This commentary was first published in the Halifax Examiner on June 11, 2025.
Back in the fall of 2024, when Tim Houston was on the stump, seeking re-election as premier of Nova Scotia, his campaign literature was littered with photos of him wearing a big toothy grin that made him look like an awfully nice, fun-loving guy.
One of these photos filled the cover of the Progressive Conservative party’s election platform, and was blown up to fill the side of Houston’s blue campaign bus, along with the glib and giddy slogan “Make it happen.”
There were a couple of hints of fangs in that smile, which hinted at Houston’s darker side.
Just before he called the election, breaking the very first piece of legislation his government passed during its first term, Houston took some vicious swipes at asylum seekers, as the Halifax Examiner reported here and here.
He also took a few cheap and predictable shots at the federal Liberals under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, because he knew that would earn him a few – albeit ill-deserved – political brownie points with some Nova Scotians.
Mostly, though, as he sought a second term as premier, Houston just smiled that toothy smile, and pledged to Nova Scotians that he would make the province more “livable.” He made all kinds of grandiose promises to improve health care and housing, and you just had to believe him because…well…that smile!
A ‘supermajority” with a super minority of votes
In the end, Houston smiled all the way to a second term, this time with a “supermajority.” His party won 78.2% of the seats in the house, with only 52.8% of the vote. The 2024 provincial election saw the lowest voter turnout in Nova Scotia’s history, at just 45%. That means only 24% of eligible Nova Scotian voters cast a ballot for Houston’s Progressive Conservatives.
But Houston still won, and his big majority gave him four more years to do exactly what he wanted to do.
Which – surprise, surprise – wasn’t what he campaigned on.
Instead, a whole new set of policies emerged, ones that Houston neglected to even hint at during the election campaign. When the legislature opened in February 2025, Houston “flooded the zone,” tabling new bills that were the equivalent of a chainsaw buzzing through democratic principles and pillars in Nova Scotia, repealing laws and environmental protections that had been in place for decades.
The new boogeyman: ‘special interests’
Securely back in the premier’s office for another term, Houston was revealing a whole new unsmiling side of himself, which hadn’t made it onto that big blue campaign bus.
Gone was the back-slapping, glad-handing Bluenoser, replaced by a new and nastier Tim Houston, willing to take swipes not just at asylees and the federal Liberals, but this time, at fellow Nova Scotians whom he denounced as “special interests” and “special interest groups.”
“We must take the ‘no’ out of Nova Scotia,” Houston wrote on Jan. 21, when he informed his caucus that outright bans on fracking and uranium exploration and mining in the province were to be ended, because they were “lazy public policy.”
On the same day as Houston’s caucus letter, the Mining Association of Nova Scotia (MANS) released a report calling for an end to the uranium ban, entitled “Take the ‘no’ out of Nova Scotia.”
Strange, that.
After Premier Tim Houston lifted the bans on uranium exploration and mining, and on fracking, in Nova Scotia in the spring of 2025, signs like this one appeared on roadsides and in yards throughout the province. This one is on the Number 6 highway in northern Nova Scotia, near an area the provincial government promoted for uranium exploration. (Credit: Joan Baxter)
Mining Association and Houston in lockstep
The premier’s letter came just a month after MANS executive director Sean Kirby was making the rounds with his “lunch and learn” presentation. That presentation, revealed by a Freedom of Information request made to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), included Kirby’s oft-repeated call for the ban on uranium mining to be lifted.
Kirby also argued that Nova Scotia could be a “difficult place to do business” and called this “Putting the ‘no’ in Nova Scotia.”
And presto! A month later, Houston announced he was taking the “no” out of Nova Scotia.
In February, Houston tabled Bill 6, which ended a 2014 moratorium on fracking onshore fossil gas, and repealed the decades-long legislated ban on uranium exploration and mining in Nova Scotia.
Just as MANS’ Sean Kirby had been asking.
Houston attacks media, unnamed ‘special interests’
In a Jan. 24 “To whom it may concern” letter – revealed by a media Freedom of Information request to the premier’s office – Houston doubled down and upped his Jan. 21 attack on “special interests,” writing:
When I released my memo, I knew special interest groups would mobilize and try to stop our efforts. That’s why I called out special interests explicitly. They are used to having control and do not want to lose control. But we cannot allow that to happen.
Houston repeated his claim that “special interests” had “captured” too many parts of Nova Scotia’s economy and had “an out-sized voice in policy creation.” Then he warned that these unnamed subversive citizens will “try to frighten Nova Scotians to achieve their goals.”
Parroting MANS again, Houston repeated that the “no” had to come out of Nova Scotia.
Houston then went after the media:
Many in the media will echo the false statements made by special interest groups because it makes for stories that generate clicks and capture attention. We cannot let these false narratives take hold and we owe it to each other to have serious conversations about important issues…
If you ever want to know what I am thinking, just ask. You will get a more accurate answer than you will ever read in the media.
In his response to the threats U.S. President Donald Trump was making to tariff Canada into submission so it would agree to join the United States, Houston had started sounding like him.
Ending the bans on uranium and fracking without First Nations consultation and engagement earned Houston a stinging rebuke from the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs.
