Latest news with #NovaScotiaCommunityCollege
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'It's nauseating': Residents in Kentville, New Minas raising big stink about recurring sewage plant odour
Spring is in the air and so is a familiar stench in New Minas and Kentville. Some residents in the neighbouring Annapolis Valley communities are fed up with the recurring pungent odours from the regional sewage treatment plant in New Minas and say it's time for the Municipality of the County of Kings to come up with a solution once and for all. "It's nauseating, it's overwhelming. I'm sure it's not good for our physical health. And it's been going on for too long," said Sue Smiley, an avid cyclist whose outings frequently take her past the plant, which sits adjacent to the Harvest Moon Trail that connects several Valley communities. The regional treatment plant in New Minas is the municipality's largest, and services Kentville, New Minas, Coldbrook, Greenwich and several private industries. The smell comes and goes, residents say, but when it arrives, it makes outdoor activities unbearable. It is particularly troublesome in hot, humid weather. Dawn Noakes of New Minas, who owns a dog grooming business in Kentville, said she started smelling the odour about a year after she moved to the area. "In 2018, we noticed an outhouse type of odour. It went on for a few days and we didn't think much about it, but then it went on for a month," said Noakes. Seven years later, the smell persists. "We've settled in this subdivision and we love it there. Our neighbours are great. The properties are lovely. I love where I live, but I can't enjoy where I live," said Noakes, who created a Facebook group where residents have taken their complaints about the situation. Kristin Lohnes, a student at the Nova Scotia Community College in Kentville, is a member of the Facebook group. She describes the odour as being similar to rotting food. "It can get to a point where it's making people physically sick, myself included. We get headaches and nausea and it's not a good scene. And where I myself have asthma, it's been rough," said Lohnes. In a statement to CBC News, chief administrative officer Scott Conrad said the municipality is working with "outside experts" to determine the cause of the odour and resolve it as quickly as possible. The municipality has identified a problem that "appears to be a lack of oxygen in the first of five lagoons wastewater cycles through during the treatment process," the statement said. "The community is understandably asking for prompt action and long-term improvements, and the Municipality is determined to deliver." But Kentville resident Robyn Joys questioned whether the system is equipped to handle a slew of new housing developments. "They don't have the infrastructure in order to upkeep all the 200 more or so toilets that are flushing and they should have never been approved before they addressed the sewage system," said Joys. The municipality's website details a number of upgrades to the treatment plant amounting to $9 million in improvements since 2017. It's not enough for Noakes. "It's the same rhetoric. It's like this is what the problem is and this is what we've done, but we haven't resolved the problem yet," she said. The municipality posted another update after a recent council meeting. It said it is working with "engineering firms with experience in wastewater treatment" to get the odour at the plant "under control," and outlined short- and long-term solutions. But residents like Joys are still waiting for results. "It's been too many years where we've had this issue.… And I'm very tired of excuses and I just would like to stop smelling the stink," she said. MORE TOP STORIES
CBC
13-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
'We just want to be a world-class college,' says NSCC president as college looks to the future
As university officials across the province continue to work through what the fallout of Bill 12 means for them, the president of the Nova Scotia Community College knows what it does not mean for his institution. "We have no aspirations to become a university," Don Bureaux said in a recent interview. "We just want to be a world-class college." Although much of the attention Bill 12 — An Act Respecting Advanced Education and Research — received as it was being debated at Province House centred on its ramifications for the province's 10 universities, the bill also made changes to Research Nova Scotia and the Community Colleges Act, the latter of which governs the NSCC. Those changes include giving the responsible cabinet minister the power to give binding directions to the NSCC board respecting policies, programs of study and services, and property, revenue and business affairs of the college. Changes not a surprise Bureaux said none of that caught him or anyone else at NSCC by surprise because of conversations they were having with government officials in the lead-up to the Progressive Conservatives introducing Bill 12 this past winter. "Quite frankly, many of the changes that affect our act were housekeeping," he said. "We were operating under those rules of engagement anyway." To observers, perhaps the biggest change in Bill 12 for NSCC is the ability to grant undergraduate degrees if authorized by the provincial cabinet and certain criteria are met. Bureaux said it's becoming more common for colleges across the country to grant degrees, but if it happens at NSCC, it would be focused on workplace-driven needs and done in a way that does not cut into the work already happening at