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November subscription drive

If you don’t know already, Tim Bousquet is on vacation. That leaves the rest of the team handling things at the Examiner. It’s been a busy few days.

We have a very versatile team and each person can handle several different jobs and cover different stories. And everyone is keeping their cool.

I don’t have much to add other than I’m really proud of this team and what we accomplish. I think we should all go for a beverage later this week.

And of course, I’m grateful for our readers’ support. You all help us continue to do what we love to do by subscribing, commenting, and sending us tips and story ideas.

Thank you all for subscribing. And if you aren’t a subscriber yet, you can sign up here.

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NEWS

1. COVID

“A year ago the Houston government told Nova Scotians masking in public spaces would be a personal decision rather than a matter of public policy because Nova Scotians could take responsibility for their own health,” reports Jennifer Henderson.

The underlying assumption was that people would have enough information about the presence of viruses such as influenza and COVID-19 to evaluate the risk and decide when to take precautions.  

However, this fall there have been very few messages to the public from Public Health about how much flu or COVID virus is present in the community and in facilities such as long-term care homes.  

Click or tap here to read “COVID is still in Nova Scotia, but few messages from public health about virus in community.”

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2. Student housing

“The province has announced that it will build 270 new rooms for students at four Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) campuses,” reports Jennifer Henderson.

A new student residence with 100 rooms will be built on the Institute of Technology campus at Leeds Street in north end Halifax. Ninety rooms will be built at a dorm for Kingstech students in Kentville, and student residences with 40 rooms will be built in both Lunenburg and Springhill.

The total student enrolment at all four campuses is approximately 2,240. 

Announcements about the student housing were made Tuesday at four campuses across Nova Scotia.

Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia to build student housing at four NSCC campuses.”

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3. HRM and living wage

“As more Nova Scotians struggle to make ends meet and the number of unhoused people grows, a Halifax-based researcher is calling on HRM to fully implement a living wage policy for all its employees,” Yvette d’Entremont reports.

In an online essay penned for The Monitor Magazine on Tuesday, the Nova Scotia director for the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives (CCPA) said HRM must lead the way by paying all of its employees a living wage.

“This council has been trying to lead on housing and homelessness. One obvious implication is if people are not being paid a living wage, then they are either insecurely housed or they may well be homeless,” Christine Saulnier said in an interview on Tuesday. 

“And the other part of that is really the social implications. This is about council stepping up here and recognizing that if they don’t do this, the gaps are either filled somewhere else or those workers are falling through them. And that has a tremendous societal cost.”

Click or tap here to read “Director of CCPA-Nova Scotia says HRM must lead the way by paying its employees living wage.”

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4. Residents at tent encampment asked to leave

Bruce Frisko at CTV speaks with some of the residents of the tent encampment at Grand Parade, including one resident David Pincock, who is wondering where he will go. From the story:

“There’s nowhere else to go. The city’s full of tents, man. If they’re going to try to get us out of here, they’re going to have to come and arrest people. I’m not going anywhere. Where am I going to go?”

On Friday, HRM announced that the tent site at Grand Parade was being removed from the list of approved encampment sites because of safety concerns. Apparently, the snow removal equipment can’t work around the tents.

CTV asked Mayor Mike Savage for an interview, but he’s in Ottawa this week.

On Tuesday, city workers were getting the tree in Grand Parade ready for the tree lighting ceremony this weekend.

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5. Illegal dumping

“The Nova Scotia government has increased penalties for people who dump their garbage on provincially owned land from $352 to $812 for a first offence, and $2,422 for subsequent offences,” reports Jean Laroche at CBC.

But according to information supplied by the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables, few are prosecuted for illegal dumping and convictions and fines are rare.

Between 2017 and 2022, 21 people were charged with dumping on Crown land and those charges resulted in 11 convictions. The other 10 charges did not go ahead.

The minister responsible for the department, Tory Rushton, told CBC News Tuesday he hoped the increase in fines would deter people from dumping their garbage illegally.

