It’s a messy morning in many parts of Nova Scotia and the Maritimes today after heavy snow and strong winds Tuesday night and overnight.
Environment Canada had been forecasting up to 40 centimetres of snow for Pictou County and Northeastern Nova Scotia, with wind gusts reaching 110 kilometres per hour in some areas..
Roads are snow covered and slippery in areas this morning, so drive carefully. Early this morning, Nova Scotia Power was reporting more than 540 power outages, affecting more than 13-thousand customers.
The majority of those outages are over an area of Nova Scotia that stretches from Pictou County through Cape Breton.
Two adults have been forced from their home by a house fire in Waterside. The blaze along Shore Road was reported around 1 a.m. Monday.
A woman who was taken to hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation was released Tuesday and the two were then helped by Canadian Red Cross volunteers with a place to stay, meals, and purchases like clothing and some other essential needs.
The pair credit their dog with alerting them to the fire.
The federal and provincial governments appear deadlocked in their negotiations on the future of health care in Canada — and the prime minister’s latest comments suggest he will not be the one to blink first.
In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Justin Trudeau says he’s not willing to kick health-care reform down the road any further, even as provincial premiers clamour for more federal funds to bolster their ailing health systems.
Trudeau says it wouldn’t be right to just throw more money at the problem, sit back and watch.
Nova Scotia’s surgical backlog currently sits at 22-thousand 600 patients.
Although the new figure is down from 26-thousand in May, deputy health minister Jeannine Lagasse, told the legislature’s health committee yesterday that overall improvement will take time.
Health authority C-E-O Karen Oldfield says the immediate goal is to get back to 2019 surgical wait time levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, with a longer term goal of achieving national benchmarks for such things as orthopedic surgeries by mid-2025.
Oldfield says to hit the benchmarks, the health system will have to perform an additional 25-hundred surgeries a year.
The Nova Scotia government is providing 140-million dollars over the next four years to help low and middle-income homeowners move more quickly away from oil heat.
It says low-income Nova Scotians will get free electric heat pumps and the electrical panel upgrades needed to install them — while middle-income households will get rebates when they install energy efficient heating systems and other upgrades that reduce their reliance on oil.
Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton says that when combined with federal contributions, the funding will help about 13-thousand low-income households, and 30-thousand middle-income households.
Nova Scotia has announced 19.5 million dollars to preserve and improve existing affordable housing and to add modular housing.
The funding includes 12.5 million to help co-operative housing groups and non-profit housing providers complete necessary capital repairs — 7.5 million of which are forgivable loans to upgrade 150 units in Halifax Regional Municipality.
Another five million dollars will be evenly split to help with design and planning of affordable housing projects and to assist landlords in upgrading the condition of existing affordable units while maintaining low-end of market rents for tenants.
The remaining two million dollars is allocated for modular housing to support people who may be experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of being homeless.
