Transforming Nova Scotia

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Our province can’t return to what used to constitute normal when we finally come out of the chaos caused by COVID-19.

That’s one of the takeaways of a new report released Thursday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia (CCPA-NS).

In the report titled‘你和我们在一起吗？Covid-19确认有必要改变新斯科舍省的社会安全网，’作者Tammy Findlay，Christine Saulnier和Alec Stratford概述了大流行如何揭露我们当前社会系统的脆弱性。作者强调了将我们的政治和经济体系转变为成为可持续，公平和公正的省的必要性。

“I do think our main message is that we cannot return to normal, and not just because we don’t have a vaccine. Even if we had a vaccine tomorrow and we could go back to normal, we should not go back to normal,” CCPA-NS director Christine Saulnier said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

“我们应该理解正常的含义，这意味着很多人当然被抛在后面……我确实认为我们确实有一个真正的机会做不同的事情。”

During the report’s virtual online launch on Thursday, Saulnier, described it as “not a detailed reconstruction plan,” although she said they are currently working on one. It does, however, focus on understanding how COVID-19 has affected people in the province and examines why its impact is felt differently among various groups.

In particular, it focuses on the government’s role providing a social safety net that supports our collective wellbeing in the best of times, and “especially” in the worst of times.

“The tragedy that has unfolded in Northwood absolutely must be a wake up call,” Saulnier said. “Our long term care facilities have been underfunded, both when it comes to adequate staffing and related supports as well as infrastructure.”

Saulnier pointed to the fact that Nova Scotia has the fourth highest rate of reported COVID cases per million in the country. The vast majority of those deaths have occurred in long term care, and more specifically at the Northwood long term care facility.

“诺斯伍德的11日死亡率最高ingle long term care home in the country, and so what I want to say is obviously there’s lots of red flags in what has transpired in Nova Scotia. We are waving some of them today,” she said.

“Certainly we would say there has not been enough transparency coming from our government. There is definitely a lack of data and information, not just on the Coronavirus itself, but on the full impact of COVID-19.”

Saulnier表示，应用其报告的框架意味着长期护理的最佳解决方案是使其成为我们公共资助的全民医疗保健系统的一部分。她说，但这只是一个较大的难题。她指出了家庭保健状况以及更广泛的预防和初级保健服务，包括基于医院的医疗保健。

“If we want to support seniors, we need to support them to be able to age well. We need to make those investments up front and all along the life cycle,” she said.

“我们知道，早期的生活经历会影响人们的年龄。我们还知道，性别，种族，文化，经济，社会和环境因素决定了后来的健康和福祉。”

使用报告的作者所说的交叉镜头来开发年龄友好的解决方案，将意味着投资于无障碍建筑物和街道，经济适用房，付费良好的护理人员和支持，可访问且灵活的就业机会以及扩大公共卫生保健。

合着者塔米·芬德利（Tammy Findlay），圣文森特山大学的社会政策专家和政治和加拿大研究教授说，新斯科舍省在很大程度上依赖妇女和慈善机构来提供我们的服务。

“We’ve known for a long time that investing in public services would increase the quality of services, would ensure greater equity for users and providers of services, and improve accountability to citizens,” Findlay said.

“公共卫生危机只是使这一痛苦变得更加痛苦，更广泛地显而易见。长期护理当然是最公然的例子，但是我们缺乏公共育儿，心理健康服务，药房和住房也已将自己显示为我们社会安全网中的主要漏洞。”

芬德利在我们的大规模重建阶段说，这些是公共投资至关重要的领域。人们将需要护理支持，以促进重返工作岗位以及涵盖心理健康服务和处方药的综合医疗保健系统。

She said we’ll also need to ensure that workers are well paid, and that income is supported with both better wages and public services. Findlay points to the fact that 30% of the province’s workers earn less than $15 an hour.

“What the pandemic has revealed is that these workers that we rely on most have been paid the least, from food processing workers, grocery store cashiers, warehouse workers, couriers, long haul truckers to those providing care and home care in long term care homes,” Findlay said. “They’ve always worked hard and during the pandemic also put themselves at greater risk. Some of them have received pandemic pay. They all deserve a significant and permanent raise.”

芬德利说，任何“重新开放”经济的“重新开放”必须确保所有工人都能获得必要的支持，以安全地工作，这是否包括使用适当的个人保护设备，带薪病假，更强大的劳动力标准以及其他拒绝不安全工作的机制。

“Once the state of emergency is rescinded, workers in Nova Scotia not covered by collective agreements are legally only able to take off three unpaid sick days,” Findlay said. “If we are no longer going to tolerate even a sniffle, we must put protections in place, including more proactive inspections. If workers are protected, so are those they serve, instilling confidence in people who are willing to make a purchase or use those services.”

Alec Stratford, executive director of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers and the report’s third co-author, said it’s important to recognize that despite the oft-repeated catchphrase, we are not all in this together.

“People have come into this from very different standpoints…as we start to look at the data and see what’s happening, those who have been privileged, those who have the financial needs, are faring better and we’ll continue to see that evidence as it becomes available,” Stratford said.

“So coming out of this crisis and into recovery, we must ensure that the most vulnerable are included in the decision making…A core point and principle within our framework as well is that the communities that are impacted, the social policy that is impacting them, they need to be part of the solution and involved in that solution.”

During an interview, Saulnier pointed to aMay 12 EKOS poll受访者提出的问题之一是“当Covid-19危机结束时，您是否期望加拿大社会重返现状，还是期望我们社会发生广泛的转变？”

In total, 73% indicated they expected such a transformation.

除此之外，有70％的人表明他们相信加拿大后的19日社会将更加“社会关注”，并将强调其人口的健康和福祉。Saulnier说，这进一步凸显了他们正在做的工作的重要性。

“So we see that 70% of people want real transformation? Wow. OK. If that’s the case, then we know it’s really critical to put the ideas out there now,” she said.

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