Category: Nova Scotia Politics
Talbot House strikes back
The board of directors of Talbot House, the much admired addiction recovery center shut down this winter after the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services raised vague and, as we now know, false allegations of sexual misconduct against its executive director, today issued two news releases that add up to a sweeping condemnation of the department’s behaviour.
How the Dexter government reacts will be a major test of its integrity. Will it circle the wagons? Or will it implement real reforms?
Please read the releases for yourself here and here. [Note: I have removed contact information for the board chair.]
On the Cape Breton Regional Police Service announcement late Friday that it had found no grounds to investigate the centre’s Executive Director, the board writes:
The Board of Directors initially contacted the police in response to a report to the Board from the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, of serious allegations and complaints concerning Father Abbass. These allegations and complaints were provided to Ms. Marika Lathem, Director of Family and Youth Services with the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, initially by the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness, and subsequently, during the course of an organizational review of Talbot House.
The Board of Directors made immediate and repeated written requests of Ms. Lathem and the Department of Community Services for the details of any allegations or complaints, or information that would allow a timely and balanced investigation of the matter, based on principles of procedural fairness and natural justice. To date, the Board of Directors has received no response and no direct complaint concerning Father Abbass. Despite our repeated requests, the Department of Community Services has provided no substantive information that would compel a formal investigation.
…Although we are pleased that Father Abbass has been vindicated of any wrongdoing, the delay in resolving this matter has resulted in an untold human cost, and was directly responsible for the series of decisions that resulted in the eventual discharge of residents from Talbot House.
Following receipt of a single, non-sexual complaint against Abbass last December, Ms. Lathem, who is Director of Family and Youth Services, launched an “organizational review” of Talbot House. Despite media requests and at least two FOIPOP requests (including one from Contrarian), the report has not been released, but according to the board’s news release, it reaches two main conclusions:
- ”Talbot House is not operating in compliance with the majority of the Standards for Recovery Houses” and
- “There is no evidence that the board has been actively overseeing the operation of Talbot House.”
In a telephone interview, Board chair John Gainer, a highly regarded Sydney psychologist, said the board “absolutely rejected the conclusions,” saying they were based on a lack of proper evidence. He said the board had prepared a point-by-point rebuttal of the report that would be faxed to the department Sunday evening.
The news release is equally scathing:
The details of the report are presented as a series of “bulleted” items, many without context, elaboration, or analysis. It is the opinion of the Board of Directors of Talbot House that the review was fundamentally flawed in process and analysis, procedurally inadequate, lacked balance, and contributed to a report that contains numerous inaccuracies, and misrepresentations that, by their nature, are prejudicial, biased, and misrepresent the history, governance, and operation of Talbot House.
The board acknowledges that it was not fully complaint with the 2008 guidelines, which deal with procedural matters like job descriptions and performance appraisals, but insists, “there is ample evidence that the board was addressing these policy and operational issues in a systematic fashion.”
The news release also confirms that, even as Lathem’s vague accusations against Abbass sputtered to a halt due to lack of evidence, the department moved aggressively to ensure Talbot House would never reopen. On April 4, without advance notice to the board or any public announcement, the department retroactively terminated the centre’s funding as of April 1. Lathem told the board the department would issue a request for proposals for addiction services in Cape Breton, adding tartly that the Talbot House Society was welcome to submit a proposal.
The news release terms this action, “pre-emptive and unnecessarily punitive.” In previous years, funding was renewed automatically every April 1.
In short, the board describes a pattern of behaviour that is at once imperious and incompetent. It is a pattern many social service organizations and societies in Nova Scotia will recognize. In fact, it’s an attitude long complained of by NDP activists before the party gained power in 2009.
If even half of what the Talbot board says is true, then a searching, independent, top-to-bottom review of the Department of Community Services is long overdue.
A few background points:
– By all accounts, the Lathem report reflects a departmental penchant for placing process ahead of outcomes. Throughout this controversy, I have not heard anyone question Talbot’s success in treating addicts, many of them tough young men hooked on hard drugs.
– Many social service organizations and volunteer societies are struggling to comply with departmental guidelines requiring written policies, job descriptions, and performance reviews, and they are doing so without financial or administrative support from the department that imposed these governance requirements.
– To provide round-the-clock treatment and residential care for a rotating population of 18 men addicted to gambling, alcohol, or drugs, Talbot had a fulltime staff of six. That probably didn’t leave a lot of time for paperwork.
