Danny Cavanagh: “One must consider the cost of keeping an individual incarcerated and the savings we see because of the work these six workers do every day. This program seems to be a win, win for everyone, everyone except the six workers who now have little choice but to stand up for what they believe in. These six workers just want a living wage and to be treated with respect and fairness. These six workers want the expanded restorative justice program to work.”

Day two of Community Services deputy minister’s testimony at the human rights enquiry: When it comes to community living, government inaction is the operative word, and that hasn’t substantially changed with the end of the so-called moratorium on small options homes. Individuals continue to languish in large institutions, and parents continue to worry about what will happen to their loved ones when they die.

Cape Breton Regional Police (CBRP) have charged eighteen men with communicating for the purpose of obtaining sexual services in Sydney, Cape Breton, the Chronicle Herald and the Cape Breton Post report. As usual, police is quoted extensively, and sex workers are never asked how they feel about it.

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?”

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?

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.”