Liette Doucet, president of the NSTU, on the current pre-election spending spree by premier McNeil: “After years of watching our schools deteriorate in the name of fiscal restraint, this new found spending largesse is another betrayal of trust. To teachers it also appears as though the government is funding its pre-election campaign at their expense–and their students’ expense.”

I had a great time at SMU last week, digging through box after box of newspaper clippings, minutes posters, and brochures related to well over forty years of civil rights, labour and social justice struggles here in Nova Scotia and beyond. Lynn Jones has scissors, and she isn’t afraid to use them. Eighteen boxes of documentation have found a home at the St Mary’s archives.

The politicians who make decisions about people on social assistance should try living on a social assistance budget just for a week, says actress and documentary maker Jackie Torrens. It would make them better politicians. “I don’t extend the challenge in an aggressive way, or an angry way. I sincerely want our MLAs to have a tiny glimpse of what people on social assistance in this province are dealing with on a daily basis,” says Torrens.