– Although their names may not be well known in Halifax, the Talbot Board is no random collection of hayseeds. It consists of bluechip professionals and community leaders, most of whom have distinguished records of achievement.
If Darrell Dexter treats this challenge as a political threat to be defended against with all of his government’s formidable powers of communications and institutional resistance, a great opportunity will have been missed.
On the other hand, if he sees this as an opportunity to step back and order a searching, independent review of the way social services are delivered in Nova Scotia, then some good will have come out of the disgraceful treatment accorded Fr. Paul Abbass and Talbot House,
Pushback on two ways NS could have better schools for less money
A Contrarian reader who does not identify himself, but who appears to work in the provincial school system, doesn’t think much of my suggestions for two painless, cost-free steps the province could take to improve schools.
To refresh your memory, these were (1) force school boards to implement modern hiring practices in place of the demeaning, talent-repelling, corruption-promoting way they now teachers; and (2) remove superintendents, senior managers, education department officials seconded from school boards, and non-teaching principals from belonging to the teachers’ union.
[T]he [hiring practices] you suggest… will not change the fundamental problem: the declining enrolment and the lack of jobs for new teachers. The boards can be as rigorous in their hiring practices as you might wish, that isn’t going to magically increase the number of available classroom teaching positions.
Anyone wishing to be a teacher in this era of out-migration and fiscal restraint in Nova Scotia must accept that they have two basic choices: go elsewhere for full-time employment or work as a substitute teacher in their local area until a job becomes available.
They only have to accept that because boards refuse to adopt modern hiring practices, to wit: a public call for applications; review of resumes to produce a short list; interviews, tests, and reference checks to decide who they hire. That’s how organizations hire rocket butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Why not teachers?
The school system is not an employment program for recent education grads. The fact there is a surfeit of applicants and a scarcity of positions should make it easy for boards to hire superb candidates for the few available positions. Instead, the current method operates as a negative screen, discouraging candidates who are ambitious and adventuresome, while opening the process to favoritism, nepotism, and opportunities to game the system.
The best possible construction to put on the current system is that boards are cynically taking advantage of the surplus of aspiring but unemployed teachers as a cheap and infinitely flexible pool of substitutes. The substitute issue is a separate one, and should be dealt with separately.
My correspondent offers two alternative solutions:
[Because] Nova Scotia will always need a surplus of teachers… the province should reduce the number of positions in the education programs to more sustainable levels and apply all those “modern personnel practices” to the applicants. That way, the best candidates will get into the program and will have a reasonable expectation of employment when they leave.
Restore the pay for substitute teachers to reasonable “livable” levels and find ways to reduce the huge debt burden most graduating teachers are forced to carry (for example, return to a one-year education program, perhaps).
I have no objection to asking universities to be more selective in admissions to their education programs, but it’s a mistake to think the school board’s mission is to provide employment for everyone who wants to teach. Its mission is to educate students. To do that, school boards should look for ways to select the best possible teachers. If they were doing that, I’d support excellent salaries for excellent teachers.
The proposal that the education system should opt for less education of its core employees strikes me as bizarre.
As for getting superintendents, middle managers, and non-teaching principals out of the union, my correspondent says:
Not surprisingly, there are many classroom teachers who would agree with you on this issue. However, in other provinces (such as British Columbia), removing the administration from the union has proven to be a mixed blessing.
Especially in small schools (of which Nova Scotia has many), drawing a management / union line has reduced the collaboration that is required for these schools to flourish.
For the B.C. government, the exclusion of the administration from the teachers’ union has simply meant that it has to work with a number of education organizations instead of just one. Worse, each one of these organizations has a mandate and an agenda.
Be careful of what you wish for.
I am unmoved. Managers should not be in the union–any union–and many problems with the culture of Nova Scotia’s school system can be traced to this anomaly. Maybe, just maybe, Premier Dexter’s shot at the NSTU this week in the legislature means he would consider changing this.
Fake consultation
I don’t often agree with Leanne Hachey, the engaging but disturbingly right-wing Atlantic VP of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, but she scored a bullseye this week with her critique of the Dexter government’s fake consultation on its much-criticized first-contract legislation. (Disclosure: Hachey and I are longtime friends and sparring partners.)
Documents FOIPOPed by the CFIB demonstrated that the legislation was drafted before the consultation began, although the draft bill was never disclosed during the window-dressing sessions.
The federation and other business groups spent tens of thousands of dollars opposing the bill only to discover what they suspected all along: it was a fait accompli.
