A preventable tragedy: How Nova Scotia's mental health services failed Cody Glode

Cody Glode had everything to live for.

He was a handsome 20 year-old, the youngest firefighter -- and first Mi'kmaw -- in Truro's fire service. "The boys at the fire department welcomed [him] with open arms," his mother says, but Cody's "true passion" remained mixed martial arts.

He was a featherweight fighter. His goal was to turn pro. He won his most recent bout by a technical knockout in the third round, and had three more fights scheduled this spring.

Nova Scotia Power outages generate outrage... and questions about the wisdom of privatization

I woke up one recent morning and flipped on the radio. "Nova Scotia Power is reporting its first outage of the morning," the newscaster began. It was not a storm day. Or the day after. Or even the day after that. We were in the middle of a brief winter storm interregnum. Skies were clear.

Another day, another news report. On Feb. 3, the Digby Courier reported 5,800 customers in Clare and Weymouth without power -- "just like yesterday." The cause of the first outage: "damage to overhead equipment." The cause of the second: "equipment failure." Unrelated to the first, according to a Nova Scotia Power spokesperson.

Mother Canada Monument Provokes War Of Words

INGONISH, N.S. - Rhadie Murphy has spent her life on the rugged coastline that snakes along Cape Breton's northern flank, its pink granite rocks stretching out near her home in the heart of Ingonish.

The 72-year-old is unreserved in her pride and praise of the small community on the eastern edge of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, calling that piece of the Cabot Trail "the most beautiful place in the world."

So Murphy and her large family were left shaking their heads in bewilderment when their tranquil hometown took centre stage in a fractious debate over Mother Canada, the towering war monument that could adorn their shoreline.

Tolls proposed for 8 sections of 4 busiest Nova Scotia highways

It's been almost two decades since a Liberal government brought toll roads to Nova Scotia. Now, another liberal regime is looking at the possibility of building eight more.

A tender issued today by the McNeil government is requesting proposals for a feasibility study to conduct a province-wide examination of twinning and tolling at eight specific sections of four major highways.

Conservative Party paid for Laureen Harper fundraising appearances in Nova Scotia

PARLIAMENT HILL—The Conservative Party has confirmed it is footing the bill for a campaign-style fundraising tour by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s wife Laureen Harper, in a bid to help Conservative MP Scott Armstrong fend off a challenge by former Conservative MP Bill Casey in the Nova Scotia electoral district Mr. Armstrong has held since 2009.

“Just to be clear, the Conservative Party is paying Ms. Harper’s travel and expenses related to the fundraisers in Cumberland-Colchester,” Conservative Party spokesperson Cory Hann said in an email to The Hill Times.

Nova Scotia Bill 1: The saga continues

The drama continues in Nova Scotia this week, after the provincial Liberals announced plans to create new legislation that would reassign health-care workers to unions not necessarily of their choosing.

In a last-minute upset, the Nova Scotia Minister of Health and Wellness, Leo Glavin, announced last week that the provincial government will fire arbitrator Jim Dorsey, after he rendered an unsatisfactory decision in the dispute over the controversial Health Authorities Act, Bill 1.  

"I don't know what to call this," said NSGEU president Joan Jessome, whose union is one of four affected by the bill. "It's quite the theatre."

Dorsey was hired as the government-appointed mediator/arbitrator in October 2014 to determine what union representation would look like after Nova Scotia's 49 existing health-care bargaining units were streamlined into four province-wide units -- one each for nurses, health-care, clerical, and support workers. 

Nova Scotia paves the way for Charter challenge to Health Authorities Act

Really?

Last year, the McNeil government passed the Health Authorities Act, ostensibly (and laudably) to streamline the province's health-care system, but also (and shabbily) to game that system. 

The legislation reduced the number of health districts from 10 to two, and the number of collective bargaining units from 50 to four. But the government's stealth agenda was to emasculate its union nemesis, the powerful Nova Scotia Government Employees Union, and cheat the province's 24,000 health-care workers of their Charter-given right to choose who should represent them.

Jason Kenny Says Nova Scotia Shouldn't Lose Young Workers To Western Canada

HALIFAX - Young Nova Scotians are contributing to Alberta's prosperity when there are energy resources that could be tapped into at home that would lead to jobs, the federal minister of employment and social development said Saturday.

"I'm from Alberta," Jason Kenney told a meeting of the provincial Progressive Conservative party.

The perils and prospects of Nova Scotia's anti-labour health bill

The uproar is about a bill to merge nine regional health authorities into one and streamline their union structure, but it's bigger than that, reaching into the core of our Nova Scotian malaise.

A peaceful end to this would keep the road clear as this province struggles to move forward on many fronts, and a bad one would thicken the dark clouds of backbiting and cynicism that hovers overhead generally, not to mention imperil the better functioning of the health-care system the bill envisions.

Nova Scotia Fracking Ban To Be Indefinite

HALIFAX - The Nova Scotia government introduced legislation today that would place an indefinite moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing for onshore oil and gas from shale deposits.

But the legislation would provide an exemption for fracking used for testing and research purposes.

Energy Minister Andrew Younger says the amendments to the Petroleum Resources Act will not provide a loophole for the shale gas industry.

Younger, who first announced the government's plans to implement a fracking moratorium nearly a month ago, says the legislation makes it clear that commercial fracking will not be allowed without a public debate in the legislature.

He says the government plans to draft regulations to define what high-volume fracking is and describe the process the government will follow before reconsidering the moratorium.

