Quebec nurses union votes in favour of new collective agreement

HALIFAX – With a crowded field of 16 candidates vying to be Halifax’s next mayor, candidates have not always found it easy to stand out. But one thing sets Andrew Goodsell apart and makes him uniquely positioned to comment on a central campaign issue: he is living rough in a tent in the city’s south end.

Goodsell, who is 38, moved to Halifax from eastern Ontario about a decade ago. Having experienced homelessness at different periods of his life, Goodsell says he is running in Saturday’s election to offer voters an alternative to the career politicians who typically get elected.

“I was like ‘Well, I’m not voting for these guys that are running right now. We don’t need more of the same. We need something different,’ so I picked up my phone and called city hall,” Goodsell said in an interview at a picnic table Wednesday.

He said the process to be registered as a candidate was straightforward: all he had to do was gather at least five nomination signatures and pay a $200 fee. He appointed himself as his own official campaign agent and provided as his address an office of the province’s Department of Community Services.

Not surprisingly, Goodsell’s election platform focuses largely on housing. His No. 1 pledge is to create what he calls “dignified public housing” to make sure Haligonians have a place to call their own in a city where the cost of living has shot up and homeless encampments have proliferated.

One of the leading contenders for the mayor’s job, former Liberal MP Andy Fillmore, has said he would stop the expansion of encampments and remove tents appearing in non-designated areas within 24 hours. Goodsell, who said he has been ordered out of non-designated areas with little notice, said more support needs to be in place.

“It’s clear when you look at the costs, (it costs) more than twice as much to keep someone homeless as it does to house that individual,” Goodsell said. His other campaign pledges include prioritizing affordable transit and imposing stricter conditions on developers.

There are many signs of Goodsell in downtown Halifax, whether it be a tent he sometimes pitches near the old Halifax Memorial Library, a table where he can be seen folding origami or his “Andrew Goodsell for Mayor” slogan written in chalk on sidewalks, enclosed in a heart. Voters also have a good chance of bumping into him with his black Belgian shepherd Dusty in tow.

Goodsell’s campaign includes weekly meet-ups outside the former library on Sundays. He has also printed a few hundred flyers to hand out, but as a candidate on a significantly tighter budget — he says he lives on income assistance that provides about $400 a month — Goodsell has relied largely on social media to spread his message.

Polling puts Goodsell far behind Fillmore and current city councillors Waye Mason and Pam Lovelace in the race to be Halifax Regional Municipality mayor, but with about one per cent support he is still in the top half of the field.

Jeff Karabanow, a social work professor at Dalhousie University, said Goodsell’s candidacy helps break the myth that unhoused people don’t participate in civil society.

“Here’s an individual who’s deeply engaged in the politics of the day …. It demonstrates the diversity of folks who are unhoused these days,” Karabanow said in an interview.

Tamara Stein, a housing advocate who works with unhoused people in Halifax, echoed Karabanow, saying Goodsell brings an important perspective to the campaign.

“Nobody knows better what’s going on than somebody who lives it,” she said. “If you’re running for something and fighting for something you believe in, then it shouldn’t matter what your stature is.”

As election day approaches, Goodsell said he hopes his campaign has inspired people.

“If I’m able to run and do this with zero support … hopefully I’m inspiring someone out there that’s got the capabilities more so than me to actually reach out to people,” he said.

He describes himself as simply “two feet and a heartbeat,” using sidewalk chalk to spread the word. “The amount of people I’ve been able to reach out to is a clear example that, if you are willing to put in the effort in, you’ll get the people behind you.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

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FREDERICTON – The past two years have not been easy for New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs, but he has proven resilient.

Faced with a mutiny from within his own party over his leadership style, he fought back and survived an attempt to oust him as leader. When cabinet ministers publicly dissented from caucus, he replaced them.

The Tory leader has had public spats since 2022 with at least 12 caucus members, who have chosen not to run in this election. But he’s resurfaced from that turbulence with a full slate of 49 candidates to present to the public — and polls have said the election is close.

