Jan 29, 2025:
– Should the Premier be calling the Ecology Action Centre a “special interest group”?
Interview by Portia Clark with EAC’s Raymond Plourde on CBC Info AM
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT (Subtitles inserted)
INFO AM: “Premier Houston writes that special interest groups in NS have an outsized voice and have halted countless opportunities for resource extraction.”
PC: Premier Tim Houston says he wants to grow NS’s resource economy. In a one-page ad in the Chronicle Herald, he specifically mentions new industries such as hydrogen and wind and critical minerals such as lithium. Premier Houston also writes that special interest groups in NS have an outsized voice and have halted countless opportunities for resource extraction.
In a statement to the CBC, Houston identified the Ecology Action Centre as one of those groups. Information Morning invited the Premier on the show to talk about his plans for resource development in our province and to explain what he meant by the term special interest group.
Once again his office turned us down.
Raymond Plourde is the EAC Senior Wilderness Coordinator. Raymond welcome back.
RP: Good Morning Portia.
PC: Would you consider the Ecology Action Group to be a special interest group?
PLOURDE: EAC is a Public Interest Group, not a Special Interest Group
RP: No, we’re a Public Interest group. We have no pro profit motives. We don’t represent any industries with profit motives. We are part of civil society and many public interest groups that advocate for things in the public interest. So that framing is false.
PC: So what’s your take on the Premier using those words “special interest group” and linking the EAC to that?
PLOURDE: The Gov Strategy: “Never let a good crisis go to waste”
RP: Well obviously we’re not happy to be the latest villain and punching bag, you know a classic case of applying the shock doctrine or what is sometimes called disaster capitalism in a political policy context where you never let a good crisis go to waste. Essentially the concept is that when there is a period of crisis, it is an opportunity for corporations and in some cases governments to force through things that they perhaps otherwise would be unable to force through, usually under sort of trumped up excuses.
So in this case, and no pun intended, that threat is Donald Trump and tariffs which is a very real pain but then the solution that they are saying is we’re going to double down on resource extraction some of which is green stuff that we could support and do support like tidal energy and offshore wind and so on, but also very old things like uranium mining and lifting the ban on uranium mining or fracking… or well, apparently they walked back the idea of oil and gas on Georges Bank although I think that maybe offshore wind is still a possibility on Georges; we’ll see.
Going Backwards
But those things are going backwards to be types of things that have gotten us to where we are here on this planet with regard to the climate crisis and the collapse around the world of biodiversity; these are things we all know about it, and seemingly governments have been focused on trying to address. Suddenly it’s a reversal, so it’s like back to the future, forward to the past.
PC: To pick up on what you said there, Ray, you said governments have been moving to, you know put bans on those. Has the EAC had anything to do with getting those bans on things, such practices such as cracking and uranium mining in the 1st place?
RP: So uranium mining was dealt with by the John Buchanan governments way back I believe in the 1980s, and that’s before my time. I suspect the EAC would have participated in whatever public process was available.
And certainly, I don’t think we’ve been a big fan of fracking, but the reason the moratoriums were put on place was because Nova Scotians in large numbers were not comfortable with these things and had serious concerns, and duly elected governments of the day looked at them carefully, did independent studies, did public consultations and expert panels reviewing and so on and so forth, and they eventually came to their decisions rightly.
I find it interesting and disappointing that besides, you know having our organization kind of used as bogeyman, they also say in their letter to their caucus and their cabinet ministers which is essentially like the mandate letter for the new administration, they’re sort of Uber direction, they also say that every past government has been essentially stupid, lazy and gutless in the face of these dark powerful special interests – which now they’re calling us one of those, and there I presume maybe others, and it’s a false narrative.
PC: To be fair, you do educate the public about risks associated with resource extraction as you say, you know you spoke at public meetings when these proposals have come up and that may create a political push to stop a development so… the premier maybe has a point that the EAC has gotten in the way?
RP: No, we are a member of civil society, we do not lead society and Nova Scotians’ opinions. We reflect a portion of the population’s opinions and we certainly seek to study and look at these things and then give our opinions both to government in official processes that they themselves roll out to the public. We certainly don’t have like inner pull with politicians or anything like that, that’s really quite silly. The true special interests the ones with more pull and clout are generating from you know, industries, and they have the profit motive; then are accurately described as special interests.
I heard a representative from the fisheries groups is saying , yeah, we’re a special interest, we’re representing, you know, like a $2 billion a year industry.
Resource extraction was not an issue in the last election
It’s a classic case of misdirection and trying to divide Nova Scotians and perhaps direct their attention away from other things that, you know, perhaps they don’t want the public focused on, like the issues they actually ran on during the election campaign… you know they were affordability, housing, healthcare, lowering taxes, increasing wages, all these, you know, pocketbook bread and butter issues.
And Nova Scotians very much responded to that, but clearly this, I think it’s been in the works for a while and the letter that the Premier sent to his entire caucus and cabinet, essentially the mandate of the government, bears no resemblance to that; those issues are not mentioned, only resource extraction lifting bans and fighting with these mysterious evil actors who are holding us back. It’s simply a false narrative and probably designed to distract people from actually looking at whether or not they’re fulfilling the commitments they made in the actual election.
PC: This letter and the mention of you know revisiting bans though is in response to the situation as you alluded to earlier with the US and tariffs… we do have to fund health care and affordable housing and this government certainly has made that part of it but not only campaign pledge, but allocating resources… we do need lithium for electric vehicles, something that the EAC has embraced and it does have to happen somewhere in the world so why not Nova Scotia?
RP: Well, so in the case of critical mineral strategy, the government rolled out a critical mental strategy process and was seeking input and doing all of the normal things through their first term; that’s a conversation that’s happening and we’re not against necessarily the mining of critical minerals
Nova Scotia has the most dense rural population in Canada
But you have to look at well what is each project on its own merits, and what are the threats or concerns? So lithium mines certainly tend to be very big, and I guess the big difference is that in Nova Scotia, we have the second smallest province in the country with the largest, most dense rural population in the in the country.
So when you propose large projects, they gotta be near somebody’s backyard, somebody’s community, and that’s often where the real resistance comes from. In many ways what they’re saying is “ ignore all Nova Scotians who disagree with us” … so we’re just going to bear right through it.
Where are the public consultations?
The lithium thing, maybe that that is viable we will see in the fullness of time. I think the premier certainly is justified in saying you know there is a threat it’s legitimate and real and we need to find new revenues and so on so let’s have a conversation.
But he didn’t open up a new public consultation around this or a new concept, what he did in his letter to the government and its subsequent full page ad to the public in the Chronicle Herald and other letters that the premier’s office is sending out, is saying that “we are going to do this” – they’re not asking, and I think that, you know Nova Scotians will express the concerns that they have in the past and we’ll see where this government ends up with that.
But i think they’re going to find that the resistance is not so called boogey man special interest/evil actors, it’s people in their communities who have legitimate concerns because we are a really small province and we don’t have vast empty spaces like the larger provinces to our west.
PC, Well Raymond, we’ll leave it there, but I appreciate speaking with you this morning thanks for being here. Raymond Plourde is the Ecology Action Centre Senior Wilderness coordinator.
INFO AM: The Premier did nit want to be interviewed
As I mentioned, we asked Premier Houston if he’d like to respond to this interview; his office turned us down.