Category: Nova Scotia Politics
The biosolidity of Ellen Page
If the admirable Ellen Page* wants to contribute to the environment of her home province, she might consider pressuring the Dexter government to rethink its politically expedient decision to delay regulations to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Mercury is a dangerous element with well-known impacts on human health, especially the health of young children. The province and Nova Scotia Power have known about their obligation to clean up mercury emissions for years, if not decades. [Disclosure: both NSP and the NS Govt. have been my clients.] The government’s decision to back away from that legislated commitment in the face of a threatened power rate increase came as a huge blow to morale in its Environment Department.
Power rates have been the third rail of Nova Scotia politics ever since they caused the defeat of Gerald Regan’s government in 1978. Darrell Dexter is nothing if not cautious, and he made the pragmatic decision to sacrifice a near-term improvement in public health for political longevity. That’s real politics, and a figure of Page’s stature could make a real contribution by weighing in on the side of health.
That would be a better use of her talents than opposing the productive recycling of biosolids, as she did in this appalling CBC-TV interview. Money quote:
I’m an advocate of hu-manure and utilizing our urine as a great nitrogen source for gardens and plants, but biosolids are very much not hu-manure… I like to refer to it as sewage sludge. It’s highly toxic. Look, I’m not a scientist, so I’ll say that obviously, but I’m a very concerned citizen and I’m worried because this is highly toxic material that is already being put on our land without the transparency of letting citizens of HRM and of Nova Scoti know.
Ellen Page
To paraphrase, Page sympathizes with government’s desire to recycle human shit and urine, and she acknowledges that she brings no scientific expertise to the discussion, but she believes Halifax’s sewage sludge contains too many toxic contaminants, whose implications have not be fully disclosed to or discussed with residents.
No single word is more misused, in journalism and in environmentalism, than “toxic.” It’s a relative term that is almost invariably tossed about as an absolute. The public imagines that everything is either toxic or not toxic, whereas toxicologists and serious environmentalists know that virtually everything, including pure water, is toxic at sufficient dose. Dosis sola facit venenum. Dose is what determines risk.
My hero: Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541)
Mercury is highly toxic at low doses. That’s why scientific risk assessment justifies spending lots of money (and political capital) to keep it out of our air. Untreated sewage also harms the environment, so most countries have stepped up efforts to remove solids from the waste stream. The question is what to do with them.
To answer the question, HRM built a biosolids processing plant at Aerotch Park to treat sewage sludge using the commercial N-Viro process. The HRM website has a description of the plant and the process, together with a schematic. The N-Viro Corporation website has a more detailed description of the process.
The provincial website offers a list of links on the use of biosolids throughout Canada, and a fact sheet on biosolids [PDF] (though the latter, frankly, is long on reassuring generalities and regrettably short on technical specifics.)
When the use of biosolids in Colchester County touched off a not-in-my-backyard furor a few years ago, the province held a public Biosolids Forum at which a variety of experts discussed their treatment and safety. (View their presentations.) Nova Scotia also established a broad-based committee to review provincial policy on agricultural use of biosolids. That led to revised and stricter guidelines [PDF] for biosolid use here.
The guidelines are worth a quick read. In contrast to the raw cow, pig, and chicken manure farmers apply freely to their lands, the HRM biosolids will be treated to kill pathogens. Samples from the plant will be tested regularly for fecal coliform, salmonella, Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Mercury, Molybdenum, Nickel, Lead, Selenium, Zinc, dioxins, furans, and PCBs. The guidelines restrict the use of biosolids on farmland by proximity to 14 categories of land and land use, including watercourses, drinking water supplies, bedrock outcroppings, drainage ditches, roads, buildings, etc. The setbacks vary according to the slope of the land, and depth to groundwater and bedrock.
Want more information? The Food Action Committee of the Ecology Action Centre (an environmental group I belong to and support) has a short position paper [Word doc] opposing the agricultural use of biosolids, but it’s very general, and focuses on an alleged lack of transparency. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment’s Biosolids Task Force has a website. A search of US educational websites for “biosolids safety agricultural use” yields 42 scientific papers; the same search on Canadian websites turns up 28.
Forums, task forces, stakeholder committees, websites, guidelines: Is it fair or accurate to describe all this as a lack of transparency?
On balance, HRM’s biosolids program offers a responsible way to recycle critical nutrients that would otherwise pose a pollution problem. Environmentalists ought to celebrate it, not oppose it.
