After Nomination Day Tuesday — the deadline for municipal election candidates to file their nomination papers — Wednesday was the day by which nominated candidates wanting to withdraw had to do so.  Officials say Marc Hanna has withdrawn from the race in District 7 for the Municipality of Pictou County.

 

 

Pictou County District RCMP reports that during the month of August, it conducted extensive traffic enforcement with 159 traffic stops for speeding and other matters.  In one incident on Highway 104 in Salt Springs, a vehicle was clocked at 178kh in a 110kh zone.

 

 

Premier Tim Houston is being called to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor in the province.  The provincial New Democrats have introduced a bill that would require the provincial health minister to release the updated number every month.  It comes as the province’s online health data portal has not updated its records since June 1st, when more than 160-thousand people were on the wait-list.  That number is 16 percent of the province’s population, with N-D-P Leader Claudia Chender saying that data is vital to tracking the government’s progress fixing health care, a campaign promise from 2021.

 

 

The president of Nova Scotia’s ambulance service says there’s been an improvement in ambulance response times so far this year.

Matthew Crossman, of Emergency Medical Care told a legislature’s committee yesterday that average response times are down from 36 minutes to 18 minutes provincewide.

Crossman attributes the improvement to the use of a fixed-wing transport ambulance that transfers patients longer distances and clinical programs such as one that frees up vehicles by allowing paramedics to discharge some less seriously injured patients at the scene of their treatment rather than taking them to hospital.

Last September, provincial auditor general Kim Adair released a report that found average response times had grown between two and five per cent annually between 2017 and 2022.

 

 

Security patrollers in Peggy’s Cove are keeping a watchful eye for visitors who wander too close to the water’s edge.  The program to have eyes on the coast comes after a 23-year-old man was killed in 2022 after getting swept into the ocean by a wave.  The President of the Nova Scotia Lifesaving Society says locals have called for a posted lifeguard at Peggy’s Cove.  But he says the strength of the waves combined with the ocean’s current and rocky conditions make it too hazardous for even the strongest swimmers