Tagged: Darrell Dexter
Dexter defends the indefensible
Since Darrell Dexter has not yet decided to fire his Minister of Community Services, he is stuck having to defend her, and defending Denise Peterson-Rafuse these days requires saying some pretty silly things.
That’s just what Dexter did yesterday when he claimed Peterson-Rafuse was doing an “excellent job,” adding, “The only people to release private information in this House are the members of the Conservative caucus.”
The tortured logic behind this argument, which Peterson-Rafuse has also used in her own defence, is that because the DCS report on Talbot House didn’t use Fr. Paul Abbass’s name, but only his job title, it didn’t actually identify him. But anyone who connects the very obvious dots and demands Peterson-Rafuse’s resignation for trading in false allegations is guilty of defaming the falsely accuse priest.
Is it really necessary to explain why this is a stupid argument? Let’s use an analogy:
Citizen Smith: I hear the premier of Nova Scotia has committed serious sexual improprieties in the course of his work.
Citizen Jones: That’s an outrageous thing to say about Darrell Dexter, especially after the police have cleared him of that false allegation.
Citizen Smith: Dexter? Dexter? You’re the only one who said anything about Darrell Dexter. You’re the one who’s guilty of defamation.
The premier and his inner circle are hoping the Talbot House story will go away, and as they wait for that hope to play out, they are willing to let a minister and her department get away with a campaign of character assassination.
Getting the green light from Rosa
At Premier Darrell Dexter’s request, the Hollis Street facade of Province House shines green every night this week in honor of the Green Porch Light Project for Organ and Tissue Donation, a grass roots campaign in which supporters of organ and tissue donation turn their porch lights green to celebrate National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week, April 23-28.
As darkness began to settle over West End Halifax Wednesday night, Rosa Eileen Barss Donham got in the spirit with a green porch light and blue butterfly wings, symbol of Nova Scotia’s Legacy of Life program. Rosa knows someone dear to her may one day need a new heart,
Please take a moment to check your Nova Scotia Health Card. If the word donor does not appear to the right of your birthday, then please download this form, fill it out, sign it, and mail it to MSI at the address indicated.
Then take the next opportunity to talk with your family. Let them know you want to be an organ and tissue donor, and you want them to make sure your wish is honored.
If for no other reason, do it for Rosa. I can attest from personal experience, you don’t want her cross with you.
Hats off to Nova Scotia Power and Sobey’s for their support of this project. Let’s make Nova Scotia the province with the highest percentage of signed donor cards in Canada.
A dissenting view
In response to this post, Stan Jones of Yarmouth writes:
You said: “I truly believe Darrell Dexter and Denise Peterson-Rafuse are better people than they have shown themselves to be in the last three days.”
You are wrong.
Actually, I think I’m right, but neither politician is giving me much ammunition to make the case for them. They should apologize to Abbass and the Talbot board, remove Lathem and her supervisors from any future involvement with the recovery centre, and name a knowledgable, skeptical authority to take a long, hard look at this badly run department.
Where is the NDP’s soul as it mounts a rote defence of DCS?
I have a flood of reader mail on the scandal enveloping the Department of Community Service—too much to publish more than a sample for now.
I do hope readers are not tiring of this subject. Officials of the department committed serious errors with terrible consequences—for the priest whose character they so carelessly assassinated; for the volunteer members of a board serving the community in good faith; and for the addicted men in treatment at Talbot House, who could be there now had the department’s cavalier actions not forced the closure of this community-built institution.
For decades, the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party has stood tall in its defence of people and institutions just like this. Yet this week, in response to these sickening revelations, the province’s first NDP government has managed only to mount a standard issue, generic communications strategy that denies all wrongdoing, and stonewalls the searching independent inquiry this department so badly needs. What a wasted opportunity.
I truly believe Darrell Dexter and Denise Peterson-Rafuse are better people than they have shown themselves to be in the last three days.
Martin MacKinnon writes:
Father Abbass, whom we now know to be mistakenly accused, should be reinstated with a qualified apology, as should all funding to Talbot House. By “qualified,” I mean the Department can appropriately say they are sorry it occurred, but when allegations are made, they must be investigated.
My great concern is that the Department of Community Services and Ms. [Marika] Lathem, whom I do not know, may believe they need to save face by making it sound like the allegations are partly correct. That would be a serious mistake. If there were procedural problems, they need to be fixed outside the glare of media. They do not constitute [grounds for] withdrawing funding and adversely [affecting] the good reputation of Father Abbass.
If Ms. Lathem and the Department do not come clean in the coming days, a second investigation of the Department and Ms. Lathem may be required. It will be interesting to see if she is asked to step down when such an investigation is initiated.
