On social policy promises Nova Scotia budget rings a familiar bell | Starr’s Point
The 2020-21 budget covers much of the same social policy ground as the 2016-17 budget did, with the politically necessary addition of some initiatives on affordable housing. The promises, under the heading “Improving the Lives of Nova Scotians” received top billing in the Finance minister’s budget speech.
This explains why this year’s report is called Three Decades Lost.
In 2017 40,710 children lived in poverty in Nova Scotia. That gave
Nova Scotia the third-highest provincial child poverty rate in Canada,
and, at 24.2%, the highest rate in Atlantic Canada.
Whereas roughly one in four kids in Nova Scotia lives in poverty, for
the very young, children younger than two, that rate is one in three!
The report, that I would encourage everybody to download and read,
contains one devastating statistic after another. It’s numbing stuff.
The authors of the report know this, and issue the following reminder.
N.S. forester concerned the woods are ‘taking a backseat to business’ | CBC News
“If people want good forestry, they’ve got to pay for good forestry,” he said.
Province may protect more land, including area of proposed gold mine | CBC News
There are old hardwood forests and the watershed “provides quality habitat for brook trout and other aquatic species,” according to the assessment.
“Nearly the entire site consists of ecosystem elements that are poorly represented in Nova Scotia’s protected areas network, including the well drained hardwood drumlins. It also overlaps with a mainland moose concentration zone delineated by the Department of Lands and Forestry.”
Part of the area also happens to have been identified by Atlantic Gold as part of its proposed Cochrane Hill gold mine project. The company’s proposed use of Archibald Lake, according to the government, “cannot be permitted within a wilderness area.”
Power for the people: N.S. town creating ‘solar garden’
Besides a hydro-electric dam, the Town of Berwick is looking at how to generate a new type of electricity — solar power.
“We have wind now and our hydro dam and we’re looking to become as renewable as we can, so solar seems to be the next step,” Clarke tells NEWS 95.7’s The Todd Veinotte Show.
Clarke says the cost of solar panels has been going down in recent years, and the town’s staff are considering investing in solar panels in partnership with Antigonish and Mahone Bay – the only other towns in the province with their own electric utility.