Is Premier Houston welcoming a Trojan Horse?
Our Premier is boasting that an agreement with Trent Vichie of EverWind to invest 8 billion in a Data Centre in Cape Breton is the largest infrastructure investment ever in Nova Scotia. Trent Vichie is a known Trump supporter. We only know the “official donations.” He has already conned Canadians out of taxpayers money without producing anything useful with his proposal – now dead in the water - to ship green hydrogen to Germany. Now he has been given free access to waltz in and plunk down a Data Centre without notice or consultation. Very recently the premier promised that a data centre would be “years down the road,” when it is obvious the backrooms boys were already brimming and buzzing with pens in hand.
It is enough to make this miserable childless cat lady contemplate how convenient it would be for certain powers south of the border to open an easy conduit for mining data and taking over with the stealth of Odysseus. It isn’t that they haven’t threatened us in overt and subtle ways. The metaphor endures in modern vocabularies on that very topic. Just because we’re paranoid …
With typical Houston-style business as usual, attempts were made to keep the wrong people away from the public announcement and photo op for "Trespassing”. If that isn’t an attempt to control the press, I don’t know what is.
Our Premier has been quoted as supporting banning the public from Nova Scotia legislature: "There's a responsibility for people, when they show up here, to act like adults," Who is the adult here? Here are bully tactics if ever I saw it.
Last year this government issued a temporary ban on 36 people who participated in the protests over the budget, including Christine Saulnier, our local representative of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Nina Newington, the president of Save our Old Forests. This was not a Jan 6 riot. It was a protest. I was there. Yes, it was noisy, but I think the government already had a “little list of folks they wouldn’t miss.” We are feeling betrayed and watching great harm coming to the most vulnerable people in our province and the preservers of arts and culture, the latter of whom, contribute significantly to the economy as well. Our Premier was conveniently out of town when the omnibus budget was being passed.
Last year Houston attempted to control media scrums. There was strong criticism, including from Canadian Association of Journalists president, Brent Jolly: “It is deliberately designed to force journalists and news organizations into deciding: should they cover the affairs of the legislature or trek off site to hear a minister regurgitate sanitized talking points?” Houston backed down and agreed to resume unmoderated scrums behind a lectern in Province House's Red Room.
Houston’s motives were “amplified” when there emerged a Progressive Conservative member’s fundraising letter that asked Nova Scotians to help the party thwart “special interests” and “bypass the media when we need to.” Those special interests turned out to be our most vulnerable citizens.
BTW Media scrums with politicians started before Confederation.
This government also reduced the number of days the legislature meets. “In less than 72 hours, the Progressive Conservative government released a huge omnibus budget bill, a capital plan and six bills affecting more than 30 pieces of legislation. Clearly the government desires another short, packed sessions of the legislature, according to opposition politicians, at the expense of transparency and accountability, to advance a less than admirable agenda."
I have subsequently retooled this as a letter to the Premier and all our provincial representatives.
