Here she is, speaking obvious but rarely heard truths about specialist teaching qualifications and the education system as a vast babysitting service, in a March (?), 2012, conversation with the CBC's Amy Smith: [Video link]...

03 June, 2013

Speaking on CBC Cape Breton last week, former Conservative Education Minister Jane Purves offered a rare, even-handed take on Nova Scotia's education funding debate: The government is genuinely looking for savings in education. I think it has been very good at promoting the truth that the syste has cost way more over the last 10 years but there are far fewer students. However, I’m wondering if in retrospect it was wise to floaat this 22 percent because they should have known what was going to happen: And what’s going to happen is that every board is going to come up with...

27 January, 2011

On CBC Radio last week, Contrarian’s old friend Ralph Surette said Nova Scotia Liberals had dumped their last nine leaders — every one since Gerald Regan — before they could fight a second election. That’s not quite true. The Liberals have had only seven leaders since Regan, and two of those took the party through two elections. Still, the record is fratricidal: The operative question is whether the Liberals will repeat this pattern when they review leader Stephen McNeil's leadership Friday. A covert campaign to unseat McNeil has featured an inept website and a mass mail-out using a purloined copy of the...

08 May, 2010

Jane Purves writes: I'm amazed that a man who has been mayor, i.e., in the higher echelons of the establishment, for what? ten years? can still get away with being considered anti-establishment....

16 November, 2009