NEWS

1. Carrie Low

The Police Review Board’s hearing in the Carrie Low case continues all week — it appears the hearing will be in session every day all day, and I’ll be reporting on it. I already have several articles in the works, and those will be coming out in coming days.

But I met with Low over the weekend to discuss the case. At the tail end of a long conversation, I told her I understood why she is pressing the issue, but I wanted her to tell me in her own words. Here’s what she said:

What I have always wanted out of this process is I wanted transparency and accountability. All I ever wanted was for them to say, ‘this was messed up, we screwed up, but this is how we’re going to rectify it.’ I’ve tried multiple times to have that dialog and conversation with the police, and nobody will do that with me.

For me now, it’s been about — it doesn’t even matter about me anymore. I don’t even care about myself anymore. Like it’s over and done with. I can’t wait to stop talking about my case. It’s now about what are they going to do it and fix this going forward. This is a huge problem, a huge error, and the whole system needs to be looked at and reformed in some way.

For me now it’s about — I have been silenced through these processes for four years, especially after Jerell [Smith] coming forward with his information. I’ve been holding on to this for a long time. And seeing the media coverage and the reports being made, and no one gets to see what’s really happening on the inside. And I want to make it public. I want the public to see how difficult it is on working with the police to get accountability, how they’re completely failing in sexual assault investigations and how nobody is able to hold them to account.

Like, how else can I bring this to light and actually have someone seriously look at this? Nobody in the Department of Justice has ever reached out to try to work with me to rectify anything. No politician in this province has done the same. The only person who ever supported anything was Claudia Chender back with the J.R. [Judicial Review] on the police complaints process. And nobody has been open to that. And for me, it kind of reinforces that in this province, everybody just wants to bury everything that goes wrong and they don’t want to talk about it. And they want to leave you with this, you know, this narrative that the police do a good job and this is like a one-off thing.

I can tell you it’s not a one-off thing. I work with multiple women who, you know — my case is is definitely complex and a little strange, you know, with an officer coming forward. But there’s really major systemic issues happening, especially when you have two forces working in the same department. We all know they hate each other. They don’t even follow the same policies, procedures, and approaches. Everyone wants to point the finger. I’m way beyond that. I was way beyond that even from the beginning. It’s not about pointing fingers. It’s about figuring this out, what went wrong, and fucking fixing it. 

2. Privacy breach at Dartmouth orthopaedic clinic

An employee at a Dartmouth Orthopaedic clinic snooped through 2,500 patients’ records, reports Jennifer Henderson. But there’s a gap in privacy legislation such that no one can charge the employee.

Click or tap here to read “An employee at a Dartmouth orthopaedic clinic snooped through 2,500 patients’ records but won’t be charged with privacy violations.”

3. Waterville and Shelburne

“’Anyone who comes forward does so voluntarily, and we will be taking a trauma-informed approach when we’re speaking with them,’ explained Cst. Shannon Herbert, an investigator with Operation Headwind, the RCMP’s investigation into allegations of sexual assault at the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville,” writes Stephen Kimber:

Reading this, I couldn’t help but wonder about the survivors of abuse at Nova Scotia’s Shelburne School for Boys in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them now dead or old men. What would they think?

…

But in the end, the boys who’d been abused in the Shelburne School — and there were plenty of them, whatever the official count — had been victimized again, not only by the flawed compensation process but also by our lack of understanding of sexual abuse and empathy for those who’d suffered as a result.

Click or tap here to read “Will Waterville sexual assaults’ investigation be a watershed… or another Shelburne?”

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4. Ghost gear

“Angela Riley started cleaning up trash from shorelines in Halifax in the summer of 2020,” reports Suzanne Rent:

“I had a lot of eco-depression going on due to climate change. It’s still something that scares me to this day,” Riley told the Halifax Examiner in an interview. “I needed to do something. I showed [my sons] I’m not just going to stand by and go ‘Oh well, that happens.’”

