NEWS
1. Houston government kills Coastal Protection Act
“On Monday, Environment and Climate Change Minister Timothy Halman announced the province won’t proclaim Nova Scotia’s long-awaited Coastal Protection Act, passed in 2019 with full support from all parties,” reports Yvette d’Entremont:
Instead, the government has opted for a new plan. That plan is titled ‘The Future of Nova Scotia’s Coastline: The plan to protect people, homes and nature from climate change along our coast.’
It’s described in a provincial media release as focused on “empowering coastal property owners to make informed decisions, supporting municipal leadership and aligning resources with coastal protection.”
“The Coastal Protection Act will not be proclaimed. What you have today is coastal action. As of 10am today, Nova Scotians can access the online tool map and access navigators,” Halman told reporters on Monday morning. “We have a climate action plan that will be implemented over the months and years ahead.”
The online tool map Halman referred to is known as the coastal hazard map. Developed in-house by GeoNova, it is intended to show property owners how much sea level rise is projected by 2100. It can be searched by civic address or PID number.
Within the next few months, it will be updated to show sea level rise by 2050.
d’Entremont provides the extensive background to the Coastal Protection Act, and collects reaction to its murder from the Ecology Action Centre and opposition parties.
Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia’s Coastal Protection Act dead in the water.”
My reaction is this: you gotta be kidding me.
Of all places, Nova Scotia, jutting out into an increasingly angry Atlantic Ocean with a never-ending, meandering sea line, is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, storm surges, hurricane-fuelled inland destruction, and erosion. It’s not hyperbole to say that a Category 4 hurricane travelling up the Bay of Fundy at high tide could turn this peninsula into an island. Already, damage from storms totals millions upon millions of dollars annually, not to mention lost lives, and it’s only going to get worse.
The threat — heck, the reality, staring us in the face — was so readily apparent that in 2019 it brought about a rare but welcome all-party (including the PCs) agreement to pass the Coastal Protection Act.
The strategies for reducing storm risks are well understood. Protect wetlands along the coast because they blunt the force of storms and storm surges, and restore degraded wetlands for the same reason. Require new roads, power lines, and private development to be set back from the shore because it’s silly to build stuff in locations where it’s very likely to be destroyed, only to incur the expense of insuring and replacing it. Prohibit “hardening” of the shoreline with riprap because such hard points increase erosion up and down the shore.
The Coastal Protection Act was sensible legislation that provided a framework for implementing those strategies. Had it been enacted, it would’ve saved shore-adjacent property, money, and yes, lives.
But the Houston government has scrapped that reasonable approach with… an app.
What is it with this government and apps? What is this, 2012?
The app might be able to tell people what the expected sea level rise will be at any given point — although it can’t even do that at present. But no app will be able to predict the damage from the wrath of a storm on a particular property. And an app won’t tell you that because of the lack of the Coastal Protection Act, a guy a kilometre down the shore hardened his property, resulting in currents that erodes away your land, which wouldn’t had otherwise flooded, even with sea level rise.
Without a broad, communal, and government-enforced policy, coastal protection becomes individualized. You’re on your own. That means if you own waterfront property, you’ll have to do what you can as a solitary landowner to protect your property, and to hell with your neighbours or the common good. Haul in tonnes of riprap, harden the shore, put the risk on everyone else. At its absurd end, this ends with a province that is completely encased in a shore wall.
But even that wouldn’t work, as no wall can withstand the coming storms. That takes a living, dynamic, moving shoreline.
The Houston government’s irresponsible killing of the Coastal Protection Act means more of Nova Scotia will be destroyed in storms, unnecessary billions of dollars in damage will be incurred, and people will die.
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2. Homeless camp evictions
“Dozens of residents still remain in encampments in parks across HRM on Monday’s eviction deadline, while activity and protests at the sites remained quiet for the day,” reports Suzanne Rent:
In a statement on Friday, HRM said 25 of the 55 people living in the five sanctioned encampments had found shelter elsewhere.
Monday’s eviction appeared to be the measured response HRM said it would conduct when it announced on Feb. 7 its plans to evict people from encampments on Feb. 26. At a press conference that day, CAO Cathie O’Toole said HRM are “not going to have police involved.”
In Friday’s statement, HRM said police “may be on hand to ensure public order is maintained, as required,” but on Monday, there were no police present at the encampments. The occasional police cruiser drove past Grand Parade.
