Tonight, Offshore Alliance is meeting in Mahone Bay to speak about international efforts from municipalities to stop offshore drilling. This comes on the heels of a Tuesday press conference held just prior to the start of the Fall Conference of the Federation of Nova Scotia Municipalities, where twelve Nova Scotia municipalities—Halifax not included—announced their request for a public inquiry on the risks and impact of offshore drilling for oil and gas. 

“The economy of our town, once driven by wooden shipbuilding, is now driven by the tourism industry, and the ocean is a critical part of the industry,” says David Devenne, mayor of Mahone Bay. “Any risk for that mainstay of our economy is an unacceptable possibility and offshore drilling is just such a risk.”

“I'm a fisherman's daughter. I'm a fisherman's wife,” says Linda Gregory, deputy warden of Digby County, who was also present at the announcement. “My district is mainly fishermen, as a whole. Nova Scotia fisheries exports $2 billion per year. According to the government of Nova Scotia, this provides 26,000 jobs direct and 26,000 jobs indirect. These jobs sustain our communities—now, as they have for centuries.”

Mahone Bay, Digby County, and the 10 other municipalities have all passed motions to support the inquiry into offshore drilling risks thanks to the lobbying efforts of the Nova Scotia Offshore Alliance—a coalition of organizations and community groups including the Council of Canadians, the Sierra Club, the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia and the Clean Ocean Action Committee.

The Offshore Alliance asked Halifax Regional Council for its support, but a motion to oppose offshore drilling was defeated last October and Council has not revisited the issue since.

Marion Moore of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia says she supports an inquiry into offshore drilling “to protect the traditional, sustainable fishing industry and tourism industry.” But also because, she says, “we're in a climate crisis. So, we shouldn't be having this conversation. If we want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we have to get rid of one of the biggest fossil fuel industries around.”

Several companies have held leases for oil exploration in Nova Scotia’s waters over the past decade including Shell, who abandoned its well in 2018 after not finding commercial quantities of oil (leaving behind a piece of pipe that was accidentally dropped into the ocean, which landed 12 metres from their wellhead—a near-miss of a potential disaster), and BP, which drilled one well last year (and spilled 136 m3 of drilling fluid—about 450 full  bathtubs—which remains on the ocean floor), but also did not find worthwhile quantities of oil. BP still holds a lease for six wells, but has yet to begin exploratory drilling on any of them.

“We believe that once the Nova Scotia municipalities really understand the level of risk, that they'll say no, this is not an acceptable activity,” says John Davis of the Clean Ocean Action Committee.

The problem is, information on all the risks of offshore drilling either does not exist, or has not been made available to the public or municipal governments.

Digby’s Gregory spoke about how this lack of information makes it impossible for her to fulfil her responsibility to protect her community. “Do we need access to good information and real influence in the decision making process to do that? We do. We need to be heard by the province. We need to be heard by the federal government. We are the grassroots of the community,” she says.

But municipal governments don’t have real decision-making power when it comes to regulating offshore petroleum resources. Which was one of the reasons HRM didn’t join the fight.

Instead, an arms-length regulatory board—the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB)—has been given power to manage Nova Scotia’s offshore oil and gas industries. Its key stakeholders are the provincial and federal governments. CNSOPB has received much criticism because while they are supposed to be an objective third party, three of their five board members have direct ties to the oil and gas industry. Earlier this year, CNSOPB’s power was extended, through an amendment to federal Bill C-69, to conduct environmental impact assessments for resource extraction projects.

For Moore, the issue of offshore drilling in Nova Scotia is “a microcosm of the whole country,” and points to a much larger issue: “The reason that we're not in a position to give permission or deny permission,” she says, “is because, in the end, governments are beholden to the oil companies.”

The Offshore Alliance's public event in Mahone Bay tonight will see Mayor Sheila Davies from Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and Councilor John Weber of Bradley Beach, New Jersey will speak about international efforts from municipalities to stop offshore drilling. In the United States, over 370 municipalities have passed resolutions opposing offshore drilling and are a key part of the successful resistance to Trump’s attempts to open the Atlantic Coast to offshore drilling. 

Well hello there. You're a person-about-town who's working on a play/concert/one-human-show that's not so much confessional as it is semi-autobiographical, really, and if you love Fleabag you'll be totally into it. Or maybe you're home on your couch and wondering where to see a play or concert or just do something other than re-watch Fleabag for the thousand time.

For 26 years, The Coast has been connecting Haligonians with the creatives making art around our fair city, with extensive listings both online and print: We help you get the word out about the cool thing you're doing and also let you know what cool thing you should be going to.
But after 26 years, we've started using an exciting new listings system online, so we want you to know all about it. If you're looking for things to do, click "Event Listings" in the navigation menu, and you'll get a sharp list of events—with a layout that's responsive to whether you're on a phone or a desktop or any device in between. Searching and filtering functions work well, and we're starting to get events further out of town, which you can seek out (or limit) by changing how far from central Halifax you'd like the system to give you events for, from 1km to 150km out.

