Government’s sweet spot lets it play politics

Last week, I wondered why the Progressive Conservative government put a nail in the coffin of the Coastal Protection Act.

It seemed strange, given the fact that the act had been passed by all parties in 2019. Climate change and the threat of fierce storms and coastal erosion certainly haven’t gone away.

So what changed? Environment Minister Tim Halman told us he wanted to take a different approach to protecting the coastlines. Rather than have the province do the heavy lifting of legislating and regulating, he would simply give Nova Scotians information and let them make their own “informed” decisions.

This would put the job of coastal protection on the shoulders of individual landowners and municipalities.

When that decision was met with questions this week, Halman explained further. It turns out that a third round of consultation last fall didn’t get much of a response.

This is certainly true. Of the 40,000 surveys mailed out to Nova Scotians with coastal properties, there were only 1,070 responses.

Whatever those 1,070 respondents said, a one-in-40 response wouldn’t be enough to paint a clear picture. (It’s also worth noting that those 1,070 responses cost Nova Scotia taxpayers $100,000.)

Halman gave us his interpretation. What the poor response shows is that Nova Scotians don’t want the province to take responsibility for coastal protection after all.

In his words, at Province House: “I interpret that vacuum, that gap, as (people saying) ‘Leave us alone. This isn’t something that we’re interested in.’”

This is despite the fact that Nova Scotians showed strong support for the Coastal Protection Act in previous consultations, according to freedom of information documents obtained by the CBC.

It also comes in spite of the fact that municipalities across the province wrote to the government urging it to declare the act and get on with the business of protecting the province’s coastlines.

And it comes after the fact that back in 2022 — days after post-tropical storm Fiona slammed into the province, destroying coastlines — Halman himself was promising to get his act together and proclaim it as soon as possible.

He said he would have it declared in early 2023. In his own words: “We want to make sure we implement this correctly because it is going to be a fundamental component in Nova Scotia adapting to the realities of climate change.”

Now, all he has for us is his interpretation of a survey that statistically doesn’t really quantify the opinion of Nova Scotians.

Of course, Halman assures us — rather paternalistically — that he has been on this file for a long time, ergo he is in a position to interpret things.

And he also assures us that he’s had feedback from Tory MLAS around the province. We don’t know how many residents gave feedback to those MLAS, or exactly what they said.

The government hasn’t released the results of the most recent survey, so who knows? Maybe every single one of those 1,070 respondents said that they didn’t want the province to take on the role of protecting our 13,000 kilometres of coastline.

At this point, we are just supposed to take his word and accept his interpretation of the third consultation.

These would be the fighting words of a government with a hand firmly on the wheel of power.

The Liberals are in turmoil after the provincial auditor general asked the RCMP to investigate the party after an allegation of misuse of public funds by a former employee. And the NDP isn’t exactly smashing it in popularity polls.

So the PCS are in a sweet spot.

They know they can do and spend what they like. This is why they can get away with a weak and unvalidated response to their decision to cancel the Coastal Protection Act.

It’s classic backroom politics in Nova Scotia. It’s just too bad they are playing politics with a resource as precious as our coastline.