HALIFAX – A councillor with Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia says a cleanup plan approved by Ottawa further delays the removal of contaminated sludge that his community has been living next to for decades.
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on Friday gave the Nova Scotia government the go-ahead for the remediation of Boat Harbour in Pictou County, where a pulp mill dumped effluent next to a Mi’kmaq community for more than 50 years.
The decision comes with conditions, including the creation of an advisory committee in partnership with the First Nation to identify possible locations for the long-term storage of the contaminated waste.
Pictou Landing band councillor Derek Francis says he is angry the decision doesn’t include a plan to urgently relocate the toxic sludge away from the First Nation to one of the alternative sites he and other members of council have proposed.
The conditions imposed by Guilbeault say that if a suitable location for the sludge is not found within one year, the committee can keep working on finding a solution for 10 years.
Francis says this timeline is unacceptable, and failing to immediately remove the toxic waste is a continuation of the federal government’s pattern of environmental racism.
In 2018, the province’s then-environment minister Iain Rankin referred to Boat Harbour as one of the worst examples of environmental racism in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 28, 2025.
