At the Pictou Town Council meeting, Paterson said that since July 12, he and Kissack have met virtually with about 80 people from “forestry groups,” including the industry organization Forest Nova Scotia, the Cumberland Forestry Advisory Group,” as well as “major landowners.”[1] If the names of these forestry groups ring a bell, it could be because they were among the ringleaders in the recent forestry industry assault on and subsequent gutting of the Biodiversity Act before it had even made it to Law Amendments, as the Halifax Examiner reported here.

Paterson also told the Pictou Town Council they had met with “160 to 170” ex-employees and retirees from the pulp mill.

He admitted they had not met with Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), the community that suffered most directly and intensively because of the mill operations since the 1960s, which had turned the PLFN precious tidal estuary A’se’K (“the other room”) into a toxic lagoon filled with stinking pulp effluent.

Rather, Paterson said, they had met with an “off-Reserve Mi’kmaw group out of Truro, at their request through Environment Canada.”

In addition, Paterson told Council they had met with “two fishing groups.” But, he admitted, these were not fishing groups from the Northumberland Strait, who stridently opposed the mill’s earlier plans to pipe its treated effluent 14 kilometres overland and into the rich fishing grounds a few kilometres offshore from Caribou Harbour.

The full story can be found here https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/music-was-what-he-did-it-was-him-there-was-no-separation/?fbclid=IwAR1v-VB_YKrHPw-JV2sWCdDv1xuteYDDdS7LcZWFlEUpICkyWdmxY-lV-W8#N3