Kimber’s Nova Scotia (July 8, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
July 8, 2007By Stephen Kimber
Take that Steve-o… and Jim-bo too
No-longer Tory MP Bill Casey may not have made the guest list for Stephen Harper’s Halifax press conference on Thursday, but he was sitting pretty at the top of another political list.
Politicswatch.com, an Ottawa website that bills itself as “Canada’s political portal,” named the Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley MP “top performer” among federal MPs during the spring session of parliament.
“No single MP had a bigger impact in Ottawa this sitting,” the website said of Casey, who got booted out of the Conservative caucus last month for voting against the federal budget. “The mild-mannered former car dealer has long been considered one of the best constituent MPs on the Hill.”
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty — Casey’s nemesis and, ironically, his predecessor at the top of the top-performers’ list in the last survey — was named the second-worst performing MP this time.
Two other regional Tory MPs who supported Flaherty’s budget — Peter MacKay and Loyola Hearn — were fifth and sixth on the “worst list,” which, not surprisingly, was topped by gaffe-prone, out-of-his-depth and soon-to-be-shuffled-out-of-his-misery Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor.
Bill Casey for defence minister?
From the fine folks who brought you…
Halifax-based MacDonnell Group is the proud new owner of the 200-acre former Shelburne youth detention centre.
The announcement should — but almost certainly won’t — end months of local controversy over the project. From initial secrecy over who was behind the MacDonnell pitch — originally known only as “Proposal A”— the dispute among members of the municipal committee charged with selling the property quickly degenerated into infighting, allegations of favouritism and even resignations.
Proposal A is now officially Bowood — the name comes from the British estate of the first Earl of Shelburne, for whom the town is named — and MacDonnell’s plans include developing the facility as a security training centre with the possibility of adding seniors’ and student housing and commercial businesses as well as parkland also on the site.
Bowood’s owner, Ralston MacDonnell, says he’ll host an open house later this month to explain his plans to residents.
There will undoubtedly be questions. Many.
MacDonnell, it turns out, was also the president of the company that bought the infamous Digby wharf for $1 from privatizing-crazed Ottawa back in 1999. The feds then handed the company $3-million to manage the wharf, much of which, critics contend, ended up going to salaries and expenses for the wharf’s non-resident directors. That wharf is now in such a sorry state of disrepair local fishermen were forced to lash it together with chains during a storm this spring.
The controversy in Shelburne, in fact, is probably just beginning.
Greenfield has a better idea
Residents in Greenfield, Queen’s County, knew their more-than-60-year-old elementary school needed to be replaced. But they also knew all about how difficult it is to squeeze money for new school construction out of the stone of the education department these days — especially when the school in question would house fewer than three dozen pupils.
So they incorporated a non-profit society, fund-raised, enlisted the help of local businesses — one lumber company donated wood — hired an architect to design a facility and came up with “a compelling out-of-the-box proposal for a community-built school.”
Last week, the society signed a deal with the department of education, which has agreed to lease their soon-to-be-constructed two-classroom facility for $72,000 a year for the next 20 years.
Pat Jones, one of the founding directors of the society, says it will be able to save up to $300,000 of the $1.25 million it would have cost the province to build a new school by acting as its own general contractor.
West Highlands, take note…
The Chignecto-Central Regional School Board might want to call the folks in Greenfield now that Deputy Education Minister Dennis Cochrane has concluded it should abandon a scheduled $3-million renovation of its West Highlands elementary school.
Cochrane, who recently toured the school with board members and local MLA Ernie Fage, agreed with local officials the 95-year-old school, which is beset by mould and asbestos problems, isn’t worth fixing.
But that doesn’t automatically mean a new school. An education department spokesperson says it’s up to the board to suggest how to proceed now.
While a parents group has written Cochrane imploring him to fast-track a new school, the spokesperson suggested there are other options “such as grade re-configurations, additions and alterations to other existing schools.”
