Further evidence, if more were needed, that God is a New Democrat: No sooner did I put up the first part of my Things the NDP Did Wrong post than I was laid low by a chest cold that obliterated deep thought.* Here, finally, is Part Two of What the Dippers Did Wrong, to be followed, more swiftly I hope, by a two-part Things They Did Right. 4.  Tone deaf to rural NS Four years ago, Nova Scotia's New Democratic Party formed its first ever provincial government by adding an historic sweep of the rural mainland to its traditional Metro stranglehold. From the...

Huffington Post's Canadian edition yesterday published an investigative report by a team of student journalists from the University of King's College detailing the housing crisis facing Nova Scotians with intelectual disabilities. There is not enough room in the system for all of the people who need a place to live. They languish on waiting lists that are hundreds of names long. Their families, in turn, must support them with scant financial, caregiving or community programming resources. Eventually the families get too old or sick to do it, making the situation for their relatives in rehab even worse. With so little room, placements...

Almost exactly a year after precipitous--and as it turned out, groundless--complaints by the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services forced the closure of Cape Breton's only residential addiction recovery centre, Talbot House will get its funding back this week. Health and Wellness Minister David Wilson will deliver the news in Cape Breton Friday, a weekday traditionally chosen for announcements governments would prefer to inter quietly. Wilson became the minister responsible for recovery centres last September, when Premier Darrell Dexter, fed up with the continual barrage of negative stories about DCS mistreatment of Talbot, stripped that department of the file and handed...

In a tacit acknowledgement that Community Services bolloxed the crisis it brought on at Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre, the province has stripped the department of responsibility for all five addiction recovery centres in Nova Scotia. From now on, provincial funding, service agreements, and oversight will fall under the Department of Health and Wellness. [caption id="attachment_11009" align="alignleft" width="200"] Peterson-Rafuse[/caption] The decision comes just in time for Health to assume responsibility for evaluating a proposal from Talbot House to restore provincial funding it received as Cape Breton's only addiction recovery centre. That avoids the sticky problem of having Community Services officials, with...

On Wednesday, the Department of Community Services made good on Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse's vindictive plan to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to replace the residential addiction treatment services so ably provided by the Talbot House Recovery Centre for the last half century. Those services came screeching to a halt last February, after a biased and incompetent "organizational review" by the department's  director of family and youth services, Marika Lathem, lent temporary credence to what turned out to be false charges of sexual misconduct against the home's executive director. Peterson-Rafuse and her officials are variously quoted as saying the Talbot House Society is welcome to...

For four months this spring, Community Services Minister Denise-Peterson Rafuse blindly defended her department's slandering of an innocent priest, and its incompetent intervention into the operation of Talbot House, a much-admired, 53-year-old community-built addiction recovery center forced to close after the department engineered the removal of its executive director on specious grounds. Then in June, when she finally deigned to meet with the Cape Breton institution's board of directors, she had a momentary and welcome change of heart. As I wrote then: Contrary to expectations expressed here Monday, today’s meeting between Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse and the Directors of Talbot...

Contrary to expectations expressed here Monday, today's meeting between Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse and the Directors of Talbot House brought the two sides closer together, and may lead to the reopening of Talbot House under the leadership of a vindicated Fr. Paul Abbass. Peterson-Rafuse, persistently criticized here over the last two months, took a crucial step back from the brink. For now at least, she has cancelled her department's plan to issue a tender for the addiction recovery services formerly provided by Talbot House. The two sides will negotiate terms for Talbot's reopening with government funding. The Cape Breton Post's...

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...

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...