Farewell to Nova Scotia
Please, think before you vote!
I’ve lived in Nova Scotia, down in Liverpool, in Queens Region. More importantly though, I’ve lived in other places - Kentucky, France, Ontario, and right now, Vancouver.
With a provincial election coming up in a few days I want to offer a couple of thoughts to Nova Scotia voters.
First of all, no, it is not true that things are just as bad all over. Things are actually a fair bit better in other parts of Canada, and no, it’s not because of population levels or the local economy. It’s because the Nova Scotia government has decided, time and again, that the needs of you and your family matter less than what the Sobeys and Irvings are demanding.
Health care in other places is better than in Nova Scotia. I’ve seen specialists in Vancouver in days, instead of months, and the overall standard of health care is noticeably higher. It is, simply put, better financed, and more of priority.
In other provinces this is not the normal state of affairs:
And although everywhere claims to have a shortage of family doctors, in Nova Scotia that wait list is much, much longer than elsewhere. And, believe it or not, in BC the health care people will send you email or phone you. They don’t mail you a letter like it’s 1963.
Nova Scotia, you deserve better.
Second, you’re being robbed blind for food, and getting really low quality for the high prices that you pay.
Vancouver is a serious food city (As is Montreal, and elsewhere) and there is no possible way that you could sell the quality of fruits and vegetables that you see on the shelves in Nova Scotia. Sometimes what we saw there was quite literally starting to rot.
And the prices you’re paying are 10-30% higher than anything in Vancouver. I’m serious about this. Moving here has cut our grocery budget by about 20% each week. For lovely, fresh, tasty ingredients.
Again, this isn’t because of “market forces” or because of you’re being in the Maritimes, it’s because Sobeys and the others know that you’ll just accept whatever crap they sell, and pay whatever price they demand.
Your Nova Scotia government could rein this in, but have chosen not to.
There are dozens of other examples where things that you or I might consider important, or even just “the norm” are under-supported in Nova Scotia, while major corporations get tons of money thrown at them, often for pretty questionable projects.
The reason why the Nova Scotia regime gets away with this is pretty simple: people have been convinced that all of this is normal. People have been convinced that the answer is always “Oh well, it’s that way everywhere.” or “Well, what can you do?”
Part of the reason for that is that Nova Scotia is desperately lacking in real, solid news journalism, so it winds up being Facebook of all things that drives discussion. No matter how you look at that, it’s a road to disinformation and outright lies. All of them very, very intentional.
That’s why instead of people standing up to criticize the current Nova Scotia government for things that are completely and utterly under provincial control, they wave flags saying “Fuck Trudeau.”
I miss Nova Scotia, and the people, and the glorious weather. There’s so much that I love about the place, but wow, I hope that people will take the time to really understand how they’re being screwed over right now.
And vote for a change.
OK, a followup on Nova Scotia. Our house in Liverpool is still heated with oil. Many, many months before deciding to come to Vancouver for two years, so Susan could do graduate work at the University of British Columbia, (a two-year program) we applied to get funding to install heat-pumps.
This week, three months after having arrived in Vancouver, and something approaching a year after having applied for heat pump funding, we have been told we can’t receive it because we don’t actually, currently live in the actual physical house. The fact that this is a temporary thing, while attending university, is not relevant to the equation.
And of course, our tenants also can’t apply because they don’t own the actual property.
So we’re all shit out of luck on this one. Either we somehow come up with thousands (tens of thousands?) to install heat pumps out of pocket, or our tenants continue to pay thousands of dollars to fill up the oil tank.
Either way the only winners are Efficiency NS, aka the Government of Nova Scotia.