By Kendall Worth
 |
| Prime inister Mark Carney and Mininster Patty Hadju |
Dear Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister Patty Hajdu,
In today’s open letter I want to call to your attention the reasons I am writing to you. Please draw your attention to my recent post. In my letter today, I am writing to you about how, here in Nova Scotia, there are things, caused by provincial government, cuts especially, which will increase the number of our local community-of-people-living-in-poverty. I am writing today’s letter with the belief that, although you are instituting your own large cuts, I believe there are enevertheless things you can fund in Nova Scotia, to resolve or improve the worst of the issues, here. What I am referring to is the 1.24 Billion Dollar Deficit.
I want to start by explaining what my blog is about, more generally.
I began in 2021 with this post. And this one explains why this blog is needed. For more on my older journalism, I invite you to see here, where I wote for a publication, previously. The closure of the NS Advocate meant I moved to publishing this blog.Before that, I published in the Halifax Media COOP. All of this journalism is about poverty related issues in Nova Scotia.
Issues, I report on include:
The Employment Support and Income Assistance program (ESIA) in Nova Scotia which includes a lot of bureaucratic nonsense and systemic issues.
The relationship between income assistance recipients and our mental health system in Nova Scotia.
Advocacy for changes in the ESIA program, Mental Health system and other programs.
Talking about solutions See this post for the solutions I introduce.
what it is like to live on the current Income Assistance rate of $1022.00 per month (while waiting for other solutions to develop!) And if you look at this post, I report on the history of living on income assistance over time as the rates were even lower in the past!
As I am sure you have heard, if you pay attention to what is also happening in the provinces, workers, who have been employed in the Civil Service for years are about to loose their jobs over cuts that our Tim Houston, PC Government is making, similar to the cuts you are making federally. Considering that they will be on EI for one year then they will have to go on our provincial Employment Support and Income Assistance program, meaning that many provincial and federal Civil Servants will be losing their jobs, soon. This means that, in a year or less, some of these people will be joining our local, already large, population of people living in poverty. Myself and members of the community I advocate for, believes, that it is your level of government, that can correct the damage that these provincial and federal cuts are going to have on our province and the people in my community.
Here is what I, and others I advocate for, are proposing:
Your federal government should send an additional transfer payment of 1.24 Billion Dollars to the Nova Scotia Government. This amount will end the deficit and provincial Civil Servants can keep their jobs. Even though we know N.S. squandered their surpluses and reduced income (taking away bridge tolls and a percentage of HST) over the past 4 years. You could save us.
In this post I report on Guaranteed Income. Nova Scotia is not presently considering this, but we are begging your government to create a special package which would be a basic income for all those losing their jobs as Civil Servants, and on the many cuts to provincial grants which may end up with a larger job loss than the Civil Servants.
And, third suggestion is is, if you cannot do either of the suggestions above,then at-least send some money and demand improvements in Nova Scotia's Mental Health services. What the Tim Houston government is currently doing makes the case for needing an improved a mental health system.
I want to end this post by saying that one of the reasons why we can make a case here in Nova Scotia, that Federal Government intervention is needed at this point, is because for years (and all the links above also indicate why) we have had a system here in Nova Scotia where:
Extensive use of Food-banks and Soup kitchens has been encouraged.
Social isolation has been encouraged.
Nova Scotians have been encouraged to accept a large homeless population which is actually Unacceptable!
One more thing:
Here in Nova Scotia, currently, and as my April 10, 2025 post illustrates, we are experiencing more and more Nova Scotians living in poverty who identify themselves as introverts these days. In this post, I report on how many Nova Scotians identifying themselves as Introverts, with poor access to resources, are avoiding community events, avoiding family get-to-gathers and holidays gatherings, because their social and economic situation has forced them to avoid people. What the Tim Houston government is doing in this sitting and in the budget, is going to outright make things worse.
By bringing these cuts in Nov Scotia to your attention hopefully your level of government can do something to remedy things in Nova Scotia. .
Your Truly;
Kendall Worth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kendall Worth is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries to make ends meet on income assistance.
Comments
Post a Comment