Danny Cavanagh: Irving fined for 2016 sawmill death
Danny Cavanagh: “When I read this headline this morning, I felt that maybe there has been some movement towards justice for needless workplace deaths.”
Month: August 2018
Kapow! Blasting Schmidtville
Judy Haiven: “What is the point of the city declaring downtown Halifax’s Schmidtville a Heritage Conservation District when hundreds of houses in the area are at risk of cracking, shifting and even falling apart? Why should local people have to put up with more excavations and blasting so some rich guys can get richer?”
Justice for justice workers: ‘Many of us have stuck around because the work is so powerful’
Dropped by the picketing Community Justice Society workers, and learned about the vital job they perform. Why is it that the most important jobs always seem to get the worst pay?
Kendall Worth: More special diet blues
Anti-poverty activist Kendall Worth on five income assistance recipients who all lost their special diets in the last little while, even though their medical doctors told Community Services that the diet was medically necessary. What to do?
Paul Wozney: Loss of experienced educational leaders will negatively impact schools
NSTU president Paul Wozney: “As August ticks towards September, Nova Scotians would be wise to remember that 2018-2019 is yet another year of system-wide uncertainty in public schools where the truly vulnerable are not only students and teachers. For the first time, with no end in sight, administrators are squarely in the crosshairs of ill-planned change that put them, schools and quality of education at risk.”
Quest is best place for my son, mother testifies at human rights enquiry
The mother of a man who lives at Quest Regional Rehabilitation Centre in Lower Sackville told a human rights tribunal today that the institution is the right place for her son, who lives with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. “Joey is happy at Quest. He has a beautiful room, a beautiful yard. It’s quiet. He goes on outings,” said Betty Rich. “Small option homes aren’t a good solution for Joey. It may well be that small options works for others, but I am the mother, and I must make my own calls.”
Glyphosate spraying resumes in Nova Scotia forests
Glyphosate spraying resumes in Nova Scotia. On Friday the Department of Environment announced it has has issued six new approvals for glyphosate spraying covering about 1,351 hectares.
Joanne Bealy: White silence
Poet and writer Joanne Bealy on moving to Nova Scotia: “Within the white community I have seen some crazy doubling down: public silence combined with a privileged kind of outspokenness, a white on white outspokenness wherein a caucasian speaker just assumes that any other caucasian agrees with them.”
Alec Stratford: Nova Scotia’s income assistance changes lack empathy
Alec Startford: “The recent changes to the Income Assistance Program are embedded in a traditional worldview that poverty is largely the result of an individual deficit, that people need to work harder to join the workforce, and for those who can’t work, we feel sympathy for their suffering and we want to relieve the pain. The grounding principle in this worldview is that the free market is the best and most efficient way to alleviate poverty. Where it can’t the social welfare system will provide remedial services to relieve suffering.”
Danny Cavanagh: Privatizing Highway 104 maintenance – A battle is brewing
Danny Cavanagh: “Snow and ice control and maintenance will be contracted out to a private company. This raises questions and concerns about the long-term cost of a new P3 highway for taxpayers. It’s essentially déjà vu, and it’s more than likely that we will be providing a hefty profit to corporate elite bank coffers and in the end will get inferior service.”