One final note: Even by the lame standards of environmental reporting in Canada, the CBC’s treatment of this story is beyond disappointing. It took this unpaid blogger only a few hours to assemble the information and links included in this post, yet host Tom Murphy appeared to have no research at hand to contest Page’s wild claims about toxicity and non-transparency:
Murphy: But you know there is research out their suggesting, hey, it’s OK, and in this case the city put on, I think, about 25% of the manure they were using was this, so what do you say to that when they roll out the scientists to say it’s OK?
Page: At one point, doctors told us to smoke, so, you know what I mean?
So much for science. So much for journalism. I know television is conflict- and personality-driven, and by its nature must simplify complex issues, but this is negligent reporting by any standards.
—
* More disclosure: I like Ellen Page. In 2003, when we were just getting our little film series off the ground, she was generous enough to travel to Sydney to attend our Canadian premiere screening of Marion Bridge, in which she had a breakout role. I have tried to write this post in a way she might find persuasive, although I suppose she won’t. Should she want to respond, Contrarian’s space is hers.
Market madness – open the doors
Reflecting on the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market’s opening day (previous posts here and here), Contrarian reader Jeff Pinhey writes:
You are kidding me. An American Homeland Security regulation, the one requiring a Port Security plan in all ports with ships leaving for a US port, causes that silliness? Let me see, if I were a terrorist trying to sneak into Canada so I could board a ship bound for the states, and I could get as far as the waterfront in front of the market, I certainly could get as far as… Herring Cove, Eastern Passage, whatever. Heck from the Eastern Passage government wharf, I could catch a bus into Dartmouth, take the ferry over and walk down the TransCanada Trail to the Market, have some nice locally grown food, then go find my ship and try to make my terror.
There is zero effective risk of those doors being used for that purpose when so many other easier options to accomplish the highly unlikely event being deterred exist.
There really are too many people in government working too hard to come up with reasons why things cannot be done, instead of why, or how, they can be done.
I don’t know if this is true generally of government, but it is certainly true of government employees acting in the name of security. We are living through a period of crazy imbalance. By simply invoking security, no matter how inane or preposterous, low level bureaucrats can trump every other consideration, no matter who valid of socially useful. A steady drumbeat of fear mongering about the threat of terrorism enforces this dynamic. The assumption is that politicians can’t stand up to this, because they will be crucified for lessening our security. I think the public is fed up, and a politician who gave voice to obvious simple truths about security excesses would gain support, not lose it.
The Farmer’s Market in Sydney was forced to leave that city’s waterfront pavilion over looney enforcement of goofy Homeland Security regulations. How long will we give free reign to small men with high F-scales?
A leadership role for Premier Dexter, perhaps?
Troublemaking semicentennial – corrected
Friends and admirers gathered in the Midtown Tavern’s antiseptic new digs Thursday evening to honor journalist-businessman David Bentley’s 50 years of afflicting the comfortable.
Among the crowd were foot-soldiers of the late, lamented Halifax Daily News (née: Bedford-Sackville News), the once salacious Frank magazine, and the meaty, fact-packed AllNovaScotia.com, which today ranks Nova Scotia’s premier newsgathering organization. As Frank might put it, all three began life as Bentley organs.
In 1974, Bentley, his wife, and two partners founded the weekly B-S News, modeling it after the sordid tabloids of his native England. Five years later, he took the enormous gamble of moving the paper downtown, transforming it into a daily, and taking on both the stolid Chronicle-Herald and the nacent, corrupt Buchanan administration.
After selling the daily to Harry Steele’s Newfoundland Capital Corp. in 1987, Bentley and business partner Lyndon Watkins founded Frank, a legendary tweaker of toffee-noses. In 2001, with daughter Caroline Wood, he founded AllNovaScotia, an online publication that is, ironically, today’s must-read for Nova Scotia’s ruling elites.
When future historians recount Nova Scotia’s late-20th Century transformation from a staid, British colonial outpost to an almost modern society, Bentley will emerge as an unsung central figure. He taught the province that ritual deference to one’s betters is the surest guarantor of mediocrity.
Our betters are still smarting from the lesson.
Fittingly, the quinquagenary brought out longtime Bentley protégé, celebrity shooter, and onetime Frank co-owner Cliff Boutillier, shown honing his lens in preparation for next week’s edition. The Glace Bay native grimaced at the intrusiveness of today’s bloggers with their pesky iPhones.
