Premier Tim Houston’s government is moving forward with a plan to possibly lift bans on hydraulic fracking (drilling) and uranium exploration.
New legislation introduced on Tuesday in Halifax includes measures that would allow for drilling of onshore natural gas, potential uranium development, and several amendments to agricultural laws, according to a news release.
Houston has been vocal recently about the need to boost the economy and tap into Nova Scotia’s wealth of critical minerals.
A ban on fracking has been in place since 2014, but the province believes these changes would help make us more economically independent. Uranium mining has been banned in the province since 2009.
The changes to uranium laws would permit the government to dig, but not private companies.
They also say any hydraulic fracking or drilling would face “strict regulations to minimize any environmental threat” and would only happen after they’ve had “conversations about how to do it safely.”
Houston has been adamant that any naysayers to resource development are holding the province back.
In the government’s throne speech on Friday and in a front page advertisement in the Chronicle Herald, the PCs said “special interest groups”, or environmentalists, are preventing these things.
Nova Scotia has seven trillion cubic feet of onshore natural gas and exploration could generate $100 million a year, with full production bringing in billions in royalties, the release says.
Energy Minister Trevor Boudreau says any natural gas coming into Nova Scotia comes from Western Canada or the United States.
“We know that it’s there because we have radon, a side effect of uranium. It’s a health hazard. We need to investigate that right now,” he says.
Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton says they’re more focused on exploring the quality and quantity of uranium for now, but mining will come later.
Rushton adds that the province has environmental standards, and if anyone wants to mine in the province, they will adhere to those. He says the mining has to be safe and environmentally friendly.
Since the Premier announced they would look at fracking, Boudreau says many stakeholders and businesses have called to say they’re interested.
Liberal Leader Derek Mombourquette says the province really needs to have a conversation with communities around uranium and fracking before they do anything.
“You’re going to need to engage with experts when it comes to watershed, when it comes to ecological rarity in our forests, when it comes to endangered species,” he says.
“They’re sensitive areas of the province where developments were looked at, really, to be developed, but haven’t happened. So you need to have all that engagement before you even get into the idea of development.”
The NDP have also said that those rules were in place to protect the environment. The party has also been very critical of Houston for not including environmentalists or consulting them when his government makes changes to environmental regulations.
