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Opposition parties say government owes it to Nova Scotians to be more transparent on its progress in implementing recommendations from an inquiry into a former soldier who killed his family and himself in 2017.
They made the comments Tuesday after a veterans affairs committee meeting that looked into the government’s progress following the inquiry into the Lionel Desmond tragedy. In January 2024, the inquiry issued 25 recommendations including for the province to improve health access for Black Nova Scotians and ramp up funding to address intimate-partner violence.
A government-run website aimed at tracking progress on this work launched this past January and says efforts are underway on 12 of the 25 recommendations. But Kim Stewart, associate deputy minister of the Department of Mental Health, told the committee that the government is actually working to address all 25.
The NDP’s African Nova Scotian affairs critic, Suzy Hansen, said communities have been waiting a long time for details about these efforts, and a progress-reporting website that does not reference 13 of the 25 recommendations is “not good enough.”
She said the Progressive Conservative government needs to clearly show Nova Scotians what progress has been made and what work has yet to begin.
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“It’s great to see some work (is ongoing), but it’s really not convincing for a lot of people in community on what work is being done,” Hansen told reporters after the meeting.
Liberal member Iain Rankin agreed, saying the current model for tracking progress is insufficient. “We can’t track the work that they’re doing, or the collaboration with the federal government, all the work that has to happen to complete all 25 recommendations,” he said Tuesday.
Hansen asked senior officials at the meeting how many Black psychologists and psychiatrists have been hired in the province since the report was released, and they could not provide her with an answer. She said this raised further questions surrounding the government’s openness on progress.
“Communities are feeling like… there’s not enough support, there’s not enough representation. Black psychologists and psychiatrists, they don’t see folks representative to themselves in that field …. So to not have that information is, really, kind of a letdown,” she said.
Desmond was an infantryman with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and depression who saw intense combat in Afghanistan in 2007.
On Jan. 3, 2017, he purchased a semi-automatic rifle and fatally shot his wife, their daughter, his mother and then himself in their home in Upper Big Tracadie, N.S.
Part of the fatality inquiry into the deaths explored the challenges faced by rural African Nova Scotians, like Desmond, when attempting to access mental health services. It recommended that the Health Department provide more virtual care to rural Black communities, and hire more Black mental health workers to provide culturally informed care.
The inquiry learned that although Desmond received four years of mental health treatment while he was in the military, his mental health was still poor when he was medically released from the Armed Forces in 2015. The inquiry was told the 33-year-old former corporal did not receive any therapeutic treatment during the four months after he returned home to Upper Big Tracadie in August 2016, and the inquiry heard from several provincial health professionals who said they were unable to review Desmond’s federal health records once he returned to his home province.
The inquiry called on the province to work with federal agencies to ensure veterans diagnosed with PTSD or other health issues have their health information linked to their provincial records, and recommended Nova Scotia’s chief firearms officer receive additional funding to conduct ongoing checks of the mental health status of licence holders. These recommendations, among others, are not addressed on the government website tracking its response to the inquiry.
Nova Scotia has invested in a Black community support line that provides support and resource navigation, and has helped establish an Afrocentric bachelor of social work cohort at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
The province has also launched a gender-based violence awareness campaign aimed at youth, provides the public sector with bystander intervention training, and is budgeted to spent about $150 million on intimate-partner violence programming in the 2025-26 year.
Stewart told reporters Tuesday that government is “very committed” to addressing all recommendations and “are equally as committed to being transparent about how we are responding,” and will be continuously providing updates.
She said some of the recommendations are long-term efforts. “They aren’t going to be done quickly. It’s going to take years. Progress is being made, and we will continue to report on those on the website.”
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