“Whoever told you sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander,” he demanded.
David Bentley, that’s who.
Docking fees
Docking fee: $150 if you’re from around here; $250 if you’re not.
So the summer residents who return year after year — buying goods in our stores, attending our concerts, paying property taxes for services they don’t use, spreading the word about Cape Breton to folks back home — let’s stick them for an extra 67%. Wouldn’t want them to think we’re neighbourly, or appreciative of their commitment to Cape Breton, now would we?
Mean-spirited. Dumb.
What we ask our politicians to be
The Whitest Kids U’Know present Matt Clint for Senator:
Money Quote:
For the last 15 years, I’ve lived my life in such a bland, uncontroversial, and repressed manner that it’s almost unnatural. Why? Because I’ve been preparing to be your representative since I was a child.
Facing up to an unflattering mirror – Feedback, updated
Aside from a small issue of geography, reader Ivan Smith says the Globe and Mail’s take-out on racism in Nova Scotia, got it right.
The popular notion that racism has disappeared from Nova Scotia is just as wrong as that geography. Racism is still here. Not as bad as it was in the 1960s or even the 1980s, but we still have a long way to go.
How many Nova Scotians know that there were black slaves here?
Smith recommends Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings, a book and subsequent film depicting the treatment of blacks in Nova Scotia in the 1780s, available on DVD here.
A copy of that DVD should be available in every public library and school library in the province.
[Update]. Bob Collicutt reports:
There is one copy of Rough Crossings in the Halifax Regional Library system. As of 6:45 a.m. today there are 12 holds on it, including mine. Thanks to you & Ivan Smith for making us all aware of this film.
Facing up to an unflattering mirror – Update
In the wake of February’s cross-burning in Hants County, the Globe and Mail did what Nova Scotia newspapers ought to have done: assigned a top notch reporter to research and write a searching report on Nova Scotia’s unfinished history of racism. Many of you will have seen Les Perreaux’s piece when it appeared last month, but I missed it. He began by noting African Nova Scotia’s unique backstory:
[N]o other region on this side of the 49th parallel has Nova Scotia’s long history of a black-and-white divide. Until the immigration reforms of the 1960s, 37 per cent of Canadian blacks lived in Nova Scotia. Today, its black population of 19,200 is smaller than the numbers in each of the largest cities. But no other place in Canada has so many black communities still living in de facto segregation. Nowhere else in Canada does the legacy of slavery remain so tangible, as much as mainstream white society tries to block it out.
The remnants of that history can be as subtle as a suspicious glance in a corner store or the cavalier placement of a dog park or garbage dump on top of a poor community. At other times, racism flares up more dramatically, evoking places far south of Canada’s Ocean Playground.
Racism doesn’t disappear just because it’s no longer acceptable in polite company. On the contrary, the stigma that now attaches to racism may make it harder for white people to confront its influence. The unconscious syllogism goes something like this:
Then along come Shayne Howe’s neighbors.
The only black man in pastoral Poplar Grove in Hants County, Shayne Howe woke to the glare of that burning cross on his front lawn one night in February, while the perpetrators shouted threats and taunts. Then, last month, when one of the two brothers charged was due in court, the family car was torched, destroying the entire interior, including a new child-safety seat.
Sporting diamonds in his earlobes and a baseball cap perched on his head, Mr. Howe is a descendant of the original black settlers, Loyalists and ex-slaves who came to Nova Scotia in the 1780s. He mixes paint one sunny afternoon in their grey bungalow to prepare for the sale of his family’s house, which backs onto a vast, green hay field.
He’ll miss simple pleasures there, he says – riding his lawn mower, beer in hand, or skinny-dipping under cover of darkness in the backyard pool.
“I was comfortable before. People seemed okay with me,” says Mr. Howe, a 31-year-old truck driver, recalling his relief when a local shop owner stopped keeping watch on him whenever he dropped in for a carton of milk.
Because the alleged cross-burners are distant cousins of his wife, Michelle Lyon, many people around town dismiss the incident as a family feud. But Ms. Lyon says she had never met the brothers before.
A venomous Facebook page with more than 100 supporters has popped up to back one of the alleged firebugs, where residents of nearby Windsor and Halifax throw around the N-word while condemning the couple as publicity hounds.
