Submission by Ian MacCara
Your Vision:
To further protect our resources in an environmentally sound way with
the strong qualifier that they be used wisely. They should be used as
a way to distribute wealth, along with a way to promote a rural
lifestyle, that is sustainable for the citizens of NS. Rich foreign
investors, may well see our resources as both a private play ground and
an easy mark in terms of cheap natural resources.
Strengths:
The great strength of our forests, wild life and fishery is the
possibility for renewable. As for minerals they need to be exploited
using reasonably safe environmental protocols. They are available, but
little leadership is shown in carefully planned mining practices.
Barriers and Issues:
The biggest barriers seem to be a lack of realization that things will
progress (change) in any case, and that we have to do more than nay say
every action, while lacking in our efforts to come up with creative
solutions.
Small land owners can be just that when it comes to
sharing in trail development, while the rich developers want it all for
themselves. Both parties like to hide behind fear of legal reprisals
that deny access to the ordinary citizen.
Sources of clean
energy must also be developed, and this includes a serious look at
better uses for natural gas and nuclear power.
Community's Priorities:
Ordinary citizens have to co-operate in things like trail development
and toleration of and even respect for the different activities that
this entails. We don't need another Paradise, or any more situations
where large tracts of non-government land are not available to the
public.
Guiding the health and sustainability:
A willingness to share trail use and access while planning goes ahead.
We are seriously behind some provinces in the development of our trail
systems. The big land developers, forestry operations, and mining
operations will all preform better environmentally if the public has
access to their private trails.