It's great for finding events. But if you're putting on an event, it's even better. There's now a simple page where you can upload your event right into the system—including a photo!—that is way slicker and easier than our old submission form. And vastly better than sending your event info to the listings email address and hoping I (The Coast's arts & listings editor) receive it, open it, read it and win a wrestling match with our old system to successfully upload it.


OK, the old system wasn't that bad. We used it to publish hundreds of events a week. But the new one is better, especially for sending in your listings information. Just tap that "+ Add Event" button at the top of any listing, or click here.

If you can make a Facebook event, you can use this. And as a bonus, instead of having Russian trollbots crawling your events, they'll get read by real live Haligonians who are looking for cool things to do. Everyone wins. Except the trollbots—so that's another win.

After a nearly too close for comfort six-week campaign that did little more than expose how poorly we Canadians are educated in the ins and outs of our governance system—and puff unearned wind into fringe party ideology—Halifax (and the country) gets another go at Liberal leadership.

All four Liberal incumbent MPs in Halifax Regional Municipality (Andy Fillmore, Geoff Regan, Darrell Samson and Darren Fisher) were re-elected by their constituents. NDP candidates took second place (and 25 percent of the popular vote) in all four as well.

Voter turnout for the region was on par with the national average at 66 percent, coming in under Nova Scotia's overall performance with 69.4 percent of registered voters showing up to vote at the polls.

As per tradition, party supporters, volunteers and free-snack fienders made their way to the parties' results parties—awaiting the arrival of their candidates and word on how the city, and country, voted.

The Coast has rounded up the highlights of the night at the Halifax riding Liberal, NDP and Green Party results parties.

Andy Fillmore keeps his Halifax MP seat in Ottawa

In what was originally projected to be a rather close riding, incumbent Liberal MP Andy Fillmore beat out NDP candidate Christine Saulnier for the seat.

At the beginning of the evening, a thin crowd gathered to watch the results roll in. But by the time Fillmore arrived at HQ around 10:30pm, it was a full house.

“When we started this six weeks ago, who knew where it was going to lead,” said Fillmore. “But we worked harder than anybody, we did anything that we could and we left it all on the field.”

Fillmore says his team knocked on 10,000 doors in the riding and made thousands of phone calls.

“We shared the message of the future, of the progressive future that we want Halifax to have." 

The re-elected MP says the most important person on his team was his 12-year-old daughter, Daisy. “She has been a supporter and an inspiration. I couldn’t do it without her, and frankly, I do it for the most part for her," said Fillmore.

Fillmore says he plans to continue the work he’s been doing since the 2015 election. “The core piece will continue to help the middle class and those people who are working hard to join it,” he said. 

Fillmore shared several of his accomplishments as MP with Monday's crowd, including opening George’s Island to the public—slated for next spring—increasing bus and ferry investments and growing the Irving shipbuilding contract.

But one new, pressing issue that’s been added to the Liberal agenda is climate change. “What’s different this year is that the climate crisis is come in to really crisp focus for all of us,” said Fillmore. 

As Canada’s ocean city, Fillmore says Halifax has an opportunity to take the lead in creating green jobs.

“We have all the potential in the world to lead climate change action from right here in Halifax,” he said. “Creating those jobs that are going to pay for the transition that we so desperately need.”

MLA for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island Labi Kousoulis was at the Liberal HQ on Quinpool Road when Fillmore’s win was announced.

“I was very happy to see him be successful,” Kousoulis told The Coast. “I think he’s done a great job and I think it’s good for Halifax and Nova Scotia.”

The MLA says he was concerned this past week when projections showed the NDP gaining traction in the riding.

“A few weeks ago I was sitting in the legislature like ‘Oh Andy’s got a slam dunk,’ and the last week it was like ‘Oh I’ve got to pick up my socks a bit more and give an extra helping hand,’” Kousoulis said.

Fillmore says overall, he’s just excited to get back to Ottawa and back to work.

“My focus has always been to represent the people of Halifax,” he said. “I’m just ecstatically grateful to the people of Halifax that have asked me to go to Ottawa for another term to represent them. We have so much more work to do. We’re going to go further, faster, and I can’t wait to get started.”

NDP’s calls to action are echoed amid disappointing election results

Around 100 people filled the Mayflower Curling Club in Halifax to celebrate NDP candidate Christine Saulnier’s campaign in Halifax. As the Liberals began winning seats across the province, the mood dimmed. But Saulnier’s entrance brought back a surge of the energy that carried her dedicated team throughout the campaign. 

Saulnier said her work for the people of Halifax wasn’t over with her defeat. “I am so grateful for the work that we’ve done together. I’m so proud of this campaign,” Saulnier told the crowd. 

She called on those in the room and her supporters around the city to build a mass movement for change, together—repeating NDP campaign promises and party policy tenents. 

The NDP party won 24 seats in the federal election—and 16 percent of the popular vote—but only one seat in Atlantic Canada, which went to Jack Harris in Newfoundland’s St John’s east riding. But in HRM, the NDP won 25 percent of all votes cast. 