“We know it takes place, we have reports of different dumpings in different areas,” said Rushton during a telephone interview with CBC News. “Obviously we can’t have enforcement in every area, but we have enforcement that does keep an eye on this as complaints come in.”

The change in fines took effect on Friday. As Laroche reports, the PCs promised to enact a Litterbug Act the last election. Tory Rushton told CBC the new fines would “make people think twice” about littering and illegal dumping.

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VIEWS

Accessibility in HRM: some successes, but still a work in progress

Last night, I attended the Accessibility Advisory Committee’s Annual Town Hall at the Halifax Central Library. Several staff members from HRM business units were part of the panel and gave updates on accessibility across HRM. Guests at the library and those watching online had a chance to ask questions.

Here are some highlights.

Melissa Myers is the accessibility advisor with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the African Nova Scotian Affairs Integration Office said she’s been working with the HRM clerk’s office on a new template for presentations that go to Halifax regional council. That template offers a wider screen, bigger font, and has closed captioning. And HRM now has an accessibility training program that was taken by 128 HRM staff and 26 cadets with Halifax Regional Police.

“It was really the first time accessibility training was offered to police cadets,” Myers said.

Darren Young, manager of major projects, facility design, and director of construction, said some of this year’s successes — include the opening of the Halifax Common pool, and hearing loops, a sound system for people who use hearing aids — were recently installed at the front desk. Young said they’re also working toward Rick Hansen gold accessibility standard for that facility.

Renovations, including accessibility updates, were done at the Dartmouth North Community Centre, and are also underway at the Horizon Centre in Eastern Passage and Keeshan Goodman Library in Clayton Park. Beechville and Lakeside will also get a new and accessible recreation facility next year, and Sheet Harbour will get a new accessibility lifestyle centre as well.

Young added that only 35 of HRM’s 200 buildings have had accessible updates this year. He noted a shortage of construction staff is slowing the process down.

Erica Fleck, director of emergency management and community safety, said the office launched its voluntary vulnerable persons registry on Nov. 8, adding that since then 72 residents have registered. (You can also register by calling 311.)

“Every day, it just grows a little bit,” Fleck said. “What scares me is the amount of people not registering, though.”

Fleck said she just ordered Braille materials for HRM, including business cards and emergency preparedness brochures. This is the first time HRM will have Braille materials to hand out.

Max Chauvin, director of housing and homelessness, said there are currently more than 1,000 people on the HRM by-name list and that as of September, housing navigators estimated there were about 200 people who were sleeping rough in HRM.

“All of our estimates suggest that number will double in about six to eight months,” Chauvin said. “For every tent you see, for every person who’s couch surfing, there will be two of them in months.”

Chauvin provided some other numbers, too:

• 67 of those people identified as having a mental health challenge
• 39% identify as having a learning disability or cognitive challenge
• 36% report having a disability
• 22% report having an after-birth brain injury

“We do run into a lot of people with disabilities, so we do look into what we can offer that would help. Sometimes that’s a connection to a physio or an oesteo who might be willing to help out with something.”

Chauvin said there are a lot of challenges for people with disabilities when it comes to housing. He said a lot of the inexpensive housing is in older buildings that aren’t accessible.

“We know of a unit that is described as accessible,” Chauvin said. “It is accessible, as long as you can go up the stairs to get to it.”

Chauvin said while the rent for an average unit in HRM is $1,800, the rent for an accessible unit could be $2,400.

He also said “we have a near-myopic” focus on wheelchairs when it comes to accessibility.

“There are a host of other disabilities and challenges that through careful design we could make a staggering difference,” Chauvin said. “And we don’t talk much about it.”

David Nautau, supervisor of bus operations for Access-A-Bus at Halifax Transit, said transit is working to have all of its bus stops fully accessible by 2030, and so far 71% of the stops are there. Access-A-Bus has also partnered with Prescott Group, New Leaf Enterprises, Club Inclusion, Regional Residential Services Society, and CNIB on an accessibility travel training program. The program offers sessions on transit basics, trip planning, how to ride transit, and visits to Halifax Transit terminals.