“No one wants to take part in a process to find out at the end of it there was really no chance to have influence,” Hachey said.
Indeed not.
Facing a series of difficult contract settlements in which it would have to show toughness, the Dexter government needed a sop for its labour allies, and the first contract legislation — a solution in search of a problem, if ever there was one — was it.
Fair enough. Governments sometimes have to do things for their base. But when they do, they ought not to gussy it up with demeaning, dishonest, fake consultations.
More news, less faux psychodrama in legislature reporting, please
I don’t mean to be overly cranky with my former colleagues in the political journalism racket, but I could do with a little less psychoanalysis and a little more content in reports from the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
CBC legislature reporter Jean Laroche’s weekly debrief this morning was long on the former and light on the latter.
Premier Dexter, he explained, normally doesn’t have a short fuse, but the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board’s threat to decimate library staff caused him to blow his stack. The debate, opined Laroche, had an unusual, intensely personal character.
Really? None of the clips Laroche played showed anything like that. In them, the premier calmly, if wearily, pointed out that the board’s empty threat was the oldest, tiredest arrow in the school board’s threadbare quiver, a tactic described here months ago as “Kill the Friendly Giant.” Laroche himself must have seen it play out 50 times, as have the opposition leaders who cynically played along.
After a decade in which school enrolment dropped by 30,000 students, while school board budgets marched briskly upward, the government has rightly ordered modest restraint in the coming year. The Chignecto board responded by announcing that a popular program with a vocal constituency will be eliminated as the only possible means of coping with “massive cutbacks imposed by the province.”
Yawn.
The real news in the exchange was the premier’s sharp (and long overdue) criticism of the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union for its obdurate defence of the status quo in a system undergoing thermonuclear demographic implosion. Dexter thinks a progressive union should be an enthusiastic partner in the search for better ways to operate a system that hasn’t changed much in 100 years.
Laroche helpfully explained that this is entirely untrue, that teachers embrace change every year by adjusting to annual tweaks in mandated curricula. Do tell.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the premier and his education minister will consider two cost-free proposals for injecting a spirit of innovation into the system.
Peterson-Rafuse passes the buck
Liberal MLA Kelly Regan put two questions to Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse in the House of Assembly yesterday:
MS. KELLY REGAN: Mr. Speaker, for 53 years Talbot House provided residential addiction treatment for men in Cape Breton. Talbot House recently, abruptly closed its doors and left the people of Cape Breton with a whole lot of questions. Will the Minister of Community Services lift the shroud of secrecy and tell the men and their families who rely on these services why the minister closed the doors and removed this vital service from this community?
HON. DENISE PETERSON-RAFUSE: Mr. Speaker, we know that the recovery houses that we have throughout the province are vitally important and we have supported those. In fact, we were not responsible for closing it, so I would think the honourable member should get her information straight. Thank you.
MS. REGAN: Mr. Speaker, it is the responsibility of this minister to ensure that her department can properly manage its programs and guarantee a continuity of service. People in Cape Breton are wondering what other local, accessible, comparable programs have been made available to men needing these services?
MS. PETERSON-RAFUSE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that every person who was in that recovery house was well taken care of. They have a placement that they are satisfied with and the fact is that is another organization that is run by a board of directors. The board of directors made the decision, not Community Services.
In short, the closure of this valued treatment centre is not the minister’s problem, and really didn’t cause much harm anyway. See the happy residents, all “placed” elsewhere.
It would be hard to imagine a minister more deeply out of touch with sensibilities, sentiment, and history on the ground in the area affected by the bureaucracy she heads.
Those permanent socialist hordes
Citing the latest of several Corporate Research Associates polls showing Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats with a comfortable lead, longtime Progressive Conservative Rob Smith has a piece in today’s AllNovaScotia.com [subscription required] proposing some form of Liberal-Tory co-operation to prevent what the news service alarmingly headlines, “Socialists forever.”
Beware of blue Bolsheviks!
This argument would be more persuasive if the Dexter Government had shown any sign of being either permanent or socialist. Dexter won office less than three years ago, and he did so by turning quietly away from the strident leftist approach of previous NDP leaders, and toward centrist policies where Nova Scotia voters have traditionally found their comfort zone. The phrase, “for today’s families,” doesn’t exactly call to mind Rosa Luxemburg.
The NDP’s historic breakthrough reflects two longterm political trends.
