Bend for Blueberries or Lose Your Benefits

Nova Scotia is the only province to have seen the number of farms grow over the past few years, increasing 2.9% to 3,905 farms. The federal Conservatives’ changes to Employment Insurance will reverse this positive trend. Ideology on foreign workers, the unemployed, and workers’ wages seems to be driving this move that will hurt forestry, fishing, and farming.

Seasonal workers provide a reliable workforce. Without knowing you can count on them, farmers will lose both predictability and confidence. And limits to foreign workers until every local person has a job will mean farmers who doubled their blueberry and strawberry fields these past years will be in a precarious position.

Younger seasonal workers will move west for work because they have to. And 60 year old snow crab fishermen will bend for blueberries or lose their benefits.

The Conservative idea that “a job is a job is a job” will mean more rural farm hands will leave for Fort Mac to work in the winter and not return in the spring, fishermen who lay-off workers temporarily as the season ends will not have those experienced workers the next season. A forestry worker on EI in the winter will receive twice-daily job alerts as the Harper government forces EI recipients to find work faster at a far lower wage – he’ll be a truck driver instead (and when there are no more local fish, logs and berries to ship out, due to a lack of seasonal workers, he’ll truck goods here instead).

Rural Canadians hands are the hands that feed you. Think of us when you visit your historic farmers’ market.

Believe the unemployed should be lucky to just have a job? Consider the Conservatives’ new 70 percent maxim: Lose your job and take another at a 30 per cent wage cut. Lose that job and take another 30 percent cut. If Conservatives really feel that Carribean crop-harvesters are stealing local jobs, the solution is not to import Carribean economies.

“To me, these changes seem to tear at the heart of rural Canada.”
- Nova Scotia NDP Premier Darrell Dexter

“There seems to be a real disconnect between what the federal government is trying to achieve and the reality of peoples’ lives in rural parts of the country.”
- Newfoundland PC Premier Kathy Dunderdale

“Our three largest industries are still agriculture, fisheries and tourism. And like I try to point out to the federal government every time, is that there’s not a lot of people going to the beach or playing golf in January. There’s not many lobsters being caught in January and there’s not many potatoes being grown.”
- PEI Liberal Premier Robert Ghiz

Pave Baby Pave

In Pictou County, we try hard to win the “Worst Road in Nova Scotia” competition. It means a day in the road-rage spotlight and the attention on the NDP’s Transportation Minister Bill Estabrooks.

Our capital city readers with their escalator sidewalks and their mass transit ferries may have forgotten about rural roads, but here in Pictou roads are a top tier issue – on par with hospitals, schools, jobs and the economy.

Before John Hamm and John Savage, governments spent a lot of money building and maintaining our roads and highways. John Buchanan and Donald Cameron had two of the biggest roads budgets in Nova Scotia history, in 1984-85 and 1992-93 respectively. Since then, successive Liberal and Tory governments let things slide, leaving the province with a messy infrastructure deficit. Until Bill Estabrooks became Minister of Transportation.

Famous for his ‘Pave Baby Pave’ mantra, Bill Estabrook’s Five Year Paving Plan – the first of its kind in Nova Scotia history - has delivered three road budgets that are paving the way toward a smoother ride for us on local connectors and for tourists on the main highways. Let’s compare Estabrooks’ road budgets with past ones:

2010-11, Dexter – $310 million
2012-13, Dexter – $281 million
2011-12, Dexter – $265 million
1984-85, Buchanan – $250 million (adjusted for inflation)
1992-93, Cameron – $233 million (adjusted for inflation)

Nova Scotians can now look at the activity on the government’s Google Maps. We took a few snaps from this year’s and last year’s paving season in Pictou.

The Bees’ Knees – Prizes for Week 8

Each week the Legislature is in session we’ll give out four prizes for the best and worst moments, as recorded in Hansard.

Bumble Bee:

The federal Conservative cuts to Parks Canada (Fortress of Louisburg in particular) saw Pam Birdsall and Manning MacDonald sticking up for Nova Scotia. But When Alfie MacLeod stepped up for the Conservatives, he chose to protect his Harper cousins in attempting to adjourn debate. He was defeated.  Alfie MacLeod wins the last Bumble Bee award of the session for trying, and failing, to limit debate.