Denise MacLellan writes:
After reading both the DCS report and the Talbot House response, I suspect the DCS motives more than ever. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone disagreed with Fr. Abbass’s approach to recovery programs, and out came the knives. What concerns me is the ruthlessness of the DCS. What was their real purpose behind all the rhetoric? What happens to the trumped-up accusations against Abbass?
As the Board suggested, there was no real attempt to make things work on the part of the DCS, which considered Abbass guilty until proven innocent… Very underhanded, heavy-handed, and unprofessional by the DCS.
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.
Community Services Dept. vs. Talbot House
Exactly as many of us expected, the vague, shadowy accusations of sexual impropriety against Fr. Paul Abbass have proven false.
The Cape Breton Regional Police announced late Friday that the department has completed its review of information in the case — they were cagey about who was being investigated, but everyone knows it was Abbass — and they will not proceed with a criminal investigation. There was nothing to investigate.
I hope Fr. Paul Abbass will have the generosity of spirit to resume his duties as Executive Director of Talbot House, the community-built recovery center that has for 53 years successfully treated men addicted to alcohol, drugs, and gambling, and where Abbass served ably and generously for 17 13 years.
But that’s a pretty tall order. Just consider the toll the allegations have taken.
For eight weeks, the falsely accused priest suffered his public humiliation in quiet dignity. He was forced to step down from his post as Executive Director of Talbot House, and stripped of his duties as Vicar General, spokesman for the Antigonish Diocese, and pastor to four rural Cape Breton parishes.
From that litany of jobs, anyone can see Abbass was an exceptionally busy man. While running Talbot House and ministering to four congregations, he handled the unenviable task of speaking for the church after Bishop Lahey was arrested for possessing child pornography, and while church property was liquidated to pay for its settlement with abuse victims.
Abbass was guilty of nothing more than resisting the bureaucratic niceties demanded by Department of Community Services bureaucrats who don’t like Talbot’s recovery model of care, and who moved aggressively during Abbass’s eight-week ordeal to ensure the centre never reopens.
As it became apparent that the initial allegation of gross misconduct was a non-starter, the DCS official handling the file scrambled to find some rationale for the department’s overreach in this disgraceful episode. Last week, Marika Lathem produced a report that refocused the department’s gunsights from Abbass to the Talbot board of directors, whose governance it criticized.
Lathem’s self-serving report should have no more credibility than the dubious allegation she originally brought forward and promoted with reckless disregard for the consequences.
Over four decades of living in Cape Breton, I have heard nothing but admiration for Talbot House and praise for its work. As for the bureaucratic niceties DCS cherishes, many if not most care-giving organizations in Nova Scotia are struggling to implement the litany of policies, job descriptions, and performance appraisals currently in vogue among public administration wonks. They do so, it might be added, without financial or administrative support from DCS.
For decades, the NDP has challenged the unfeeling policies of this backward department. Now it’s time for the Dexter Government to put those ideals into practice:
Remove the discredited Lathem from any role in the affairs of Talbot House, and withdraw her report.
Appoint someone independent of the department to assist the Talbot Board in the onerous task of undoing the damage caused by the department’s misguided actions, with a budget sufficient to the task.
Undertake a searching, top-to-bottom review of Community Services by someone with no connection to the department. Someone who will actually listens to the men, women, and caregivers who suffer under its inept administration. Someone who will help implement the vision — so long championed by the NDP — of respectful support for those Nova Scotians most in need.
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.
Mulcair’s boycott of CBC Radio
I’m glad Thomas Mulcair won the leadership of the NDP Saturday. He has the best shot at retaining at least some of the party’s beachhead in Quebec. He’s said to be tough and politically shrewd, both of which he’ll need to be when dealing with the wily Stephen Harper. He clearly plans to edge the party toward the centre, ala Darrell Dexter and other successful NDP premiers, and that’s a good tactic when facing a government of right wing ideologues.
But I’m not without a few qualms, including Mulcair’s reputation for carrying grudges, and his occasional bone-headed statements on foreign policy, including his knee-jerk support for right-wing Israeli policies that pose a danger to Israel and the world.
My qualms are not eased by Mulcair’s silly, and thus far unexplained, spat with CBC Radio’s English service. Mulcair boycotted English CBC Radio throughout the campaign and in the days since. He refuses to explain the boycott, or even own up to it, but his rejection of interview requests is too consistent to be happenstance. If anyone else knows what stuck in his craw, I haven’t heard the explanation.
Perhaps Mulcair has been impressed at how successfully Harper buffaloed the national press corps by treating it with contempt. On CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, Francine Pelletier lamented the gallery’s failure even to protest Harper’s continuing refusal to hold news conferences.
I don’t like having a prime minister who bullies the press. I don’t like press gallery reporters who respond like whipped spaniels. And I won’t take warmly to an NDP leader who is tempted to follow the same recipe.
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.