- As Western Canada and — to a lesser extent — Ontario turned sharply right over the last 20 years, Nova Scotia remained true to what might be called Red Tory values: We remain economically moderate and socially liberal. The widening gulf makes us look uncharacteristically leftish by comparison, but it’s the Uppity Canadian leopards who’ve changed their stripes, not us.
- Over the same period, party divisions within Nova Scotia have coalesced into three clear zones: Liberal Cape Breton; Tory rural mainland; and NDP Metro. Dexter won the last election on the strength of inroads not in Cape Breton, where he picked up no additional seats, but in the rural mainland, where loyal Tories winced at the Rodney Interregnum.
If Dexter were recklessly pursuing ideology over the province’s best interests, an opposition coalition might be in order. I believe the Harper government’s US Republican-style extremism should cause Liberals, New Democrats, and disaffected Stanfield Progressive Conservatives to explore avenues of co-operation.
But to argue that anything Dexter has done is so far outside the mainstream, or so redolent of permanent hegemony, as to inspire a Tory-Liberal Union is, forgive me Rob, just silly.
The giftie gie us
I met a Norwegian immigrant last night, a man in his 40s. He has lived in Nova Scotia for four years. At one point, the conversation turned to snow days.
“You know,” he said, “in 40 years in Norway, I never saw one snow day. Not from school. Not from work.”
Four years in Nova Scotia, and he’s seen about 40.
Just saying’.
Those orange lunch bags — conclusion
In the interests of tying up loose ends, here are a couple of final notes about the insulated orange lunch bags the Department of Education handed out to grade primary students in four school boards this winter. I voiced suspicion that the selection of the color orange was a transparent political ploy, and even suggested the NDP should reimburse the taxpayers for their cost.
It’s clear I was wrong. The detailed explanation provided by Ann Blackwood, Executive Director of English Program Services for the Nova Scotia Department of Education, has the unmistakable ring of truth. Education bureaucrats chose the color for reasons that had nothing to do with politics.
As to the color itself, I have now seen one of the bags, and I’m hard put to call it anything but orange. The back, sides, trim, and top third of the front panel are orange beyond reasonable argument. The glossy panel that occupies the bottom two thirds of the bag’s front is, in my perception, orange trending toward reddish. Reasonable people could disagree. The overall impression is: a bright orange bag.
The value of the program? This year the province distributed 3,500 bags to Grade Primary students in four school boards: Annapolis Valley, Cape Breton-Victoria, South Shore, and Strait-Richmonsd, at a cost of $126,000, or $35.44 per bag. Each bag contains construction paper, scissors, a magnifying glass, colored animal counters, magnetic numbers and letters, plasticine clay, a sound shaker, a pencil, a kick sack, My Toys (a children’s book ), Jack and the Missing Piece (a picture book), I Went Walking (a children’s book), and Paws and Claws (a musical CD by Halifax children’s musician Maria Alley).
Next fall, all 8,500 grade primary students in all eight boards will receive the bags at an estimated of $306,000. The project has been carried out entirely within the department, without the aid of an advertising agency.
“This investment supports our effort to help children earlier with their reading, and strengthen connections between parents and schools, key priorities within the Kids and Learning First plan,” wrote Education Minister Ramona Jennex in an email to Contrarian. ”It is so important we engage our children early with rich language experiences and it is my hope the contents of these bags will offer the opportunity for parents to engage in fun and meaningful experiences.”
“We know that children need oral language and good vocabulary experiences to build the foundation for reading and writing,” Jennex wrote. “Many teachers are expressing concerns about our youngest children coming to Primary with limited ability to engage in conversation due to limited language experiences.”
Does this add up to good value for the education dollars it required? I don’t feel qualified to offer an opinion, although I’m sure some parents will be skeptical, especially in light of the NDP Government’s cancellation of the Reading Recovery program.
Orange you glad we didn’t choose blue or red?
Halifax engineer Jeff Pinhey thinks Contrarian’s attempt “to find political intrigue in childrens’ lunch bags is beyond petty, it’s almost creepy.” Pinhey first advanced this view in a clever message whose irony sailed right over Contrarian’s head:
I am outraged at all the obviously NDP sponsored vests being worn by almost every single construction worker in Nova Scotia! And when I looked into this I found that not only are they all NDP orange with some yellow – get this – they are forced to wear them by a LAW! We actually have been legislated to show our support for the governing party. How Orwellian is that?
In a follow-up exchange, Jeff wrote:
I don’t give a rat’s ass what some politico-phobic people think about primary school kids’ lunch bags, but I would object if they were NOT orange and/or yellow simply because it would represent a lost safety advantage for free.
