It’s been a while since I last wrote an op-ed. To be honest, with Julie back as editor of The Coast, single-handedly dismantling the misogynists in the comments section with her hilarious videos, who needs my hot takes?
I assure you, no one.
Unfortunately, I am back because I think we need to talk about a growing problem inside the Nova Scotia Progressive Party and the Premier’s office.
AI Data Centre Critics Scolded
If you’re not up to speed, allow me to catch you up.
Earlier this month, energy company EverWind announced they would be powering a $10-billion artificial intelligence (AI) data centre at Point Tupper in Cape Breton. It was then discovered that the tenant would be none other than U.S. AI behemoth Anthropic.
The announcement caught a lot of Nova Scotians off guard, and we have a lot of questions that need to be answered. Everything from how much water will be used, how it will affect power rates, and about why there wasn’t more consultation before the announcement was made.
Last week, CBC interviewed Sibo Chen, an associate professor of communication at Toronto Metropolitan University about the issue. Chen researches the public discourse around AI data centres for a living, and one might say he’s an actual expert. In what felt like a mild and balanced interview, he said public concerns about the project were valid, and that the Houston government’s handling of public consultation helped fuel the backlash.
Two days later, William Burns, a communications adviser in the Premier’s office, emailed Chen to call his remarks “irresponsible” and “uninformed.” Burns copied the CBC reporter who had interviewed Chen. He also copied Chen’s department chair at TMU.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A political staffer in the Premier’s office went to a professor’s boss because he didn’t like what the professor said on the news.
Chen said the email was an attempt to restrict who gets to make public comments, and that it only reinforced his belief in public engagement. He’s right.
This week, when reporters asked Premier Houston about it, he doubled down. He said he was glad his adviser sent the email, and that Chen was “clearly lacking in information but yet speaking as an expert.” The gist of his message was clear: if I am subjected to public criticism, then the media and academics should be too.
Except, this wasn’t criticism. This was political interference.
Positional Power Demands Constraint
We must acknowledge that there is an inherent power imbalance between those who work in the Premier’s office and everyone else. When we elect people to hold public office, and we trust them to use the powers that come with it with judgment and restraint. I am no longer confident the Premier’s office understands this basic concept.
When a political staffer contacts a professor’s employer, or phones a reporter to say their coverage is out of line, that isn’t just “feedback.” This message carries the full weight of the Premier’s office and the message received by academics, by journalists, and by anyone else watching is that speaking up comes with a cost.
That is called a chilling effect.
Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects our freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media. To be clear, nobody has been legally barred from speaking here, but the Charter reflects a value that should guide everyone in government. People are allowed to criticize the powerful without the powerful coming after them for it. When those in power use their positions to discredit and pressure their critics, they are working against the spirit of that freedom, and I would argue, moving toward censorship.
Do you have to like what the media says? No.
Do you get to use the power of the Premier’s office to lean on the people who say it? Also no.
This is a Pattern of Behaviour
Earlier this week, I posted on social media criticizing the government’s response to Chen’s interview and calling it autocratic. To my surprise, the PC Party’s Director of Communications, Jordan Croucher, showed up in my replies to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about.
That’s right. The Director of Communications for the PC Party had the time, and the audacity, to reply to a member of the public’s social media post about a news story.
And this matters, because this isn’t a one-off.
Over the years, the Premier’s press secretary, Catherine Klimek, has phoned reporters directly to tell them their social media posts, commentary or articles were out of line. His chief of staff, Nicole LaFosse Parker, has sent cease and desist letters to people who publicly oppose the Premier or comment on his policies. Last year, the Premier’s office stopped holding media scrums until media outlets pushed back and refused to interview him in his office. And now a communications adviser is telling a professor, his department chair and the CBC that an expert is ill-informed on the very subject he studies.
I think it’s worth reminding Tim Houston and his team that at one time they used to understand this principle. As members of the opposition, they used every tool available to hold the Liberal government to account. They often called out the then government’s lack of transparency and its avoidance of debate in the legislature. That’s what good opposition parties do.
Now that they hold power, they seem to have forgotten that’s what the opposition party and the public have the right to do to them.
This isn’t a left or right issue
To be clear, this isn’t only a Progressive Conservative problem. It’s a power problem. The abuse of power in politics isn’t a left or right issue. It’s a top-down one. Who holds the power? What do they choose to do with it? And who do they choose to wield it against?
Access to our elected officials is shrinking, and the pressure on the media keeps escalating, because Tim Houston and his staff are confusing a supermajority with autocracy.
Is that hyperbole? No. I don’t think it is.
When governments feel they above public criticism, we have a problem. That’s not normal. That’s not ethical. And it certainly isn’t working for the people who elected them.
Every time we let a governments chip away at the norms of transparency, we slide a little further down a path that doesn’t lead anywhere good. It’s a path that ends with all of us asking, one day, “How did we get here?”
As the journalist and author Masha Gessen put it:
“Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority — not the capture of moral high ground.”
Speaking Up is a Civic Duty
I have the honour and privilege of knowing many journalists. They work with integrity. They are subjected to abuse on the regular. Some have had their homes doxxed. Some have had their livelihoods threatened. And yet they stand firm in the belief that their job is to hold people to account and bring the truth to light.
That takes courage.
Calling our government to account is an act of civic duty. It is what we are entitled to as members of a civil society. We are allowed to speak our minds on the issues that concern us. That is a right, not a privilege.
I choose to exercise that right, and I will continue to do so. Like Professor Chen, I will not allow any man with the title “special advisor” to convince me otherwise.
Liz LeClair is a writer, public speaker and gender-based violence advocate based in Dartmouth, NS.
