There is no money for people on social assistance in yesterday’s Liberal budget. That kind of a mean spirited attitude doesn’t bode well for the secretive welfare transformation project the department has been working on since 2015.
The return of a potentially violent young man to the NS Youth Facility in Waterville after he spent a year in solitary confinement in an adult prison has prison workers worried, the Chronicle Herald reported yesterday. But there is much the Herald left out, and much that the government has to answer for.
A new poem by El Jones. TRIGGER WARNING: 80-90 percent of women in prison are victims of physical and sexual assault. Yet because they are “criminals” what happens to them at the hands of the system must be something they deserve. When we talk about injustice to rape victims in Canadian courts where are their stories?
Today at noon, while inside the Nova Scotia government convened the Legislature for a new session, the streets outside Province House filled with around a thousand angry workers, loudly demanding that the Public Services Sustainability Act (Bill 148) be revoked.
A youth who has been held in what is effectively solitary confinement for a year should be returned to the Nova Scotia Youth Facility in Waterville, Justice Anne Derrick has recommended. But the final decision is up to the Department of Justice. And it looks like it may want to continue the status quo. This will compromise the young man’s treatment and rehabilitation, and negatively affect his fragile mental health, Justice Derrick says.
It took a while, but with the hiring of criminologist Dr Scot Wortley the analysis of Halifax carding data can finally begin. I went to the Board of Police Commissioners to get the details, and for a bonus finally got to ask Chief Blais why police collected race-based stats for ten years, but in all that time never looked at them.
As part of its release of the 2016 census data Stats Canada publishes a series of thematic maps that shed light on where poor people live. What it shows is you that there are a lot more people living in poverty in rural Nova Scotia than in Halifax.
I figured I pretty well knew all I needed to know about Viola Desmond after all the recent publicity around a new ferry name and the decision to feature her portrait on the new $10 bill. But there is always more to learn about Nova Scotia’s racist past.
Members of the Benefits Reform Action Group (BRAG), anti-poverty activists with a focus on Nova Scotia’s heartless welfare regime, spent an entire day talking about strategy and big pictures.
How come real gains are made in the Fight for 15 elsewhere in Canada, but not in Nova Scotia? Does it have to be that way, and are there lessons to be learned both from earlier false starts here and successes elsewhere in Canada?