In the next several months, Access-A-Bus will offer an online booking system for its clients, which also provides other data for Halifax Transit. Nautau said that Access-A-Bus’s success rate in picking up clients on time is 94% and the success rate for getting clients to their destination on time is 95%.

“Prior to that, we really weren’t sure,” Nautau said. “We’d hear the complaints from clients, but we couldn’t get an answer because we didn’t have the data.”

There’s now an accessible taxi service called Extra Care Taxi, which has 10 accessible vehicles and is available 24-7. Clients pay the standard taxi fare, while HRM provides the rest of the funding to the taxi service. That service averages about 53 clients a day, and has completed 18,000 rides in the past year.

Cassidy Yochoff, inclusion and accessibility specialist for parks and recreation, said the department has completed accessibility audits on three parks in HRM, and those results will help guide similar audits in other parks. Accessible bleachers have been added to HRM ballfields and accessible features have been added to HRM playgrounds, as well.

Yochoff said they hired more “summer inclusion staff” for their summer day camps, and have offered accessibility training to other day camp staff. She also noted there is a staff shortage, and asked the audience to share the message if they knew anyone who wanted to work as program staff.

She said HRM just purchased a grit chair, which is an adaptive all-terrain mobility machine that people with disabilities can use for off-roading or hiking.

Yochoff said HRM is still working on a strategy to audit all outdoor playgrounds to get a baseline of accessibility.

“There are a huge amount of parks and outdoor assets and facilities in HRM, so it is going to be a large task,” Yochoff said.

And in 2024, a group will be working on a pilot project on how to make recreation programming more accessible to people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

The in person and online audience members had a chance to ask the panel questions. Someone who was watching the town hall over Zoom asked how bus stops can really be accessible if the sidewalks around the bus stops aren’t accessible, too.

“A concrete pad on a block without sidewalks may make the bus stop accessible, but getting to and from the stop without a sidewalk is a real challenge,” the viewer said.

Nautau explained the ways in which the new bus stops would be accessible, but didn’t explain how the sidewalks would be because sidewalks aren’t the responsibility of Halifax Transit.

So, there was really no answer to that question.

When I think of sidewalks and accessibility in HRM, I always think about Milena Khazanavicius, who is blind and uses a guide dog. She lives off Windsor Street in Halifax and has been fighting for years to make sidewalks and crosswalks in HRM more accessible. She always tells me there are too many barriers on sidewalks, including construction signs and fences.

A mother in the audience spoke about her 14-year-old daughter who has sensory issues and mental health challenges, and is mobile, but still has issues using transit, especially when those buses are packed.

“Unless she can flip her [transit] pass around and show you a wheelchair, she doesn’t get a seat,” she said.

She said she spoke to Halifax Transit who told her if her daughter doesn’t have a wheelchair, she has to stand or take another bus. She wanted to know why bus drivers can’t advocate on behalf of her daughter. Unfortunately, the mom didn’t get much of an answer last night, and the moderator suggested she take up the issue with other staff at the event.

Another woman who said she was disabled talked about her own experience of advocating for herself in the city. She wanted to know how Chauvin and Fleck are working with the province on getting people enough money to survive.

“From what I understand, the base [social assistance] if you’re homeless is $380,” she said. “I’ve had to become a scholar in order to save myself from becoming homeless.”

Chauvin had this to say: “People don’t have enough money. They just don’t.”

He said shelters aren’t housing, but rather a band-aid.

“Anything short of a place that is accessible, sustainable, supportive that you call home…I think we like to say ‘you have housing’ and we can give you housing, but only you can decide it’s a home.”

Chauvin said he speaks with staff at the Department of Community Services at least three times a week “on a quiet week.”

Anyway, it was a good look at what’s been done, and the work that still need to be done. After all, 2030 is not that far away.

You can watch the video of the full town hall here.