The fatuous claim that the incident was just a family feud that got out of hand is an extreme example of white reluctance to acknowledge racism – even at the scene of a cross-burning.
Perreaux’s entire piece is worth a read.
[Update] Department of Amplification & Correction/
Reader Ivan Smith takes issue with Perreaux’s statement that, “No other region on this side of the 49th parallel has Nova Scotia’s long history of a black-and-white divide,” but not for the reason you might think.
Okay, maybe he meant it metaphorically. Nonetheless the geography is wrong. All of the Maritime Provinces lie south of the 48th parallel.
All of Nova Scotia, except for a tiny sliver at the far north end of Cape Breton Island, lies south of the 47th parallel.
Sandra Gittins of Truro points out that HRM’s mayor is of course Peter Kelly, not Peter Perry, as Perreaux calls him at one point.
The strange case of the NDP vs. the AG – ctd.
Graham Steele and I had a further email exchange. I suggested he had not answered the question at the heart of my original query:
Why didn’t you (or, if you wish, why didn’t [Cabinet Clerk Greg] Keefe) simply waive solicitor client privilege in these cases?
Canny Mandarins
I added:
A second question that I didn’t ask, but which still hovers over this: Is this a sign that the NDP government, with its very small cabinet, is falling prey to a classic malady of new governments, especially new governments whose ministers have no experience in government: that of being unduly led by the canny Mandarins?
Steele replies:
The answer is that the issue on this specific audit was supposed to be resolved by the broader discussions on revisions to the Auditor General Act. At the time the AG wrote to the Premier in October, everyone expected amendments to be introduced in the spring sitting.
The answer to the second question is “no.” That’s not a fair characterization of what went on here. I think people want to see some dark conspiracy on this issue. The reality is, as usual, much duller. A process to revise the Auditor General Act was underway, and this was one of the issues on the table; the process took longer than expected; the government was busy with other priorities. We’ll deal with the issue in the fall. Within six months, it will be a non-issue.
The strange case of the NDP vs. the AG
At first blush, Auditor General Jacques Lapointe’s refusal to issue an audit opinion on the province’s two largest business loan funds looks like another in the lengthening string of Dexter Government screw-ups. This is the NDP, for heaven’s sake, perennial champions of openness and accountability, withholding 281 documents and redacting a further 32 on grounds of cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege, thereby thwarting independent scrutiny of the corporate welfare trough they once scorned.
Solicitor-client privilege protects communications between a lawyer and a client from being disclosed without the permission of the client. It binds the lawyer, not the client. In the case at point, government is the client; it has an unfettered right to waive confidentiality. Contrarian asked Finance Minister Graham Steele why it didn’t simply do so.
Steele replied by email: “The key issue is how to allow the auditor general to have access to documents, without thereby opening to disclosure documents which are legitimately confidential…
“This issue, which is known as ‘limited waiver,’ is enshrined in statute in other provinces like Ontario,” Steele wrote. “We have no such provision in our Auditor General Act. Our view is that it is necessary to have a legislative framework in place before privileged documents are handed over to the Auditor General. The auditor general apparently believes the existing legislative framework is sufficient. With respect, we disagree, and we are backed up by the court case and the practice in other provinces.”
Steele cited a December, 2000, Nova Scotia Supreme Court decision, Nova Scotia v. Royal & Sun Alliance, in which the province sued two insurance companies seeking to recover damages paid to abuse victims in residential schools. While carrying out a review of the compensation program, the auditor general of the day was given access to various documents over which the province later tried to claim cabinet or solicitor-client privilege. Partly on grounds of that prior disclosure to the AG, the chambers judge agreed to give the companies access to some but not all of the documents.
In a statement to the media Wednesday, Steele said the province wants “to put the same framework [as Ontario], or a similar one, into our legislation, and then the documents will be turned over to the auditor general.” AllNovaScotia.com quotes Lapointe as complaining he suggested doing exactly that, but was stonewalled by government lawyers.
“[W]ith the benefit of hindsight,” Steele wrote to Contrarian, “It is obvious that we should have identified the issue of limited waiver as an issue that needed to be expedited, and we should have dealt with it in advance of the rest of the revisions.” Yup.
Steele made two other points in his email:
Something that was missed by the reporters was that the audit was supposed to cover March 2008 to September 2009 – in other words, 15 months of the last government, and only 3 months of ours. The idea that we are “covering up,” when most of the audit would have covered the previous government, is … well, far-fetched.
