The Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, which was unceremoniously stripped of responsibility for addiction recovery centres earlier this month, has quietly removed from its website its much criticized review of Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre. An electronic search failed to turn up a copy of the "report" — hatchet job would be a more accurate descriptor — anywhere on the gov.ns.ca website. Removal of the error-riddled document, and publication of the Talbot Board's point-by-point refutation, had been persistently sought by the beleaguered recovery center. As recently as July, Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse insisted she stood by the review, saying it  it...

30 October, 2012

Yes, the blog posts have been slower this July. On those rare Nova Scotia weeks, when the sun blasts down and the temperature tops 25° for days on end, there are better things to do in than sit at a keyboard and grouse about the state of the world. In the backlog of posts I mean to get to: big developments in the Dexter Government's demolition of Talbot House (including five pending Contrarian FOIPOP requests looking for the motives behind this hatchet job); feedback from defenders of Neal Livingston and admirers of Cabot Links; and he next instalment of the Contrarian Election...

25 July, 2012

Sydney Mines native John Hugh Edwards is a life-long New Democrat, the kind of party stalwart who mans phones during election campaigns, works polls on voting day, and faithfully attends NDP rallies and conventions. Twice, the longtime St. Francis Xavier extension worker ran as the party's federal candidate in Cape Breton - The Sydneys, mounting a respectable challenge to Liberal MP Mark Eyking. Don't miss his letter to the Cape Breton Post about Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse's treatment of Talbot House: For decades, the staff and volunteers at Talbot House have provided Cape Breton with incredible service to those among us...

24 July, 2012

Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse will finally sit down with the Talbot House board of directors Tuesday, but only after her department's shrewd mandarins have pre-empted any actual purpose the meeting might serve. The Talbot board asked for the session months ago, seeking a peaceful resolution to her department's reckless assaults on the half-century-old, community-built addiction recovery center. Peterson-Rafuse readily agreed to the meeting in principle, then bobbed, weaved, and stalled until her officials rendered it meaningless. First she couldn't meet because the legislature was sitting. Then she postponed again, just long enough for the department to announce the RFP* it hopes...

12 June, 2012

On Tuesday, members of the Nova Scotia Legislature's Community Services Committee will get a chance to question the bureaucrat who promoted what turned out to be false allegations of sexual misconduct against an innocent priest, and to ask her superiors why they still haven't withdrawn a report containing slanderous innuendo against him. The department's actions led to the closure of Talbot House, which had for 53 years provided safe lodging, meaningful work, and successful treatment for some of Nova Scotia's most troubled citizens. Marika Lathem, Director of Family and Youth Services and the principal author of the error-filled report, will testify. The Talbot...

05 June, 2012

At the legislature Thursday, two key developments in the scandal enveloping the Department of Community Services and its minister, Denise Peterson-Rafuse. The Progressive Conservatives demanded the minister's resignation, arguing she had breached Nova Scotia's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) Act by allowing the department to publish a report that violated Fr. Paul Abbass's privacy by repeating false innuendo against him even after the CBRM police looked into allegations advanced by DCS and found no grounds to open a criminal investigation. In a scrum with reporters from the Cape Breton Post and Halifax Metro, Peterson-Rafuse made a string of statements about...

27 April, 2012

Mary Cecilia "Bomber" LeBlanc, shown above with L'Arche assistant Mavis at the 2007 Cape Breton Island Film Series party for l'Arche Cape Breton, died peacefully Thursday morning in her home at The Vineyard, a L'Arche residence in Orangedale, surrounded by friends and caregivers. Death came six days before her 60th birthday, and, incredibly, hours before a provincial health bureaucrats were to meet to begin planning her involuntary removal from l'Arche, over protests of family, friends, and caregivers. Mary was a small woman with a steely will and an outsized capacity for getting her own way—and then leading a chorus of laughter about...

07 November, 2010