Continuing Care Assistant Ann McGettigan was the victim of sexual assault by a client during a home visit. She felt unprotected by her employer, but her Nova Scotia Human RIghts complaint was dismissed before it reached the tribunal stage. Now Ann is taking the Human Rights Commission to court.
The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission is rewriting the history of the Liane Tessier case on its website, omitting how it fought Liane every step of the way. Liane isn’t happy about it. How can you even begin to fix something if you refuse to see any problem in the first place?
This leaflet was handed out by Liane Tessier’s supporters prior to the public apology issued to her by Halifax Fire on Monday, December 18. It is well worth a read.
After twelve years of fighting systemic gender discrimination at Halifax Fire Liane Tessier finally received an apology, but not a very good one. Hardly an hour later she received an email from a former colleague, illustrating how much more work will be required before misogyny at the workplace is finally a thing of the past.
This Monday former firefighter Liane Tessier will receive a formal apology from the City for the years of systemic gender-based discrimination she was subjected to. Thanks to an entirely incompetent Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission this almost didn’t happen.
We spoke with Liane Tessier, the Halifax firefighter who will on Monday receive a public apology from the city and Halifax Fire for its misogynistic treatment of her. To accept HRM’s offer to settle and apologize wasn’t an easy decision for Tessier, who hoped that the ten-day human rights tribunal scheduled for October would expose the many culprits at HRM and the Fire Department who made her life hell for all these years. Now she has documented all the ghastly details on her website.
Reporter Robert “Broken Record” Devet went to the Board of Halifax Police Commissioners for an update on the police street check analysis. Here is his report.
I went to the community meeting in the Halifax North End, called by the Human Rights Commission, to talk about police street checks. The overall consensus: Halifax police behaviour is often racist, the practice of carding itself is racist, and the community is tired of having to tell white people this over and over without anything ever substantially changing for the better.
Recently more than 25 African Nova Scotian organizations in a joint statement asked that the practice of police street checks be stopped immediately. The NS Human Rights Commission meanwhile has claimed African Nova Scotian support for the analysis it is conducting. When asked who these supporters are the Commission essentially tells me that it is none of my business.
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.