On Gary Burrill getting kicked-out of the Legislature and his right to call Tim Houston a Hypocrite!
By – Kendall Worth
Along with others in the disability community, I give kudos to Gary Burrill for sticking up for our rights. On April 12th Gary Burrill, Leader of the Nova Scotia NDP, asked a question in the legislature about about disability rights, and called the Premier a hypocrite for first saying that the province would not fight a ruling about getting people with disabilities out of large intuitions and in to the community, and subsequently appealing the court decision. Tim Houston on the other hand behaved like a hypocrite, not only by his responses, but also by putting nothing new in the budget for persons with disabilities this year. Tim Houston did this after he put in his platform that persons with disabilities would be one of his top priorities.
When I goggled the meaning of the word Hypocrite, I found:
Definition of hypocrite
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
In the meantime, here is the Video of the question Gary Burrill asked while sticking up for the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as accusing the Premier of being a hypocrite.
Members of the community of folks with disabilities, acknowledge that even before this incidence we knew that this current PC Government was not going to live up to their promises to improve the disability system in Nova Scotia. We saw it when the Provincial Budget was introduced for 2022/2023 and there was no increase in the Income Assistance rates. What is offered as allowances through the Employment Support and Income Assistance program (ESIA) is the only thing we have available here in Nova Scotia that even comes close to a provincial disability income.
And yes there is the Disability Support Program in Nova Scotia, however, that provides no extra allowance money to live on. Also to enter that program means leaping through a lot of bureaucratic nonsense and red tape. The following is the rate table for allowances.
And of course there are special needs allowances available through the Employment Support and Income Assistance program, but Community Services make it outright difficult for an income assistance recipient to qualify for those allowances. I have talked about this, previously in this story in the Nova Scotia Advocate.
Members of the community-of-people-I-advocate-for feel that if Tim Houston really did care about the health of Nova Scotians living in Poverty, this is something else he would have had addressed immediately. This recent action of Tim Houston, makes some wonder if Tim Houston is going to end up being a repeat of Joanne Bernard who by the way also behaved like a hypocrite, during her time in Politics. After all during her time in politics she showed herself to be the Minister of Broken Promises.
Along with others, I believe that, as demonstrated in the video, Gary Burrill was trying to give Tim Houston the message that he has got to do better (than what we saw in the Recent Budget) if he really does care about the Disability Community. I agree 100% that Tim Houston should not have filed that Appeal of the Human Rights Decision. The fact that Tim Houston went ahead and did this after he said he was not going to, that does make Tim Houston is a Hypocrite!
Given what has happened so far, it makes you worry what is coming around the corner with this PC Government.
Kendall Worth and Gary Burrill
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