Judy Haiven asks a good question: How can it be that an officially nominated federal candidate gets dragged through the mud; is accused of writing anti-semitic tweets; is then turfed from being a candidate for the NDP – yet wins the most prestigious Human Rights Award in Nova Scotia?
Compensation awarded to the complainants in a human rights enquiry may sound generous, but it is peanuts when you take into account the decades the three were institutionalized, away from community and their loved ones, and subjected to a regime that allows almost no space for making your own decisions.
We speak with Mayann Francis, former lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, about an incident at the Dartnouth General Hospital that caused her to file a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
Warren (Gus) Reed is still waiting for the province to follow up on the September 2018 NS Human Rights Decision that restaurants must provide wheelchair access to washrooms. A recent case of Norovirus while traveling in the US made the risks wheelchair users are exposed to all the more real.
Last week a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry decided that former firefighter Kathy Symington did not suffer discrimination while working at the Halifax Fire Service.
“In fact the Tessier case shows that for a woman to complain about a male-dominated workplace, such as the Fire Service, the woman has to be willing to fight for more than a dozen years, has to have an airtight complaint, witnesses, and certainly not criticize her superiors. Short of this, women are simply not believed.,” writes Judy Haiven.
A broad and sweeping joint effort to repair relations between the Town of Truro and the African Nova Scotian community in that town is lauded as a historical event, not just for Truro or Nova Scotia, but perhaps even for Canada.
In a decision issued a year ago a Nova Scotia Human Right Board of Inquiry ordered the Department of the Environment in no uncertain terms to enforce food safety regulations that make it mandatory for restaurants to provide wheelchair-accessible washrooms. Almost a year later plaintiffs are still waiting for actual changes.
Scott Neigh, of the excellent Talking Radical podcast, interviews Marty Wexler and Claire McNeil about the fight against institutionalization in Nova Scotia and the appalling Human Rights tribunal decision (which is being appealed).
A little bit of good news for anybody wants people labelled as living with intellectual disabilities to have better access to community-based housing options in Nova Scotia.
The Disability Rights Coalition is seeking to appeal a Human Rights Board of Inquiry decision that found that people with intellectual disabilities face no systemic discrimination in terns of housing needs.