We’re All From Pictou County Now…

I cannot help but think this is the autumn of discontent for many Nova Scotians. So many issues. So much disillusion. Whether it is Northern Pulp emissions, the mink ranch spill-offs, clear-cut forestry or open-net pens on the coast – people are increasingly challenging government and the system. The management of our resources – yes, OUR resources – has been fundamentally flawed for generations. Citizens are just now speaking out about it all. It is an emotional situation, no doubt, but one that is refreshing in a thousand cases.

These are highly contentious debates. In Pictou County, neighbours and family members have been placed at cross-purposes. Could there be a more disquieting row than jobs versus the environment? Is there anything more divisive? Is there anything more damaging in the final analysis? Could we not move beyond this elementary quarrel and focus instead upon the solutions department?

One hopes that governments at all levels and of every political stripe are learning the odd lesson along this journey. Citizens are cynical for a reason. When public policy does not come clean, when it is less than transparent, when it benefits a favoured few, guess what? There’ll be trouble. Social media, public awareness and a sense of injustice can change everything today in a heartbeat. Ignore us at your peril is the prevailing mantra…

Does government even have the capacity to listen? Now there’s a dandy question well worth pondering…

A prominent national columnist in a prominent national newspaper wrote a rather nasty piece in his publication yesterday. The op-ed cutesy headline screamed: “Nova Scotia has a fracking issue.” The tone of the thing was, “How dare they? Nova Scotia, the economic basketcase, says ‘no’ to a fracking opportunity.” It was one more poorly received lecture from Upper Canada. It was one more superficial analysis that failed to account for reality. The columnist should be made to stand on the Pictou Causeway and breathe in downwind particulates. He might then better grasp some of these heightened community issues.

Like sausage-making, the fracking decision may not have been pretty. But give the Province credit for one thing: they knew how to read the tea leaves. There are massive concerns with hydraulic fracturing. To proceed in this environment would have been suicide. It was a decision to be celebrated. A collector’s item you might say. More important, it was a decision to be learned from…

Citizen groups are discovering that you name the issue, there are widely common themes. I might be fighting open net-pen fish farms on the coast and you might be fighting clear-cutting. Come to find out, the thread is identical: public policy that is not accessible, much less justifiable. In place for years and years just because – well, just because some among us benefited. A bureaucracy that does not respond well to a focused and well-informed challenge. Citizens so aggrieved that, ultimately, they run out of patience. Citizens who eventually stand up and are prepared to be counted. (I carried a placard the other day. I wouldn’t have thought that possible) ….

Nova Scotia has changed. So have Nova Scotians. You can sense it in the autumn air. We’re all from Pictou County now…and that alters everything.

— Stewart Lamont
Tangiers Lobster Company, Nova Scotia