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NOTICED

No statement can accomplish what an interview can

Last week, I put in a request to interview Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage Allan MacMaster. I was working on a story about the Cumberland Public Libraries’ need for more funding to prevent it from closing some of its seven branches and laying off staff. I didn’t send questions, although the spokesperson asked that I clarify what information I needed. All good.

I didn’t get that interview, but rather a prepared statement from a department spokesperson, which I didn’t run in full but rather just linked to in the story. (You can read that story here).

Getting statements instead of interviews is becoming frustratingly more common. My colleagues Stephen Kimber and Joan Baxter wrote about this before —  Kimber here, and here is Baxter’s piece on her work to get interviews with government ministers.

Here’s what Kimber wrote about the “scam” of providing a statement:

Perhaps it’s time we in the media stopped carrying official statements that intentionally don’t respond to our legitimate questions. Maybe we should simply report that the accountable official declined to answer our questions. “The department instead sent a statement that didn’t answer the following questions…” and then we should repeat the questions instead of the non-answers. While we should include a link to the official statement for transparency’s sake, we shouldn’t give it credence by including it in the story.

In our Slack channel this week, we were talking about the days when you could just call someone and get them on the phone. Now, you have to go through layers of PR staff to get an interview. I took a cue from Kimber for that Cumberland library story and didn’t publish the statement in its entirety.

It’s true that the people we need and want to interview are very busy and PR staff help those experts manage their schedules, but they’re also managing the responses journalists get, too. Sure, the Examiner gets chances to ask questions at scrums and briefings, but sometimes one-on-one interviews work best for a story.

A statement is not an interview. I realize MacMaster is new at the portfolio and still learning, but this was a pretty straightforward story. Besides, as librarian Leslie Allen and her patrons at the Advocate Harbour Library told me, not many elected officials visit them in their remote village on the Parrsboro shore to learn what’s actually going on in the community, so it’s important to get interviews on their behalf. That made this interview even more important.

And sometimes we don’t get any response from PR folks at all.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a PR person at a housing organization asking if I wanted to interview their CEO. This CEO runs a company that builds shelters that will be set up in HRM and across the province. I wasn’t interested in interviewing the CEO, but they also offered a tour of the site, which did sound interesting. I said I’d be interested in that.

I didn’t get a response.

I emailed again. No response.

So, I guess they just wanted me to give their CEO a plug?

Last year, I contacted Truro Mayor Bill Mills for this story about the housing crisis in his town. Mills answered the email himself and I got an in-person interview with him within days. Housing isn’t even part of his job, but he still helps out residents when he can. In this case, it was about a couple being renovicted from their apartment.

That interview made a difference for the story. Mills gave me insight on how the housing crisis was playing out in his town. His words weren’t crafted by someone else and that made the story sound, well, more human.

Interviews can be nervewracking, I know, but aren’t people who serve and speak to the public trained on how to do interviews properly? Don’t they know their subject well enough to explain it to a reporter so they can write about it and explain it to readers?

I personally really enjoy one-on-one interviews. I like the back and forth of them, getting to know someone and their stories and expertise. I could do interviews all day. But far too often the answer to a request for an interview is “no.”

Years ago, I interviewed the head of a very small literacy organization who told me she was quite nervous about doing the interview. I told her that was understandable, but that she was the expert in her field — I was just asking the questions. That interview was interesting, important, and real. No statement can accomplish that.