March 5, 2025 pro-democracy rally goers Hudson and Janet Shotwell, the founders and former owners of Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Halifax. (Credit: Joan Baxter)
Othering citizens who care about the environment
Houston refused to identify the people or groups he labelled “special interests” – presumably anyone who cared about protecting the coastline and environment, and tackling the climate crisis.
He was deliberately othering a whole swathe of Nova Scotians. It’s a tactic often used by authoritarian and right-wing populists to divide people, create an “us vs. them” mentality to try to alienate and marginalize those groups.
However, correspondence sent to the premier’s office in January and February, revealed by a media Freedom of Information request (FOIPOP), hints at the identities of some very special interest groups that really are planting self-serving policies in the premier’s ears.
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of those is MANS’ Sean Kirby.
MANS to Houston: give the mining industry what it wants
On Feb. 7, Sean Kirby wrote to Houston to share with him the results of a survey of MANS members. Kirby copied his letter to Deputy Premier Barbara Adams, and six ministers in Houston’s cabinet.
In his letter, Kirby said Houston was right to take the “no” out of Nova Scotia, perhaps forgetting MANS had published a report with that very phrase in its title three weeks earlier.
Not content that Houston had already done MANS’ bidding by repealing the legislated ban on uranium exploration and mining, Kirby added that this would be “meaningless” unless companies could get permits to do work.
“Structural change is needed. Minor or temporary tweaks are insufficient,” wrote Kirby.
Predictably, Kirby quoted the right-wing, corporate-funded Fraser Institute, which labelled Nova Scotia the “least attractive Canadian jurisdiction in which to invest.”
Such criticism from the Fraser Institute must have been anathema to Nova-Scotia-Is-Open-For-Business Houston.
Kirby then informed Houston that he should restructure the entire permitting process in Nova Scotia, take it away from Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change, and create a new Department of Mines that would be a “one-stop shop for permitting.”
In other words, Kirby was asking Houston to create a department that would not only promote and facilitate mining, but would also somehow regulate it – like building a house for the hens, and giving the foxes their own room inside to run the place.
Kirby was essentially asking Houston to give the mining industry – a special interest group – exactly what Kirby said MANS members were asking for.
‘Who is the premier listening to?’
For Karen McKendry, senior wilderness outreach coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre, Sean Kirby and MANS are very much at the forefront of special interests in the province.
In an email, McKendry wrote:
If you want to figure who the real “special interests” are in Nova Scotia, just take a look at who sits next to the Premier at a press conference announcing more concessions to the mining industry. Or look at who has provided quotes on a provincial press release when the Province justifies supporting more mining as a way to combat climate change. Or double check the provincial lobbyist registry.
In both cases, McKendry was referring to Kirby.
“Keep in mind that the only person or organization to speak publicly [at the Public Bills Committee] in favour of Bill 6, the legislation that lifted the uranium ban, was Sean Kirby of the Mining Association of Nova Scotia,” McKendry added. “All other members of the public who spoke about uranium voiced their opposition to exploring for this mineral, citing health and environmental risks. So who is the Premier listening to… Nova Scotians, or the 1%?”
Billionaire J.D. Irving chimes in
The media FOIPOP to Premier Houston’s office also shows that his attack on “special interest groups” curried favour with another major industrial powerbroker.
On Jan. 24, three days after Houston told his caucus it was time to push natural resource extraction in the province, James D. Irving, co-chief executive officer of the privately owned J.D. Irving forestry conglomerate, wrote to the Nova Scotia premier to “applaud” his “initiative to jumpstart resource development” in the province.
In his letter to Houston, Irving complained that investment has declined in the forestry sector, and that sawmills in Nova Scotia suffered from “raw material shortages because of policy constraints on Crown land.”
Irving hoped that Houston’s mandate “would translate into a more growth focused agenda for the Department of Lands and Forestry” (actually, there is no such department; it is now the Department of Natural Resources). Irving also offered to meet with the premier to “discuss the potential the forestry industry can provide to Nova Scotia.”
Echoing Houston’s own rhetoric, Irving then went on to blame “special interest groups” for the woes he perceived with timber supply from Nova Scotia Crown land.
Wrote J.D. Irving, a member of one of Canada’s wealthiest families, whose own personal wealth is in the billions of dollars:
Canada is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, and Nova Scotia is no exception. While we should be the wealthiest nation in the world given our natural advantages, we are falling behind other developed countries because of special interest groups and a general “not in my backyard” attitude.
There is irony in Irving’s claim that Canada is failing to be the “wealthiest” country in the world and falling behind others because of “special interest groups.” Irving’s own family’s corporate empire has for many years benefited from “federal and provincial subsidies, taxpayer-funded government contracts and tax concessions.”
The Irving family has also benefited from the use of an offshore insurance company that allowed it to “move millions of dollars in profits out of Canada and into the tax haven of Bermuda.” The Irving family has long had companies registered in Bermuda, “out of the reach of Canadian tax authorities.”
Tim Houston worked for 12 years as an accountant in Bermuda, for Deloitte and in the reinsurance industry.
So both Irving and Houston may be quite familiar with the special interests one might find offshore in tax havens.
