Starting Monday, an environmental lawyer will make his case to a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge to allow for a judicial review of the delisting of Owls Head Provincial Park and its negotiated sale to a private golf course developer.
But the two-day hearing is only the start to ensuring Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry is open and transparent about all of its provincial parks, whether they’re officially designated or pending approval, Jamie Simpson said.
In December, CBC Nova Scotia reported the province quietly removed Owls Head from its parks and protected areas plan in March 2019 and was in talks with Beckwith Gilbert, an American citizen with a large section of property in Little Harbour that abuts the Owls Head land in question.
Simpson, who represents Bob Bancroft and the Eastern Shore Forest Watch Association in the lawsuit, said Minister of Lands and Forestry Iain Rankin “had a duty to, at a minimum, inform and consult the public regarding his intent to delist Owls Head Provincial Park and to negotiate its sale to a private golf course developer.”
“The upshot of all of that is that by the time the public found out about it, the window of opportunity had already passed to launch a judicial review,” Simpson said in an interview on Sunday.
“So the whole purpose of this is whether or not we can get judicial permission to file our judicial review past the timeline that’s stipulated for these types of cases.”
While the judicial review, if granted, would focus on the 285-hectare area of coastal barrens and wetlands on the Eastern Shore, Simpson said it would also be relevant for other provincial parks.
Of the 206 provincial parks in Nova Scotia, 102 are awaiting official designation.
“So roughly half of what we think of as Nova Scotia’s provincial parks, such as Herring Cove Provincial Park Reserve, turns out are not technically a provincial park and the exact same state that befell Owls Head could potentially happen … and we have no assurance that the department would let the public know that a sale was pending for it,” Simpson said.
“Now, would the province do that? Who knows” Simpson said. “But the point here is that any of these provincial parks that we think of as provincial parks, but haven’t been designated by regulation, the same fate could fall to them.
“So while we wouldn’t address those other parks specifically, we hope the judicial review would set an expectation as to how the department should treat properties that have been identified similarly to Owls Head.”
Simpson said it seems like a lot of effort to get through “this one little hurdle,” but the final outcome is important.
“If the judge were to agree with us on the judicial review, then we would expect the government to apply that sort of fairness to any other property that has been identified for conservation purposes,” he said.
The hearing is to start at 2 p.m. in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