Hello, Greenfield…
A failure to communicate
The problem, says Environment Minister Mark Parent, is that Boularderie Island residents can “see the past and the damage but [they] don’t see the future yet.”
The problem, say local strip-mining protestors, is that Parent doesn’t see their present.
Parent, who was in Cape Breton touring the Point Aconi power generating station last week, turned down an invitation from members of Citizens Against Strip Mining to tour the nearby site of the former Prince mine with them.
Pioneer Coal of Antigonish is “remediating” the site under the supervision of Parent’s department, but protesters say the company has created “a huge hole it did not have permits to dig” in order to reach the coal seam.
“They destroyed a huge area of wetlands,” complained Donna Stubbert, one of the 30 protesters who waited in the sun for three hours to get Parent’s attention. “Nobody has a problem with the cleanup of the Prince mine site. The issue is the 85 hectares of pristine forests containing 47 acres of wetlands, the area beyond the Prince mine site that will be destroyed.”
Parent, who said he’d already met twice with the protest group and had toured the site previously, admitted past remediation efforts haven’t worked as well as expected, but insisted, “as minister, I have been very proactive on making them [companies] meet high environmental standards.”
That didn’t satisfy local resident Lawrence Bragg, who claimed the land will be useless once the company finishes stripping coal from it. “You can’t plant on it, drill a bore hole or put a basement or a house on loose soil,” he said.
Clearly, he sees a different future than the minister.
Stop and smell the… exhaust
Our environment minister gets around. Last week, Mark Parent also spent time in his King’s North riding where the questioning was gentler.
During a meeting with municipal councilors, Coun. Wayne Atwater asked the minister if he’d consider banning drive-through service at fast-food outlets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The answer was no but… “If the county would like to move forward, I'd be supportive,” Parent told councillors, who have been discussing creating their own no-idling zones.
Parent also told councillors studies show it’s faster to park your car, get out and go inside for your food.
But is the food any better?
‘No, you turn left at Scotland…’
Did you know that Britons’ spending on so-called second-home properties tripled from 2002 to more than $12 billion in 2005?
No? Me neither.
But you would probably have guessed, without even knowing, that “only a fraction of that money has found its way to Nova Scotia.”
A British company wants to change that. Second Home Nova Scotia, which launched its website — www.secondhomenovascotia.com — last week, already boasts 217 “amazingly affordable… waterfront properties, luxury homes and rustic cottages [amid] unspoiled acres of forest, lakeshore, beautiful beaches, stunning seashore and mountains… only six hours’ flight from the United Kingdom.”
“For whatever reason, it seems that Nova Scotia has been completely overlooked” by British cottage buyers, explains company boss Terence Fane-Saunders. “The average person in the UK, if you talk to them about Nova Scotia, they don't even know where it is. Some think it’s in Scotland.”
Most of the properties — which range in price from $35,000 to over $1 million — are on the province’s south shore where the company is “affiliated with” local realtor Tradewinds.
Perhaps not surprisingly, not everyone is amused. “If these properties are bought up by foreign interests, it’s only going to… result in higher taxes,” Baddeck Coun. Bruce Morrison told the Cape Breton Post. His community may have to review its non-resident ownership policies if property tax rate hikes continue to spiral upward. “I can ensure you that residents here who are moving into retirement village mode... didn’t envision skyrocketing taxes, that’s for sure.”
Fane-Saunders, for his part, maintains a stiff upper lip. He doesn’t want to get mired in local politics, but he insists the newcomers will be good for the province.
And, of course, they’ll be good for him too!
Come and get me
One of the joys of reading community newspapers is that they often include detailed reports of what constitutes local criminal activity.
Consider this recent excerpt from the RCMP blotter quoted in the Yarmouth Vanguard.
Among the 152 calls for service during the previous two weeks, police responded to this one from staff at the local correctional facility on June 15 at 8:42 p.m. “Outside their facility, an intoxicated male is banging on the door stating there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest and he’s waiting for an RCMP officer to pick him up.”