He has taken his party decidedly more to the right, especially on social issues. Among his thin list of campaign promises — there are only 11 — is a pledge to reject all new applications for supervised drug-injection sites; to force severely addicted people into treatment; and to “respect parents.” It’s that last election theme that has caused him the most controversy.

His decision in 2023 to require teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred first names and pronouns of transgender children under 16 caused an outcry across the country, but it remains popular in New Brunswick. Boasting six balanced budgets and a promise to cut taxes, Higgs is also running on the traditionally conservative theme of “family.”

And the Tory leader doesn’t seem to care what naysayers think.

J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, said Higgs has been “a bit of a lone wolf.”

The 70-year-old was hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977. He retired from Irving in 2010 as director of logistics and distribution, and was elected that year, during which he started serving as finance minister with the Progressive Conservative government of David Alward.

Higgs was elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.

The Progressive Conservative camp did not return a request for an interview with Higgs or any of his candidates.

Lewis described Higgs as a politician who “isn’t very scripted,” someone who “thinks out loud and those thoughts can get him into some political trouble.” And for the last couple of years, the premier has had his share of trouble.

Aside from the internal caucus disputes, he’s been in a running conflict with Indigenous leaders. They have accused him and his party of being insensitive to their concerns, including regarding the government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into the systemic racism faced by First Nations. As well, the six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation are suing the province over title and treaty rights.

One of the party’s promises is to “defend landownership,” explaining in the platform that “the provincial government is being sued to assert Aboriginal title over the entire province …. we will defend landowners in court.”

Then there is the province’s francophone population, who mistrust the Progressive Conservatives. Francophones came out strongly against the Higgs government’s ill-fated attempt to reform bilingual instruction in anglophone schools. And Higgs’s decision to give to the public safety portfolio to Kris Austin — a formerly staunch critic of official bilingualism — didn’t help relations.

In the 2020 election, the Tories lost their sole seat in the northern French-speaking region, delineating a stark divide on the electoral map with a majority blue, Progressive Conservative south, and a largely red Liberal north.

When asked about his government’s relations with the francophone minority, Higgs deflected: “I would say 42 per cent of our infrastructure (spending) has been placed in francophone ridings,” he told a recent news conference.

And like the tumultuous past couple of years, the Tories’ road to Monday’s election has not been without controversy. On Sept. 19, the day he launched his campaign, he made an off-colour joke about the death of a Liberal voter. Later, Sherry Wilson, the outgoing minister responsible for women’s equality, and candidate for Albert-Riverview, suggested that the trauma suffered by Indigenous Peoples in the residential school system was similar to the frustration parents feel by not being told when their child is questioning their gender identity.

If the Progressive Conservatives are re-elected, Lewis said, it can be seen as an endorsement of Higgs’s policies and the direction he is taking his party in.

In the 2018 election, he said Higgs “squeaked” by, when 22 Tories were supported by three People’s Alliance members to get a majority in the 49-seat legislature. In 2020, Higgs called a snap election, and voters judged the premier and his party mostly for how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis added.

“I think this (election) is more of a good test of what people think about his leadership, even though it’s six years into his time as premier.”

Standing by him on the campaign trail has been his wife Marcia, his high-school sweetheart before they got married and settled in Saint John. The couple have four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.

During a news conference on Sept. 19, Higgs said he wished people knew him outside of politics. He recounted an incident during which “complete strangers” commented on how funny he is.

“They say, ‘you actually have a sense of humour …. When did you get that?’ I say, ‘I’ve had that all my life.'”

He also said that his foray into politics has been longer than he and his wife expected, but he doesn’t seem to want to turn back now.

“If people say, you know, ‘you’re done,’ I’m done,” he said. “But it’s because of that determination, that desire for a bigger, better, brighter future for our next generation, that’s what keeps us going.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

TORONTO – Advocates for breast cancer survivors and people who have had ostomy surgeries, such as colostomies, are calling for changes to the way an Ontario program covers certain medical devices, saying it leaves them paying a lot of money out of pocket.

