Letter to Honourable Michelle Thompson and Honourable Premier Tim Houston March 8, 2026

www.tryhealingarts.ca

H-ealing A-rts R-econciling P-eoples

March 8, 2026

Happy International Women’s Day, Honourable Michelle Thompson & Honourable Tim Houston:

I write on behalf of HARP The People’s Press (www.tryhealingarts.ca), Nova Scotia’s independent multi-media publishing house and shareholder-owned Community Interest Company, dedicated to the healing arts for health equity.

After the huge rallies across Nova Scotia on March 5^th, how can you still defend your budget cuts that disproportionately harm the most vulnerable and marginalized people of Nova Scotia?  You seem to have hardened your position on cuts to non-profits, arts, culture and heritage, mental health, Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian programs, the environment and climate change and…and…   As your cuts target women’s services and programs, including those related to violence against women, I am writing you, Michelle and Tim, on purpose on this day, as my HARP partner and husband John Graham-Pole don our purples to wear to the Taste of Solidarity tea taking place at Coady Institute’s Marjorie Desmond Hall.  Remember Marjorie Desmond as you propose cutting programs and services for African Nova Scotians.

Take a look at the creative genius of some real persons—your own constituents—who are HARP writers and artists from Nova Scotia, Indigenous communities, across Canada and the US, featured in the 50 or more HARP publications since 2018, spanning fiction and non-fiction, print, e-books, audio books, documentary films, and CD’s.  All representing the healing arts for health equity.  

2. Megan Maginley, an artist and writer who self-identifies as a “lovely creative autistic force of nature,” created The Ballerina Boy in her dedicated art studio at L’Arche Antigonish.   Here she is depositing her royalty cheque at East Coast Credit Union, Antigonish.

 

 

Your cuts assault education for disability support programs, caregiver benefits, and volunteer programs in long-term care homes.  Anne Camozzi decries the cuts to the Nova Scotia Research Incentive Program ($151,000 -100%) and the Community Transportation Assistance Program and Strategic Community Transit Investments (20% reduction). “There’s no other way to get to Halifax for medical appointments or for local appts with my wheelchair, provided by the province. …Those of us in wheelchairs and many others for other reasons, require door-to-door service when there’s snow or rain, or important on time appts, or when we are ill. Antigonish Community Transit is an essential service.”

3. Eva Bertrand Brunelle, Antigonish artist and mental health advocate, created the cover art for John Graham-Pole’s book, Blood Work.

4. Tara Hunt, Antigonish artist and author of From Shattered Toward Whole: Healing from Emotional Trauma.

Your budget cuts over $2.6 million from mental health, addictions, and support programs. These cuts affect trauma-informed care, e-mental health initiatives, recovery houses, and programs related to the 2020 mass shooting ($110,000). Your budget cuts from $200,000 to $160,000 directly affect unmet needs for northern Nova Scotia’s mental health, grief and bereavement support, as well as Sydney and Halifax’s domestic violence courts ($15,000 each).

5. The People’s Photo Album: A Pictorial Genealogy of the Antigonish Movement, published in 2018 as a tribute to the StFX Extension Department’s 90th anniversary, celebrates the rich heritage of this social justice movement.  It highlights the Martin Street Housing Cooperative in a poster created by third-generation youth Chantal and Jordan Phee as a school project.  Rose Murphy later created a CBC Halifax radio documentary on this Cooperative.

Your proposed budget effectively dismantles African Culture Activities, African Nova Scotia Affairs-Community Engagement, African Heritage Month Proclamation, and Child and Family Wellbeing -Community Resource Support (Association of Black Social Workers), cutting $25,000 from Promoting Leadership in Health for African NS Dalhousie University (100%), and $90,000 (100%) from the Afrocentric Summer Scholar Program for African Nova Scotia Youth – Nova Scotia’s young people like Chantal and Jordan.

6. Sara avMaat, Antigonish artist, writer, and climate activist, wrote Hope Unleashed: A Climate Action Comic; with proceeds to Ecology Action Centre and Nova Scotia Nature Trust.

Your cuts assail planetary health through dismantling grants and programs in Energy Resource Development, Sustainability of Applied Sciences grants, the NS Climate Change Fund (ending 2026-27), Ecological Forestry Implementation, Biospring/Greenspring, and Marine Division program funding for regional services and public education.The massive loss of scientific knowledge that comes with the shocking announcement that you are eliminating the Wildlife Division of the Department of Natural Resource and sacking seven managers, in order to prioritize the economic over the ecological, is unconscionable. We will no longer have a department dedicated to protecting the unique ecosystems and habitats of Nova Scotia.  The health of game and non-game populations of wildlife in Nova Scotia is in jeopardy.

7. Elder John R. Prosper and Settler Dorothy A. Lander launched Mi’kmaw Fiddler Joe Marble Plays to St. Anne: A Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed-Seeing Pilgrimage on the feast day of St. Anne at Walnek/Summerside (July 26, 2023). It is the only joint memoir by and elder and a settler in the service of truth and reconciliation.  Elder John R. writes of his escape from Shubenacadie Residential School, and of the importance of St. Anne’s Church, built in 1867 for the community of Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation.  Proceeds from this publication go to the St. Anne’s Church Restoration Fund.

Your proposed cuts decimate the programs of the Office of L’Inu Affairs, and make meaningless the claim that “we are all treaty people” committed to truth and reconciliation:  $30,000 from the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre (100%); $40,000 from Development and Program Support (100%); $27,000 from Treaty Day Awards Ceremony and Mi’kmaw History Month (100%); Treaty Education Lead and Administrative Support; $558,000 from Tripartite Forum (100%); $100,000 from Aboriginal Community Development (100%); $25,000 from Atlantic Indigenous Economic Development Integrated Program (AIEDIRP) – 100%; $50,000 from Clean Leadership Summer Internship (100%); $10,000 from Annual Mi’kmaw Summer Games (100%); Mi’kmaw Language Revitalization Strategy; Moose Management Initiative. And particularly disheartening, given your commitment to “fix heathcare” and honour treaty rights, why are you cutting $215,000 from Tajikeimik, which means “to be healthy,” and was (yes, past tense) a developing health and wellness organization leading the transformation of healthcare for the 13 Mi’kmaw First Nations in Nova Scotia. In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, it sought to shift control of health services to the Mi’kmaq, focusing on culturally safe, wholistic, and community-led care that blends traditional knowledge with Western approaches.

These budget cuts hurt HARP directly, given the reduction of $700,000 to the Publishers Assistance Program (100%). Also, the operational support for the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia reduced from $120,000 to $96,000 (20%), and the continued diminution of operational funding for our public libraries.  Fr. Jimmy Tompkins and Nora Bateson would be heartbroken.

I am mailing two copies of Imagine Antigonish, one for each of you to read and gain greater understanding of these many devastating cuts to real people.

Imagine Antigonish: A Photographic Inquiry into Health Equity makes the case that the cooperative arts underpin all the social determinants of health equity — food security, income security, social support systems, and all the many -isms of race, gender, class, and age. 

In full understanding of the pressures on you to create financial stability across all sectors, while meeting the needs of the people of Nova Scotia,

Dorothy Lander

dorothy@tryhealingarts.ca

Tel. 902-863-0396