nov. 7, the Parole Board of Canada...
Race in Nova Scotia: one small step forward, another giant leap into the past
Back in the fall of 1968, Stokely Carmichael’s mere presence scared the hell out of Halifax. Are there lessons for today?
Last month, the Bank of Canada released its new $10-banknote featuring an image of Viola Desmond, the iconic Canadian civil rights pioneer who refused to give up her seat in the whites-only section of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow in 1946, and touched off this country’s modern civil rights era nine years before Rosa...
William Shrubsall: gambling on American justice, gambling on public safety
The parole board agrees dangerous offender William Shrubsall is still a danger. So why grant him full parole? Good question. Bad answer.
“After considering the following information, the Board has decided to take no action on your day parole and to grant full parole for deportation. The Board explains its reasons below…” Start with this. When considering 47-year-old Ethan Simon Templar MacLeod’s request for parole earlier this month, the Parole Board of Canada already had plenty of...
Catherine Tully’s power to persuade vs government’s power to ignore
If you’re denied access to information even after the information and privacy commissioner has reviewed your request and deemed it legitimate, your only recourse is to take the government to court. At your own expense, of course. It doesn't have to be that way. It is because it's in the government's interest to keep you from knowing.
Nova Scotians deserve modern access and privacy protections including effective oversight of their rights. Our current laws are no longer up to the task. Consistent with my recommendations last year, I once again recommend that the laws be modernized to ensure that Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians are ready and able to meet the challenges...
The president versus the press. Or should that be the president thanks the press?
The day after the US mid-terms, Donald Trump staged a rambling 90-minute press conference to spin the dross of Republican electoral loss into the gold of never-ending Trumpian triumph, and thus re-establish his personal ownership of the news cycle. The press made it easy for him.
I’ve never been a fan of press-conference journalism. It may be a marginal improvement on canned-quotes press-release journalism when it comes to public accountability, but most press conferences I’ve attended are little more than carefully staged theatre pieces designed to control and direct the flow of information and emotion in ways favourable to the presenter....
Jen’s choice is no choice at all; why not?
Jen Powley is smart. She has four degrees. She’s a prize-winning author with an eclectic CV and a significant record of ongoing accomplishment. She’s still only 41. So why does she face a government-imposed Hobson’s life choice: go into a nursing home to be warehoused and “removed from society” for the rest of her life, or accept care that isn’t even adequate to meet her most basic needs?
Jen Powley is smart. She has four degrees: a BA in Social Sciences (with Distinction) from King’s University College in Edmonton in 2000, a one-year post-baccalaureate Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College in Halifax in 2001, a Master of Planning degree from Dalhousie in 2008 and a Master of Fine Arts in […]
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