Halifax needs more funding for the arts, especially for renovating the galleries, theatres and buildings that house them. According to the latest data from Statistics Canada, Nova Scotia does not receive any steady funding for maintaining or improving these buildings, from either the provincial or federal government. The data shows there was no money provided to support these buildings since 2005.

These buildings, theatres and galleries are actually few and far between in Halifax. They would include spaces like the Dalhousie Arts Centre, Neptune Theatre, Alderney Landing Theatre, The Veith Street Gallery, The Khyber Art Gallery, and several other smaller venues. These facilities are specifically for visual, literary and performing arts activities.

The map below shows the different spaces in Halifax used for arts and culture activities and details about them.

Lack of funding, lack of clarity
The municipal government does not provide any money for these venues either, according to Dawn Sloane, Councillor for District 12 Halifax Downtown. Sloane is focusing her campaign for the 2012 municipal election on the need to improve the arts and culture sector in Halifax, and she says a lot of problems are generated by not having appropriate space for arts activities.

“The structures that we have right now are very limiting,” she says. “It needs to change to reflect how other cities support the arts.”

Sloane explains that the spaces currently being used for large performances and arts shows aren’t actually arts venues by definition. She lists the Halifax Metro Centre and Halifax’s Grand Parade Square as examples of this. These venues are often host to large concerts, shows and various types of performances but one is actually a civic entertainment centre and the other is a historic parade square.

“It just doesn’t work that way in other cities,” says Sloane. “They have the appropriate spaces for each event.

Councilor Sloane is not the only one pushing for more government focus on space for arts and culture activities. A report that was produced in 2007 shows Nova Scotia needs to improve its arts and culture venues on every level, according to the respondents of the survey. It explains that even the policies, inventories, and programs that focus on these buildings for the arts are only vague at best.

The report is called The State of Cultural Infrastructure in the Atlantic Region and it is the most recent report available that focuses specifically on arts venues. The report was produced by researcher Keith McPhail for the Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities at Simon Fraser University.

The author of the study surveyed all people who are responsible for running and operating the arts and culture buildings, both government and non-government. According to the author, the responses show a serious lack of organization and a need for more information.

The author explains that non-government respondents of the survey said securing funding for these buildings and spaces has been a challenge.According to the report, these respondents felt that arts venues in Halifax “did not usually receive the same support as multi-purpose spaces, indicating that non-cultural reasons for support are more heavily favoured.”

The lack of funding is the only other problem in the report presented as being more serious than the lack of knowledge. According to the report, “a number of government respondents and reports did suggest that facilities were underfunded and it was at, or becoming, a critical situation.”

The possibility of public support
The Bella Rose Arts Centre in Halifax West High School is mentioned in the report as an example of a publicly funded arts centre. Despite the fact that the venue has seen funding from all levels of government in the past, it currently runs its own fundraising campaign to be able to cover maintenance and equipment costs that are necessary for completing the space. As a result of this process, the centre has taken years to develop, according to the report.

Despite this example, the Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is still pushing for more publicly funded arts venues. The independent research organization released an alternative municipal budget on August 28th, in which they discuss their own priorities for the city of Halifax.

The budget recommends Halifax invest in more community-owned and operated arts buildings. According to the organization, “Better interpretation of public art and art institutions and practices would encourage the public to engage and participate, generating an engaged, active and safe community.”

Public funding is only one possible approach to the money problems. As Sloane mentions, Halifax could benefit from just a clearer understanding of which particular buildings are for the arts, what their policies are, who is responsible for sustaining them and who is responsible for securing their funding.

Small steps towards improvement
These points are also raised in a  more recent report, a Cultural Framework that was produced in 2011. This Cultural Framework is a study that seeks to analyze the arts and culture sector as  a whole, and identify where its strengths and weaknesses are in hopes of improving. The framework was produced by a Kelco Consulting Ltd. for the Communities, Culture and Heritage Department of the provincial government.

This framework, though released five years after the infrastructure report, talks about  the same problems. According to the framework, Nova Scotia still needs to determine the availability and the roles of infrastructure for its arts and culture sector.

Sloane also says that these problems are still not being discussed, and she blames some of it on a lack of participation from the local government.

“There are ways the municipality could be helping (to improve arts venues) but they just don’t,” she says. “If one of these suggestions comes up, we’ll stifle it. We turn it into a complex rubix cube that no one can solve.”

Sloane’s recommendations for improving the situation are based on making small changes. She suggests  making improvements and renovations to the existing arts buildings, and keeping the discussion alive.

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Health professionals in Nova Scotia are hard pressed to help mothers in the province reach World Health Organization recommendations of six months of exclusive breastfeeding – largely because of a lack of information.

Exclusive breastfeeding, also recommended by the Canadian Pediatric Society, has been linked to reduced illness in children and babies, including fewer ear infections and much lower rates of gastro-intestinal illness. There are some studies that show that improved immune system responses last well into childhood, and that breastfed children may even be smarter than those who receive formula.

Is the formula good enough?

Unlike the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which regularly publishes annual breastfeeding report cards to show how states are doing, Public Health in Nova Scotia must count on health indicator data collected by Statistics Canada in its annual Canadian Community Health Survey, which covers a range of health indicators that range from participant’s general perception of their health, to whether they smoke, to whether they wear a bike helmet. Just two questions relating to breastfeeding are asked.

Respondents are selected to represent Canadians in general, rather than Canadian mothers in particular, and the breastfeeding questions are asked of any mother who has had a baby in the past five years.

