“I felt the strong need to write this post because of my frustration with this unresponsiveness from my worker, and I wondered how many other people on Income Assistance experience the same thing.” An income assistance recipient writes on calling over and over and about the stress of never getting that much awaited call back.
Media release: Educators for Social Justice is concerned about the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies’ (AIMS) efforts to capitalize on the Nova Scotia Liberal government’s recent education reforms. “Teachers have been saying all along that schools are not a business,” said Dr. Pamela Rogers, a PhD in education and English teacher at Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford. “AIMS’ represents the wealthiest business interests in Nova Scotia. There is zero diversity on its board of directors. Their record shows they are much more concerned with standardized testing and getting businesses access to public schools, than they are with quality, well-rounded education and increasing equity in school programs.”
Kendall Worth about the people on income assistance he encounters here in in Halifax who worry about free bus passes becoming available this spring. “Don’t’ get me wrong. I do agree that there is a strong need for all income assistance recipients, and anyone living in poverty for that matter, to have access to free bus passes. I know quite a few people who are excited about the free bus passes becoming available. But for some it will mean $78 less each month for rent or groceries,” he writes.
The latest on the prosecution of journalist Justin Brake, and how you can help. Muskrat Falls may help our province meet its green energy targets, but at what cost? Brake’s reporting raised that uncomfortable question, and for doing so he deserves our support.
“Commercial forestry is much like fracking, given that the public had limited knowledge or understanding of either industries,” staff at Port Hawkesbury Paper recently told Guysborough District councillors! Our Guysborough correspondent Alexander Bridge sends this report.
Unreliable drug and alcohol testing performed by an Ontario lab has caused the unwarranted break up of families, not only in Ontario, but very possibly in Nova Scotia as well. Community Services used the Motherisk lab for a hair strand test that has now been discredited in hundreds of cases. After a review, Ontario revisited every case where Motherisk evidence was used. Not here in Nova Scotia, though.
News release by the Labrador Land Protectors and Grand Riverkeeper Labrador, calling for a national day of action on Muskrat Falls in May of this year. Nova Scotia is complicit through the Maritime Link, but unfortunately the Ecology Action Centre remains silent on this impending act of cultural genocide.
March 15 at the Halifax North Memorial Library: talk by Arnold August, author of Cuba – U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond, followed by a panel discussion. The panel members include Don Foreman, Executive Member of Canadian Network on Cuba and 35-year activist with CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers), and Errol Sharpe, Publisher, Fernwood Publishing (Halifax).
“The Nova Scotia School Boards Association and school board members across the province are devastated by the adoption of Bill 72,” said Dave Wright, Vice President of the Nova Scotia School Boards Association. “The loss of elected, local and diverse voice in public education is a tragedy.”
Educator Molly Hurd in the first of a two-part series on Bill 72 and the blessings and pitfalls of standardized testing. “I look at all standardized test results with healthy skepticism – they can be a useful diagnostic when well designed, but even low stakes tests on randomized samples are blunt instruments for measuring a school’s or program’s worth.”