A new study from Statistics Canada found that people with a disability are more likely to live in poverty and nearly a quarter of disabled people in the country are low-income earners.

The report, which came out in August 2017 but is based on data from 2014, says that approximately a fifth of all Canadians reported having some type of disability, either mental or physical. Nine per cent of non-disabled people are low income earners, but over double (23 per cent) the number of disabled people live in poverty.

The study is based on data from the 2014 Longitudinal and International Study of Adults, which collects information on Canadians’ jobs, education, health, and family.

Warren Reed, an accessibility advocate in Halifax, said he agrees that poverty is an issue for people with disabilities, but said the conclusions of the study are misleading. He said someone’s disability itself is not the cause of poverty, rather, the cause is the barriers to employment they face because of being disabled. He said an example of this might be something physical preventing someone with a disability from working there, like a step up before entering a store or office.

“I really object to having my problem associated with the concept of poverty, it’s not my fault, it’s not my disability’s fault, it’s the fault of the system and its many, many components,” he said.

Reed is also the co-founder of the James McGregor Stewart Society, a Nova Scotia based organization that encourages the participation of disabled people in society. He said the real issue is that having a disability can make it much more difficult to get an education or find a job where you can work. He said there are issues for disabled people who want to take public transportation and the government-run accessible transit system.

“If you can’t get to a place because you live in the boondocks… then you can’t get a job and you’re kind of stuck in a low income state,” Reed said.

A Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission case from June 2017 dealt with the issue of disability accommodations in the workplace. Sandra Wakeham, a Nova Scotia Department of Environment employee, developed chronic pain as a result of being in two car accidents. She alleged that accommodations for her disability were not made by her employer, which made her pain worse. As a result of not being accommodated properly, she had to take time off work on short-term disability on a number of occasions. She was eventually left unable to work and without income.

Statistics Canada found that half of disabled people living alone are low-income earners, while only eight per cent of those who are married fall into that category. It also found the more severe someone’s disability is, the more likely they are to be poor. For the purpose of the study, “low income” was defined as someone living in a household where the income is under half the median Canadian family income, around $76,000.

The Nova Scotia provincial government recently introduced new accessibility legislation. Part of the purpose stated in the law itself is to remove barriers to employment for disabled people.

Gerry Post, the Department of Justice’s executive director of accessibility, said in an interview the law will help address the trend of disabled people living poverty, but it is still “early days.”

“The issue is not that you have a disability,” he said. “It is a societal issue that people with a disability are not being accommodated by employers.”

Post said more people have to recognize issues with disability accommodations to lower the number of disabled people living in poverty.

“There’s attitude barriers, physical barriers, communication barriers, all sorts of barriers,” he said. “Once you remove those barriers you will lift those people out of poverty.”

Bedford, Nova Scotia might have the highest number of Spanish-speaking people in the Halifax Regional Municipality, but you wouldn’t know it just by walking down the main street.

Sixty five of the almost 1,400 Spanish speakers in the HRM live near Bedford, the highest of any area in the municipality. The number has almost doubled since the last census in 2011, when it was only 35 people.

Magali Dam-Mazzi, acting president of the Latispánica Cultural Association, said that despite the increase, the Spanish-speaking community in Halifax is not united. Mazzi said the majority of people from Latin America come to the city for work and to find a job.

“Most of the people who come from Latin America are middle to low class so they are spread everywhere,” she said. “We don’t also have a big restaurant, there is no community centre that would get us all together.”

Grant Simpson, a fruit seller with a stand on Bedford Highway, said he hasn’t seen the increase in Spanish-speakers in the area first hand. He said he has, however, seen a number of Middle Eastern and Asian people, as well as vacationers.
According to Statistics Canada’s 2016 census, 1,375 people in Halifax said Spanish was their mother tongue, versus 1,135 in 2011. This is an increase of over 21 per cent, higher than the national average, which was just over 12 per cent in the last five years.

Mazzi, who moved to Halifax from Peru 10 years ago, said the goal of Latispánica is to promote Hispanic culture in the city and create a sense of community for newcomers from Latin American countries, like Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. The organization hosts a fundraising gala every year and holds cooking and dance workshops.

The Hispanic community is stronger in places like Montreal and Ontario, according to Mazzi, who is also a Spanish professor at Dalhousie University. She said one of the reasons for this is the lack of any official presence or consul in Atlantic Canada of a Spanish-speaking country, which can host speakers and events.

“If you go to the embassy [website] in Ottawa you see they do so many beautiful things that really helps to maintain the culture and the roots… But nothing comes here,” she said. “They stay over there. It’s very bad.”

Since the last census in 2011, Spanish was the only European language in Canada that saw growth in the number of speakers. Just over 495,000 people listed it as their mother tongue in 2016, around 55,000 more than in 2011. German fell by almost six percent, while Italian fell by almost seven per cent. Even though it increased, Spanish fell to fifth place among most-spoken immigrant languages –languages other than French and English- in Canada.

Mandarin Chinese saw the most growth, almost 140 per cent in the last five years. It became the most spoken immigrant language in the country with 610,835 people who speak it as their mother tongue. Cantonese, Punjabi, Filipino and Spanish make up the rest of the top five.

Tim Outhit, the city councillor for Bedford, said he hasn’t seen the increase in Spanish-speaking people in the area first-hand, but has seen growth in other ethnic communities in the area. He said one of the reasons for this is relatively affordable housing in the riding.

“You think of Halifax of having a large Arabic and Lebanese and Greek communities but we’re also seeing Indian and African,” he said. “You see growth and diversity in general, which I think is just great.”

