Inquiry needed into children’s stories that don’t end well
I’ve been writing about child protection issues since 2004 when I got interested in the story of a Halifax couple embroiled in a highly publicized, 67-hour, shots-fired standoff with police. The issue: Children’s Aid had seized their five-month old daughter, not because of anything the couple had done to the child—in fact, evidence indicated they were loving, capable parents—but because they’d each been accused of abducting children during acrimonious custody battles in previous relationships.
Their story didn’t end well. The parents ended up in jail. Their daughter disappeared into the often self-serving anonymity of the province’s foster care system.
Then there was the story of the 16-year-old girl whose mental health issues were never addressed in foster or group homes. She ended up in court. The frustrated judge ordered the then-minister of community services—the girl’s legal guardian—to explain the mess. The minister never testified. Instead, the case was shuffled to the sidelines.
I caught up with the girl—now 18—last year. She told me she didn’t get any more help after her court case; instead, as soon as she turned 18, she was spit out into the adult welfare system. Good riddens.
Through her, I met a young man who’d been shipped off at the age of 12—against his parents’ wishes—to an Ontario residential treatment centre called Bayfield where he spent five years. Bayfield, he says, didn’t help. Instead, they prescribed drugs: he was on 13 medications at one point. Like the girl, Bayfield and child welfare washed its hands of him as soon as it could. The last I heard, he was living on the streets.
Which brings us to the current case: the 15-year-old Cole Harbour boy who was also sent to Bayfield. He didn’t do well either. Bayfield has now dumped him, but not before squeezing his grandparents/guardians out of his life—leaving the province, which claims it doesn’t have the facilities to treat him, to decide what to do next with him.
Whatever it does with the boy, the province should do something else; call a public inquiry into how we deal with troubled children and families. Something is clearly wrong.
Welcome to the rat days of summer
When did we realize we had finally entered the deeps of the news-challenged rat… er, dog days of summer?
Was it when that story about the number of rats per city block in Halifax—75; You count ‘em, I’ll pass—made CBC Radio’s marquee World at Six news show last week?
Or perhaps it was when we read yet another haven’t-we-read-this-already news story. Can you say Lance Armstrong does drugs?
Or was it when some city councilor started musing about administering lie detector tests to his fellow councilors—why not just put them in a room with the 75 rats!—to find out which politician-rat was spilling their secrets to the press. (Earth to councilor: the best way stop all the leaks at city hall is to stop writing so many silly secret memos.)
Or perhaps we can mark this summer’s real news-less, madness-begins moment as the instant when Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter and his New Brunswick counterpart Shawn Graham launched their choreographed video two-step at last week’s premiers’ conference in Winnipeg. The purpose: to convince Canadians to vote early and often for the “magnificent” Bay of Fundy, the only home-country contender remaining in a New Seven Wonders of Nature competition.
While acknowledging his province had a few pressing problems—“With a small, aging population that suffers from a high rate of chronic diseases, Nova Scotia is forced to find ways to deliver better health care while keeping costs down”—Dexter described his Fundy fun as a meeting “highlight.”
Dexter even managed to invoke the name of Nova Scotia’s iconic Joseph Howe. “Joseph Howe used to brag about the high tides at the Bay of Fundy, and rightly so,” Dexter intoned.
Well, not quite. It’s worth contextualizing what our unwilling Father of the Federations actually said—probably also in the middle of an August heat wave. “Boys, brag of your country,” Howe declared. “When I'm abroad, I brag of everything that Nova Scotia is, has, or can produce; and when they beat me at everything else, I turn around on them and say: “How high does your tide rise?’”
How low can we go? It’s only August 9.
We want answers; they offer hype
I don’t necessarily oppose the new convention centre proposed for that gaping hole in the heart of downtown Halifax.
And I don’t completely subscribe to the too-tall, edge-of-the-wedge principal objections raised by the Save the View Coalition.
The preservationist group argues the convention centre’s twin 18 and 14-storey towers will obliterate much of the iconic Citadel Hill view of George’s Island, which is true, thus threatening our historic city’s world-renowned tourist-postcard calling card, which is significantly more debatable.
While I appreciate the battles earlier generations of activists waged to preserve as many views as possible from the Citadel, I personally like the idea of a tightly packed, eclectic downtown that mixes historic and modern, tall and squat, ugly and beautiful, commercial and residential in a funky, lively urban stew. With some great views.
It is the coalition’s back-up argument—that there is no solid business case for a huge new convention centre that will necessitate at least $100 million in taxpayers’ dollars to make happen—that gives me pause. And the dismissive, don’t-worry-be-happy Commonwealth Games-all-over-again response of convention centre boosters to legitimate questions that gives me more pause.
Those questions begin with those commissioned, fore-ordained-to-be-favourable consultants’ reports. While they acknowledge the key issue—declining numbers of major conventions coupled with ever increasing competition to land them—their conclusions either ignore or dismiss it.
Convention centre boosters organized a website forum, supposedly to discuss issues “relevant to the proposed new convention centre.” But when Coalition organizer Bev Miller questioned what she claims will be a $6-million annual shortfall between how much it will cost the province to borrow funds for the centre and how much in new tax revenues it will generate, her post was “removed by the moderator due to a violation of the Code of Conduct.” (It was later reposted, but only after Miller objected.)
Last week, convention promoters released a poll they claimed showed locals support their dream. But the questions—“Governments should invest in a new convention centre if there is a strong business case showing the centre will attract visitors to Nova Scotia, create new jobs, and generate economic benefits and tax dollars”—were clearly skewed to create the desired result.
Now chief booster Trade Centre Ltd. promises to release results of yet another commissioned study—this one on the economic impact a new convention centre will generate—before the developer submits his final plans July 19.
One hopes this report will be more honest—and helpful—than previous ones. We need answers, not spin.
