On the Brink: A Nova Scotia family and the ‘never-ending struggle’ to survive

This is the first instalment of a Global News series called ‘On the Brink,’ which profiles people who are struggling with the rising cost of living. In this story, a Nova Scotia woman talks about the challenges of making ends meet while supporting her family.

Maria Burgess knows what it’s like to be on the brink.

After years of hardship, the 32-year-old has finally managed to carve out a happy life for herself and her family – but it wasn’t easy.

“Now we have a working stove, a working fridge, the clothes on our back and food in our cupboards, which is the big thing for me,” she said in an interview from her home in Moncton, N.B., where she recently moved after exhausting her options in Nova Scotia.

She recalls, not too long ago, having to choose between buying groceries, paying rent and letting a bill go. In their case, food always came first, so her children could eat.

“The struggle is real,” Burgess said.

Like a lot of families who are on the brink, Burgess’s troubles began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the family lost their rented home of five years in Windsor, N.S.

“That’s when the landlord sold and the prices got jacked up,” she said.

Burgess said the search for affordable housing in a province with a sub-one-per-cent vacancy rate was hugely challenging.

“It’s hard to find housing nowadays. It’s usually like $2,800, plus utilities. It’s expensive,” she said. “And trying to survive, buying groceries which have also gone up – it’s just a never-ending struggle.”

After a year in a cramped hotel room, there was finally some good news. Burgess’s husband landed a new job in New Brunswick, and they made the move shortly after.

They spent some time living with a friend, before finally settling into a place of their own in Moncton – a huge upgrade from their tiny camper and hotel room.

“We actually have a private room now,” she said with a laugh. “Here, we can have our time, (the kids) can have their time, and they have space to roam.”

‘Still in that struggle area’

The couple have normal, working-class Canadian jobs. Burgess works at Tim Hortons, and her husband works in construction.

Though they are in a much better position than they were a year ago, Burgess said they still face challenges.

“We’re making more money, but with the amount of groceries, we’re still in that struggle area,” she said. “We’re making it, but we go without sometimes.… It’s tight.” |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10128874/on-the-brink-1-family-struggle/ | globalnews.ca/news/10128874/on…

#nspoli #inflation #covid #rent #IncreasingCosts #PoorWages #politics #NationWide #canada

Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as part of organised political campaigns, in which case we refer to it as disinformation.

But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.

It undermines democracy itself. In a recent paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology, we highlight two important aspects of democracy that disinformation works to erode.

Disinformation about climate change is a well-documented example. The fossil fuel industry understood the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels at least as early as the 1960s. Yet they spent decades funding organisations that denied the reality of climate change. This disinformation campaign has delayed climate mitigation by several decades – a case of public policy being thwarted by false information.

We’ve seen a similar misinformation trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic, although it happened in just a few years rather than decades. Misinformation about COVID varied from claims that 5G towers rather than a virus caused the disease, to casting doubt on the effectiveness of lockdowns or the safety of vaccines.

The viral surge of misinformation led to the World Health Organisation introducing a new term – infodemic – to describe the abundance of low-quality information and conspiracy theories.

Strikingly, some of the same political operatives involved in denying climate change have also used their rhetorical playbook to promote COVID disinformation. What do these two issues have in common? |Read more https://theconversation.com/disinformation-campaigns-are-undermining-democracy-heres-how-we-can-fight-back-217539 | theconversation.com/disinforma…

#world #cdnpoli #politics #misinforamation #democracy #infodemic #covid #ClimateChange