The Assistive Devices Program partly funds the cost of equipment, such as wheelchairs, insulin pumps and hearing aids, for people with long-term disabilities.

For most of the devices covered under the program, the province pays 75 per cent of the cost, but the funding for breast prostheses and ostomy devices is set at specific dollar amounts, which users and advocates say amounts to far less than 75 per cent of the total price.

People who have had a mastectomy due to breast cancer, for example, can get reconstruction surgeries that are covered by the provincial health plan.

But if they don’t qualify for the surgeries or want them, they can instead get an external breast prosthesis that fits inside special mastectomy bras. The province currently covers $195 for one prosthesis, but they can cost $400 to $500, advocates say.

That amount of $195 was set back in 2006. The Ministry of Health reviewed it in 2011, but made no change. It is now outdated, said Vanessa Freeman, a board member of the group Speaking of Breasts — Advocacy for Solutions.

“It’s not really keeping up with the times, like the cost of living right now. Things have changed substantially,” she said.

Freeman owns Pink Ribbon Boutique, a mastectomy bra boutique, and said she gets some customers to donate used prostheses back to the store.

“We just try to do whatever we can to help, but it’s not really sustainable or truly enough,” she said.

When Freeman’s mother, a three-time breast cancer survivor, discovered she had a gene mutation that had put her at a higher risk for developing breast cancer, Freeman got tested.

In 2016, she found out she had the same mutation. She decided to have a prophylactic double mastectomy.

There are physical implications to losing your breasts, she said, such as the pinched nerves and the neck and shoulder pain that result from a sudden shift in the balance of your body.

The mental implications, she added, are harder to put into words.

“From a young age, I think as women, we’ve kind of been told there’s certain things that make us feminine, those are the things that define us — so breasts, hair, these kinds of things,” Freeman said.

“I wanted to believe that I was bigger than that or that it was some sort of badge to not be affected by it, but … it really hits you in a lot of ways that you don’t necessarily anticipate, even to this day. I have done a lot of work to try to make peace with the way that my body is, and I think I’ve come a long way.”

Therapy has really helped, but that also comes with an additional cost, she said. “That’s not always available to people.”

Kelly Wilson Cull, director of advocacy for the Canadian Cancer Society, said people should not have to pay out of pocket for products and services that they need in their cancer recovery.

“In a country like Canada, people often think that we have universal health care and that cancer wouldn’t come with a bill, but that’s certainly not the case,” she said.

“Getting back to a new normal, and getting back to work and sort of reintegrating into your life after cancer, just having those tools to build self esteem and build normalcy is so critical to the huge emotional journey that comes with a cancer diagnosis.”

The Ostomy Canada Society also said it hears from people in Ontario who have had ostomy surgeries — procedures that create a new opening to bypass problems with the bladder or bowel — who have trouble affording the supplies they need, such as the pouches that collect waste.

The assistive devices program pays $975 per ostomy per year, but the average annual cost for supplies is around $2,500, said Ian MacNeil, who does advocacy and government relations for the society.

“Frequently they have to make decisions on paying the rent, sometimes, it’s, ‘What can I get at the grocery store and not get because I’ve got these supplies to purchase,'” he said.

“So it can be very, very problematic.”

The last update to the amount of funding came in 2015, MacNeil said. People who receive social assistance or live in a long-term care home receive $1,300 per ostomy per year.

“We have been hammering the Ontario government for a change, but we haven’t had any success thus far,” MacNeil said.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said price and funding reviews for breast prostheses and ostomy supplies in the Assistive Devices Program take into account the average annual client cost.

“No additional reviews are planned for this time,” W.D. Lighthall wrote in a statement. “Grant amounts for ADP devices are based on stakeholder input, client input and jurisdictional reviews.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.