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES:
AMHERST DAILY NEWS, CAPE BRETON POST, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, SHELBURNE COAST GUARD, YARMOUTH VANGUARD.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Wright and Wrong (July 5, 2007)
Wright the wrong man for the job
If you want to begin to understand the utter disdain Nova Scotia’s department of community services has for its own legislation — and for the people it is supposed to serve — consider its recent appointment of Robert Wright to the committee that is supposed to review the province’s Children and Family Services Act.
Wright is a senior community services bureaucrat, a former director of Cumberland County family and children’s services and executive director of the department’s recently announced youth strategy and services.
Incredibly, however, Wright has been named to the review committee as one of two persons “whose children have been, are or may be in need of protective services...” (italics very definitely mine).
When the Nova Scotia Family and Children’s Services Act was introduced in 1990, it was hailed as a progressive piece of legislation, but even its framers understood the act would need to be reviewed regularly to make sure it was still working to — in the words of the act — “protect children from harm, promote the integrity of the family and assure the best interests of children.”
Which is why the legislation required the minister to “establish an advisory committee whose function is to review annually the provisions of this act and the services relating thereto and to report annually to the minister concerning the operation of the act and whether the principles and purpose of the act are being achieved.”
The 10-member committee was supposed to represent all the key players in the child protection system, including not only agency representatives, legal aid workers and other insiders but also — specifically — two people whose experience was from the receiving end of child protective services.
Wright, whatever his many other sterling qualities, should not be a “parent” representative on this committee. (A government spokesperson says she can’t say what Wright’s specific qualifications are for the post “as it would be a breach of confidentiality,” noting only that the legislature’s toothless human resources committee appointed Mr. Wright.)
Regardless, the fact is he is an insider. He can’t help but represent — and be seen to be representing — the government’s vested interest in the review process. A government spokesperson claims the department sought “legal advice” before it appointed him; I’d love to see the verbal gymnastics involved in justifying that leap of lizardly legal logic!
The unhappy truth is that Wright’s appointment merely continues the pattern of cavalier contempt the department has shown for its own process.
Between 1999 and 2005, this government didn’t even bother to appoint a review committee. It only reluctantly did so after two determined women — who’d had their own unhappy experiences with the system — took the minister to court two years ago.
After Supreme Court Justice Hilary Nathanson ordered the department to belatedly live up to its legal obligations, the then-minister, David Morse, did his best to sabotage the ruling’s intent.
The legislation calls for the appointment of “two persons drawn from the cultural, racial or linguistic minority communities” in order to bring other perspectives to the table. Morse instead appointed two Children’s Aid Society staff members who, only incidentally, happened to come from those communities.
Morse named a personal friend as the first parent member on the committee. (The government, of course, wouldn’t even consider applications from the two women who’d taken the government to court and won; they clearly were too interested in the system’s workings. The department claims it’s still looking to fill the other parent vacancy on its committee.)
And now, thanks largely to the government’s ongoing efforts of hobble its work — delaying appointing new members to replace those who have resigned or whose terms have expired, naming people like Wright who clearly don’t belong — the committee is in a shambles. It still hasn’t even filed its last annual report, which would have been only the first since the courts ordered it to act.
None of this is intended as a knock on Robert Wright’s qualifications to serve as executive director of the new youth strategy the government has set up in response to the Nunn Commission report. Or even to suggest he could not represent the minister’s interests on the review committee; there are slots for that too.
But he cannot — and should not pretend to — represent the interests of those on the receiving end of the system.
If the minister doesn’t revoke his appointment, Wright should do the honourable thing and resign himself.
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column, “Kimber’s Nova Scotia,” appears in the Sunday Daily News.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (July 1, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
July 1, 2007
Emergency? What emergency?
If you live in Digby and have a medical emergency this summer, South West Health suggests you dial 9-1-1. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
The doctor shortage is now so acute Digby General Hospital is closing its emergency department from Mondays to Fridays throughout July, and perhaps longer.
Patients needing emergency care are being directed to the Yarmouth, Annapolis or Kentville hospitals, but South West Health hinted that calling 9-1-1 first might speed up treatment since “emergency departments give priority to emergency cases.”