The minister says the government won't consider lifting the ban until the it is convinced fracking can be done safely under a set of stringent new rules and regulations.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
Author: CP

McNeil government sets its sights on organized labour in Nova Scotia

On Thursday, in the warm afterglow of a Throne speech that zeroed in on "unsustainable [public sector] wage increases" and promised a "hiring slow down and steps to achieve a more sustainable wage pattern," Health Minister Leo Glavine was clear as glass.

Premier Stephen McNeil's government had had it up to here with recalcitrant health-care unions. The unions had come up with a proposal for a collective bargaining process for the newly merged, streamlined, one-size-fits-all provincial health authority, and the government had flatly rejected it. The time for talk was past before it began.

New legislation will impose specific unions on health-care workers in Nova Scotia

(K'JIPUKTUK) HALIFAX - This Monday, Nova Scotia's Health Minister Leo Glavine will introduce legislation that dictates to health-care workers which union they must belong to.

"We will identify who will represent nurses, who will represent technologists, clerical and administration," Glavine told the Chronicle Herald earlier.

The legislation merges nine district health authorities in the province into two, and reduces the number of collective agreements with health-care units to just four, based on classification.

Nova Scotia threatens to sweep away patient care with nurses' right to strike

Let me see if I understand this.

Capital District nurses have the legal right to strike. In February, they voted 90 per cent in favour of striking to back contract demands. But if they actually walk off their jobs, they will effectively -- and almost instantly -- lose that right. (See the McNeil government's legislation forcing striking home-care workers to return to their posts even before the ink on their picket signs was dry. McNeil will do the same if nurses down their stethoscopes.)

So what are their options?

The nurses could quit.

Oh… no, they can't.

Patronage portents come early for Nova Scotia's new premier

It is too soon to draw conclusions, but the patronage portents from Stephen McNeil's first three months in power are not promising.

First, there was the case of Glennie Langille, the defeated Liberal candidate and former party communications chief. Without benefit of a competition, McNeil handed her an $85,000-per-year plum as the province's new chief of protocol.

The apolitical position -- which involves co-ordinating official ceremonies, hosting royal and other high-mucky-muck visitors, and managing the Order of Nova Scotia -- was previously held by a public servant.

Why can't we talk about energy conservation in Nova Scotia?

Efficiency Nova Scotia, the conservation agency funded by your power bill, is reporting good progress as the public buys into the notion of saving both energy and money.

The province-wide electricity load has been cut by 4.3 per cent so far -- enough energy saved last year alone to power 16,000 homes -- and an "energy-efficiency industry" of small businesses is growing to service all this.

Excellent. Now what's keeping us from going all the way and actually adopting those forms of energy that conserve by definition?

Senate plot line familiar? We saw that act in N.S.

The political drama around the Senate’s expense scandal is unfolding on the arc of classic tragedy. Ambitious figures aspire to great wealth and accomplishment, but commit an unethical act. They fear exposure and cover their tracks. But lo, the act and its cover story are revealed, the veil frays and disintegrates. Curtain on Act 1.

In Act 2, denial and indecision reign as details emerge and the consequences become clear. Conflict rages as alliances are tested and loyalties strained. The audience wonders whom to believe.

Ivany commission reports on Nova Scotia's progressive economic future

Here's some good reading on the economic future of Nova Scotia. The Ivany commission on the "new economy" has written up what it heard on the road in an interim report (at www.onens.ca). In so doing, it has cleared much underbrush and roughed out a path forward, like Dr. John Ross's report did for health care.

In short, we may be getting better at grappling with our problems -- just in the nick of time as the economic prognoses get more ominous and as one-note Harperist forces to the West work to trivialize the Maritimes as a mere welfare case.

The commission had been warned that "consultation fatigue," cynicism and "one-issue" interests would make this just another round-and-round. It didn't happen. The response has been enthusiastic, making it "hard to conclude that Nova Scotians are risk-averse."

Report launch: Fracking in Nova Scotia -- the real story

This past Monday evening (on Mother Earth Day), NOFRAC launched the report, Out of Control: Nova Scotia's experience with fracking for shale gas, in the community it happened back in 2007-2008. Kennetcook, N.S. still has tailings ponds full of fracking waste, and many community members didn't know the details of what had happened or even where the toxic waste ponds are.

To read the report, report summary and supporting documentation, click here.

To read the Chronicle Herald on the report and launch, click here.

Idle No More Blockade In Nova Scotia Dismantled

HALIFAX - A blockade of a Canadian National rail line between Halifax and Truro in Nova Scotia forged as part of the Idle No More protests has been dismantled.

About 20 people from the Millbrook First Nation placed wooden pallets and a car on the tracks in Truro at about 1 p.m. Friday.

Shelly Martin, the band's lawyer, says the blockade was removed later that evening around 10 p.m.

Via Rail said in an email on Friday that it took 53 passengers to Truro from Halifax by bus as officials at CN negotiated with protesters.

Chief Bob Gloade has said the blockade was sanctioned by the band council and was part of a growing wave of protests and blockades organized by the Idle No More movement.

Original Article
Source: huffington post
Author: CP

Have Conservatives won heart of the East? PM thinks so

The prime minister flew in last week on his seasonal migration and barbecue route across Canada. It was the sleepiest part of the summer and not a perfect time for politics. But politics is Stephen Harper’s job and he’s a workaholic.

The putative justification for the visit was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a wetlands research station on the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border. That’s right, a research station, which seems odd. The mere thought of the PM going pro-science would cause some Tories to spill their War of 1812 commemorative teacups.