Saulnier said that no matter who formed government, it’s up to Canadians to hold them to account on issues that matter to people in our community. 

Saulnier will return to her job as Nova Scotia director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and will bring the stories she heard while knocking on doors with her in her work. “I will continue to fight social and economic justice for living wages in our city and for environmental justice,” she said.

As for running again Saulnier says there’s a good chance: “This was an incredible experience for me…the first time that I've ever done anything like this,” said Saulnier, smiling. Knocking on doors and meeting thousands of people in every walk of life is “not something you get to do in everyday life.” And the people she met and stories she heard with certainly stay with her.

“I loved the city before, and I love it even more now.”

Greens go for gold, get bronze, commit to continuing the fight 

Jo-Ann Roberts, leader of the Halifax Green Party, only wrote one speech for last night's election but that doesn’t mean she considers this campaign a loss. 

Roberts remained in high spirits when she re-entered the Green Party HQ, following a phone call with the Liberal’s Andy Fillmore. She only had words of hope and excitement concerning the future of their party in Nova Scotia and Canada as a whole.

"We fought an amazing campaign. We set the bar, we raised the expectations and we lived up to it, " said Jo-Ann Roberts to her crowd of supporters, shortly after hearing the news of her defeat. "We’ve changed politics in this city and in this province."

The campaign office was a sea of green throughout the night, with just over 60 people attending in support. Amid a mixture of volunteers, supporters and family, spirits ran high, filling the air with conversation and laughter. When Claire Kelly, Roberts’ daughter, took second place in the Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe riding for New Brunswick, the room exploded with cheers. 

Although the majority of the party didn’t expect to win the riding, many believed that the platform they built for the Green Party this election will live on for years to come.

“It was amazing to see the whole team develop around Jo-Ann and develop around the whole message that there’s a need for a green voice in the House of Commons from Halifax,” said Susan Antoft, a wearer-of-many-hats volunteer for the party. “The end result is a little disappointing but I can only see the Green Party growing and getting better in the future."

While the Green Party got no seats in Nova Scotia, it made a breakthrough in Atlantic Canada, when Jenica Atwin from the Fredericton riding beat out her Liberal competition. Elizabeth May and Paul Manly were also re-elected for their ridings which gives the Greens three seats, a first for the party.

For the Greens, this is a big success. In the 2019 election, they took about 6.4 percent of support. In 2015, the party received about 3.4 percent of the popular vote, down slightly from 3.9 percent in 2011.

“We achieved more than anyone expected of us,” said Roberts about her defeat. 

Roberts ran federally for the Green Party in Victoria but lost in the 2015 federal election. This year, she ran on a promise to protect the coast from offshore drilling, transition from fossil fuels to green energy, introduce a Guaranteed Liveable Income for Canada and bring in a national Pharmacare plan. She is also involved in issues affecting climate change, housing, democratic reform and income inequality.

We’ve been dumping oil, plastic, toxic chemicals, radioactive sludge, sewage and fishing gear into the ocean for decades.

We depend on oceans for so much, including half the oxygen that keeps us alive. They’re a source of protein for many people worldwide, and they absorb much of the rising heat from our indiscriminate fossil fuel burning. So, why do we treat them so badly?

An alarming new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes clear the link between climate, ocean and the cryosphere (places where water is in solid form, as ice or snow, including the Arctic and Antarctic, glaciers, permafrost, ice shelves, icebergs and sea ice).

The “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate” concludes that unnaturally rapid, human-caused global warming is altering oceans and the cryosphere faster and at a much larger scale than predicted earlier. When ice and snow cover shrink under higher global temperatures, we can expect increasing landslides, avalanches, floods, wildfires and risks to water availability and quality. We’ll also feel impacts on “recreational activities, tourism, and cultural assets.”

Without serious action to address the crisis, severe impacts will continue to increase.

The ocean is talking the brunt of the excess heating, about 90 percent. Without serious action to address the crisis, severe impacts will continue to increase.

The IPCC notes greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity have already warmed the planet 1 C above pre-industrial levels. “There is overwhelming evidence that this is resulting in profound consequences for ecosystems and people. The ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe.”

The report—by more than 100 authors from 36 countries who referenced about 7,000 scientific publications—found that, because greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for many years, already occurring trends will likely accelerate, including diminishing marine life, increasing storms, melting permafrost and shrinking ice caps. If we fail to reduce emissions and take other measures to slow global heating, the consequences will be far worse.

The IPCC has projected sea level rise by 2100 to be 10 centimetres more than it predicted in 2014—between 61 and 110 centimetres—mainly because Antarctic ice is melting faster than expected. The IPCC tends to be conservative in its estimates. Others predict sea levels could rise by as much as 238 centimetres if we don’t get emissions under control.

The researchers say that, even if warming is kept below 2 degrees Celcius, we can expect trillions of dollars in coastal damage every year and millions of migrants fleeing from coasts, now home to about two billion people.