The StatCan data shows that 80% of Nova Scotian mothers breastfeed at least once, but that only 27% continue to do so exclusively for the full six months.

Because of the breadth of the survey, the robustness of the breastfeeding data is questionable, says Holly D’Angelo Scott, Senior Epidemiologist, Public Health at Capital District Health Authority.

“As a district and a province, we should be collecting our own information on a regular basis,” she says. “If you talk to moms, five years is a long time to try to remember when you stopped breastfeeding.”

Local Efforts

Hospitals throughout the province collect data on how many mothers are breastfeeding when they leave the hospital, but very little is collected after that.

“We don’t really know when it falls off,” she says. “I want to know whether [mothers] stop breastfeeding at two weeks or two months. We also want to know why. What’s going on at this point? […] That would help us figure out what we should be doing.”

Statistics Canada collected specific breastfeeding data in the late 90s and again in 2003, but since then has rolled those questions into the Canadian Community Health Survey.

In contrast to StatCan’s general health data, the United States not only keeps excellent records on breastfeeding, but is committed to making that information publicly available in an easy-to understand way. According to the Centers for Disease Control’s Breastfeeding Report Card for 2012, the rate of mothers who breastfeed at least once is similar to Nova Scotia’s numbers in most states. The CDC not only publishes the data regularly, but gives access to the detailed data to any researcher who requests it. It also looks into factors like access to lactation consultants, La Leche League leaders, and early introduction of formula, which allows health educators to zero in on concrete things they can do to improve rates.

View the CDC’s Report Cards on Breastfeeding:

Nova Scotia has a breastfeeding program where Public Health Nurses call mothers in the first few days when they return from the hospital. The help can be invaluable to new mothers who may be uncertain about whether their newborn babies are getting enough to eat, and may be having trouble establishing a good breastfeeding relationship without the constant support of the hospital environment.

But D’Angelo-Scott wonders if it is the only time mothers need help.

To help find out, Capital Health has just launched a pilot test survey to help address the shortage of data collected by StatCan and the Department of health. The pilot will survey mothers across the district about breastfeeding when they leave the hospital, then at two weeks, six weeks, two months, and six months later. D’Angelo-Scott aims to get enough responses that she can look at data down to the community health board level, if not individual neighbourhoods.

But for now, the province is counting on the StatCan numbers and breastfeeding initiation data collected by hospitals to take steps to improve breastfeeding rates. Nova Scotia’s Breastfeeding Policy was formally signed in 2005, and the Capital Region Health District launched a campaign called “The First 6 Weeks” in 2009. The IWK Hospital, the province’s largest maternity and children’s hospital, has been working on achieving “Baby-Friendly” status, even hosting a Breastfeeding Conference later this year.

A mother’s perspective

Public Health programs, like their home visit, drop-in clinic and phone support launched as a result of the 2005 strategy seem to provide help where it’s needed, at least for those who’re willing to ask.

“I think I had what I needed, between public health, friends and family who had breastfed, supportive husband and a little girl who seemed to figure it all out pretty easily,” says Heather Ternoway, who is just beginning to wean her 11-month old daughter, Helen.

She says she knows mothers who stopped breastfeeding when their babies were still young, often “for lifestyle reasons” and others who breastfed for several years.
“I think it all depends on your personality, your baby, your support network and your lifestyle,” Ternoway says.

She notes that compared to some of her friends’ formula-fed babies, Helen seemed to get fewer colds, and to get over them faster. She also hasn’t had many digestive problems.

Ternoway was surprised to hear about the lack of concrete breastfeeding data in the province and expressed hopes that this would change soon.

Where are the numbers?

D’Angelo-Scott notes that there has been a fairly successful project in Cape Breton to collect breastfeeding information at several time periods. But she notes that she only had access to that information because she was working on her PhD at the time.

“We don’t get to see that data. This is part of the problem as well,” she says. “You really can’t compare across the province.”

StatCanada numbers for Nova Scotia’s Health Authorities don’t help. With the exception of the Capital District Health Authority and the Cape Breton District Health Authority, StatCan deems the numbers “too unreliable to publish.”

Looking at the numbers across Canada, Nova Scotia 80% breastfeeding initiation rate is at the low end of the. Only Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Nunavut have lower numbers, with Newfoundland trailing the pack at just 54% of mothers breastfeeding at all.

Statistics Canada: Canadian Community Health Survey

While the data for many provinces is unpublished, Nova Scotian’s 27% six-month exclusive breastfeeding rate trails other provinces’, like those in British Columbia and Manitoba, where rates are 10% higher.

Statistics Canada: Canadian Community Health Survey

Canada’s not alone in sketchy figures. International breastfeeding data is also pretty sparse.

Initiation of breastfeeding figures for 2006 as reported by the World Health Organization:

What’s needed and where do we go from here?

D’Angelo-Scott is optimistic about the pilot project at Capital Health. More important than the numbers, though, is the context they hope to collect, particularly about women’s breastfeeding challenges and reasons for introducing formula.

She noted that an issue that came up in her analysis of the data in Cape Breton is that many women are unaware of how the benefits of breastfeeding might outweigh other lifestyle choices.

“Our moms don’t know things like if you smoke, you should still breastfeed. The benefits outweigh,” she says. “We strongly recommend that you don’t smoke, but it’s not a reason for you not to breastfeed.”

Better information on what keeps people from continuing to breastfeed will help D’Angelo-Scott and her colleagues develop strategies and tools to help support mother and ensure that more babies in Nova Scotia receive the benefits of extended breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding Promotion – A Timeline