Despite the crisis, Health Minister Chris d’Entremont doesn’t appear overly concerned. He was supposed to attend a Digby meeting on the issue almost two months ago, but got delayed in Halifax and the meeting never happened. And he didn’t show up at a Digby rally Thursday, during which more than 1,000 people signed save-our-hospital postcards to send to Premier Rodney MacDonald.
Late last month, Dr. Roy Harding, the hospital’s deputy chief of staff —whose resignation became effective Thursday — wrote to the minister asking for a face-to-face meeting. He complained the minister’s absence at another meeting with his officials “has led at least in part to this unsatisfactory situation.”
The result: “I never got a reply.”
Their meeting has now finally been scheduled — for July 11, nearly two weeks after Harding’s last day on the job.
Show me the money, take 1
If Yarmouth’s Tri-County school board wants to get the same funding as other regional school boards, it should hire more expensive teachers, lose some students and, oh yes, shorten the distance between schools.
That may not have been the message Deputy Education Minister Dennis Cochrane wanted to deliver when he made his belated appearance before the board Monday. But that was the message skeptical principals, school advisory council reps, school board members and parents — who believe the province’s funding formula favours other school districts — took away from the two-hour session.
The education funding formula, Cochrane insisted, is equitable but can never be equal. Some boards appear to get more funding, he explained, because the average teacher salary in their district is higher, possibly because Yarmouth has hired younger, cheaper teachers to replace those retiring.
And then there’s declining enrollment. Cochrane said the province provides supplementary funding to school boards in places like Cape Breton that are losing dramatic numbers of students. Under that formula, the Strait regional board last year got $4.6 million while the Tri-County received just over $500,000. Do you really want to get extra money because you have fewer students, Cochrane wanted to know?
One school principal countered that she was told by a fellow principal from another district his school had received $160,000 for “extras… How is it possible that one board can have all of their schools get a surplus when our schools are struggling?”
Does the province understand that filling traveling student services and counseling positions on a population rather than a geographic basis penalizes board’s like the Tri-County board, which is trying to serve a vast rural area, others asked?
The meeting, it is fair to say, did not change many minds.
Show them the money, take 2
Tri-County schools aren’t the only ones looking for more money. The chair of the West Highlands Elementary School in Amherst has written Cochrane a letter, imploring the education department to “fast-track” a replacement for their 94-year-old school building, which contains mould and cancer-causing asbestos as well as suffering from structural problems.
The school is scheduled for multimillion dollar renovations “in the next few years,” but locals say they need a new school now.
“A patch-job approach will not adequately address the serious health and safety concerns presently existing at West Highlands,” advisory board chair Cindy Bourgeois wrote.
While Cochrane recently told local school board officials he agrees something needs to be done, he pointed out the province now has a “hold” on new school construction projects…
So let’s spend millions on useless renovations instead.
Support our decal makers
In economically booming Sydney, there are so few pressing issues to distract Cape Breton municipal politicians one councillor wants the region’s chief administrative officer to get staff pasting yellow “Support Our Troops” decals on all municipal vehicles.
“It’s about time we showed support,” says Coun. Jim MacLeod, who has a sign in front of his own home declaring his family prays for and supports Canadian troops.
Over 200 Cape Bretoners are currently serving in Afghanistan.
Here a pool, there a pool
Who closed the door first? And did they slam it shut? Those were the questions up for debate last week when Lunenburg Municipal Council discussed plans for a new multi-purpose facility featuring an aquatic centre, library, 500-seat performing arts centre and municipal building in Osprey Village off Exit 12 at Highway 103.
For some councillors, the plan — and suggestions the municipality partner with the local YMCA and library — brought back messy memories of a failed, two-year effort to develop a joint multi-purpose centre with Bridgewater’s town council. That deal fell through when Bridgewater insisted on a town location while the municipality wanted the Osprey Village site.