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Government

City

Today

Heritage Advisory Committee (Wednesday, 3pm, online) — agenda

Board of Police Commissioners (Wednesday, 4pm, HEMDCC Meeting Space, Alderney Gate, and online) — agenda

Tomorrow

Transportation Standing Committee (Thursday, 1pm, City Hall and online) — agenda

Province

Public Accounts (Wednesday, 9am, One Government Place and online) — Student Housing Needs; with representatives from the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and the Department of Advanced Education

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On campus

Dalhousie

Today

Dal Bookstore Annual Yard Sale (Wednesday, 9:30am, Student Union Building, Halifax and Cox Institute, Truro) — daily until Friday

Woodwinds Noon Hour (Wednesday, 11:45am, Strug Concert Hall) — selections from students’ repertoire

Europe and EUrope – Ukraine and the Identity War (Wednesday, 1pm, Room 1016, Rowe Management Building) — public lecture by Russell Foster, Carleton University and King’s College London

Tomorrow

Non-canonical role of transcription factor EB in health and disease (Thursday, 12pm, Room 3H01, Tupper Medical Building) — Thomas Pulinilkunnil will talk

Computational Analysis as a Tool for Contextualizing the Music of Hildegard of Bingen (Thursday, 12pm, Room 406, Dalhousie Arts Centre) — Jennifer Bain will talk

Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Environmental Law for Sustainability (Thursday, 7:15pm, Ondaatje Auditorium, McCain Building and online) — Inaugural Meinhard Doelle Legacy Lecture; Bill Lahey, Lisa Mitchell, and Sara Seck will discuss “the many contributions of friend, colleague, and environmental scholar Meinhard Doelle (1964-2022) at the intersection of environmental law, energy law, and climate change.” More info here.

King’s

Today

Acadian Driftwood – One Family and the Great Expulsion (Wednesday, 7pm, Halifax Central Public Library) — MFA Book Club featuring author Tyler LeBlanc; from the listing:

Piecing together his family history through archival documents, LeBlanc tells the story of Joseph LeBlanc (his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather), Joseph’s ten siblings and their families. With descendants scattered across modern-day Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the LeBlancs provide a window into the diverse fates that awaited the Acadians when they were expelled from their homeland. Some escaped the deportation and were able to retreat into the wilderness. Others found their way back to Acadie. But many were exiled to Britain, France, or the future United States, where they faced suspicion and prejudice and struggled to settle into new lives. A unique biographical approach to the history of the Expulsion, Acadian Driftwood is a vivid insight into one family’s experience of this traumatic event.

Our Hearts Aren’t Disabled (Wednesday, 7pm, KTS Lecture Hall) — screening of film and Q&A with filmmaker Josh Dunn; from the listing: 

This movie examines the romantic lives and trials of six people living with mobility challenges. Its characters are people of different ages, genders, orientations and ethnicities.

Josh, a multi-disciplinary artist, features as both subject and interviewer as he endeavors to shed light on the difficulties he and others face. Sometimes a painful journey filled with heartbreak, the film also features a healthy dose of wit, humor and perseverance, helping the viewer to see that disability places no barrier on the power and beauty of one’s humanity.

RSVP here.

Tomorrow

“No Greater Kindness” (Thursday, 7pm, Senior Common Room, A&A Building) — Ronald Huebert will read an excerpt from his work in progress, Loving John Donne: a Novel

NSCAD

FEAST (Wednesday, 11am, Anna Leonowens Gallery) — artists and curators will discuss their work

Noon Talk (Wednesday, 12pm, Anna Leonowens Gallery) — with Shoora Majedian

Artist Talk (Wednesday, 12pm, Port Loggia Gallery) — with Kate Dong

social choreography lab (Wednesday, 1pm, Anna Leonowens Gallery) — with Laura Runions; info and rsvp here

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In the harbour

Halifax

10:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, arrives at Fairview Cove west end from St. John’s
14:30: GPO Emerald, heavy lifter, arrives at IEL (outboard crane ship ORION) from Rostock, Germany
17:00: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from moves from Fairview Cove to autoport
17:00: AlgoCanada, oil tanker, moves from Anchorage #2 to Irving Oil #3

Cape Breton

15:00: Algoma Mariner, bulker, sails from Quarry to sea north through the lock
16:00: SFL Trinity, oil tanker, moves from Everwind 1 to anchor

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Footnotes

One thing I just noticed about the parking machines downtown: You can no longer offer your spot to another driver if you paid for more time than you needed. Nor can you luck out and get a spot that has time left on the metre.

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