Those shoreline cleanups soon became her daily routine and she goes out regardless of the weather. So far this year, Riley’s picked up more than 5,000 pounds of trash from shorelines. Her two young sons inspired her to get started. 

Riley started an environmental business called Scotian Shores. The company organizes shoreline cleanups, most of which are in the Southwestern part of the province and along the Bay of Fundy. So far this year, it’s hosted more than 835 cleanups, mostly in Halifax, the Bay of Fundy, and Southwest Nova Scotia. And the volume of debris collected is staggering: more than 140,000 pounds, or 63.5 tonnes, by the end of June.

A portion of what Scotian Shores cleans up is ghost gear: lost or abandoned fishing gear like rope, lobster traps, and other plastics used in the seafood processing industry. For those cleanups, Scotian Shores applied for funding through the Ghost Gear Fund at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO).

Click or tap here to read “Cleaning up ‘ghost gear’: Nova Scotians help address global issue.”

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5. Paper Excellence is… excellent! Or not

Paper Excellence has been named on of “50 best corporate citizens” by Corporate Knights, a company that says it advocates for a “sustainable economy.”

This has left reporter Joan Baxter, well, flabbergasted.

Click here to read “Paper Excellence owns the pollution-spewing Northern Pulp Mill, has poisoned a First Nation, isn’t paying $85 million it owes Nova Scotia, and is leaving its pensioners hanging. But it’s been named one of Canada’s ‘best 50 corporate citizens.'”

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6. Donkin ordered closed

“The Donkin underground coal mine in Cape Breton has been shut down again following reports of a rock fall on Saturday,” reports the Canadian Press:

The province says a Stop Work Order has been issued and production will not resume until the department has verified that it is safe to do so.

The mine was temporarily shut down last week after inspectors found a “very small amount” of roof material had fallen on the floor of the tunnel, but Nova Scotia’s Labour Department confirmed Tuesday the mine had been given approval to reopen after repair work was completed and inspected.

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7. Housing data

“Housing advocates say understanding the magnitude of Nova Scotia’s housing crisis is challenging without residential tenancy data, and they’re calling on the province to do its part,” reports Yvette d’Entremont:

“Transparency is essential for accountability. And if that data is not publicly reported and collected on residential tenancy issues, advocates aren’t able to hold the government to account on the promises that it makes to address these kinds of crises,” Kenya Thompson said in an interview.

“And of course, that’s the case across policy issues. But it is particularly pressing now with the housing crisis.”

Thompson is a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia (CCPA-NS). She’s one of three authors who wrote an article published by CCPA on Friday titled Filling Gaps in the Nova Scotia Housing Crisis. 

…

“It’s well within Service Nova Scotia’s capacity to report on the number of leases signed and the types of those leases, the number of residential tenancy hearings that take place, and the decisions that result from those hearings, as well as how many folks are evicted from their homes,” Thompson said. “That is all data that service Nova Scotia would collect.”

Click or tap here to read “How bad is the housing crisis in Nova Scotia? No one knows, because the data aren’t collected.”

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8. Pride

Yesterday, a week before the Pride parade, Halifax Pride announced that the parade will in fact happen.

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Government

City

Today

No meetings

Tomorrow

Public Information Meeting – Case 24598 (Tuesday, 7pm, Sackville Heights Community Centre) — Application by Armco Capital to amend the development agreement for Sunset Ridge to add 73 townhouse style units within 15 new buildings along the southwest side of Sackville Drive, between Margeson Dr. and Crossfield Ridge, Middle Sackville.

Province

No meetings this week

On campus

No events

In the harbour

Halifax
05:00: Atlantic Sea, ro-ro container, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England
07:00: Vivienne Sheri D, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Reykjavik, Iceland
10:30: Lake Wanaka, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Emden, Germany
11:00: Vivienne Sheri D sails for Portland
15:30: One Owl, container ship (146,412 tonnes), arrives at Pier 41 from Norfolk, Virginia
16:30: Atlantic Sea sails for New York
21:30: Lake Wanaka sails for sea

Cape Breton
No arrivals or departures.

Footnotes

I’ve got nothing.