Laugh about it, shout about it When you’ve got to choose Every way you look at this you lose. — With thanks and apologies to Paul Simon If elections are no time to discuss important issues, then leaders’ debates are no place to reach meaningful conclusions about political leadership. Which is why, on the...
The premier who won’t get involved versus the sister who won’t give up
I can understand why Nicole Gnazdowsky might have become a “hostile individual” after no one in authority would tell her how and why her brother died in a workplace incident. I can’t understand why Premier Iain Rankin can claim he doesn’t have the authority to act in her case because there’s an election campaign underway. Really?
I can understand why Nicole Gnazdowsky might have become a “hostile individual.” I can’t understand why Premier Iain Rankin can claim — as he did last week — that he doesn’t have the authority to act in her case because there’s an election campaign underway. Huh? Let’s start with Gnazdowsky. Her 26-year-old “little brother,” Andrew,...
Election 2021: Welcome to ‘stupid season’
"An election" — as here-and-gone Conservative Prime Minister Kim Campbell once infamously but correctly explained — "is no time to discuss serious issues.” The real reason we are going to the polls in the middle of August is because the Liberals hope, and believe, no one will be paying attention.
It’s 7:37 am on Saturday morning and I hit refresh on my computer news feed. Again. A few minutes earlier, on CBC Radio’s Weekend Morning, newsreader Sarah Haliburton — squeezed between host Bill Roach’s usual eclectic musical selections (Dennis Lee’s iconic “Alligator Pie” followed by “Two Sleepy People,” the Fats Waller version) — began her...
Iain Rankin scores unforced error after own goal after…
I’m guessing — hoping, for their sakes — the premier's inner circle wasn’t responsible for "strategically leaking" news about Rankin's youthful DUIs last week. But they, and Rankin himself, are certainly culpable for what happened after that.
Watching Premier Iain Rankin score one own goal after another — and then, oh god, no, yet another — on his Liberal campaign last week was fascinating in a rubberneck, train wreck, don’t look now, not again, JUST PLEASE STOP IT kind of way. By itself, Rankin’s unforced gaffes probably won’t — and shouldn’t —...
Hey, Mr. Politician: What’s your plan to fix Nova Scotia’s broken child protection system?
Until an unexpected email forced me to reconsider last November, I hadn’t taken the time to connect all the dots from the individual stories I’d written to the larger picture of the child welfare system they painted. I had no idea Nova Scotia’s Children and Family Services Act had been significantly amended in 2015. Or any clue many inside and outside the system believed life for children and families was now worse even than the cases I’d written about so randomly over the years.
The backstory to my series on Nova Scotia’s child welfare system in last week’s Examiner — “Child Protection: Catch-22 All Over Again. Again and Again…” Part 1 and Part 2 — had its beginnings in a mid-November 2020 email that landed, unbidden, in my website’s inbox. “I am very concerned about the family court system […]
Child protection: Catch-22 all over again. Again and again… Part 2
The case of the "Minister of Community Services v J.C," says Emma Halpern of the Elizabeth Fry Society, “shows all the gaps in our child protection supports and services.” There are a lot of them.
Read Part 1 of this article here. PART 2 As of September 8th, I have had two one-hour supervised visits with K.C. at Child Welfare Services’ offices … At both visits K.C. smiled when he saw me and reached out for me to hold him. The visits are very difficult because I have only one […]
Child protection: Catch-22 all over again. Again and again… Part 1
J.C. spent most of her growing up years "in the care of the minister." They weren't easy years, and she barely survived. She wanted better for her son, and she did everything authorities asked of her, and more. So why did Nova Scotia's child welfare decide to take her child anyway? And what does what happened to J.C. say about what's wrong with our child protection system?
PART 1 She had done everything she was supposed to, everything that child protection authorities — who still seemed to be in charge of her life, even though she was now an adult — had asked of her. And yet here she was, on September 11, 2020, in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia’s Family […]
Border crossed
Iain Rankin closed a border, Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin courted the crazed and Tim Houston made his Hobson's choice between principle and power. After which he dumped Smith-McCrossin. Oh, and then Rankin reopened the border after all. Welcome to another week in pre-election Nova Scotia.
Tim Houston did the right thing, and it may cost him a legislature seat he can’t afford to lose. Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin did the wrong thing, and it may make her the de-facto leader of an anti-vaxxer crazies’ cult no self-respecting registered nurse should ever want to be within spitting distance of. And Iain Rankin, whose...
Promises to make… Promises to keep?
Iain Rankin billed himself as the candidate of generational change. But as a premier in pre-election pretend mode, he seems more like the unwelcome but familiar ghost of politicians past.
On June 14, 2021, Health Minister Zach Churchill announced the “Rankin government” — as it demands to be known — will invest one million dollars a year to provide improved cancer care treatment and support for patients in southwestern Nova Scotia. “We are committed to giving the people of Digby, Shelburne and Yarmouth counties better...
So… Nova Scotian
The still-unfolding story behind last year's firing of new NSCAD President Aoife Mac Namara fits all too neatly into the ongoing saga of business as usual in Nova Scotia. Pity.
It all seems, well, so … Nova Scotian. Let’s begin way back in the late 1960s and early seventies when a local developer named Ben McCrea cobbled together various deals that helped save a group of historic but ramshackle waterfront buildings from the wrecker’s ball. McCrea’s efforts not only transformed those rundown blocks into our...
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