December 17, 2019

March 18, 2020 On February 17, 2020, I published a blog post called “Municipal Ecological Governance in Nova Scotia” that discussed, among other things, a letter that Maryse Belanger, COO of Atlantic Mining NS Corp. (“Atlantic Gold”) had sent to various provincial Ministers in February 2019.  As I noted in my blog post, Ms. Belanger’s letter asked the Government of Nova Scotia to make it clear to the Municipality of the District of St. Mary’s that the St. Mary’s Council has “no legal or legislative authority” over the Cochrane Hill Gold Project, which is a mining project that Atlantic Gold has proposed to carry out in the region. In response, I wrote that even though municipalities’ powers to contribute to ecological governance are limited, municipalities do have ecological governance powers that matter all the same. One power that I highlighted is the power to designate protected water areas under section 106 of Nova Scotia’s Environment Act. More generally, I also argued that because municipal governments operate close to the people, they are uniquely positioned to hear their constituents’ concerns and respond to them or amplify them so that they will be heard by those with higher authority.  Since I published my blog post,…