Halifax’s Operation Red Nose cancelled
Posted Nov 2, 2012 05:28:30 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Halifax partygoers looking for a free, safe ride home this holiday season will not be able to rely on Operation Red Nose.
The free car service has been cancelled this year due to problems securing insurance coverage.
“One day after Halloween, (we) are not able to stage the program for 2012,” said regional coordinator Corinne MacLellan. “That’s not to say we won’t be looking at coming back, bigger and better in 2013. But, for this year, we’ve got to regroup.”
This would have been the eighth year the local chapter of the national program would have operated in Halifax.
Partiers who’d had too much to drink would call Operation Red Nose for a ride home. Two volunteers would show up, one to drive the caller home in their own vehicle and the other to follow in a second vehicle.
“There are a whole lot of layers of liability associated there,” MacLellan told the Rick Howe Show Thursday. “It’s not as easy as a blanket policy.”
And therein lies the problem. This year the program doesn’t have enough funding to cover the insurance costs.
In previous years, Operation Red Nose Canada offered a blanket insurance policy, which is not being offered this year under the national organization’s changes.
MacLellan said the rising cost of fuel has also been a struggle.
The Sydney and Truro chapters were cancelled last year as well.
