There are growing calls for rent control in Halifax from tenants who say finding a new apartment in the city is simply not feasible anymore.
Danielle Murphy and her family of five have lived at the same apartment in Herring Cove, N.S., for the past seven years, but they were recently forced to move after the owner put the home on the market.
“It went on the market and it sold really quick,” said Murphy. “Now we have to be out.”
At the time when it was sold, Murphy was paying $1,250 for the three-bedroom home. Now, she says she’ll have to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 a month, a price she says her family simply can’t afford.
“Honestly, with the prices, we’re looking at a family of five living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment,” said Murphy. “We don’t have the flexibility to pay the ($2,000 to $3,000).”
This Labour Day, as our province continues to struggle with both a pandemic and a recession, Alberta working families are waking up to the fact that they’ve been the victims of a cruel bait and switch.
During the last election, a majority of Albertans voted for Jason Kenney’s promise of “Job, Economy, Pipelines!”
But, instead,they’re chasing doctors out of our province. During a pandemic!
And, they’re sending more than 750,000 of our kids and 90,000 staff back to school without adequate protection or funding to reduce class sizes.
During the long summer session of the legislature, they also passed anti-worker labour legislation that ends overtime pay as we know it and tips the playing field in favour of employers, both in the workplace and on the political stage.
It also became clear that backroom deals are being cut with UCP insiders to privatize and corporatize our health-care system.
The Winnipeg Police Service’s new armoured vehicle. (Winnipeg Police Service)
Canadian police forces have received millions of dollars from oil companies, banks and financiers, through shadowy charitable foundations that have little public oversight and increasingly serve as a “cash cow” of private money.
These police-affiliated organizations based in large cities across Canada have funded helicopters, armoured vehicles and surveillance technology for police departments, as well as many community and youth-oriented programs, according to an investigation by The Tyee.
As the Defund the Police movement continues to gain traction, a leading expert on police foundations says police may use them as a “fall-back strategy,” turning to corporate coffers to make up for any potential budget cuts.
The Vancouver Police Foundation, whose current “corporate partners” include LNG Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and real estate companies, has given the city’s police more than $3 million dollars in the last five years, paying for a patrol boat, night-vision binoculars, and a drone program.
Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro speaks during a press conference in Calgary on May 29, 2020. The Alberta government is proposing legislation to accelerate approvals of private clinics in order to get more surgeries done. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
These changes risk undermining the public health-care system, increasing costs and decreasing quality. Media reports about a proposed private surgical facility suggest that the government may be putting profits over the public good in implementing the reforms.
Corporatization of health delivery
The legislative changes allow corporations to make financial arrangements with the government to provide health services, and to contract with physicians to deliver those services.
This is a departure from the current system in which only physicians (either directly or through their professional corporations) could bill the government for providing health services. Unlike physicians, who must place the interests of their patients above their own personal and financial interests, corporations owe financial obligations to their shareholders that may conflict with the interests of patients.
Privatization of health delivery
With the expansion of private delivery, a larger variety of surgical procedures will be performed in private clinics. (Unsplash/National Cancer Institute)
The new legislation also facilitates the private delivery of publicly funded surgeries. Although some services are already delivered privately (most commonly cataract surgery), many more surgeries and a larger variety of procedures will now be performed in private, for-profit, facilities.
The government’s stated rationale for increased private delivery is to reduce wait times. This claim runs contrary to evidence that indicates that reallocating finite health professional hours to the private system increases wait times in the public system.
Because private facilities generally prefer healthier patients with less complex medical needs, those with more complex needs will be left waiting longer for care in public hospitals. Recruiting additional staff to address these issues would be difficult, given the government’s strained relationship with physicians.
Centralization of government control
Perhaps in a bid to minimize opposition to its controversial reforms, the government is also asserting control over key health institutions. For example, the new legislation shrinks the responsibilities of Alberta Health Services (AHS), the entity responsible for contracting with private providers, and allows the government to impose an accountability framework on AHS.
View of the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton on March 28, 2014. A recent proposal by the Alberta government could increase its control over institutions that regulate health professionals. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
The government recently circulated a proposal that could increase its control over the key functions of institutions that regulate health professionals. Because one of these institutions, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, is responsible for accrediting and setting standards for private surgical facilities, the proposal could be a way of influencing that process.
This facility is likely to benefit from public subsidies. For example, if procedures performed in private facilities result in serious complications, or if patients require readmission to hospital, public hospitals will likely be responsible for treating these patients.
In addition, acquiring land and constructing the facility will require public investment, whether by way of direct funds, tax credits or by allowing the facility to recoup its costs through service contracts negotiated with the government. Furthermore, the investors are reportedly insisting on contractual terms that will make their contract with the government expensive to cancel and binding on future governments, placing financial risks on taxpayers.
There are also transparency problems with the project. Lobbyists had access to high-level government officials, raising concerns that lobbying efforts rather than public interest will influence who receives private contracts, the terms of those contracts and how these facilities will be regulated.
Recent reforms embracing the corporatization and privatization of health services undermine the public health-care system and risk prioritizing profits over patients and taxpayers. However, challenges to public health care are not limited to Alberta.
Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips was under surveillance by Sgt. Jason Carrier and Const. Keon Woronuk. This is BIG news! UCP Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer says it was an “unauthorized surveillance” and he’s outraged about it. On Twitter he says, “The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) has been ordered to conduct a comprehensive review of the professional standards investigation to determine if there are grounds for a criminal investigation. “
We are all shocked by this type of behaviour from the two officers. It’s hard to believe they would engage in this type of activity, even if they had a lame excuse for it. Another name for this type of surveillance is profiling. The definition on hand suggests it means:
Profiling:
1. recording a person’s behaviour and analyzing psychological characteristics in order to predict or assess their ability in a certain sphere or to identify a particular group of people
Dr. Lynn Jones, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a life-long civil and human rights activist, educator, community and labour activist and speaker. She is also listed as one of the top one-hundred accomplished black women in Canada. She was racially profiled on September 2019, approached and questioned by police while watching the deer on the side of the road near her home.
She later wrote a letter about the incident to Bill Mills, Mayor of the Town of Truro. You can read the letter here. In it she says, “Please add me to the list of African Nova Scotians who are constantly being racially profiled in this province for no valid reason and while you’re at it, give your constituents in Truro and your Town police a lesson in white privilege, anti Black racism and the history of the founding people of our province and Truro. “
The police promised they would do better, but the officer wasn’t demoted. After all she was black and not a white former MLA.
It seems there are numerous examples we could list that show black and indigenous people having their privacy violated by “unauthorized surveillance” by police forces, with members who see themselves more as vigilante militants. Alberta has its fair share of them as well, and not just two Keystone cops from Lethbridge.
One of the items in the recently released “Blue Panel Report” created for the UCP government, is to create a police force to replace the RCMP. One can’t help but wonder if they’ll be any better trained, and if their duties to the government could be extended to incorporate mandates specific to Alberta.
There are growing calls for rent control in Halifax from tenants who say finding a new apartment in the city is simply not feasible anymore.