The evictions were the complete opposite of forced evictions from shelters in front of the old library on Spring Garden Road on Aug. 18, 2021. On that day, HRM staff with chainsaws destroyed shelters and Halifax Regional Police arrested and pepper sprayed protestors.
Click or tap here read “Dozens remain in encampments on quiet eviction deadline day.”
The homeless crisis is the inevitable result of governments rejecting government. Which is to say, the neoliberal embrace of markets as the solution to everything meant that for decades, government after government refused to provide a basic service that was seen as a fundamental government responsibility in the decades between World War 1 and about 1980: building and maintaining an affordable public housing stock sufficient to provide for those at the lower end of the wage spectrum.
A robust public housing stock provided homes for soldiers and sailors returning from war, decent accommodations for people who the larger economy couldn’t properly provide for, and a community for retirees and the disabled. More, public housing served as a buffer for the failures of the private housing market.
Without that broad public housing stock, all it took was a stressor to throw thousands out onto the streets, and almost on cue came the pandemic.
We still don’t fully understand how the pandemic played out economically (ask an economist to explain inflation over the last four years and watch their confused convulsions). But it’s absolutely clear that those who could upsized their living arrangements; there were shortages in building supplies and those who work with them; private equity flooded into real estate investment trusts, using new tools to increase rents to their highest possible level; and central banks embarked on bone-headed policies of driving up interest rates, making it more difficult for private builders to finance new construction and senseless for people to sell their existing homes only to get a higher interest rate on a new home.
What’s inarguable is that tent cities exploded across the country, including in Halifax.
In that context, the municipal government was and is in a difficult position.
It certainly can do more to provide housing. Yes, I know, the municipality is legislatively prohibited from building housing, but what would happen if Halifax councillors voted to spend $50 million on an affordable housing project (which is certainly within the city’s budget capacity)? Would they get arrested, Waye Mason dragged off in chains by a sheriff’s deputy? Would the province sue the city? Would a court intervene and issue an injunction? I can’t see any of those things happening, or if they did, it would be so politically deranged that whoever took such action would be out of a job and subject to public ridicule forever. Bring it on, says I.
During an actual emergency where people are dying on the streets, Halifax councillors thumbing their collective noses at the legislated division of services would be heroic. Alas, I guess that’s too much to ask of politicians.
But failing such failure of imagination, there’s not much otherwise that city officials can do. They’re stuck with on the one hand the traditional expectation that parks and public spaces be maintained for all, and on the other hand the plain enormity of the housing crisis.
I don’t think anyone wants the tent cities to become permanent. So what to do?
Clearly, the evictions of August 2021 were stupid, brutal, and senseless. As I reported a few weeks ago:
In August 2021, the municipality left eviction notices on tents in parks across the peninsula. A press release issued on Aug. 18, 2021 read in part:
[T]he municipality has worked with the Province of Nova Scotia as well as community-based partners including the Street Outreach Navigators and housing support workers, to offer those experiencing homelessness with support – including a range of housing options and/or temporary accommodation. The province continues to work to secure temporary accommodation options that can bridge to permanent housing. Temporary accommodation options – including hotel stays and shelter beds – are being made available to occupants of encampments located on municipal property.
That was not true.
Zane Woodford and I visited homeless encampments that morning and spoke with people living in tents. Most said they had been offered no temporary accommodation, no place to go. No matter, as we spoke cops arrived to force the tent dwellers to move out. “When they asked police where they should go, they were told to leave the peninsula,” reported Woodford.
At a press conference yesterday, Mayor Mike Savage agreed that the 2021 promise of alternative accommodations was false.
“At that point in time, there were very few shelter options in the city of Halifax for people who needed help,” explained Savage. “We were told [by the province] there were places [for people] to go. A lot of that was going to be hotel rooms and things like that. We feel as a city that we had the assurances we needed. That didn’t happen.”
Let’s reiterate that: the city evicted people from parks, saying there were places for people living in tents to go, but that was a lie.
And here we are two-and-a-half years later, and the city is again evicting people from parks, saying there are places for people living in tents to go.
Are there? What’s changed between August 2021 and February 2024?
