A Grumpy Gal from the East Coast

Early voting in Nova Scotia has been underway for weeks and yet voter turnout remains low. With the election looming, I’m hoping more people will turn their minds to who they want running the province for the next four years, but I suspect many will just shrug and snap on the TV instead. They shouldn’t. Houston keeps saying “good things are happening” and that we should re-elect his government so they can continue to “make things happen” but they're empty words. The Premier has little to show for his three and a half years in office - if you don’t count broken promises and dumb ideas, that is.  Here's just a partial list of the broken promises: 1. to reinstate elected school boards; 2. to take a science-based approach to decisions around covid public health measures; 3. to improve health care (especially in rural areas); 4. to appoint a new Board of Directors and permanent CEO for the NS Health Authority; 5. to implement the Coastal Protection Act ; 6. to abide by the fixed ele...

I woke up this morning worried about the level of voter engagement with this year's NS election and immediately wrote the following email to family and friends across the province. I hope some of you will consider doing the same.  Dear Nova Scotia family and friends; I’m taking the unusual step of writing to you today because I’m deeply concerned about the future of our province and the fate of our democracy.  The Houston government’s decision to call a snap election has resulted in too many people apparently feeling as if their votes don’t matter because the outcome is predetermined. Worse, many people aren’t even sure where or how to vote because - for the first time I can remember - voter cards weren’t sent out to tell us where and when we could cast our ballots.  The purpose of this email is four-fold: To ask you to please vote if you haven’t already done so;  To encourage you to review each of the party’s platforms before you vote; To invite you to tune into the...

I’ve been thinking of reviving this blog for awhile now. Goodness knows, there’s plenty to feel grumpy about. We’re living in dark times, my friends - five years into a pandemic, with civil war threatening in the US, Christo-fascist movements on the rise, the planet on the brink of environmental collapse, and wars breaking out all over. Here in Canada, we’ve got incompetent and corrupt political leadership in most provinces, and an ugly federal election looming next year. I’ve been actively engaged in politics for nearly 5 decades now and I don’t remember it ever being this bad. The thing that makes it worse is that the electorate has become so ill-informed and disengaged in recent decades. Sorry to sound judgemental but it’s true. Most people don’t pay much attention to politics these days, and many who do lack the critical thinking skills needed to make genuinely informed choices. None of that is accidental, of course. Wealthy oligarchs, who are the largest funders of most mainstream...

What a frustrating federal election campaign this has been. Though a huge proportion of Canadians are genuinely concerned about climate change and want politicians to act, most parties have done their level best to either dismiss those concerns (the CPC and PPC) or convince the electorate they have meaningful plans for tackling climate change when they don't (the Liberals and the NDP). Most frustrating of all, the only leader telling the truth and offering concrete proposals for addressing the problem, Elizabeth May of the Green Party, has been largely ignored - particularly by pundits and the media. This despite the fact that she's so highly regarded by voters of all political persuasions. I can't help thinking the Greens would garner a lot more attention if their leader was an old white guy. As I've been heard to say often, never underestimate the effects of sexism and misogyny. After all, we've only ever had one female PM and no longer have any female Premier...