Ardel Smith comes from a long history of Black Canadian aircraft pilots. Smith, who grew up in Cole Harbour and has family ties in North Preston, is the first Black aircraft pilot from Nova Scotia to fly helicopters. “I’ve been all across Canada, I’ve met other Black pilots, whether they fly airplanes or helicopters,” Smith […]
The “Right to Know” in Nova Scotia often goes right to “no”
It’s almost “Right to Know Week” in Nova Scotia, but that doesn’t mean that access to information in the province is something to celebrate, as a recent freedom of information request illustrates.
In this article, Part 1 of a two-part series about the state of the public’s “right to know” in Nova Scotia, the focus is on what happened when the Halifax Examiner submitted a Freedom of Information (FOIPOP) request to the province about whether it would agree to protect the French River watershed — the water […]
Atlantic Gold’s imaginary conservation land
In 2008, Atlantic Gold was given provincial approval for the gigantic Touquoy open pit gold mine with the condition that within 4 years the company buy and give the province nearby land for conservation purposes. 13 years later, that condition is still unmet, and the province is making no real effort to enforce it.
Atlantic Gold has just announced that in “late spring/early summer 2021” it will be undertaking a new Class 1 Environmental Assessment for modifications to its open pit Touquoy gold mine in Moose River. Among other things, the company wants to expand its waste rock storage area that is already sky-high, prepare to store tailings in […]
How the Biodiversity Act was killed
Forest Nova Scotia, which represents the biggest forestry players, gets an awful lot of public money — including millions of dollars to administer a forest roads program panned by the auditor general. It also has a paid lobbyist swaying the policies of the very government that funds it, and who started working on its behalf just as the Biodiversity Act was gutted.
Last month Forest Nova Scotia, an industry group representing the most powerful shapers of forestry policy in this province, spearheaded a propaganda campaign against the Biodiversity Act, which the Liberal government of Iain Rankin had introduced on March 11, calling it legislation that would “preserve and protect Nova Scotia’s unique ecosystems, wild animals, plants, lakes […]
Atlantic Gold’s lobbying blitz
The company is now in court on charges of harming the environment, regulators are casting a wary eye at its plans for future environmental protection, and investors are getting worried, so Atlantic Gold has hired a lobbyist to fast track federal approval of its Nova Scotia projects.
Last year it was a propaganda blitz. For several weeks in the spring of 2020, Atlantic Gold, which operates an open pit gold mine in Moose River in the Halifax Regional Municipality and wants to open three more along the Eastern Shore, bombarded people in Nova Scotia with its PR. Atlantic Gold’s owner, Australia’s St […]
“We are down to our last month’s rent”: naturalists say clearcutting is accelerating
“I worked at the Bowater-Mersey mill for 38 years, and our provincial government makes Bowater look like an environmentalist!” said Brian Muise. Muise, a member of the Queens County Fish and Game Association, made his comment at the annual meeting of the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters in Truro on Saturday. Muise is […]
Peter Kelly is back in the news
Morning File, Thursday, October 25, 2018
1. OPOR “This is a story about a potential half-billion-dollar health-care services contract, alleged cozy dinners between bidders and bureaucrats, an unusual legal letter and accusations the government’s tender process was unfair,” writes Chronicle Herald reporter Paul Schneidereit: The planned purchase of a new provincewide electronic health record (EHR) system — expected to cost in the hundreds […]
We spent millions of dollars on the Argyle Street reconstruction project and forgot to put in washrooms and water fountains
Morning File, Friday, July 6, 2018
News 1. Cabinet shuffle This item is written by Joan Baxter. Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is no more. Yesterday, Premier Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government renamed it the Department of Lands and Forestry (not, however, Lands and Forests, something lamented by the insightful Facebook page devoted to Nova Scotia’s “Woods and Water”). Timberlea-Prospect […]