Miners praise N.S. premier's call to lift uranium ban but environmentalist calls it a 'dead end'

When Karen McKendry heard Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston's comments that "We must take the 'no' out of Nova Scotia" and pursue more natural resource development, she had a different interpretation of the premier's phrasing.

Houston made the comments Wednesday, announcing the provincial government's shifting focus could include re-examining long-standing bans in Nova Scotia, including on uranium mining, fracking for natural gas and the moratorium on oil and gas exploration on the lucrative fishing grounds of Georges Bank.

McKendry, the wilderness outreach co-ordinator with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, said we should keep the Nova in Nova Scotia.

"Nova means New Scotland," she said. "It means we need to go in new directions and be progressive. And I don't think there's anything progressive about revisiting a dead end that we already went down when we looked at uranium mining in the past."

McKendry said that mining is one of the most polluting industries in the world, and as the world deals with a climate crisis it's not an industry Nova Scotia should be looking toward.

"When we hear that Nova Scotia's environmental regulations are the best in the world, they are not, and they are not always followed, so it doesn't seem like Nova Scotians want to delve more into that and take more of those risks," she said.

McKendry pointed to a mining company that's fighting the Nova Scotia government in court over how to clean up a site it used to operate.

McKendry said the province should focus on growing natural resource industries such as fishing, farming and forestry and making them "more resilient and more niche and more competitive, as opposed to putting them at risk."

Sean Kirby, the executive director of the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, echoed the premier's comments.

"We need to embrace opportunities in this province. And I think that's really what the premier was getting at when he talked about the importance of taking the no out of Nova Scotia, right?" he said.

"There is huge need globally for uranium and Nova Scotia has potential to provide it. So we should lift the ban and allow exploration for it to start again so we can see whether we're actually able to have economically viable mines."

Kirby said the modern mining industry does an excellent job of taking care of the environment and operates with the highest standards.

'Too much red tape,' says mining industry

He said more than 3,000 Nova Scotians work in the industry, and said the average compensation is $102,000 per year.

But Kirby said it's a tough environment to work in, calling the process for getting permits for modern mines and quarries extraordinarily complex.

"Nova Scotia has for many years simply had too much red tape," he said. "It's simply been unnecessarily difficult to work in the province and we need the provincial government to help us fix that so that we absolutely are held to the highest standards environmentally and in terms of safety and everything else that's operational."

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