One thing that has changed — a bit — is that the province has gotten more responsive to the housing situation. The Houston government is right when it says that it is the first government in decades to build public housing. It’s not enough — 222 new units to be built over four years is something, but it ain’t much. We need 10 times that, at least.
More positively, the Department of Community Services is better understanding the complexities faced by those who have already landed on the streets. The department is badly under-funded, and relies too heavily on under-resourced and often untrained volunteers and non-profit agencies, but I don’t doubt the sincerity of the bureaucrats trying to help the very most needy.
It’s a horse-is-out-of-the-barn situation — better that there be enough public housing such that people don’t land on the streets in the first place — but over the past two and a half years, there have been put in place better processes and facilities for the homeless. Is it enough? No. But it’s much, much better than it was in 2021.
Which brings us back to the municipality. We’ll see what happens in coming days, but so far, the municipality is not relying on the brutal tactics it employed in August 2021. I think there’s some institutional learning here, or at least a fear of a repeat of 2021, and councillors and the mayor have taken those lessons to heart.
But probably a more important factor is that the former CAO Jacques Dubé has been replaced by Cathie O’Toole.
Way back in 2011, O’Toole was the city finance director. That’s the year the ill-advised scheme to place concerts on the Halifax Common had plainly collapsed. Recall that then-CAO Wayne Anstey, then-mayor Peter Kelly, and then-president of Trade Centre Limited Scott Ferguson secretly schemed to illegally use a dormant-and forgotten-about Metro Centre bank account as the vehicle to loan promoter Harold MacKay upfront fees for musicians.
The loan money came from advance ticket sales for the concerts themselves, which was absurdly risky — should the artist cancel for any reason, the city would have to return the money to ticket purchasers and eat the loans. Anyone trained in public administration would know as much. Anstey was a lawyer, Kelly got a quickie MBA from SMU, and more to the point, Ferguson had been directly scolded by the auditor for previously using a similar scheme to finance the World Juniors hockey championship.
Really, the whole thing was sketchy as fuck. The trio lied about concert ticket sales to attract big acts, then lied again about the ticket sales to those big acts to get more big acts. Like wannabe gangsters, they held secret meetings at the Sunnyside restaurant in Bedford, away from their staffs’ eyes. They re-activated an old bank account that wasn’t properly accounted for through TCL’s mismanagement of the Metro Centre. They relied on ticket sales through a ticket agency TCL had outright stolen from the city. None of this was run by actual accountants. The city’s Finance Department was kept entirely out of the loop, for the precise reason that no way, no how would it approve of the scheme.
Of course the whole thing went belly-up, and so Anstey showed up in O’Toole’s office to ask that she paper it over. Understand that Anstey was her boss.
A lesser bureaucrat would have done as told. This is commonplace. Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of clearly improper accounting measures employed by all sorts of governments, agencies, and corporations to cover-up wrongdoing, and I’ve suspected a lot more.
But O’Toole did as she was trained and legally required to do: she brought the impropriety to council’s audit committee, where it became public and blew up into “the concert scandal.” Anstey and Kelly ultimately lost their jobs (Ferguson somehow walked out of this with no repercussions, even though he was just as culpable as the other two).
So I have immense respect for O’Toole. As a result of her whistle-blowing, her employment at HRM at that time became untenable, but she was hired on as finance director at Halifax Water, then took the top job as director. Last year, she was hired back as CAO at HRM. Throughout, simply as part of my regular reporting, I’ve read dozens of reports she has authored. She strikes me as professional, capable, and most importantly, ethical.
I don’t want to overstate this. O’Toole isn’t a Mother Teresa, or even one of the many unrecognized and uncelebrated people on the ground working with the homeless. She sits atop enormous bureaucracies that by their very nature are going to do things I don’t agree with and will upset a lot of people. But given that context, and given that eviction is a debatable proposition, I can’t think of anyone better suited to oversee the thankless chore of prodding people out of the encampments and into what are hopefully better circumstances.
I’ll be the first to criticize if this goes terribly sideways, but so far, it’s not the disaster I feared.
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3. Violence against women
“A coalition representing workers in Nova Scotia’s violence-against-women sector are demanding immediate action on wage equity to address severe staffing shortages and recruitment issues,” reports Yvette d’Entremont:
On Monday, the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia (THANS) along with representatives from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and non-unionized facilities, issued a plea to the province for immediate wage equity. Of the 11 transition houses under the THANS umbrella, seven are unionized — four with CUPE, three with PSAC.