universities. He gave examples of degrees related to advanced manufacturing, mining operations and the ocean sector as some of the offerings at other colleges. "For the most part, they're very applied degrees that are conducive and aligned with the applied learning environments that exist at colleges," said Bureaux, adding that conversations at NSCC about what could be offered there are only just beginning. "Right now there's no definitive plans as to what degrees we'd offer and we'd want to be very aware of the 10 universities in this province that we work very closely with — that do a great job — to make sure that we're adding and not duplicating or competing with the pre-existing degrees that are in the province." Even without adding degrees to the college's offerings, there are annual reviews to ensure the programs that are available meet the needs of students and the province more broadly. Always evaluating program offerings Officials at NSCC recently announced the music business program would be placed on hold and several campuses will not offer the business administration diploma program in the coming semester. In both cases, low enrolment was a driving factor in the decision. "We make sure that we have programs that students want to enrol in, that the economy needs in terms of workforce development and that those jobs are contributing to the priorities of the province of Nova Scotia in terms of where the economy or society is going," said Bureaux. In recent years, that's meant a "dramatic increase" in demand for training in the health-care and skilled trades sectors. Bureaux said students are coming to NSCC with the expectation that when they complete their training there will be a good job waiting for them in Nova Scotia. The provincial government has called on the college periodically to increase opportunities for programs such as continuing care assistants, early childhood education and in the construction trades to meet pressing employment needs in the province. Bureaux said the determining factor in whether those programs can accommodate more people comes down to a combination of available space, faculty and, in the case of skilled trades, available apprenticeship agreements. In some cases, program expansion can be accommodated through creativity. Some long-term care facilities that need workers have partnered with the college to provide learning space for students who could go on to become future employees. "They actually can be training on site with dedicated classrooms at their facilities that would allow for that integrated learning to happen," said Bureaux.
CBC
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
End of an era: Board that classified films in the Maritimes fades to black
When Jason Eisener wanted to screen the feature film he made as part of his screen arts studies at Nova Scotia Community College in 2003, he booked the Oxford Theatre in Halifax to show it. But there was a problem. To show Fist of Death, which Eisener describes as a martial arts, zombie, post-apocalyptic movie, he'd need to get it classified. The broke student borrowed roughly $100 from his parents to get the film reviewed by the Maritime Film Classification Board. Eisener spent only a couple of hundred dollars making Fist of Death, with the budget going toward the tapes the film was shot on and food colouring required to make fake blood. "It felt like an accomplishment that me and my friends were able to actually make a movie that could get classified and someone thought it was crazy enough to give it an R rating," said Eisener, now known as the filmmaker behind movies such as Hobo With a Shotgun and television shows such as Dark Side of the Ring. The province recently announced that the government agency that determined how old you had to be to rent a film or watch it in a Nova Scotia theatre is shutting down. The Maritime Film Classification Board sometimes found itself at the centre of controversy over censorship and morality. In a pre-internet world where one of the major forms of entertainment was renting a movie from a rental store, the board's work dashed the hopes of many youngsters looking to rent something deemed not appropriate for their age — or they could just get their parents to rent it for them. A sticker placed on the cover of the film included labels such as General (G), Parental Guidance (PG), Adult Accompaniment (AA) or Restricted (R). Jennifer VanderBurgh, who teaches courses on film, television and media at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, called the shutdown of the board a sign of the times. "I would argue … there's less agency for parents to actually monitor what their children are watching because of children's access to the internet," she said. "You know, it seems kind of a quaint idea now that we would be able to restrict anything to people with internet access." The board's origins date back more than a century in Nova Scotia, where its objective was film censorship. It wasn't until the 1980s that its focus turned toward rating films, said Adam Grant, an official with Service Nova Scotia, the department that oversees the board. He said in 1993, an agreement was signed among the Maritime provinces that would see Nova Scotia review the films and the other two provinces use the ratings. At present, film distributors must pay $3.95 per minute to get a film classified in Nova Scotia. To review a DVD, the cost is a flat fee of $39.80 per film, said Grant. The number of films the board reviews annually has decreased steadily over the years, said Grant. In 2015, 1,452 films were