In every scenario the IPCC examined, it found extreme sea level events that previously occurred every 100 years will likely happen every year by 2050 at many locations. These include more intense, frequent tropical storms with stronger winds and more rainfall, increasing harm to kelp forests and other important ecosystems, coral reef destruction, declining food fisheries and increased flooding from rising sea levels. Loss of ice and snow cover also causes feedback loops that speed up warming, as snow and ice reflect heat while dark surfaces absorb it.

A OneOcean initiative news release points out that three of the most serious impacts of climate breakdown on the ocean—acidification, heating and deoxygenation—have been present in every mass extinction in Earth’s history. This severity means controlling other stressors is critical. “Overfishing, pollution, destruction of habitats, ecosystems and biodiversity are all stressors that can be stopped in order to support the resilience of the ocean to withstand the climate crisis,” the release says.

As with all climate-related problems, there’s no shortage of solutions; we just need the political will to implement them.

OneOcean recommends protecting under international law the two-thirds of ocean that makes up the high seas (those areas outside national jurisdictions), curtailing overfishing and pollution, strengthening biodiversity targets and tackling climate disruption in every way possible.

Our profligate burning of fossil fuels and destruction of water and land areas that absorb excess carbon have already set unavoidable consequences in motion, but it’s not too late to avoid the most dire costs of climate disruption. We all need to heed the science and get on with solutions.

Seven months after the release of Scot Wortley's report on street checks—which found that Black people were five to six times more likely to be street checked than their proportion of the population would predict—the province has made up its mind.

Today, justice minister Mark Furey announced a permanent ban on the practice of street checks. His decision comes after the release of a report from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission looking at the legality of street checks—the report says: they're illegal.

Trayvone Clayton says the news is "a big stress reliever." Clayton, along with three others stepped away from the Wortley Street Check Action Working Group last spring after it appeared they were moving towards regulation, and the youth were adamant a ban was necessary.

"It feels good to know that we will no longer be...stopped due to our skin colour or anything," says Clayton. "It's just something we've been wanting for over 20 years.

"Being able to walk through a neighbourhood, and walk through a community...it is good. We don't have to have that feeling no more that we're gonna be stopped for no reason."

The latest report, written by justice Michael MacDonald and Jennifer L. Taylor was asked for by the board of police commissioners to aid it in moving forward after the release of Wortley's report. 

The report, which will be presented to the board at Monday's meeting, says that street checks are illegal, based on the understanding that they are "not reasonably necessary."

The report writers say one element of their decision has to do with privacy concerns saying that "street checks have the potential to interfere with" the right to be free from "arbitrary detention" and " the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure." AKA the right to be left alone.
The province had previously said in April that they were moving "toward strict regulation," which contributed to Clayton and his peers' stepping away from the working group.

"Before, walking around, when I would see police officers I would start to be hesitant," says Clayton.

"Now we can actually walk around with our chest out and confident about ourselves. And able to just be free, free to walk. Yeah, we still don't have full trust in the police officers..., but now we know they can't put their hands on us or stop us for no reason."

Clayton regrets that he and his peers weren't invited back to the working group once they decided to move forward with a ban, and that it took so long to see an official ban of the practice.

"They should have been listening to us from the get-go," he says. "It shouldn't've  took two reports for them to believe that the things they were doing were illegal." 

With plenty of deep breaths and a few sideways smiles, Stephen Adams made it through his announcement with almost no tears in City Hall Friday morning. 
Adams, Halifax's longest-serving councillor, told colleagues and media that this year would be his last in politics.

Adams, says he chose to make this announcement now in order to give anyone in his district—Spryfield - Sambro Loop - Prospect Road—sufficient time to plan to run in next year's municipal election, which will take place on October 17, 2020.

"For the individuals that are interested in offering, a year will give them some time to learn the area, learn the issues, and more importantly, get to know the people involved," says Adams.

He adds that potential candidates should "Ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask me questions, read the papers and don't pay attention to Facebook."

While other 2020 hopefuls have also made quasi-moves surrounding the upcoming municipal election, official operations can't kick off until March 1. Which means candidates can't raise or spend campaign money until then.

Adams joined city council in 1991, was around for amalgamation in 1996, and has been around for plenty of changes since then—not to mention four different mayors, seven premiers, eight MPs and eight city managers or CAOs. He says he'll miss the ups, and the downs—because they made the ups better.

"Have a look at Spryfield now," says Adams of his career. "With the help of a lot of people and some determination and stubbornness, if you will, we succeeded."

Adams looks forward to seeing the 500 block section of Herring Cove Road project take shape during his last year on council, citing the bike lanes, sidewalks and a retaining wall which has already been started coming to the area.

When author and activist Joan Kuyek moved to Sudbury, Ontario, she noticed unusual surroundings. “I couldn’t believe the city when we first came in. I mean, at that point it was black rocks everywhere,” she says by phone from Ottawa. The landscape had been burnt by a hundred years of smelting in North America’s richest mining district.  Sudbury, like many parts of Nova Scotia, was built around mining. “It was an absolutely vibrant and alive place because there were so many young people who had been hired as the mines were expanding,” says Kuyek. “It was very exciting for us, too.” 

