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Environmental Racism Panel members appointed in Nova Scotia

Smoke stacks bellowing out smoke into the sky next to pine trees.
About 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions emitted each year in Nova Scotia are from the electricity sector and industry. Photo courtesy Unsplash.
Haeley DiRisio - CKDU - Halifax • NS | 05-07-2023
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An Environmental Racism Panel has appointed its first seven members.
The panel was created because the provincial Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act required that the government set up a panel to address these environmental racism concerns. Last December, Augy Jones was designated as the chair of the panel and started the process of selecting the members.

“I really had to recruit and convince these people to give their time to this project,” Jones said.

The panel consists of Angie Gillis, Executive Director Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq; Desiree Jones-Matthias, lawyer, African Nova Scotian Justice Institute; Gaynor Watson-Creed, Associate Dean, Dalhousie University faculty of medicine; Karen Hudson, Principal, Auburn Drive High School; Lisa Young, Executive Director, Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources; Mike Davis, President and CEO, Davis Pier Consulting; and Thomas Johnson, Executive Director, Eskasoni, Fisheries and Wildlife.

Environmental racism is defined as racial discrimination in environmental policy, according to the panel.

“Think about health concerns for any community around clean water, proper sewage, having a municipal dump in your area, having a factory putting in toxic waste to your community,” Jones said.

“The racism part comes in because we found there was a disproportionate amount of Indigenous and Black communities that have all of those toxic elements within them,” Jones added.

Jones said the panel is going to be taking the Sankofa method—looking back to go forward.

“We have to start out by validating historical instances of environmental racism such as Boat Harbour and Pictou First Nations,” Jones said.

Pictou Landing First Nations, a Mi'kmaw community were told the lagoon put in over 50 years ago would be good for tourism.

The lagoon became a poisoned dumping ground for pulp mill waste until the federal government allocated $100 million to help clean up Boat Harbour.

“It’s trying to link what we can do to try and eradicate these types of things happening to communities,” Jones said.

The panel will look at what policies and legislation needs to be put in place to protect these communities from environmental racism and what climate change initiatives can be applied to heal their environments and restore justice, Augy explained.

The panel will meet for the first time in early August.

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