“I think we’ve always done more with less out of necessity because regardless of the funding or the wages, the work needs to be done,” THANS provincial coordinator Ann de Ste Croix said in an interview Monday.
Click or tap here to read “Coalition: Nova Scotia must act on wage equity in violence-against-women sector.”
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4. Electricity rates
“Until this year, Nova Scotia Power’s residential customers were restricted to two tariffs: the Domestic Service Tariff, used by most residential customers, and the Time-of-Day Tariff, reserved for households using electric thermal storage,” writes Larry Hughes:
Two new tariffs, Time-of-Use and Critical-Peak Price, are now available, reflecting an evolution in the demand-side and supply-side of the electricity system, respectively.
Hughes takes us through the new tariffs and what they mean for consumers, concluding:
Some customers will benefit greatly from these tariffs.
However, most, including those on low-or moderate-incomes, will not.
Click or tap here to read “New flexible electricity rates will help some customers, but probably not those with low or moderate incomes.”
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5. AG on Liberals
As we go to publish, the Auditor General issues this release:
The Auditor General plans to file a complaint with the RCMP after completing her investigation into the misuse of public funds at the Liberal Association of Nova Scotia.
The AG’s work on the report started in 2022 following notification from officials at Elections Nova Scotia of suspected significant misuse of funds over several years at the Liberal Association of Nova Scotia.
A former employee’s misuse of travel claims, and a party credit card led to their resignation and the reimbursement of more than $194,000.
The Association chose not to complete a forensic audit or file a complaint with the RCMP and did not report full knowledge of missing funds to their auditors before finalizing the 2020 audit in the Spring of 2021.
“The Association did not fully convey the extent of the misuse of public funds to their auditor and this apparent concealment leaves financial reporting concerns that should be followed up by the police,” Kim Adair said in her new report.
The Association also signed a settlement agreement with a confidentiality provision with the former employee, who was subsequently hired at another publicly funded organization.
While party officials and auditors did meet with the Auditor General, the Association did not provide certain information as requested on numerous occasions between July and October 2022.
“The Association’s delay in providing information to our Office was not in compliance with the Auditor General Act.”
The Act provides the Office with strong unrestricted access to the records of any organization that receives public funding.
All registered parties receive annual operating funds from Elections Nova Scotia. In the past ten years, the Nova Scotia Liberal Party has received $6.4 million in public funds: $2.9 million for party operations and $3.5 million in candidate expense reimbursements.
The Auditor General makes two recommendations in her report including that the Liberal Association of Nova Scotia file formal complaints and fully cooperate with the RCMP relating to the misuse of public funds and the apparent misrepresentation of the Association’s audited financial statements.
The second recommendation is to amend the Elections Act to give the CEO the authority to deal with any similar issues in the future.
It is important to note the current leader of the Liberal Party reviewed the report and agreed to follow our recommendations.
“Holding individuals accountable for the misuse of public funds is diminished when publicly funded organizations do not file criminal complaints. Including this recommendation ensures that similar situations are prevented from happening in the future.”
We’ll have more on this later today.
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Government
City
Today
Halifax and West Community Council (Tuesday, 6pm, City Hall and online) — agenda
Tomorrow
Budget Committee (Wednesday, 9:30am, City Hall and online) — agenda
Province
Legislature sits (Tuesday, 1pm, Province House and online) — watch on YouTube
On campus
Dalhousie
Today
John Lewis: Good Trouble (Tuesday, 7pm, MacMechan Auditorium, Killam Library) — film screening and panel discussion with the director Dawn Porter
Tomorrow
Noon Hour Recital: Voice (Wednesday, 11:45am, Strug Concert Hall
A Field Guide to Imaginary Jewish Books (Wednesday, 7pm, Room 104, Weldon Law Building) — Eva Mroczek, incoming Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies, will talk about “how imagining alternative libraries helped premodern Jews remake tradition, question authority, and leave room for the weird”
When more isn’t always better: Polypharmacy in older adults (Wednesday, 7pm, online) — Mini Medical School with Althea Lacas
Saint Mary’s
Today
Erasing Slavery in Canadian History: A Conversation with Dr. Charmaine Nelson (Tuesday, 6pm, in the conference theatre named after a bank, in the building named after a grocery store, and online) —
Canada enjoys the mythic image of a haven where Black slaves could find refuge through the Underground Railroad. However, historians now reveal Slavery as “Canada’s best-kept secret”. What’s the real story of slavery in Canada and why is it important to discuss it today?
