It looks like the Town of Shelburne is not interested in the generous offer by filmmaker and actress Ellen Page to pay for a much-needed public well for the Black community in town. But the town’s legacy of environmental racism calls for reparations, and that well would be a great start.
“So what will happen if the mill just defies the Boat Harbour Act and keeps on operating, using Boat Harbour for its effluent?” Not a whole lot of anything, writes Betsy MacDonald. Which is why we urgently need honesty and clarity from Premier McNeil, she argues.
Talks between the Town of Shelburne and a group advocating for clean water access for a Black community within town limits appear to have broken down completely. It’s a sad story. Here’s hoping there’s a way out of the impasse.
Robin Tress, of the Council of Canadians speaks at Law Amendments about Bill 213, the Sustainable Development Goals Act. She makes some great points, about respecting treaty rights, the tendency of governments to allow corporate interests to frame the discussion, and the nature of true consultations.
An offer by filmmaker and actor Ellen Page to pay for the drilling of a public well to provide clean water to a long suffering African Nova Scotian community is said to experience some push back from the Town of Shelburne.
Joanne Bealy on some of the many strong local documentaries in the lineup at the Atlantic International Film Festival this year. “What these films show us is that the people of Nova Scotia are visionaries, the provincial and municipal politicians … not so much.”
We don’t talk enough here about the environmental and colonial mess that is Muskrat Falls, providing so-called green energy to Nova Scotia via the Maritime Link.
Chief Andrea Paul of Pictou Landing First Nation posted a response to the Unifor proposal on her Facebook page. “Today, they are caught in a battle that THEY had years and years to resolve. They had many years of opportunity to do better. They chose not to. Even with the Boat Harbour ACT they still believed they were above that and didn’t begin consultation with the Band until 2017 after we requested it.”
Indigenous people in faraway Labrador face methylmercury poisoning, but never mind, Nova Scotia can claim it’s meeting its green energy targets.
Raymond Sheppard looks at environmental racism in Nova Scotia. “It could be concluded that environmental racism is an act of attempted genocide,” he writes.