Our Cabinet has never made a decision to deny access. The matter never came before us because in the normal course we would have dealt with the matter when a legislative proposal was ready. In denying access, the Clerk of the Executive Council was simply following through on long-standing and well-established practice.
The second point is at best a distinction without a difference, at worst specious. Through most of the new government’s tenure, Robert Fowler was Clerk of the Executive Council. I worked for Fowler for two years, when he was CEO of the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency and I was its director of communications. We remain friends, and while we didn’t always agree, I can attest that Fowler was punctilious in his observance of elected ministers’ prerogatives. He may well have advised government to withhold the documents, but it is inconceivable he would have directed departments to do so without clearing the matter with the premier or deputy premier. I’m confident the same is true of his successor, Greg Keefe.
The whole embarrassing saga further erodes the new government’s political capital and moral authority. It suggests that, as with many new governments, especially those with no experience governing, senior civil servants are running the show. If this is indeed a problem, it is partly a result of a too-small cabinet, spread too thin.
One final note: Lapointe comes off as a bit of a show-boat in this exchange. He appears to enjoy his increasingly frequent sashays through the media spotlight. A civil servant who has experienced one of his audits complains that his MO is abrasive rather than constructive. That’s consistent with the impression he left here.
The Herald’s misreporting – ctd.
Sharon Fraser is a Halifax journalist, women’s rights advocate, and the wife of Dan O’Connor, the chief of staff to Premier Dexter embroiled in a controversy over inaccurate reporting by the Chronicle-Herald over the weekend. She describes the events at the heart of the Herald’s misreporting:
I have no desire to keep this going eternally but I wrote this summary this morning and thought you might be interested.
Here’s what happened:
On Friday, the Herald published a front-page story reducing an important government initiative and its announcement to the amount of money that was spent over several months in its preparation. The headline — the government announcement was about wind-power and other forms of renewable electricity — was “Blowing money.” The headline and lead stated that the cost of the announcement included the cost of preparing the new five year renewable electricity policy.
There were other inaccuracies in the story and its whole premise was based on the Herald’s contention that the government was squandering taxpayers’ money.
Dan wrote a comment to the Herald online forum, strongly criticizing the story, its inaccuracies and the fact that Opposition Leader Stephen MacNeil had been called for a comment for the story but no government representative had been called.
At this point, the Herald had choices: It could have said, “we stand by our story,” and published Dan’s comment. Or, as it seems to know who its anonymous commenters are, it could have called Dan (or another government representative) and interviewed him about the alleged inaccuracies and do a follow-up story about the government’s position on the story — and on the original event.
The Herald didn’t make either of those choices. Instead, using the same reporter who had done the original story, it went after Dan, ultimately smearing his reputation by falsely claiming he had twice “denied” writing the comments, then writing that he had “confessed” after “repeated questions.”
I was standing right beside him during the phone calls. The reporter called him twice. In the first call, she asked him if he had sent an email to the paper that day. He said no. She called him back, very shortly after, and said she had asked the wrong question. She then asked if he had sent comments to the online forum. He said he had. There were no denials, no repeated questions, no “confession.”
On Saturday, the Herald filled much of its front page with a story (and full-length photo) — centred on the fact that Dan had submitted anonymous comments to the online forum and the fabrication that he had lied about it. His comments, which they had refused to post on Friday, were on Saturday’s front page. Well into the story, the Herald reported the government’s objections to the inaccuracies in the original story, and the first comments from a government representative about the previous day’s front page story. (In conversations with several government representatives, the Herald never denied fundamental errors in the original story, but refused to correct them, refused to apologize, and said they “stood by” the various editorial staff who decided to write, edit and present the Friday story.)
On Saturday, I sent a comment to the online forum under my own name, disputing their version of events and accusing them of fabricating what they had written about Dan. My comment was not published and within a short period of time, the story was closed to further comments.
On Monday, the Herald ran an editorial that was presented as a defense of the original story without ever ever repeating its premise or endorsing its errors. The editorial added information that changed the topic from the renewable electricity announcement to the use of consultants — which had not been the subject of a Herald news story or news gathering. The editorial said not a word about the earlier inaccuracies or the failure to offer the government a chance to participate in the story and concluded by suggesting the government should simply send out press releases when it wants to make an announcement.