Killer Bee:

In response to MacLeod’s remarks defending the Harper government, Pictou East MLA Clarrie MacKinnon’s opening stirred up a hornet’s nest in the opposition benches:

Clarrie MacKinnon: I really didn’t intend to speak on this but what really got me upset was my good friend, the member for Cape Breton West. I lived in that constituency, I know him well, I like him a lot but I can’t believe that he is an apologist for the Harper Government, I just can’t believe it. That is what he was doing in his remarks, he was saying that there were no job losses. (Interruptions)

The Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Pictou East has the floor.

Clarrie MacKinnon: Instead of taking the Harper Government to task for the cuts, he tried to transfer the blame to the provincial minister responsible for tourism and that is not fair. I used to think there were some Conservatives who were progressive. I don’t think there is anything such as a Progressive Conservative any more. (Interruptions)

The last Killer Bee prize of the session goes to MacKinnon for saying out loud what so many voters have begun to wonder.

Drone of the Week

1 drone noun \drōn\
a stingless bee that does not gather nectar or pollen

2 drone intransitive verb \drōn\
to talk in a persistently dull or monotonous tone

Again and again, Conservative MLAs make themselves red-in-the-face with thoughts of labour voices finally getting a seat at the decision-making table. This week, Victoria-The-Lakes MLA Keith Bain, wins the Drone of the Week prize for criticizing labour advocates Linda Power and Ray Larkin. Governments have to work with all communities, including Labour, or have to work through some very tiring labour pains.

Honey Bee:

In a debate on Community Access Program (CAP) sites, Kings North MLA Jim Morton reminded Nova Scotians of the importance of the program the federal Conservatives have just cut, and winning the final Honey Bee prize of the legislative session.

Late in the evening of Thursday, April 5th, you will remember – as all my colleagues in this House will remember – that was the evening before a long weekend that began with Good Friday – The federal government sent a letter to CAP site officials across the country advising them that the program, which had been in place for more than 10 years, would be discontinued.

I think that decision tends to fail to recognize the value of those Community Access Program sites. These are valuable community resources. They contribute to economic development by giving everyone in the community access to information. They’re an important social resource, because they allow people to connect with family and friends, to make contact with the services they need throughout the community, and in fact, throughout the world.

In many cases what they’ve done is help introduce older Nova Scotians, in particular, to the world of computer technology and help them become more comfortable with a modern means of being in touch with each other. They’ve certainly created a means of access for economically disadvantaged or poor Nova Scotians, for those people who may be temporarily poor because they’re unemployed and don’t have the means to provide themselves with that kind of computer access. Those people who are receiving income assistance, or who maybe are living on minimum wage, have found a Community Access Centre as one of the important ways of staying in touch with the wider world.

There were 500,000 hours of CAP site Internet time logged in the fiscal year that just ended. The usage numbers over the years since 1995, when the program was implemented, have either remained stable or escalated. There has been no indication that the interest in this program has diminished.

Dear Editor

The editors of The Chronicle Herald calls this past legislative session as it sees it, giving good marks to the NDP, saying:

Graham Steele has the deficit falling ahead of the four-year plan. He’s kept a lid on spending, with some leeway where needed, like home and nursing care, emergency centres, mental health and drug coverage. There’s enough progress to cut small business taxes next year. To cement the idea of more to come, the NDP legislated a two-stage rollback, in 2014 and 2015, of the unpopular hike in the HST.

The Herald editors understand the simple cost-benefit equation of the $25 billion ship-building contract. They also value the investments in forestry, investments that support an essential industry in rural Nova Scotia and save workers’ jobs. We agree. Where we disagree is on the Herald’s notion that health care workers don’t have the right to negotiate.

The problem with the argument is that making strikes illegal doesn’t get rid of strikes. Indeed, it often leads to wild-catting, e.g Alberta (four times recently). When you strip workers of their rights, negotiations become impossible and strikes, illegal or not, happen anyway. As seen recently in Saskatchewan, legislating away strikes simply leads to expensive court battles where the government loses (the SK court struck down essential services legislation, saying that while the right to strike can be restricted, the legislation effectively took away employees’ right to strike, against their constitutional right).

It’s ironic, of course, to point out that such a scenario (where “tough” governments make strikes “illegal,” but they occur anyway) is pretty much the worst possible one for patients. No preparation. No planning. No contingencies. Total chaos. 

The solution? Bargain in good faith. Negotiate.