Tag: Disability Supports

Marginalizing people with disabilities blindsides Liberal campaign

Marginalizing people with disabilities blindsides Liberal campaign

Posted by | Aug 15, 2021 | |

Sunday in Victoria Park with Vicky will not be one of the cherished memories of Campaign 2021 for Iain Rankin and the Nova Scotia Liberals. No matter how the election turns out, any campaign post-mortem will have to consider how last Sunday’s good news announcement on new hospitals and health centres got taken over by disability rights activists. In case you missed the news reports and social media coverage, here are the basic details of a Liberal campaign event gone sideways. Vicky Levack, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around, showed up for the campaign...

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Nova Scotia budget takes cautious approach to redressing social program shortcomings

Nova Scotia budget takes cautious approach to redressing social program shortcomings

Posted by | Mar 29, 2021 | |

Last November as Nova Scotia was embarking on pro-forma public consultations on the budget, I argued that the provincial government has both the fiscal capacity and the moral obligation to “build back better” by significantly increasing expenditures on programs and services Statistics Canada classifies under “Social Protection.” Social protection includes sickness and disability, help for families and children, housing support and measures to increase social inclusion. Nova Scotia’s expenditures on this basket of programs actually dropped between 2013 and 2019, leaving the province with the country’s second lowest per-capita expenditure. The budget tabled last week takes some baby steps...

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Disabled population gets its pandemic moment – as a political football

Disabled population gets its pandemic moment – as a political football

Posted by | Jun 14, 2020 | |

For a brief but far from shining moment this past week, Canadians with disabilities were in the political spotlight in Ottawa. At issue was the wrangling about a modest gesture by the Liberal government to recognize the toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on disabled people. The proposal is to send a one-time payment of up to $600 to about one million Canadians eligible for the disability tax credit. Within that group, seniors would get only $100 to $300, presumably because they’re already benefitting from a pension top-up announced several weeks ago. At most, the initiative would cost half...

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On social policy promises Nova Scotia budget rings a familiar bell

On social policy promises Nova Scotia budget rings a familiar bell

Posted by | Mar 6, 2020 | |

Last week’s Nova Scotia budget, the eighth from the McNeil Liberals, was greeted by most as a pre-election offering. That may yet turn out to be the case, but to my eye, the 2020 budget more closely resembled the one brought in a year before the last provincial election. That 2016 offering, coming only a few months after Justin Trudeau and his sunny ways temporarily captured the hearts of Nova Scotians, tried to put a smiley face on a provincial Liberal government that had spent the previous two-plus years preaching austerity. Dubbed “Working Together for a Stronger Nova Scotia”...

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2017 Budget— going backwards on social initiatives

2017 Budget— going backwards on social initiatives

Posted by | May 7, 2017 | |

The 2016 Liberal budget was quite a different beast from the 2017 budget on which the Liberals are running for re-election. Sure, it shared with the current version the obsession with achieving balance at the expense of public sector wages. But aside from that, it was leftish, featuring new spending on income assistance, childcare and disability supports. The Liberals seemed proud of those initiatives, too. Childcare was such a big deal the Premier announced it at the Liberal annual general meeting. In 2016 the increase in assistance rates was declared “historic,” and the modest increase in spending on disability...

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Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

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