She spent 30 years as a community organizer. Over time, she saw the downsides of the industry that employed so many. “It made me have to deal with issues of the environmental destruction of mining, we were immersed in huge labour battles and the women’s movement, because women were treated so unbelievably badly in this resource town…that’s where it started.”

Kuyek dug deeper into the mining industry as founding national coordinator of non-profit industry watchdog MiningWatch Canada. For 10 years she was part of a skeleton staff developing a deep cache.

For the last 10 years, she has been a consultant to communities affected by mining. Now, after a lifetime of learning, Kuyek has decided to write everything she knows about Canadian mining in her new book, Unearthing Justice. “The reason for writing this book is I wanted it to be something useful to people who are dealing with mining issues,” she says. Unearthing Justice contains everything you might want to know about mining, told through the stories of people from BC to Nova Scotia. How a mine opens and closes, the displacement of Indigenous peoples to make way for mines, the flow of money, the legal system’s kid-gloves handling of the industry and ways for people to limit mining damage in their community are all covered. “It’s history. Maybe it was the accumulation of the assaults on the land and people that finally got to me… I just really felt that people needed to learn from each other,” she says.

Kuyek is coming to Nova Scotia for the book’s launch. Before launch activities, she will attend a demonstration at the gold show, paid for by citizens, where investors, industry people and government are welcome. Citizens and media are not.

Kuyek says the gold show is a bad sign. “Nova Scotia promoting it as this big gold show and then closing it to everybody because they’re so scared of their taxpayers doing something about it? That is unique.”

All are welcome at St. Andrew’s United Church (6036 Coburg Road) Saturday October 19 at 1pm for a talk from Kuyek followed by a panel discussion on alternatives to mining. Her tour continues in Tatamagouche Sunday.

Although the only discussion now should be about solutions and how to implement them quickly, some people in and out of the political sphere still refuse to accept the massive amounts of evidence for human-caused global heating and the need to address it.

Politicians are finally talking about climate change. How could they not? In Canada, more than 800,000 young people and their supporters took to the streets on September 27, joining more than 7.6 million worldwide, to demand that adults take the crisis seriously.

It was exhilarating to see half a million people marching in Montreal, more than 100,000 in Vancouver, over 10,000 in Halifax and many smaller marches throughout the country. But is it too little too late?

I don’t think so, but every day we stall means emissions continue to rise, making it increasingly difficult to avert the worst consequences. We’ve already pumped so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and destroyed so many carbon-storing natural areas that the planet would continue heating even if we halted emissions immediately.

For decades, I and others have been speaking about the need to conserve energy, shift to renewables and protect natural spaces, all while being told the transition won’t happen overnight. Meanwhile, over many nights and days, Canada has continued to expand fossil fuel development and infrastructure, and representatives from across the political spectrum argue we need new pipelines designed to last at least 50 years to transport dirty fuels the world has committed to moving away from in less time!

It doesn’t make sense to pin our future on a polluting, climate-altering sunset industry that already employs far fewer people than the clean energy sector. It’s why we must take the upcoming federal election seriously. Fortunately, every major party now has a climate plan. Unfortunately, not every plan will get us to our Paris Agreement targets—and even those targets seem inadequate in the face of escalating consequences.

A common refrain is that Canada produces a relatively small percentage of emissions, so it doesn’t matter what we do.

Although the only discussion now should be about solutions and how to implement them quickly, some people in and out of the political sphere still refuse to accept the massive amounts of evidence for human-caused global heating and the need to address it. A common refrain is that Canada produces a relatively small percentage of emissions, so it doesn’t matter what we do.

Most countries could use the same excuse, and it ignores that we don’t account for the emissions from burning the fossil fuels we sell globally. And while it’s true Canada produces less than two percent of global emissions, we have one of the highest per-capita rates, behind the US and Saudi Arabia, and we’re the 10th largest emitter overall. Countries like Canada that contribute two percent or less to emissions add up to close to half the emissions, which means we all have to do our part. The top 15 emitters, including Canada, generate about 72 percent.

China produces more than 27 percent (although far less per capita than Canada), the US produces just under 15 percent, and India, in third place, produces under seven percent. More than 90 percent of emissions have occurred in less than 100 years, with more than half in less than 30!

It’s taken us hardly any time to pollute air, land and water and alter the climate with our wasteful consumer and car culture. There’s no reason to continue down this road. It’s been proven many times that money, cars and excess stuff don’t bring happiness. In Canada, we could go a long way by being less wasteful, but that’s just a start.

There’s no shortage of solutions; we just need political will.

We’ve put off tackling the problem in a meaningful way, and people—especially youth—have had enough. There’s no shortage of solutions; we just need political will. It’s time for us all to demand that politicians stop thinking in short-term electoral cycles and start focusing on the future.

We should all examine the roster of candidates and parties where we live, compare their environmental platforms and records, and ask local contenders about their climate commitments. Remember, in Canada, we don’t vote for a prime minister; we vote for a member of Parliament to represent us.

