John Perkins has filed a lawsuit against Atlantic Gold Corporation and
the RCMP after his hasty caught-on-video arrest at a public information session on mining in Sherbrooke this past May.
The information meeting was hosted by Atlantic Gold, whose plans to construct three gold mines in Nova Scotia put them at the forefront of this province's new frontier in gold mining.
Two months after the incident Perkins told The Coast, “my physical injuries are pretty much healed. My emotional, cognitive injuries are still an issue” He says he can’t bring himself to watch the video of the incident, which has been viewed over 11,000 times.
Perkins, the founder of Sustainable Nova Scotia, says in a press release that he is standing up "to counter the chilling affect the arrest could have on public discourse about the environment: 'I feel strongly that it is my duty to hold them accountable for the injuries and harm they have done to me and to do what I can to stop this from happening again. I have done this because I do not want people to think that corporations are legally permitted to make false accusations against members of the public in order to have them arrested and removed from public meetings,.'"
In the world of Nova Scotia gold mining, as one government department spends millions to clean up polluted sites from previous gold rushes, another department’s involved in making the next gold rush happen. Globally, the price of gold is on the rise, and last week hit the highest it's been since 2013. Good news for those set to profit off the mining industry, bad news for the rest of us as gold's value "tends to rise at times of geopolitical uncertainty."