Lawyers in a Nova Scotia class action lawsuit against the Canadian military will seek to put a hold on the case while they join a class action filed in Federal Court against the Canadian Armed Forces.

According to Kate Boyle, one of the lawyers in the Nova Scotia case, plaintiffs in four provinces are seeking permission to sue the CAF together for discrimination.

Boyle represents Glynis Rogers, the lead plaintiff in a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed against the Canadian Forces in November 2016. She said it made sense that her firm join with others on the case in Federal Court, which was filed after Rogers’ case. The proposed class action would combine suits from Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, and British Colombia.

The amalgamated class action includes the case of Sherry Heyder, a Thunder Bay, Ont. reservist who first joined the military in 1988. According to her statement of claim, Heyder was discriminated against based on her gender and removed from basic training because she is a woman.

In her original statement of claim, Rogers alleges she experienced harassment and sexual assault by other members of the military while at the Royal Military College (RMC), in Kingston, Ont., and while stationed at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Borden. In her statement of claim, she alleges that belittling comments were made about her when she won an award at RMC and she was raped by a male CF member at CFB Borden in 2012. The male member was initially court-martialled, but appealed the decision and was later acquitted by a military tribunal.

Boyle said the decision to put a stay on proceedings on the Rogers case in Nova Scotia ensures there won’t be overlap with the case in Federal Court. Combining the cases will also ensure they don’t get bogged down trying to decide which one can proceed and move the issue forward.

She said they have informed the judge in the Rogers case they would be seeking the stay two weeks ago, but it has not been confirmed yet. The case would remain in the court system but not move forward for the duration of the stay.

Jonathan Shapiro, a law professor at Dalhousie University, said it is uncommon for class action lawsuits to amalgamate into larger ones, but in this case it makes sense as it will put increased pressure on the government to settle rather than go to trial. He said this case follows a recent string of lawsuits filed against the CAF having to do with gender issues.

“There’s some smoke because everyone understands the military has traditionally treated women very badly,” he said. “There’s definitely something there, but whether or not the class action will succeed, impossible to say.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the CAF said the military does not tolerate discrimination or harassment. They said the Department of National Defence is responding to the lawsuit and and the issue of harassment continues to be an ongoing priority.

Shapiro said the military is an environment where abuses are prone to take place because it has traditionally been male-dominated. Despite this, he said it is hard to pin down a specific incident, which is what a class action lawsuit needs to succeed.

Shapiro said it is unlikely that the case will make it all the way to trial. He said the majority of class actions settle out of court, but that process could take up to 10 years. The amount of evidence and moving parts means the cases do not move quickly.

A certification hearing will be held in July 2018 to determine whether the four separate cases can be combined into a single class action.

A medical marijuana company that recently opened a new clinic in Nova Scotia has posted over a $1 million loss in its last quarter, according to financial documents. The loss came after a rapid increase in spending over the same time last year.

Canabo Medical Inc.’s expenses rose by over 300 per cent from the end of January to the end of April 2017, compared to those months in 2016.

Julia Sawicki, an accounting professor at Dalhousie University, said this is likely because the company is only just starting to get up and running. It has yet to post a profit.

Canabo Medical Inc. by mckied on TradingView.com

Julia Sawicki, an accounting professor at Dalhousie University, says it’s normal for companies like Canabo Medical Inc. to lose money when they’re starting out.

“In 2016 they really weren’t spending that much money… now it seems like they’re online and paying salaries… expanding facilities,” she said.

Sawicki said it is normal for a new company to lose money in its first few years as it starts business, but it is hard to determine where it is going in the future. Canabo Medical Inc. did not respond to a request for comment on its financials despite several attempted contacts.

The company makes money in three ways: medical marijuana consultations, collecting data for research, and selling cannabis related products, according to the recent quarterly report. Most of its revenue is generated by medical consultation fees.

The company operates 22 clinics around Canada under the name Cannabinoid Medical Clinic. It operates two clinics in Nova Scotia, one in Halifax on Spring Garden Road and a new one in Wolfville. Others clinics are in Toronto, Ottawa, St. John’s, and Vancouver. It serves 20,000 patients across the country, according to the company’s website.

Canabo Medical also started selling shares to the public, which allowed it to raise around $8 million. The company lists this as a cash asset in its financials, while last year it had only around $2.5 million in cash.

In the six months before April 30, 2017 the company reported spending over $5 million in expenses. Around $2.4 million went towards the cost of starting to sell shares to the public, which is a “one-off” expense, according to Sawicki, and is not representative of its long-term financials.

One of the most dramatic spending increases for the company in its last quarter was on marketing and advertising, which was $275,848, compared to $805 during the same time in 2016. Travel costs also rose to $54,848 from $16,465, according to the quarterly report.

Sawicki said this type of spending is not uncommon for a new company that is getting on its feet.

“They seem pretty normal for a firm that really wasn’t doing that much for the first six months to a firm that’s really cranking up now,” she said.

In the management discussion and analysis, the company states that the reason for the dramatic increase in expenses is due to its clinic expansion and new salaries and benefits. In April 2017 Canabo Medical paid around $355,000 in salaries and benefits, but no amount is stated for April 2016.

The document says the company employs 28 people in total at it clinics and seven corporate staff. Canabo expects this number, and the salary expenses associated with it, to increase over the next year as it expands, according to the documents.

While the federal government has said it will legalize recreational marijuana by 2018, Canabo Medical Inc. does not anticipate this will have a significant impact on its business, according to the discussion of the quarterly report.

The next report the company is scheduled to release is for the period ending July 30, 2017.