Larry Haiven on Bill 148:| “Unions and collective bargaining and, yes, strikes, are part of the price we all pay for living in a democracy, convenient or not. Bill 148 takes us back to the dark ages and workers, again, will have to take matters into their own hands.”
Last week citizen-reporter and poverty activist Jodi Brown reported on the predicament of Samantha Monaghan, mother of six-year old son Luc, who has a terminal illness. Today things got really bad.
Wishing happy birthday to Kukukwes.com, and a little bit about paywall alternatives. Walls aren’t nice, and neither are paywalls.
Check out this excellent six-minute video documentary introducing seven Nova Scotians addicted to opioids, as they explain how stigma and prejudice puts their lives at risk.
Video reporter Jodi Brown visits the mother of a terminally ill six-year old son, who was kicked of social assistance and told to repay over $30,000 in payments Community Services claims she should not have received. The mother is denying the allegations and fighting her case in court. Meanwhile the family can’t make ends meet and is facing eviction.
Stephen Thomas, energy coordinator at the Ecology Action Center, read the news about the most recent donation by a fossil-fuel company to Dalhousie University and he took to Facebook to express his displeasure and concern. We asked if we could republish it, and he agreed, although he felt it was pretty unpolished. Sometimes unpolished is fine.
Kendall Worth sits down for coffee with three Income Assistance clients who are terrified of their annual review, mostly because they feel their caseworker is needlessly adversarial and disrespectful. Why have an annual review when you know your disability isn’t going to go away, Kendall wonders.
A monthly budget of $56 per month for a mother and her kids on social assistance, how can that be? Jodi Brown does the math.
The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission has finally hired a data expert to analyse police check data within HRM. That was the bit of news delivered by Halifax Regional Police chief Jean Michel Blais at this Monday’s Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting. That’s eight months after a Freedom of Information request revealed that Black Haligonians are three times more likely to be subjected to police checks than white people. Eight months is way too slow.
This is Kendall’s second open letter to Community Services minister Kelly Regan. Turns out there were a couple of issues he forgot to raise. “Something I want to bring to your attention in this letter is something I wrote about how caseworkers get away with behaving like they are medical professionals when it comes to approving special diets. It is also this part of the ESIA policy that sets the stage for caseworkers further questioning doctors about the medical documentation that clients provide.”