Ann Blackwood, Executive Director of English Program Services for the Nova Scotia Department of Education, doesn’t cite safety as a factor in the selection of NDP orange for the insulated school lunch bags handed out to Grade Primary students this month, but she insists politics played no role. The bags were filled with a variety of learning and play materials, and described as part of “Succeeding in Reading” and the “Kids and Learning First Education” plan.
Having teachers work with parents on how to use these bags will help children connect their learning in school and at home – and connect learning with play and creativity.
The process that went into choosing the red and orange colours* of the bags… was managed solely by professional educators aimed at getting a product with greatest appeal to children. Political colours did not enter into the discussion.
The team that evaluated submissions for the bags and their contents comprised the Department of Education’s Literacy Coordinator, Early Learning Co-ordinator, Literacy Support Consultant, Literacy Evaluation Coordinator, and a Student Services Consultant.**
The insulated lunch bag was available from our supplier in the following tote colours/trim and gusset colours: red/light orange, black/grey, blue/royal blue, green/lime green.
The team as well as support staff, who were consulted, liked red/orange for the following reasons:
- Blue/royal blue was considered, recognizing that blue is a colour often associated with boys (as pink is with girls).
- Black was considered not appropriate since bright neon colour palettes appeal to young children more than dark colours.
- Support staff thought red and orange looked fun and would appeal to both boys and girls.
It was concluded that the red/light orange bags would be most appealing to grade primary children. That was the colour that was ordered.
We look forward to having teachers distribute these learning resources to parents of Grade Primary students in four regions this month and next. They will be available to families of all next year’s Grade Primary students in September.
Blackwood made these comments in an email forwarded by the Education Department’s communications branch.
The outrage directed at the giveaway reflects, in part, anger over the NDP Government’s cancellation of the Reading Recovery program. If there is money to send home free magnetic fridge letters, the reasoning goes, why not keep a much acclaimed program? Contrarian is aware of the controversy, but doesn’t feel qualified to offer an opinion. We welcome yours, however. See the comment tab, above.
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* My informants on the school bag issue go ballistic when defenders of the giveaway claim the bags are merely red with orange trim. “The f*****g bag is orange,” wrote one. “Orange. It is not red with orange trim.”
Contrarian has arranged to personally inspect one of the bags later today, and will render a verdict that will satisfy no one.
** I do not wish to take cheap shots, but the fact the department employs a group of professionals with these titles, and the fact their duties included selecting the color of a lunch bag, does give one pause. The fact that literacy is a common element in the titles suggests that the department does see the giveaway program as, in some sense, a replacement for the much praised Reading Recovery program.
Orange is as orange does
Labor lawyer Ron Stockton, who is also president of the Lunenburg NDP Association, protests that the insulated lunch bags distributed to Grade Primary students in Nova Scotia the Annapolis, Cape Breton-Victoria, South Shore, and Strait regional school boards this month and next (and pictured here) do not appear to be NDP orange, but rather, red with orange trim.
If the government were Liberal would you have levelled the same criticism? If a PC government put out materials that were blue (admittedly a much more commonly used colour) would you have criticized them? At my age I like things to be as colourful as possible (just as I did when I was a kid). I love the look of it even though I may have used more orange than red and added a bit of glow-in-the-dark green.
The confusion is, I’m afraid, an artifact of the way computer screens reproduce color shades. The bag is NDP orange. Here’s a close-up:
Contrarian reader Paul Taylor asks a bonus question: Where were the bags manufactured and printed? For the answer, we turned to the information label affixed to the bag, as required by the Textile Labeling Act (apologies for the poor resolution):
That would be Sweda USA, an “integrated supplier and manufacturer of promotional products that provides innovative marketing solutions for the advertising specialties industry,” and China, a manufacturing powerhouse in Asia. Jobs here? Not so much.
And while on the subject of full disclosure, this is as good a time as any to reveal that last Friday, at 10:30 pm, I joined the federal New Democratic Party, just before the midnight deadline for qualifying to vote in the leadership race. I intend to vote for whichever candidate is most open to cooperating with the Liberals in defeating the Harper Government and allowing Canada’s moderate-left consensus to govern, probably this one. When the Liberal leadership voting deadline rolls around, I’ll probably join that party, if they’ll have me, with the same goal in mind. And I voted Conservative in two of the last three provincial elections. Go figure.
But I still think the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party should reimburse the province’s taxpayers for this shameless bit of political promotion aimed at schoolchildren and their parents.
