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A Department of Energy communications director who became a lobbyist for the Alton Gas project just four-and-a-half months after leaving her public employer says the career move isn’t a conflict of interest.
Karen White was communications director for Nova Scotia’s Department of Energy until April of 2015. She left that job and took a position with National Public Relations, which maintains an office in Halifax, in May. On August 17, White registered with the Nova Scotia Registry of Lobbyists on behalf of Alton Natural Gas for the purpose of lobbying a variety of provincial departments, including her old employer in the Department of Energy.
Nova Scotia’s Conflict of Interest Act states that any former House member or public employee must wait six months before they “accept a contract or benefit from any person to make representations to a government decision-maker with respect to a contract or benefit that is or is to be awarded, approved or granted by a government decision-maker.”
White says she cleared the move with the province, providing a letter to The Coast from the Office of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner. The letter, dated April 27, 2015, is addressed to White while she was still employed with the Department of Energy.
“I would suggest that the only restriction that you have with your new employer would be that you do not make any representations on behalf of that employer to your current department,” writes commissioner Merlin Nunn.
White was cleared to lobby other provincial departments on behalf of Alton Gas, including the Department of the Environment where she has also previously worked as a communications director, along with the departments of Agriculture and Fisheries, Economic Development and Natural Resources.
“In the letter from the conflict commissioner I was restricted from talking with the Department of Energy, which I did not do” says White. “It didn’t preclude me from working with other government departments.”
Despite the official approval, Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River MLA Lenore Zann—a vocal critic of the Alton Gas project and the government’s consultation process—takes issue with White’s new employment.
“I think that the fact that there is a lobbyist working on this issue who worked for the Department of Energy and in particular the minister as the director of communications is highly unethical,” says Zann. “What else is going on behind the scenes we don’t know about?”
The Lobbyist registry says White’s official role is to “primarily act as a facilitator and/or contact person on communications matters.” She’s also expected to lobby members of the Legislature and advise Alton Natural Gas on “how to interact with government.”
Last week, Nova Scotia’s provincial government issued a series of permits to Alton Natural Gas Storage Facility LP, allowing the Calgary-based company to continue with its aims to create salt caverns in which to store natural gas in the community of Brentwood, NS.
The project has been highly controversial, with the majority of public attention currently being devoted to the redirection of tens of thousands of tons of brine, produced in the hollowing-out of the salt caverns, being redirected into the Shubenacadie River.
The notion of using a complex tidal river ecosystem like a brine toilet bowl is unique, with no ‘real-time’ precedent, and comes with an unknown degree of potential fallout.
There’s also the ongoing issue of fallout over Mi’kmaq consultation—or lack thereof—during the eight years and counting the project has taken since inception.
Sipekne’katik First Nation is publicly decrying the consultation process over the project, and their exclusion from it, while the consultative body known as the Mi’kmaq Rights Initiative—which claims consultative authority for the other 12 of the province’s Mi’kmaq communities—is publicly decrying Sipekne’katik First Nation.
The province, meanwhile, has noted that no Mi’kmaq community has the right, under Nova Scotia’s interpretation of the Crown’s “Duty to Consult” policy, to a general referendum on the issue.
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This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2016.
isn’t this status quo for politicians once they move on?
Consultations that are not required and now employment of former government employees not being a conflict of interest… >.<
“Once they move on” is one manner of looking at it. ‘Actively recruited while in office’ is another…
Still Miles, she was cleared by the Province; she’s NOT in a conflict of interest position. This is another non-story. It is not another Mike Duffy scandal.
No, I think by the end we’ll see it’s a scandal all of its own. Give it time…
With this and the leak of the premier’s assistant offering Andrew Younger’s wife a job, you can bet, there’s a whole lot of trough slurping going on. Nothing new in Nova Scotia politics. Maybe Zann is a politician with a difference. She mastered Hollywood. Sure she must have a bs detector to sniff out this kind of stuff like a truffle dog. Let’s give her a chance. At least we know she’s not a DD clone, nor does she support offshore drilling.
The government okaying this civil servant to join a private firm when apparently the LAW is he or she must wait six months is like Peter Kelly’s back room approval of the Nova Centre site when the Cogswell exchange site was granted an equal assessment status and that just plain got disregarded–just plain breaking the law. What is a law for then if it can be broken whenever it suits the powers that be.
Vote for Lenore Zann for Leader of the Nova Scotia NDP !
Well now Joanne… if they broke the law then why are they not being held legally accountable? Why isn’t the opposition filling the media with this story? That’s what happens when politicians break the law.
No law was broken. There are provisions which allow this appointment. In fact, the provisions are reported on in this story.
I’m all for accountability but not big on assumption.
Meh, not like 1 lobbyist is going to make a difference in a proposal that was bound to get accepted anyways