“We don’t have a good track record for working with anybody,” declared Coun. Donald Zwicker. “We had an opportunity. Somebody else didn't close the door. We closed the door. We slammed it in their face, as a matter of fact.”
Countered Coun. Sandra Statton: “I take offence to having a broad brush put on this council as being negative. [Bridgewater] flatly refused to even consider Exit 12.”
Councillor John Veinot agreed there was disagreement. “We’re not a council that is functioning very well with one another,” he allowed.
As for its latest multi-purpose proposal, council voted 8-4 to go ahead with it.
Meanwhile, back in Bridgewater, Mayor Carroll Publicover wasn’t about to abandon the town’s multi-purpose plans, which also include a pool.
“In terms of re-creating a marriage between the two facilities,” the mayor told the Bridgewater Bulletin, “I don't foresee that.”
Me neither.
And we’ll be here to bug you too, Billy Joe
Seventy-year-old Billy Joe MacLean wants to be mayor of Port Hawkesbury again. If, as expected, he’s re-elected next year to the job he’s held for the past 14, it will “make me the oldest living municipal provincial public servant, I think, in the history of the province.”
It will also make him the only “oldest living municipal provincial public servant” to have been unanimously expelled from the Nova Scotia legislature for expense account fraud.
Back in the bad old Buchanan days, Billy Joe was one of the government’s good-old-boy MLAs and cabinet ministers who got caught filing forged expense claims. After pleading guilty to the charges in 1986, Buchanan’s scandal-plagued government was forced — the premier shed a tear as the votes were cast — to introduce legislation prohibiting anyone indicted in a criminal case from sitting in the legislature, and tossing Billy Joe himself out on his ear.
The Supreme Court eventually declared the law — though not Billy Joe’s expulsion — unconstitutional. MacLean was even re-elected MLA before returning to his municipal political roots in 1993. Since then, he’s somehow managed to put the expense account scandal so far behind him the Cape Breton Post didn’t even think to mention it in its story about MacLean’s re-election plans.
Even a battle with prostate cancer has not slowed him down. “I am happy to report I got a zero count,” he told the Post after his latest follow-up tests last week, “so I am going to be around to bug the government for a while.”
Better than a VLT?
Early on Father’s day morning, customers began telephoning Betty Northup, the owner and operator of the popular Lakeside Variety in Vaughn, just to be sure. “We had people call in to hear if it was true,” she recalls.
It was. On June 17, agency-designated convenience stores around the province began selling booze on Sundays too. “It was very busy here all day,” Northup told the Hants Journal.
She says the province’s decision to let approved stores sell alcohol is a boon to hard-pressed convenience store operators, who’ve been doubly whacked in recent years — losing VLTs and facing competition from newly legalized Sunday retailing. “The small stores need something to help them stay alive; and this is it.”
Maybe.
Next Sunday, Northup’s government competitors, including the nearby Windsor Nova Scotia liquor commission outlet, will begin muscling in on her new Sunday turf.
It’s enough to drive a convenience store owner to drink. But at least it’ll be close at hand.
Happy Canada Day to us!
It’s the gift that keeps on giving. As part of its sixth annual Gifts to Canadians project, the Nature Conservancy of Canada last week announced it has acquired another 50-acre shoreline-and-wooded-uplands buffer site near the Port Joli Migratory Bird Sanctuary.
The sanctuary is an important migration and over-wintering area for nearly 40 per cent of Atlantic Canada’s 10,000 wintering geese as well as a habitat for a wide variety of birds, including warblers, songbirds and the endangered Piping Plovers.
Danielle Robertson, who has been working on the project for three years, is a member of the family that owned the land for over 200 years. “For us,” she says, “this is the best possible scenario for the future – preserved in time for everyone to enjoy.”
Happy Canada Day to you too.
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES: AMHERST DAILY NEWS, BRIDGEWATER BULLETIN, CAPE BRETON POST, DIGBY COURIER, HANTS JOURNAL, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, YARMOUTH VANGUARD.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.
Buy his books at Amazon.