Tomorrow
Kemet Udjat Film Festival: Hidden Figures (Wednesday, 6pm, in the conference theatre named after a bank, in the building named after a grocery store, and online) — more info here
In the harbour
Halifax
05:00: Wolfsburg, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Emden, Germany
06:00: Contship Art, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from New York
07:00: Sonderborg, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
16:30: Wolfsburg, sails for sea
18:30: Contship Art sails for sea
22:00: Sonderborg sails for sea
Cape Breton
09:00: Bahama Spirit, Bulker, arrives at Pirate Harbour anchorage from Charleston, South Carolina
16:30: Ghibli, oil tanker, sails from EverWind for sea
Footnotes
A bit late today because in the middle of writing Morning File I had a root canal.
Thanks for your exceptionally clear and helpful articulation of why the government’s decision to shelve the Coastal Protection Act is so dangerous and irresponsible. If we speak up loudly, maybe we can persuade them to change their minds! So long as the legislation remains on the books and isn’t actually repealed (which it hasn’t been so far), the battle’s not over.
Regarding the CPA fiasco, I cannot believe the extent to which successive governments of Nova Scotia have “ostriched” (head in the sand) on emissions and the unfolding climate catastrophe. Any of us can glean from the science available and the reports in the media regarding the science that the models for virtually all climate-related outcomes, including sea-level rise, are proving inaccurate. This is because the models, like all science, are based upon the science to date and populated with historical data, followed by extrapolations to get a sense of the future. These models are being overtaken by the speed at which new records are being set and climate-related events are unfolding. So, the point is that we must embrace the probability that the currently predicted sea-level rise numbers are no longer valid. This, if valid, would make the current assumption(s) upon which various actions are being taken invalid. Nova Scotians should likely be preparing for a far greater sea-level rise than the nominal 1 metre that has been the basis for action for some time now. Hope is not a plan.
Great morning file, as usual. Thanks. What in the blazes are all of these clowns doing?
I’ve probably read the section on the Coastal Protection Act five times a day. You have a knack for describing the slow moving train wreck that is Nova Scotia in all its gory detail.
Perhaps we should change the license plates to say “Canada’s Oligarch Playground”
Individually empowered, systemically destroyed.
Super.
Fun little democracy loophole that a piece of all-party legislation can pass, and dollars upon dollars can be spent towards researching its deployment, taking public input etc, and then the governing party can be like “actually, y’know what? nah.” One of those things that feels like it shouldn’t be allowed, even if it’s (I guess?) perfectly legal. Can only imagine how soul-crushing this feels for everyone who worked so hard to get the act crafted and passed. As someone who grew up a stone’s throw from the ocean here, I can viscerally remember the first time as a grade-school child (the kind of nerdy child who read the grown-up version of National Geographic every month, back when it was still good), that I learned about the threat of sea-level rise, did some rough math and looked at some prediction maps, and made the harrowing realization in my young brain that by the time I had grandchildren or great-grandchildren, every place I ever knew and loved might be totally lost to them because it would be underwater. It genuinely shook me in a way that makes it a clear memory even decades later. Throughout my adolescence and into adulthood, I’ve subsequently watched with despair and trepidation as my mother fights each storm season to keep her father’s fishing wharf and its old timber buildings – a generationally passed-down property that connects us to our heritage and our family’s traditional livelihood, and the only true inheritance my sister and I will ever have – from being torn to shreds and swallowed up by the storm surge, eventually having to resort to crossed fingers and closed eyes, waiting helplessly to see if it is still there when the waters recede. As I get a little older and start trying to plan in grown-up ways for the far-off future, I’ve developed a running dark joke that I’ve got it made for retirement, because my sister and I will inherit a tidy little slice of shoreline to retreat to when we’re old and grey – “assuming it’s not underwater by then”. Even if the property does make it far enough that I become responsible for it, become a coastal property owner myself, I’ll still be at the mercy of the vacation mcmansions being plowed into adjacent slices of shoreline every couple of years by people who won’t spend more than a handful of months here each year. The issue of sea level rise and coastlines has always felt deeply, bone-chillingly existential to me, as someone determined to build the rest of my life on the same shores my family has clung to since the day the boat dropped us off centuries ago. I want a future here. I want to show my grandkids the same shoreline where I picked beach glass with my own Nana as a child. To see so much work towards trying to do *something* about the threats to that dream, and then it all to be chucked out the window for an APP and an “every man for himself” abdication of responsibility? Gut-wrenching. Gutless. And yet – just god damn typical, ain’t it. And they wonder why our young people grow up thinking that the future is something you grow up and move to Alberta for.
