Nova Scotia mum on why it won’t release findings from environmental racism panel

HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government is refusing to release recommendations from a panel tasked with examining environmental racism in the province, and the minister responsible isn’t saying why.

Justice Minister Becky Druhan, who is also responsible for the Office of Equity and Anti-Racism, avoided giving an explanation when pressed by reporters after a provincial cabinet meeting Thursday.

Druhan did say the province’s Progressive Conservative government is committed to addressing issues of equity and racism and she said the panel’s work will “inform” those efforts.

“One of the important insights that the panel provided to us … is that systemic and foundational change is needed to address racism around environmental issues,” the minister said.

Druhan wouldn’t answer when asked whether she had seen the panel’s recommendations, saying its work had predated her time as minister.

The eight-member panel was appointed in June 2023 to look at how racism affects a community’s natural environment and it was expected to submit its recommendations by the end of that year. It was chaired by Augy Jones, who is now the government’s executive director of African Nova Scotian Affairs.

When he was appointed to the panel in December 2022, Jones was clear about how he wanted its work to be perceived.

“We want this process to be an example to Canada on how you engage with marginalized communities who have been traumatized in an intergenerational way,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview.

The idea for the panel came from the opposition New Democrats, who proposed an amendment to climate change legislation that was passed in the fall of 2023.

Examples of environmental racism include instances where landfills, trash incinerators, coal plants, toxic waste facilities and other environmentally hazardous activities are located near communities of colour, Indigenous territories and the working poor.

Opposition NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it was “disheartening” that the government has sat on the panel’s findings for more than a year. She said the report should be released to the public.

“The promise made when this panel was established was to bring some clarity and truth and recommendations to what is a really shameful legacy in this province of environmental racism,” Chender said.

Interim Liberal leader Derek Mombourquette said the government was sending a “disgraceful” message in not releasing the panel’s recommendations.

“The minister has the absolute obligation to release that report so communities and Nova Scotians can read it,” he said.

Examples of environmental racism in Nova Scotia include the toxic dump and landfill that operated for decades near the historic Black communities of Shelburne and Lincolnville.

As well, the cleanup continues at Boat Harbour, N.S., near the Pictou Landing First Nation, where a once pristine body of water served for decades as an effluent lagoon for a nearby paper mill.

Liberal critic Iain Rankin, a former environment minister and premier, once referred to Boat Harbour as one of the worst cases of environmental racism in Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2025.