‘Significant overreach’: Cities slam Ontario on bike lanes as Ford vows to go further

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s government is hiring 47 more people to prevent and address violence in the province’s schools.

The new staff include student supervisors, security guards, child and youth care practitioners, educational and teaching assistants and teachers specializing in behaviour and classroom management.

The province is investing $976,000 for the new hires, who will be in addition to the behavioural and support staff already working in the public school system.

Each region will access which specialized staff on offer can best respond to their challenges.

As well, the province says it’s updating its school code of conduct policy and its school emergency management procedures and training.

It says more than 4,600 regional and school staff as well as more than 800 school advisory council members have offered advice on how to improve the code of conduct.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FREDERICTON – The high cost of housing was at the centre of the New Brunswick election campaign on Thursday.

Both the Liberals and the Greens announced plans to make housing more affordable if they are elected to govern on Monday.

In Fredericton, Green Party Leader David Coon said his party would reform the property tax system to ensure residents are not hit by large property tax or rent increases. Coon said property assessments in New Brunswick continue to soar because they are tied to industrial rates, a system the Greens would change if elected.

“No one should ever be taxed out of their home,” Coon said in a statement. “We need to overhaul this system …. Homeowners shouldn’t have to bear the burden of subsidizing corporate taxes.”

Coon promised to change the property assessment system for apartment buildings to reward landlords who are charging low rents. To do that, he said, the Greens would base assessments on rental income rather than property value.

As well, the Green leader repeated his promise to impose a rent cap tied to each rental unit, not just the tenant, to prevent new property owners from evicting people in order to cash in on steep rent increases.

In Saint John, Liberal Leader Susan Holt said her party would establish a fund to help the non-profit and community sectors build more affordable housing.

“This fund will allow them to do even more to help New Brunswick close the gap in the housing supply, especially for affordable housing options,” Hold said in a statement, which did not include how much money would be put into the fund.

Earlier in the campaign, the Liberals announced proposed initiatives focused on homeowners, tenants, and private developers. Among other things, the Liberals are promising to build 30,000 homes, impose a three-per-cent rent cap, reform the property tax system, eliminate the provincial sales tax on new, multi-unit developments and increase investments in New Brunswick-built modular housing.

Meanwhile, Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs planned to make a campaign stop in a mall in Woodstock, N.B., and speak to the media, but he did not have any other public events on his schedule.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s health authority says the wait-list for family care has dipped by about 15,000 people in four months — a drop the premier credits to programs aimed at reducing the doctor shortage.

The figures for Oct. 4 indicate there were 145,114 people on the registry, compared to 160,234 when figures were last publicly released on June 1.

However, the numbers are still far higher than the summer of 2022 — after the Progressive Conservatives took office — when there were slightly more than 100,000 people seeking to be attached to a doctor or other family care practitioner.

Premier Tim Houston told reporters Thursday that programs introduced by his government to attract and retain doctors have helped stabilize the number of people without access to primary care. It is a positive sign, he added, that 11,501 people found a family care practitioner in September, the biggest number since the registry was created.

Nova Scotia Health had stopped publishing the monthly update for four months as it made calls to people on the list to verify if they were still looking for a doctor. As a result of its research, about 7,800 people were removed from the list, the authority said.

Karen Oldfield, chief executive of Nova Scotia Health, said in a news release the organization is “cautiously optimistic” the downward trend will continue in the number of people waiting for doctors. She credited the drop to ongoing recruitment efforts, including the creation of an assessment centre to help certify foreign-trained doctors more quickly.

Houston noted that 10 new doctors are expected to start later this fall, which will further reduce the numbers on the wait-list.

“It took a while to stabilize the system, and it’s now improving,” the premier said.

However, both opposition parties said the new figures were hardly anything to celebrate, given the fact the absolute number of people looking for a doctor has grown since the Tories took office in 2021.

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill said, “The numbers are bad. We’ve got twice as many people that need a family doctor as when Tim Houston started (governing).”

“If the best they can come up with is 145,000 people who still need a family doctor, this is a worsening crisis in our health-care system and the premier needs to be more focused on dealing with this,” Churchill said.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said she’s taking the figures with “a grain of salt” because she doesn’t have a clear picture of the methodology being used to take people off the list.

The overall wait-list number, she said, is still an “indictment of a government that was elected to fix health care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.