Thanks to the tremendous efforts of so many—youth, Indigenous people, environmentalists, politicians, business leaders and innovators—the climate crisis has become Canada’s top election issue. We must ensure it stays top of mind, no matter which party or parties end up governing after October 21.

Whether you vote in an advance poll or on election day, vote for climate solutions!

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation

Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington.

Nearly 100 protestors from across the province descended upon the Angus L. Macdonald bridge early Monday morning to demand action addressing the climate crisis.

The #BridgeOut demonstration, organized by climate justice activists from Extinction Rebellion Nova Scotia had demands for government to close the Alton Natural Gas Storage Project by October 4 (they didn’t), enforce the early 2020 deadline for the Northern Pulp Boat Harbour project and to close all coal, gas and biomass generators in the province and replace them with renewable energy from solar and wind.

Protesters arrived at the Bridge just after 7:30 am, and were met by more than 50 Halifax Regional Police officers at the bridge.

More than a dozen high school students skipped class to support the protestors,  including Lachlan Brown from Dartmouth High School.

“I’m worried about our planet and I’m worried I’m going to get robbed of my future if we don’t cut carbon emissions,” says Brown.

“I’m here to learn. The people older than me know more than me. It’s up to me and up to my peers in 20 years when we’re leaders of this country and we’re responsible for this planet so we have to fix this and the best way to do that is learn from the people who already know.”

While Extinction Rebellion planned to keep pedestrian and cyclist lanes open to the public, the Bridge Commission closed all lanes of traffic with an exception for emergency vehicles only.

Catherine Hughes, an artist from River John, says she rode her bike approximately 150 kilometres to Dartmouth, a nearly four-hour ride, to avoid creating additional emissions travelling to and from the demonstration. Hughes emphasized the need for expanded, accessible public transit throughout the province, “so people don’t have to feel like they’re taking their lives in their hands so they can live in a way that’s consistent with their beliefs.”

“The Pictou Landing First Nation…have to live with the stench from [the Northern Pulp] mill all the time, and in particular, they need to live beside Boat Harbour and the contamination there,” says Hughes. “I really want to see that mill closed down. It’s doing much, much more harm than good.”

After being told to leave the premises and given time to do so at 10:50am, Halifax Regional Police arrested around 14 people for failing to leave. By noon, a total of 18 activists had been arrested. A tweet from Extinction Rebellion NS late Monday afternoon noted the oldest detainee was born in 1942, and the youngest in 1997.

Supporters with posters and flags were ordered by police to leave the sidewalks near the bridge following the arrests as police reminded attendees the sidewalk is private property owned by the bridge.  

The bridge re-opened by 12:15 pm to cars and buses, as well as cyclists and pedestrians.

The sentiment of the closure contrasted with the Climate Strike last month that saw more than 10,000 protestors take to the streets of Halifax.

There was plenty of criticism for the demonstration from citizens frustrated by having to take an alternative route or method of transportation, making #BridgeOut an example of protest in its purest form—not for smiles and photo-ops but people putting themselves on the line for our planet. And despite the uproar from the public, the demonstration has given attention to the climate crisis and Extinction Rebellion’s demands in a larger capacity than ever in Halifax and around the world, where similar disturbance protests unfolded over the course of the day.

Many citizens were more concerned about short-term inconveniences rather than long-term consequences of our actions—despite drivers being well accustomed to detour routes used during the abundance of closures during the Big Lift in the past few years.

But for protesters, it was a now-or-never moment. “I’m worried about the future of the world and all the good people that live here,” says Frances Van der Wel from Wolfville. “It’s just time. I’m fed up, I’m really fed up. Something has to change.”

Voting has historically been inaccessible for students and youth living away from the electoral riding they consider home, but this year, students can vote on campus with special ballots.

In past federal elections, there’s been a low voter turnout for youth aged 18-24. In 2011, overall voter turnout was 61 percent but less than 40 percent of youth voted.

“I always thought that my vote didn’t really matter and that’s why I didn’t vote in the 2011 election,” says Al Schnare.

At the time Schnare was living in Cape Breton, away from his home in Deep Cove. He says that he wouldn’t have voted anyway because he felt fed up with the political system and candidate options during the 2011 election.

In the 2011 federal election, Elections Canada set up polling stations in some university residences, but they were only to serve those living in residence. Many of these voting stations went unused because students were already transitioning between school year and summer lodgings by election day in May that year.

With growing concern about the low youth engagement in elections, the vote on campus program was started in an attempt to make voting easier and more accessible. The program allows people to vote by special ballot for a candidate in whichever riding they consider to be home—so long as they arrive with a form of accepted identification.

In 2015, 39 educational institutions took part in the program.

Youth turnout jumped by 18 percent for the 2015 federal election, pushing the youth turnout up from less than 40 percent in the previous election, to 57 percent.

“There was no question after the election whether or not it would be continued,” says Lisa Drouillard, director of outreach and stakeholder engagement for Elections Canada.

It’s now a permanent national program, with more than 115 educational institutions taking part. In Halifax this year, Saint Mary’s University, Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College are hosting student voting.

