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Premier Tim Houston has a hate on for ‘special interest groups’ but won’t say who they are. Here are the actual special interests in Nova Scotia.
Houston’s divisive politicking seems to have begun on January 21, coincidentally — or maybe not — the day after the most divisive man on the planet, Donald Trump, was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. On that day, Houston circulated a six-page letter to his caucus.
In it, he warned of turbulent times ahead because of tariffs Trump threatened to impose on Canada. Houston warned “special interests” had “captured too many parts of our economy and have had an out-sized voice in policy creation.”
Shadowy ‘special interest groups’?
Houston continued to make the same insinuations about unnamed “special interests” in a $10,000-ad that took up the front page of the Chronicle Herald, an ad Nova Scotians paid for.
The scapegoating persisted and dog whistles even made it into in the Houston government’s Throne Speech on February 14. The speech alternated between schmaltzy nationalism and melodramatic calls for unity, and repeated attacks, once again, on “special interests.”
The message was that anyone who defended government regulations — or bans on fracking and uranium mining — that had been put in place over the years to protect the environment and climate, was part of some cabal of shadowy special interests out to “impoverish” Nova Scotians.
Then came the legislative jackhammer. |Read more|