classified. Last year, it was 611. The work of reviewing the films is sometimes done from a second-floor room at the province's alcohol and gaming division office on Windmill Road in Dartmouth, N.S. At one time, films were watched using a 35-millimetre projector, but films today are watched on computers there. Sometimes films are reviewed at the movie theatre in Dartmouth Crossing because of the format in which the films are provided, said Grant. What it's like classifying films Randy Hume of East Chester, N.S., is one of the 10 people who review films for the province. He's been doing it off and on for 14 years and said he's going to miss the part-time gig that pays $50 for a half-day's work. "It is work, but it is fun … and I've met a lot of good people," he told CBC News on a day that he watched the new Rami Malek movie, The Amateur. Because the other reviewer wasn't able to make it, Hume found himself inside a Cineplex Dartmouth Crossing theatre accompanied only by a security guard. And if you're imagining him doing it armed with some buttery popcorn, snacks and a beverage, think again. Hume said when they do film classifications at the movie theatre, it's usually before the theatre is open for the day. Hume said while watching the films, he pays attention to things such as language and violence and looks for "something that's going to really jar people." How the film board will be replaced In shutting down the film board, Nova Scotia will instead rely on the ratings provided by distributors. "Our ratings are supposed to reflect our morals and our beliefs here in the Maritimes … but if we're getting them from Hollywood or Toronto or wherever, this is not really going to reflect our morals at all, so we're going to lose that," said Hume. He said with the distributors determining the ratings, he worries "they're going to err on the side that makes them the most money." Once Nova Scotia shuts down its board, only three provinces will have them: B.C., Alberta and Quebec. Hume said he can only remember one time when he voted to have a movie banned. It was an animated film. "I don't even remember the title, but it was just nasty, nasty visuals, nasty everything in it," said Hume. Highly publicized bans Banned films — excluding pornography — have been rare. A 1978 Supreme Court of Canada decision was made regarding Nova Scotia's decision to ban Last Tango in Paris from theatres. In 1997, Bastard out of Carolina was originally banned in Nova Scotia. Described by a Daily News reporter as a "no-holds-barred look at one girl's tragic life growing up in the South Carolina home of a stepfather who beats and rapes her," it was banned for going "beyond acceptable community standards," according to a film board official at the time. The decision attracted lots of criticism, even from the executive director of the Kids Help Foundation. "I'm no film critic, but I can assure you this film does not overstate how children are affected by abuse," said Heather Sproule in a Feb. 26, 1997, Daily News article. "It's explicit and brutal, but no more brutal than what an abused child experiences." VanderBurgh said film is a powerful medium where what is being shown may appear as reality, but it is in fact manufactured. "Films often show horrific things in an effort to rally support, to try to eradicate that horrific thing from society," she said. "Those things are not necessarily endorsements of what they're showing." The ban on Bastard out of Carolina was overturned in March 1997. Other Maritime Film Classification Board controversies The film board has mostly stayed out of the spotlight, but there are some notable exceptions. In 2001, Hannibal, a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, was rated as Adult Accompaniment (AA), meaning children younger than 14 could see the film when accompanied by an adult. It had a stricter rating in most other places. The film included scenes where "a man is fed to wild boars and his face is eaten off; in another, a man is hung from the side of a building with his intestines hanging out," according to a Feb. 25, 2001, Daily News article. A spokesperson for the film board cited commercial reasons as playing a role in not giving it a Restricted (R) rating. "The film would lose out on a fair bit of the marketplace — that had a big bearing on the decision," the spokesperson said in the article. The board was also in the news in 1994 when it proposed that the cost to classify porn films would be $4 per minute, compared to $1.75 for non-porn films. "It's a subtle form of censorship," the director of the Atlantic Film Festival said in an April 26, 1994, Daily News article. "In effect, the strategy is to keep pornography out of the province by making it difficult to get in." Even the cabinet minister responsible for the department seemed to agree. "It [the classification fee] will create problems for films that shouldn't be here, I'll tell you," Guy Brown told the Daily News. Shutdown timeline Grant said it will probably be another eight to 12 months before the Maritime Film Classification Board shuts down as the province develops regulations to make it happen. Eisener, the Dartmouth filmmaker, said he loved the look of the stickers the board placed on films indicating their rating. He said he didn't realize the board was still in operation until the announcement it was shutting down. "I guess I just never really saw the need for it," he said from Los Angeles, where he's working on future projects. "I really like the design of the stickers themselves and I thought those would make really cool designs for a T-shirt."
