The Nova Scotia House of Assembly Management Commission will meet Wednesday to clear up an injustice that should have been fixed decades ago. Its members will pass a new rule requiring MLAs' constituency offices to be free of barriers to wheelchair users. The commission reached all-party agreement on the change a month ago, but inexplicable last-minute foot-dragging by senior NDP officials threatened to deep-six the deal. Lobbying by the James MacGregor Stewart Society, a disability rights group,  embarrassed the government into action Friday. The new rule will come into effect after the election, at which time newly elected MLAs will have one year...

09 August, 2013

Things are different at the convent. (H/T: Silas/ Presentation Sisters Convent, St. John's, NL.)...

09 August, 2013

PC Leader Jamie Baillie's election promise to hold power rates at current levels came in a position paper that included the following unsourced graph, purporting to show that something called "energy costs to rate payers," measured in units it did not explain, have increased by 27 percent since 2009: Wow, that certainly looks shocking! Contrarian is no statistician, and my graphic skills are tenuous, but I read Darrell Huff's classic How to Lie with Statistics shortly after it came out in 1954, and Chapter 5, "The Gee Whiz Graph," stuck with me. Of the persuasive power of graphs, Huff had this advice...

07 August, 2013

Moments after Auditor General Jacques Lapointe's decision confirming Richmond MLA Michel Samson's eligibility for an outside member's housing allowance, but denying his current claim on the slenderest technicality, NDP House Leader Frank Corbett rushed out a news release. In it, he falsely stated that Lapointe had found "Samson lives in both Halifax and Arichat and as a result his residency cannot be the basis of providing a housing allowance to Samson." [Contrarian's emphasis] There are many things not to like in Lapointe's decision, among them, the time and ink he wasted dreaming up residency tests not found in any legislation governing MLAs' allowances....

07 August, 2013

Last spring, a disability rights organization surveyed the constituency offices of Nova Scotia MLAs and found hardly any were fully accessible to citizens who use wheelchairs. In May, the James McGregor Stewart Society cajoled the House of Assembly Management Commission into meeting and considering ways to remove barriers from MLAs' offices. The campaign hinged on passing changes before the election, so newly elected MLAs could be required to find accessible space, while returning MLAs would have a modest grace period to comply. I was skeptical. I expected the inconvenience of modifying or relocating constituency offices might trump the obvious injustice of preventing...

05 August, 2013

Since 1970, four Nova Scotia governments have delayed elections into the fifth year of their mandates. Three of the four got clobbered. In 1978, Gerald Regan's Liberals went almost seven months into their fifth year, then dropped from 31 seats to 17. In 1993, Donald Cameron's Progressive Conservatives went almost eight months into their fifth year, and fell from 28 seats to 9. Almost five years later, Russell MacLellan led the Liberals from a commanding 40 seats to a humiliating 19-seat tie with the New Democrats, allowing him to govern only briefly with the slenderest of minorities. In 2003, John Hamm went just 10...

04 August, 2013

After months of counting tiny beans, Nova Scotia's politician-despising, publicity-loving, limelight-hogging Auditor General has grudgingly conceded what everyone knows: MLA Michel Sampson Samson lives in Arichat and fully qualifies for reimbursement of necessary Halifax expenses. [See: news release. Full report (pdf)] Then, predictably, Lapointe found a mean-spirited technicality on which he could deny Samson those legitimate expenses. Samson's Halifax residence doesn't qualify because it's a "house" not an "apartment." What tendentious pettifoggery! The campaign to deprive this elected MLA of the tools needed to do his job effectively was cooked up by a not very discerning CBC reporter, who couldn't distinguish legitimate living...

02 August, 2013

In a telephone interview moments ago, Jennifer Stewart, press secretary to Premier Darrell Dexter, said "there absolutely will not be an election called tomorrow." We were discussing election timing because of the danger that an early election call could torpedo all-party efforts to bring in new rules ensuring that people in wheelchairs can visit and even work in MLAs offices in Nova Scotia. More on that shortly....

02 August, 2013

Last month, University of Massachusetts scientists working with laboratory cell cultures said they had succeeded in suppressing the extra chromosome associated with Down syndrome, a technique they predicted could lead to treatments targeted at the symptoms of the condition. Halifax resident Renee Forrestall, whose 22-year-old daughter Marie Webb has Down Syndrome, condemned the research as akin to cultural genocide. We've got a genetically similar community, visible minority who are being targeted and terminated globally. People think, "Well, this is the way it is and these people just shouldn't be." A friend who knows I have identical twin grandchildren with Down Syndrome sought my...

02 August, 2013
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