NDP Year 1: What went wrong?
On June 9, 2009—one year ago next week—Nova Scotia voters took a flying leap of faith and fate, sweeping out a tired Tory government, sidelining the faint comeback hopes of a still-recovering Liberal party and handing the keys to office for the first time ever to the New Democrats.
It is probably fair to suggest Darrell Dexter’s historic majority victory seemed at the time—even to many traditional Liberal and Conservative voters—a hopeful, optimistic sign of change in a province in desperate need of a few.
Today, though the jury is far from rendering a final verdict on Dexter’s first term, it is equally fair to suggest much of that optimism has dissipated.
What went wrong?
Some of it was inevitable, of course. The NDP’s actual performance could never have matched the sweet imaginations of its most long-suffering true believers, or even the more modest hopes of nervous switch voters.
There is no magic wand to rein in runaway health costs or keep emergency rooms open when there are no doctors to staff them. And governments sometimes make difficult decisions—turning off the taps for the Yarmouth-Portland ferry, fixing the pension mess, deciding whether to fund a new convention centre—many voters won’t like.
The fact the new government almost instantly abandoned its own solemn, cross-its-heart-and-hope-to-die campaign pledge not to raise taxes or cut programs, could not help but feed public cynicism, but I think it’s fair to say most of us expected that. And saw it as wiser than the alternative.
What we didn’t expect was that Darrell Dexter, so sure-footed in opposition, would lose his common-man touch in office.
His handling of the unanticipated MLAs expenses scandal, for example, was ham-handed. His own free-spending ways, along with his reluctant retreat from his insistence the public should pay his bar society fees, came to symbolize legislative entitlement at a time when the NDP was trying to prepare Nova Scotians for much needed tax increases and program cuts.
Thanks to the political distraction/public obsession with the expenses scandal, the NDP has seemed to lose control not only of its agenda but also of its temper. NDP Chief of Staff Dan O’Connor’s recent public spat with the Chronicle-Herald over an anonymous posting he made to their website, for example, indicates how frustrated they have become.
This was not the first year the NDP had hoped for either.
If ever there was a time for the NDP to—in the immortal words of Stephen Harper—“recalibrate,” it is now.
Liberals perfect face plant
Can anyone explain why Nova Scotia Liberals—this province’s natural governing party for much of the last century—seem so hell-bent on shooting themselves, their leaders and their chances of forming the next government flush in the face?
Consider the last time there was a majority Liberal government in Nova Scotia.
In 1993, John Savage swept a tired Tory government from office, winning 40 of the legislature’s 52 seats. By 1997, however, Savage had been ignominiously forced from office, not by voters but by unhappy members of his own party. Why? Because Savage had actually begun to do what he’d promised to do—clean up the province’s corrupt patronage system—and eliminated some entitlements fellow Liberals felt entitled to.
Under Savage’s successor, bland, visionless, veteran federal MP Russell MacLellan, the Liberals squandered their advantages, stumbling and bumbling their way to opposition.
In 2000, MacLellan quit. It took party members two years to find a replacement but when they chose one, it seemed they’d gotten it right.
Danny Graham was bright, articulate and articulated a progressive liberal vision. But when Graham’s wife became terminally ill less than two years later, Graham had to step down to take care of his young family.
And the Liberals stepped right back in it, choosing the ineffably incompetent Francis McKenize, whose freefall 2006 election campaign reduced the party to nine seats in the legislature, his own not among them.
So MacKenzie quit. If you’re counting, that’s four leaders, not to forget two interim leaders, in a little over a decade, resulting in the election of 31 fewer MLAs.
The prize that current leader Stephen McNeil inherited with his second-ballot victory over fellow MLA Diana Whalen in April 2007 was hardly glorious.
How’s he done?
His record is mixed. He ran a strong 2009 election campaign, but his efforts went largely unrewarded, the voters having already decided to try someone else. The Liberals gained just two seats, enough to make it the official opposition. As opposition leader, McNeil’s still finding his feet.
But he has time. If he’s allowed that luxury to develop and mature—like Darrell Dexter and John Hamm before him—McNeil could very well lead his party to power someday.
This weekend in Antigonish, Liberal party members will vote on McNeil’s continued leadership. He’ll probably survive the review, but—thanks to too many malcontent party mischief makers—emerge the worse for the fight.
Which means the Liberal party will continue to do what it seems to do so well.
Do itself in.
Dexter profile wins 2009 AJA
Stephen Kimber's election-eve profile of the man who would become Nova Scotia's first ever New Democratic Party premier won the Gold Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
AJA presentation
The story, "Who is Darrell Dexter?", appeared in the June 3, 2009 edition of The Coast, Halifax's alternative weekly. Coast writers were finalists in five categories at last night's awards presentation in Halifax.
King's Journalism School alumni were also well represented. Christina Harnett (along with Myfanwy Davies) of CBC Radio, Halifax, NS, won the Gold medal for Feature Writing, Radio. Christina was also a finalist in the Enterprise Reporting catergory. Other finalists included Bev Ware (Spot News, Print), Rob Linke (Enterprise Reporting, Print), Joan Weeks (Continuing Coverage, Radio), Chris O'Neill-Yates (Feature Writing, Television), Norma Jean MacPhee (Arts and Entertainment Reporting) and Eleanor Beaton (Commentary and Best Magazine Profile). Halifax Magazine, edited by King's alum Trevor J. Adams, won for Best Magazine Cover. A number of other journalism grads were members of newsroom teams that won or were finalists in other categories.
2010 journalism grads Jon Linds (Atlantic Lottery Corporation Achievement Award) and Jennifer Pawluk (Province of Nova Scotia Prize) were also recognized during the ceremony.
Check here for a complete list of winners
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in 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 eight non-fiction books.