CBC
28-02-2025
- Politics
- CBC
University sector concerned about Houston government's 'short-sighted' education bill
As the Nova Scotia government positions itself to take greater control over the province's 10 universities, some within the university community say the potential changes are "short-sighted" and part of "anti-democratic," "Trump-style politics" in the province. Last week, the Progressive Conservatives introduced a bill that would link the university's funding decisions to the government's social and economic priorities. Bill 12 would allow the minister of advanced education to appoint up to half of the members of the university's board of governors, and force a university into a revitalization plan. The legislation also would allow the Nova Scotia Community College to grant degrees. CBC News contacted all 10 universities in Nova Scotia requesting an interview, but none put someone forward. Spokespeople for some schools said they are still assessing the bill and it is too soon to comment, while others did not respond. The president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, Peter McInnis, said the tabling of the legislation blindsided administrators, including presidents, who were not warned of or consulted on the bill. "It's a little bit of a, you know, unexpected surprise and not a pleasant one," he said in an interview with CBC News. "This seems to be picking up some of the more unsavoury trends across the country.… It seems to be part of a certain amount of anti-democratic legislation." On Thursday, Advanced Education Minister Brendan Maguire said the province isn't asking universities to eliminate programs. "One of the things that we said in the last bilateral agreement was we wanted more seats for health-care professions because we are in desperate need for health-care workers and we wanted them filled at 97 per cent and they were incentivized to do it," Maguire said. "But in no circumstances will we be asking them to eliminate programs. Listen, they're their own entity. What we want to do is just work with them to make sure that they're filling what we need here in Nova Scotia." Linking funding to government priorities McInnis, who teaches in the history department at St. Francis Xavier University, said tying funding to government interests is "a short-sighted approach" because "political priorities may shift with the wind." He gave the example of the University of Calgary, which at one time increased its focus on the oil and gas sector, but when that declined, enrolment dropped. "So it was very difficult to forecast what's going to be valuable." Cathy Conrad, the president of the Saint Mary's University Faculty Union, is a professor in the geography and environmental studies department. She said she has worked for 25 years to oversee the development of climate change programs at SMU, and worries about the impact of the legislation on her field of study, and others that may not align with government priorities. "If environmental stewardship is not a priority of this government … then what does that mean for programs that are based on evidence and need and social justice? Does that mean that these programs will no longer have funding and instead we should be focusing our priorities on extractive economic priorities related to mining and fracking?" Conrad and McInnis worry that if the government wants universities to focus on applied research or studies that help fill labour market needs and have a more immediate return on investment, that could affect funding for the arts and humanities. Conrad said humanities are not always appreciated, but she said a well-rounded, expansive understanding of our world is crucial to respond to, for instance, U.S. President Donald Trump's threats related to Canada becoming a 51st state. "If we don't understand our history and the philosophy and the psychology and the sociology of how it is historically — and actually relatively recent history — we don't know how to move and navigate ourselves into this new world that we're finding ourselves in very quickly." Conrad said the bill itself "feels and reads very much like Trump-style politics, which is really troubling." Board of governors appointees Both McInnis and Conrad said they are also concerned about the possibility of the government appointing up to half the members of university boards of governors. Boards are responsible for making decisions about budgets, capital projects, new faculties or faculty reductions, and are also effectively the boss of the university president. If 50 per cent of members were appointed by the government, it would "tip the balance" to approving what politicians want, McInnis said. Maguire said he won't be picking board members. He said the province will collaborate with universities to find the right people for the job. McInnis said while administrators and board members at universities come and go, it's the faculty members who are in their profession for decades, and who bring their expertise to benefit the university boards. "[Boards] need to be advised and how best to do that from the people that are on the ground actually teaching the courses and doing the research." McInnis added that if it's accountability the government wants, that already exists through a peer-review system for funding decisions at universities. Merger worries As part of the bill, universities deemed to be in financial trouble could be mandated to undergo a "revitalization plan." The government could withhold funding from those institutions until they've created an acceptable plan charting a way forward. McInnis said he worries it could mean the government is considering merging universities, which he said would detract from how schools serve their communities. David Westwood, president-elect of the Dalhousie Faculty