New contributor Lila Mosher writes about how she became dependent on income assistance unexpectedly. There’s the lack of money, obviously, and on top of that there are all the mean spirited people who criticize and judge you without knowing your story.
The Benefits Reform Action Group (BRAG), a coalition of welfare recipients and poverty advocates is not happy with last week’s provincial budget. “Good Grief!” writes the group in a press release. “While announcing tax cuts for the middle class and businesses it has not provided a single penny for the poorest of the poor in Nova Scotia—the people in need and reliant on social assistance.”
Kendall Worth argues that the liberal government has been a disappointment for people on welfare. They have done nothing to address the immediate needs of people living in deep poverty, and we know nothing of the welfare transformation except that it moves along with the speed of cold molasses.
People on welfare will have an even harder time making ends meet in the upcoming year, thanks to a provincial budget that ignores their plight.
This year’s budget may be balanced, but the a small group of people on social assistance and their allies who gathered in front of Province House wondered at what cost. Protesters hoped to talk about poverty in Nova Scotia with MLAs entering the House to take part in this afternoon’s budget discussions. Demonstrators were studiously ignored by Liberal and Conservative MLAs, while NDP MLAs stopped to chat.
Years after he got off social assistance Community Services intends to charge him with fraud for running a small business, even though the department had earlier approved the practice. Now the poor man fears he may end up losing his daughter. Brenda Thompson reports from the Annapolis Valley.
It appears frequent contributor and poverty activist Kendall Worth is not a fan of Minister Joanne Bernard.
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.
A sad story about a wonderful store and geeky kids’ safe place that needs our help.
If high speed internet access in rural Nova Scotia is a “basic right,” what about access to a phone? Oh wait, no votes there…