Challenge needed
New faces in politics need to take on the old guard
Of 11 first-time MLAs elected last May, eight are women and they are, far and away, the best thing to come of Nova Scotia’s most recent general election.
The compliment is gratuitous and worth what it cost, but among this class may be the talent and tenacity to change the trajectory of Nova Scotia, for change it must. One or more of these rookie legislators needs to challenge the old order.
Absent a full accounting and the chips that fall, or heads that roll, the Gabrielle Horne case will be but a cautionary tale. Its lessons are the worst of Nova Scotia, with echoes faint but clear of a system that failed 26 miners at Westray, justice that wrongly convicted and imprisoned Donald Marshall, Jr., and, more audibly, a state hierarchy that’s self-preserving first, public-serving later.
The Nova Scotia that persecuted Gabby Horne is Mississippi with snow, not for the usual racist connotation, although misogyny played a part, but for the official acquiescence necessary for those and other injustices to prevail.
It’s the Nova Scotia where, with apologies to Stephen Stills, you “step out of line, the man come and take you away,” which is pretty much what happened to Dr. Horne.
She paid with her reputation, 16 years of her life’s work and a legal bill that may yet crush her, all for refusing to kowtow to male egos and the elite cabal that backed them to the hilt of the knife in her back.
But don’t take my word for it. John Sullivan is among the most respected physicians in Nova Scotia with good reason. He’s a top-tier heart surgeon and academic, a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medalist and a former president of Doctors Nova Scotia.
He’s one of those rare Nova Scotians — there’s a list, but that’s another column — who have attained the pinnacle without joining the club and are unafraid of its vindictive grasp.
He’ll tell you that Dr. Horne’s patients love her and that her trouble started in 2002 because senior male colleagues miscalculated and thought they could bully a younger, more junior female.
They couldn’t, but the elite cabal sided with them not her, and Capital Health and its successor, the Nova Scotia Health Authority, paid lawyers untold millions to get Dr. Horne back in line and send a clear message to anyone else who might stand for right against their wrong.
The cautionary tale worries Dr. Sullivan deeply.
Great researchers won’t come to a place where what happened to Dr. Horne can happen to anyone who withholds obeisance from malevolent authority, her original sin. For that and that alone, her hospital privileges were varied by means intended to protect patients. Imagine the devastating effect that sanction has on a doctor.
Despite two independent and thorough reviews that exonerated her unequivocally, it still took Capital Health four years to admit its mistake, and lawyer-up some more to drag her through another dozen years of legal hell.
Dr. Sullivan said that horrendous process, compounded by the parsimony of Nova Scotia’s appeal court which awarded her $800,000 in damages, will have a chilling effect, make quality recruitment next to impossible and give pause to other professionals who might challenge official iniquity.
The bad, old Nova Scotia that tyrannized Gabby Horne meets metaphorically amid smoky leather in an exclusive club where, once admitted, members won’t betray club rules for fear of exclusion.
It will be interesting to see whether first-term New Democrats Claudia Chender, Susan Leblanc and Tammy Martin want in the club, or want to change the rules and shake up the old order.
They sit in caucus meetings with Dave Wilson, who must have heard something of Gabby Horne while serving in Darrell Dexter’s cabinet, especially as health minister. That government, like its successor and its predecessor, didn’t see fit to rock Capital Health’s boat in the name of justice for Dr. Horne.
Among the newcomers in the Tory caucus, Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin wants to become leader and, presumably, premier, the job that comes with rule-changing privileges. Maybe she has what it takes to embarrass the current government into doing the right thing.
The right thing, in this case, is a full financial accounting for 16 years of lawyering amassed against Dr. Horne, disclosure of who had the power but failed to end the persecution and why, and the appropriate actions flowing therefrom.
Or should we all learn the words to “Dixie”?
Jim Vibert is a journalist and writer who formerly consulted or worked for five Nova Scotia governments. He now keeps a close and critical eye on provincial and regional powers.