Association, expressed alarm over the bill, writing in a statement that universities are "already crumbling" as the result of inadequate public funding. "Increasingly, public funds to PSE [post-secondary education] come with strings attached, as provincial governments attempt to steer institutions to meet their own mandate and priorities through threats to withhold or even reduce core funding," wrote Westwood, a professor of kinesiology. "Public institutions are being gutted or eliminated in real time, and democratic values are under threat as power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few." Provincial funding for Dalhousie, he noted, has fallen to below 50 per cent of the university's operating budget, with the rest coming mainly from tuition fees. "One can scarcely consider Dalhousie to be a public institution any longer," he said. Maguire said he has no desire to merge universities in Nova Scotia. "What we want to do is make sure that they are viable and sustainable for the long term … And one of the things that we want to put in place is just, you know, like warnings. So we know in advance if they're going down a path of insolvency," Maguire said. Maguire said there are some universities that are facing financial troubles and the province wants to ensure there are "stopgaps" before it gets worse. "If they're going down a path of potential insolvency or they're going down a path of great debt, we can work with them with the tools they need to make sure that they're sustainable. This is all it's about. We don't want any of our universities to go away. In fact, we want them to grow," he said. Auditor general's report coming soon The province's auditor general's office is finalizing its report on whether the Department of Advanced Education is effectively monitoring and holding universities to account for public funds. That report is scheduled to be released on March 4. Universities in the province receive $380 million a year in operational funding, plus $43 million for specific programming.
CBC
27-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Province to fund tuition for nearly 100 students training to support people with disabilities
Nova Scotia has announced it will pay for the tuition of nearly 100 students training to support people with disabilities. Scott Armstrong, the minister of opportunities and social development, made the announcement Thursday. He said the government is spending about $640,000 to fund the spots, which will open across the province in September. "The investment we're making today is about more than just education. It's about ensuring that individuals with disabilities can truly live a good life in the community of their choice. And I want to highlight that — of their choice," Armstrong said at a news briefing Thursday. The move to educate and recruit more disability support workers comes as the province works to close all institutionalized care and get people with disabilities into new supportive living situations by 2028 — meeting requirements outlined in the workplace strategy of a five-year reform plan approved by a human rights board of inquiry in 2023. The creation of the human rights remedy capped a legal battle originally launched in 2014 by three people with disabilities who were kept in a Halifax psychiatric hospital for years, despite medical opinions that they could live in the community with appropriate support. As of Dec. 31, 2024, there were 702 individuals with disabilities still living in adult residential centres, regional rehabilitation centres and residential care facilities across Nova Scotia. Armstrong said the province is on track to move these individuals into the community by 2028. "At the heart of this work is a commitment to a human rights-based approach, one that centres with the voices and choices of Nova Scotians with disabilities," he said. "And in my opinion, this change is long overdue. The work we are doing now under the human rights remedy requires more than simply changes to a program. It means changing the entire system and rebuilding it from the ground up." Armstrong said part of that is funding these spots to encourage more people to pursue a career in disability support. He said the cost of tuition, textbooks and student fees will be covered for 75 people enrolled in either the full-time one-year program at the Nova Scotia Community College campuses in Kentville and Sydney, or the two-year part-time program in Bridgewater. Funding will also apply to 12 students enrolled in the Island Career Academy's six-month community residential worker program in Sydney, and 12 students at the CBBC Career College's 900-hour community support worker program in Dartmouth. Armstrong said these students will receive $5,000 for tuition and associated fees. Those who receive the funding are required to work in Nova Scotia's disability support sector for at least a year after graduation. "The new disability support professional certificate program at NSCC ensures our learners have the skills to support persons with disabilities in their communities that focuses on upholding their rights as independent individuals, emphasizing their personal strengths and eliminating barriers," said Connie Fisher, dean of the School of Health and Human Services at NSCC. The NSCC program was previously offered as a two-year diploma but will now be offered as a one-year certificate to get workers into the sector faster. "As a college and partner in education, transforming and changing systems to create an equitable, accessible and inclusive province is a priority," Fisher said. "By being a part of the cultural change, grounded and transforming the way we support people with disabilities, it is our commitment and we are proud to offer this exciting new program to contribute to that critical change."
