Changing Our Priorities on Policing

Dear Mayor and Council.

I am writing to you as the Halifax Regional Municipality is faced with significant budget constraints brought on by COVID-19, to urge you to begin changing the way the City approaches community safety and law enforcement, and begin reallocating funding from the Halifax Regional Police to other community safety initiatives. I would urge you to start by restoring the full budget cut of $5.5 million proposed for the Halifax Regional Police, and allocating the $2 million in savings that was identified to other community health and safety initiatives.

As a citizen, I have grown increasingly concerned about the effectiveness of our current approach to law enforcement, and particularly the negative impacts it has on African Nova Scotians, Indigenous people, and racialized communities. 

From the Marshall Inquiry to the Wortley report, we have had numerous wake-up calls in terms of how racialized groups are often unfairly targeted by law enforcement and the justice system in Halifax and across Nova Scotia.

Recent events in the US have highlighted the dangers of police violence and police militarization. Closer to home, the tragic shooting of Chantel Moore underscores the problems of using police officers to conduct "wellness checks", and other functions they were never intended to carry out. 

I have a number of colleagues, friends, and family, who work in the criminal justice system. Their roles are varied, but they make similar observations about their work: that the vast majority of behaviour that the criminal justice system deals with is not rooted in ill intent, but is rooted in addiction and mental health issues, problems the criminal justice system is not well equipped to solve. As a result, we are often sending police officers to deal with problems they are not in a good position to deal with. We have, as one person put it, turned the police into "social workers with guns". This is an expensive solution with often disastrous results. We need to change our approach, and start transitioning from that form of policing, to broader community health and wellness initiatives. 

Councillors, you can't control many aspects of the justice system. But you do have control of one thing: police oversight, and the police budget. We are in a budget crisis, but in crisis comes opportunity. The opportunity to shift our priorities. The opportunity to do things differently. 

Chief Kinsella himself has said that the $5.5 million cut will not affect community safety. Take those savings and re-allocate them to initiatives that will make a difference: mental health and addiction services. Community based patrols (for a good example, see the work that the Bear Clan Patrol has done in urban centres and Indigenous communities in Western Canada). 

Start doing the things that will reduce our dependence on police, courts, and prisons to solve our social problems.If you do, we can emerge from this crisis as a stronger, healthier, and safer community. 

Regards,

Minister, You are Letting our Kids Down

Dear Minister Churchill,

I am writing to you today as a parent of two children in the public school system to express my extreme disappointment with how you and your government have handled the response of public schools to the COVID-19 crisis. 

First of all, I recognize that these have been challenging times for everyone in the Province. I am working hard to keep my business running and my wife is working to meet the demands of her job during this crisis, while also trying to keep our kids active, engaged, and learning from home. This has been a difficult balancing act. We also know that there are others facing far greater hardships than us.

Considering all of that, the lack of support for students and parents from the public school system in this Province has been staggering. 

The Premier announced the closure of Nova Scotia schools on March 15th, 2020. While most universities and private schools had online learning for their classes set up within days, it took until April 8th (three and a half weeks) for the public school system to have online learning in place, despite the fact that google classroom was already available and in use as a tool..

Our experience with online learning has been mixed. Our son's class has had twice weekly class sessions by video conference, and daily assignments which take up to an hour to complete, with limited parental guidance. This has provided our son with much-needed structure and opportunities to socialize with his classmates, both important at his age. It keeps him engaged, and allows us to complete our work as well. 

Our daughter's class has not had any group classroom sessions. They have had weekly one on one sessions for half an hour, and daily assignments, most of which have taken no more than five minutes to complete. They were provided with free access to a book website for 30 days, after which we had to pay for the subscription ourselves. She has been missing both structure and the opportunity to socialize with her classmates. This has directly affected both her mental health and ours. 

Other parents report mixed experiences, with some barely receiving any support at all. This suggests that teachers have not been given clear expectations regarding their work during COVID-19, and that not enough of them have been trained to use the tools that are available, like google classroom. Nor has the Province provided much in the way of resources to parents to support their kids in learning: No websites, no online subscriptions, and no materials. 

And what little support we were getting has been abruptly cut off. Your government recently announced that online learning would end on June 5th, three and a half weeks before the end of the school year, without any explanation as to how or why this decision was taken.

More recently, the website for registration for EXCEL has failed multiple times during registration, causing additional stress and uncertainty for parents, and wasting more of the little remaining free time that we have. 

The expectation seems to be that the kids can "catch up" if they go back to school in the Fall. Yet experts are predicting multiple waves of this disease, and it is entirely possible the kids may be sent home again for periods next year. It remains far from clear that the public school system is prepared for that eventuality. The experience to date inspires little confidence. 

Throughout this, communication from the Halifax Regional Centre for Education has been limited, sporadic, and often confusing. Communication from you as Minister has been virtually non-existent. I can only compare this to other Provinces like New Brunswick, where the Minister of Education has been front and centre in leading the response to COVID-19. Even the Prime Minister took the time to directly address students, and made an offer to assist with their homework. That token gesture is more help than we have received from your Department. 

Further, there has been little in the way of effort to solicit input from parents. School Advisory Councils are not operating, and neither the Department nor HRCE appear to have undertaken any widespread efforts to solicit parent feedback.

Minister, your government chose to take complete control of the school system, and abolish the school boards, eliminating the only direct link between parents, the public, and the governance of the school system. You own this problem now. This is your crisis to manage.

Either step up, or step aside. Because continuing to let our kids down is not an option.

Sincerely,

Derek Simon

Dartmouth, NS

(This letter was sent to Minister Churchill on May 20th, 2020. I will keep you posted on any reply."