While Drouillard says programs like Vote On Campus can’t take all the credit for the spike in youth turnout, they were pleased to be able to accommodate the uptick in youth voters.

“The older I get, the more mature I get,” says Schnare, who voted for the first time in 2015, “and I realize that it [voting] is a lot more important than I gave it credit for before.

Voting on campus by special ballot in the advance polls runs from October 5-9. Students looking to vote in their home riding after October 9 can do so at an Elections Canada office or by mail before 6pm on October 15.

Hundreds of Haligonians gathered at Grand Parade Square on Friday to mourn the destruction caused by climate change and request government action.  

“The planet is in crisis, there is no planet B and unless we take that seriously then our home is gone,” said David Walmark, an attendee of the rally. “Everybody can do their own little bit individually but it’s not going to be enough, it has to be Halifax speaking.”

The Interfaith Gathering and Climate Action Rally marked the beginning of the K’jipuktuk Halifax week of Climate Action, inspired by Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future. This gathering was designed to honour the victims of climate change with a moment of silence and hear from faith leaders and climate change activists about the state of the climate crisis. It also aimed to educate attendees on how they can make a difference. 

“If everyone shows that they care about the climate then we can make it, we can change the laws, we can change the system,” said Willa Fisher, 17-year-old climate activist from Citadel High School and one of the organizers of SchoolStrike4Climate HFX. “All this response means we are winning, that we can do this.”

Working in collaboration with Extinction Rebellion, Our Time Halifax, Climate Strike Canada and more, each day there will be a series of events following the rally designed to generate climate change awareness. Events range from the Youth National Die-In to Veg Fest and will end with a General Strike on Friday, September 27. 

“With this event, we want to scare the shit out of the establishment. People say this is an interesting event—well it’s not just an interesting event, it’s an existential crisis,” said Richard Zurawski, HRM District 12 councillor and chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee for HRM. “When was the last time you had a big ol' glass of oil? Or chowed down on some coal? Or took a good deep breath of natural gas? Because that’s what is supplanting through big businesses across the HRM.”

One of the main themes the interfaith gathering and climate action rally sought to promote was the importance of unity. Bringing together leaders of various faiths, it encouraged all people to unite under one cause and stand up for everything being affected. Representing the Anglican church, reverend Tory Byrne both spoke at and attended the rally because she is worried about the state of god’s creation: “This creation is a creation for all people,” said Byrne. “We need to raise awareness, not only to make people aware but to make people commit to actions that aren’t always comfortable but give life to all.”

“Climate is life. If we ignore our climate then we don’t have anything,” said Joan Smith, a water walker for the Mi’kmaq nation. Smith believes that there needs to be an emphasis on the importance of water within the climate change fight. “Water is also life. Without water, we don’t have a climate, we don’t have land, we don’t have animals, we have nothing,” said Smith, “An elder told me once that we need to step up to the plate and I think that’s what’s happening now.” 

With Canada’s federal election on the horizon, the climate crisis has been a popular subject of debate. After Elections Canada’s decision to declare human-made climate change as partisan, the environment has become a hot topic as citizens wait to see whether Canada is going to vote for the climate. 

“I’ve lived in multiple places across Canada and I’ve seen effects of climate change from all over,” said Lindsay Eagleson, a rally attendee. “We need government and we need individuals to fight for a planet that we can all actually live on.”

Deborah Ross, another climate striker, agrees with that sentiment. “The time is now. We don’t have much time left to act for climate justice and to reverse the effects of climate,” said Ross, “We owe it to our children to protect their futures.”

One company in Halifax is already working to counteract pollution in the environment by reducing the number of personal-use vehicles in HRM.

“We need to show that we are together on this and that there is a huge movement to get people’s attention. This is a crucial moment,” said Pamela Cooley, the founder of Carshare Atlantic, who was at the rally. “I think it’s important that with everything we do we consider the environment and the future of the world.”

Events are happening all week in the city, culminating in the Strike for Climate next Friday, September 27. 

An infinite future of changes to Halifax and Dartmouth’s streetscapes and planning zones got their first big seal of approval this week. After months—really years…decades even—of back and forth on big ideas and tiny details, Package A of the city’s Centre Plan was unanimously passed by regional council this week. 

The plan aims to streamline and strengthen the rules and by-laws around the physical buildings that make up city life in HRM’s centre, as well as simplify some

 of the processes around who gets a say in further development decisions, and gives the city a concrete start on the “what do we do about housing affordability” question. It covers the land of peninsular Halifax and across the bridges between the harbour and the Circ.

Councillor Sam Austin called it a “huge, huge step forward,” in agreeing on where growth should go, what form it will take, and eliminating one-off arguments over site-specific developments. He said if anything, it should give citizens and developers a more consistent expectation of what’s to come in your area.

At a public hearing on Tuesday, for over two hours local residents and developers spoke to councillors about the plan. Many were developers or developer-adjacent asking for site-specific changes to the plan. Some were previous planners who were just there to say, "great work, folks," and a few residents who were disappointed in the way the changes would affect their own or neighbouring streets.

