First, the good news: The Statistics Canada graph appeared in a Bloomberg story that attributed the reduction in child poverty directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s child benefit program, which was worth $25 billion to Canadian families in 2017 up from $19 billion in 2015. Statistics Canada itself says: InRead More

The signs of Christmas are everywhere and I’m not referring to the lights, the decorations or the concerts. No, actually, I’m thinking more along the lines of the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Campaign, the CBC’s Light Up A Life Campaign for Feed Nova Scotia, the Christmas Daddies Telethon — thoseRead More

Perhaps one of Charles Dickens’ most famous lines was Oliver Twist’s “Please sir, I want some more.” First published in monthly installments from February 1837 to April 1839, Oliver Twist was pretty much an attack on Britain’s Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in an introductionRead More

Dear Editor, It seems less and less frequent that we receive knocks on the door with people on the other side who want to have face-to-face conversations. Rare is the opportunity to look someone in the eye rather than through a screen and talk about things that matter. It’s electionRead More

It just isn’t funny anymore Dr StrangeJob is angry! Every level of government—federal, provincial and municipal—is currently under scrutiny for questionable spending of taxpayer dollars: the recent federal staff relocation reimbursements, the latest provincial MLA frivolous self-promotional kitsch, the Guysborough County expense scandal and the ombudsman’s Richmond County expense claimRead More

Is there a link between poverty and public health? “Definitely,” says Monika Dutt, a family doctor and medical officer of health with the Nova Scotia Health Authority in the CBRM. “It’s always been there, but I think now there’s more and more evidence to really show there is a clearRead More