Right about now I am starting to almost feel a twinge of sympathy for Premier Tim Houston.
He watched, or at least presided over, the physical removal of “two grey-haired senior citizens doing our jobs,” from the EverWind press conference last Friday that announced the creation of a $10 billion data centre in Cape Breton. Joan Baxter and Jennifer Henderson are two veteran reporters at the Halifax Examiner. At the Point Tupper site, the women had been cleared by security to attend the press conference. Suddenly in the middle of the speeches, the communications director for EverWind Claire Parsons began to harass the two reporters in a bid to force them to leave. The details are nasty, and you can read the journalists’ account of what happened here.
The fallout from this event has now reached disaster proportions, not only on social media, but across the legacy media as well. Houston is damned either way: Either he was in on the abrupt bum’s rush or he had given his new corporate sweetheart EverWind carte blanche to muscle out anybody it didn’t like. Everybody official in attendance at this media event looks bad. It’s just like the Canadian parliamentarians who rose to give two standing ovations to a Ukrainian member of Nazi-controlled SS unit in 2023.
Among those with egg on their faces are two Liberal MPs, Kody Blois and Mike Kelloway, were also at the presser. They were there to –well—press the flesh of their corporate pals and try to take some credit for Houston’s mega-deal.
Funny: the three dignitaries Houston, Blois and Kelloway claim they saw nothing. They heard nothing. They said nothing. I guess seeing two women journalists being hustled away by six burly security men was all in a day’s work, as far as the big shots were concerned. Still, Blois insists he and Kelloway “believe fully in the principle of freedom of the press.”
Getting back to the premier – what is it with him? If he thinks of the staffers (bimbos) in his office that never warned him, or tried to stop the security guys from ejecting the reporters, or the security detail’s over-reach, or their use of even minor physical force to remove the journalists – Houston must be furious.
Like Tom the cat in the Tom&Jerry cartoons, I’m sure there was fury — steam coming out of Tim Houston’s ears on the weekend.
The best EverWind could come up with as an excuse for ejecting the women is that
“… an interaction with an EverWind employee occurred that fell short of our expectations. We apologize for the incident and will …ensure that similar situations are handled appropriately in the future,” (CBC)
No, that’s a lie. EverWind hates the media outlet that the two women work for – Tim Bousquet’s Halifax Examiner. Bousquet has been a relentless critic of Trent Vichie, the founder and CEO of EverWind. The removal of The Examiner reporters was pure spite – plain and simple. Bousquet has suggested that Vichie is a scam artist and that his wind farm/AI project are one more in the long line of scams that Nova Scotia governments have fallen for over the years.
Bousquet has demanded an apology.
But Premier Houston will find he has to do better than that. I’m sure he’ll try to get himself and his government off the hook by using a traditional male apology. He will say there was a misunderstanding. It was not handled well by anyone. It was a mistake. He’ll say he respects all the media and welcomes them to ask questions.
But who was responsible for ejecting the journalists? EverWind probably does not like the Examiner’s serious criticisms of the pirates in the mining, logging and energy sectors. EverWind probably doesn’t want investigative reporters anywhere nearby. If EverWind decided on their own to throw the women out, Houston wears it. If Houston told them about the Examiner’s support of environmental issues over corporate greed, and then EverWind decided to kick the women out, Houston will still wear it.
The next step is surely a Freedom of Information request for all emails and correspondence between the Premier’s office and EverWind’s CEO in anticipation of the press conference last Friday. That’s one way to know for sure.
Cartoon at the top and below by KAP. This is from Cartoons for Freedom of Expression.