After clarification and debate from councillors, a large number of the site-specific requests were shelved in amendments to be revisited in Package B—which also includes decisions around parks and open spaces among other things.

Then staff held their breath as councillors went back and forth on a few more contentious items.

The first of which was the plan’s plan for affordable housing or as mayor Mike described it, “the big nut.” The city has moved forward with a density bonusing program, which will let developers construct a building bigger than the now set rules around size as long as they pay a “density bonus” AKA cash money into a fund earmarked for affordable housing initiatives—permission to colour outside the lines in exchange for funds that will likely be directed to housing-related non-profits and organizations. Staff has six months to figure out what exactly that looks like.

Density bonusing won out over not inclusionary zoning—which would have put set rules around which kind and how many units (read: affordable units) must be included in a development in certain areas—after the province decided to give density bonusing the green light and red-light the latter.

At the public hearing, developer Peter Polley said opting for density bonusing over inclusive zoning was like encouraging non-profits to open grocery stores, instead of working with grocery stores to help with food affordability, calling the density bonusing too restrictive.

Developers asked staff to reconsider charging the density bonus—applied to any proposed development exceeding 2,000 square metres of floor area (an NHL sized hockey rink is about 1,500 square metres) at the early permit stage in the building process. Staff said they had looked into it but there was no spot in the process after the initial permit issuing where they could hold developers on the hook for the money.

Some councillors argued that charging this fee upfront would result in increased rents, minimizing affordability.

Staff have maintained throughout the process that a goal of the plan is to increase the housing supply. General economics tells us that increased supply—as long as it’s not accompanied by even higher increases in demand—should keep prices down. Vacancy rates hit their lowest point in 2018 at 1.6 percent and word on the street is they’re even lower right now. (In The Coast’s recent Renter’s Survey, 43 percent of the over 500 respondents said their rent is going up in the next  year.) 

Councillors Matt Whitman, David Hendsbee, Russel Walker, Stephen Adams and Tim Outhit voted against the chunk of the Centre Plan that was separated from the big vote, which called for a reorganization of the sub-committees that got to make decisions about which buildings went where and what they were like. Outhit said he hit the wrong button and meant to vote yes. Hendsbee, who asked for this bit to be separated from the main vote argued that this would strengthen the rural-urban divide on council.

The plan, with its goal of simplification, will mean no more as-you-go public hearings for big buildings as we know the process now.  Their permission is baked into the new rules—or can be achieved by paying into the density bonusing purse—to dig down and build up. But Package B is still to come and up for debate, so Halifax as we know it could stick around for a couple of more years yet.

At this week’s board of police comissioners meeting Halifax police chief Dan Kinsella said HRP is keeping its plan from June 2019 to purge all data and metadata regarding street checks in December 2020.

In March 2019 the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and Scot Wortley released their report on street checks which reported on racial bias in the street check practice finding that Black men are six times more likely to be stopped by police than white men in Halifax, among other things. 

Action on the report’s 76 recommendations are dependent on four main pillars, first being the province and the department of justice, second being an inquiry into the legality of street checks from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, Halifax’s board of police commissioners and finally the HRP and Halifax RCMP. 

Kinsella says the decision to retain metadata only until December 2020 is in part because of the risk of it being a large data set.

“If we take information out names, gender, dates, of birth, ages…all those kind of things…and the data set is still very large, there are individuals around who could potentially rebuild the data set, which could lead to identification and potential privacy issues down the road.”

He says with the questions raised by Wortley, ensuring they ask what the data is being kept for and how long it’s kept for led to the determination that “there is no real value to us keeping it beyond December 2020.” 

The report recommends that if the province goes forward with regulation, a research committee should be convened to discuss best practices around data collection.

But in a regulation scenario the Wortley report also says “for ongoing research and evaluation purposes, all historical, pre-regulation street check data should be de-identified and retained,” adding that “historical street check dataset will further assist researchers in their examination of the relationship between race, gender, age and police surveillance activities.” Wortley suggests that should provide go-ahead with regulation of street checks, the historical data will assist in the evaluation of said regulation.

At the meeting commissioner and chair Natalie Borden also brought a motion asking for HRP to look into data collection on police stops in an attempt to keep the street check file moving forward. Police stops are distinct from street checks but often included in the umbrella of opportunity for racial bias in policing. This piece, like many of the Wortley report recommendations are dependent the upcoming Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission consideration of the legality of street checks, which Borden says should be on the agenda at next month’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting. 

Borden also updated the board of police commissioners on the status of the province’s working group, saying they are doing some restructuring and reconsidering—read: soul searching—what the mission of the group is as the province moves towards regulation.

City councillor and commissioner Lindell Smith also brought forward a motion that at the next meeting HRP and the RCMP walk the commissioners through the process for sexual assault reporting and investigations, in light of a recent CBC article by Maggie Rahr, telling the story of the mishandling of Carrie Low’s sexual assault by Halifax Regional Police.