Environmental collapse
Weve been wondering if Iain Rankin is serious about the environment. Is he really going to drag Nova Scotia into the contemporary world? Will he help us break our provinces embarrassing addictions to 20th-century anachronisms, like filthy coal, clearcuts and forest monoculture? Will he start making the things of the future, or will we continue to throw bad money and good public land at billionaires, who will continue to build elite golf courses and ant-farm housing developments for the dying society that loves them?
It didnt take long and it didnt take much to find out. Just some ignorant words about environmental legislation, bad old Halifax, and the evil of protecting nature all published in the form of an ad in this newspaper on March 20.
Rankins Astroturf environmentalism, a faux-green substitute for the real thing, was too puny to withstand a single rhetorical challenge, and so he gutted his own Biodiversity Act.
So here we are again, pre-modernitys last holdouts, pathetically pretending that we belong within the Western democratic community, when actually we deserve our laggard reputation as North American sub-hillbillies, in the recent words of columnist Ralph Surette.
Joe Tucker, Musquodoboit Harbour
First, it was the announcement of the Biodiversity Act which caught my attention. It seemed like a long-awaited and reasonable bill to introduce when there is so much concern about the health of our forests and the wildlife and plant species that inhabit them. A good starting point for discussion, especially as Iain Rankin based his Liberal leadership campaign on protecting the environment.
I delved into the act a little more and found that it did allow for public discussion before it was to be made law, especially for affected stakeholders i.e., landowners and the general public.
On March 20, I read on back-to-back pages of The Chronicle two paid ads, one promoting the wisdom and benefits of the act, the other forecasting a catastrophe for private landowners if the government got its way. Confusing, indeed.
I was disturbed after finding out that the Concerned Private Landowners Coalition (CPLC), whose website I also delved into perhaps with forest industry priorities at the forefront? received such a massive response to their ad. It was a revelation to read the comments from concerned private landowners who were probably angered and riled up about the government telling them what they could or couldn't do on their properties. I would be interested to know how many of those landowners had actually read the content of the act, as opposed to those whod been completely overwhelmed with concern because of the information and some misinformation presented to them by CPLC.
Then, I heard the act is going to be severely amended. Did I miss the public consultation process, where voices of concern on both sides of the argument could be heard in a more rational and informed way before going forward? Where in the equation stands the Law Amendments Committee, which deals with such issues?
My husband and I own property in HRM and Lunenburg County. We treasure both pieces of land equally, perhaps our Lunenburg property more. We recognize that climate change, invasive species, endangered flora and fauna are real issues. No matter where a Nova Scotian chooses to live, the health of our forests, our lakes and our coastlines are the legacy we leave to future generations.
Perhaps the Biodiversity Act is not perfect, but to hijack it before it has left the starting gate is a travesty. Can we not come together, support its goals, and reach an outcome that our grandchildren might thank us for?
Premier Rankin: listen to all the stakeholders, but dont buckle at the first sign of dissent, especially when it appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to what could be interpreted as a fear-mongering tactic engineered by one lobby group. Its a worrisome sign when we havent even got around to implementing the Lahey report yet.
P.S. I am a member of the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia.
Vivien Blamire, Dartmouth
The recent outrage and shock over the watering down of the revised Biodiversity Act highlights an ongoing reality that has informed resource policy in Canada since the country's inception. We think that because we live in a democracy that in some vague way, resource policy is open to democratic input. This has never been the case.
Resource policy is controlled by a tight network of industrial interests and their representatives in government departments who exercise jurisdictional control over the policy-making process. Any new policy must take into account past agreements, and therefore resource decision-making has been as seen as reactive and incremental.
For there to be any radical shift in policy direction, as the Lahey report calls for in forestry practices, it is necessary to change the makeup of these networks. Over the last 50 years, environmental groups have tried to break open these networks by demanding citizen input into the policy process, but as we have seen on so many occasions, this input is largely ignored in the final policy outcomes, although court-imposed duty to consult requirements have led to some successes for Indigenous groups, as well as court decisions regarding an Aboriginal moderate livelihood in the fishery.
As political economy professorHarold Innis made clear, the staples economy has shaped the very structure of Canada. The conversion of resources into products that create wealth is the reason government departments exist. This was seen to serve Canada well until environmental problems generated increased concern over a range of issues.
So we are in a moment now where citizens no longer trust the government to make decisions behind closed doors because there is the perception that they have fled into the arms of large corporate interests.
What is also clear is that this democratic input into policy-making is largely ignored. For there to be real change in forestry management practices in Nova Scotia, there needs to be a radical restructuring of who is at the table when the real decisions get made. The voices that had to resort to a logging road blockade in Digby County need to enter the halls of power if there is to be significant change in how decisions get made.
Ray Rogers, Sable River
Times are changing. It used to be that the scariest thing progressives could be called was tree huggers. The prevailing sentiment was to never, ever let tree huggers stop economic progress at any cost. Now the net is widening. In their opposition to Bill 4, the Biodiversity Act, the Concerned Private Landowner Coalition warns that this legislation puts control of private lands in the hands of Halifax activists and politicians. Its bad enough to have to cope with rural activists, but those from Halifax? Apparently, those are scary folks, indeed.
One wonders. Would those activists be the same ones who have private woodlots of their own in many instances? The same ones who voted for newly selected Premier Iain Rankin because he promised to be much more environmentally sensitive than recent governments of all stripes? Would these be the same activists who recognize that Nova Scotias best hope by far is to develop a niche green economy, for the first time ever utilizing our natural resources and natural advantages in a sustainable model for this underperforming coastal province?
If those are the activists we are talking about, perhaps its time we listened to them before it is too late .
Stewart Lamont, Tangier
Re: N.S. Liberals fold under pressure, gut their own biodiversity bill.
Jim Viberts March 25 column comes right out of the environmentalists handbook. Talk about misinformation!
If you go on these environmentalists websites, you see where he got his information. The Biodiversity Act is unnecessary and will be used by the anti-forestry, anti-mining and anti-jobs groups for years to come. The propaganda comes from these well-funded environmental groups and yes, they have been trying to turn Nova Scotia into one big park for decades. One of these groups has 29 full-time paid employees. Their ad on March 20 took up a full page. They are not poor.
Ken Mallett, Wellington (president, Nova Scotia Prospectors Association)
Contrary to the propaganda put out by industrial forestry outfits, rural Nova Scotia is full of people who dont appreciate the pillage of our forests for the profit of a few mills. We know from our neighbours that contractors working in the woods are kept on such razor-thin margins by those mills that clearcutting is the only way they can make money. High volume/low value harvesting is a race to the bottom. We are almost there.
A few of us rural activists, sickened by the planned destruction of forests in habitat necessary to the endangered mainland moose, chose to block some logging roads in Digby County last fall.
Not one of the nine people arrested for refusing to lift our blockade is from Halifax. We live and own land in Yarmouth, Digby, Annapolis and Kings counties.
Furthermore, none of the people who found their way on bumpy logging roads to our encampment to express their support on Nov. 29 came from Halifax. Not one. How do we know? Because COVID regulations at that time restricted people from travelling from the Central Zone. The 50-plus people who joined us that day all came from the Western Zone.
Over the eight weeks that we maintained those blockades, numerous hunters and guides stopped by. We drank coffee and chatted. Conversation would turn to how much they hated all the clearcutting that was driving out wildlife and ruining places they had loved from childhood. At some point, every one of them said: I 100 per cent support you. So much for Halifax activists being the only ones who care about biodiversity.
Nina Newington, Mount Hanley
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