Well said!!
Well at least the mayor and his free market cronies aren’t inanely boasting about how many construction cranes there are on the HRM skyline.
Regarding housing, it’s interesting that just a couple years ago council almost voted to ask the province to transfer Metro Housing to them, contingent on the province still paying for it. Sam Austin’s newsletter (linked below) on the vote even mentions directly that the city would build new housing if this went through. I don’t have the fortitude to crawl through legislation to see if there actually is anything preventing the city from doing it or if that’s just one of those assumptions nobody bothers to test.
The cries of poverty to dissaude anyone from asking the city to build housing never works for me. Toronto and Vancouver can manage to build public housing themselves – yes they have far more money, but they also have far more people to provide for. Cut the HRP budget and use the money to build something that actually does provide for the community. I also wonder if there would be federal money available; the feds seem to be somewhat open handed with funding housing so long as other levels of government are willing to actually start doing it.
As with all government inaction it is a result of deliberate choices, not unusual circumstance.
Sam Austin’s newsletter re: housing: https://samaustin.ca/council-update-findlay-rink-halifact-housing-and-crichton-heritage/
I remember there was some review of the city charter around when the old ibrary assaults by police happened… Or may have been around “Defund police” — but it was established that the city has “the authority” to build and manage housing, but, as they insist, not the funding. There are 33 references to the word housing in the charter.. . (3) For example: “This Section does not apply to a borrowing or part thereof by a municipal housing corporation where the municipal housing corporation obtains a borrowing guarantee from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in respect of that borrowing or that part thereof, respectively. 2022, c. 38, s. 19.” Seems to suggest that borrowing for housing is possible (but I am neither lawyer nor relevant academic, just an old, compassionate activist) …
“A hole has been punched through the riprap protecting Eagle Head Beach Road from storm surges. Credit: Tim Bousquet / Halifax Examiner”
This undated picture is from the road leading to the ocean. Turn right and you end up on Peter Kelly’s property.
https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province-house-2/former-halifax-mayor-peter-kelly-accused-of-devastation-of-eagle-head-beach/
What the actual frig!!! A piece of legislation passed by all parties following extensive input and they just ignore it? This is beyond outrageous. It is blatantly a few well heeled property owners pulling strings to get the PCs to back off. The people who are wrecking the coastline with their loads of armour stone do not give a flying fig about anyone else except their own piece of coastline. To heck with the guy down the shore as long as they have an unobstructed view of the ocean from their McMansion! This is the most corrupt decision this current government has made. I wish we could take them to court on this.
I agree, Jon. I heard the minister say on the radio that he “trusts Nova Scotians to make good decisions”. Yeah, like Peter Kelly, and those guys who live on the Northwest Arm who want to infill. Either this is the most corrupt decision, as you say, or they’ve all lost their minds. And what about the Isthmus of Chignecto. Will they smarten up after we become an island?
The recent full moon may account for the lunacy of the Houston government on its total abdication of its responsibilty to the province it is obliged to protect and the citizens within it. It is established in law from what I understand that the provincial crown is responsible for this soon to be inundated with seawater foreshore. Passing this responsibility to the numerous citizens living and enjoying the ocean view is iresponsible, shoddy, grossly unfair and leaves those along the shore now basically responsible for protecting the citizens who live away from the shore. This is a responsibility that is shared with all who domicile here regardless of their distance from the ocean. Therefore it’s a provincial responsibility. I rather expect that someone in cabinet did a study that will ever be revealed that shows the cost of doing this is will be astronomical, certainly not in the budget given the already costly “improvements” to the health care system. So perhaps all those in long term care won’t have to wait to have a view of the water, it will reach them soon enough. I can not believe how arrogant, cavalier, mean spirited, indifferent and down stupid this government is becoming.