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Maybe more Nova Scotians would participate in the public life of their province if it didn’t carry the threat of arbitrary and violent arrest.

A week ago, a law-abiding, community-minded citizen of this province was frog-marched out of a public meeting by a large Mountie who appeared to be acting on the instructions of a mining company.

Video of the incident has been shared widely, but Nova Scotia’s Justice Minister and Attorney General Mark Furey hasn’t seen it, or at least he hadn’t as of Thursday’s cabinet meeting.

The RCMP is the provincial police force, and as such they’re answerable to the attorney general. You’d think he’d be a bit more curious about how they behaved in an arrest that sparked broad condemnation as unjust and unjustified.

Atlantic Gold put on back-to-back public meetings in Sherbrooke last week to try to convince folks that a massive open-pit mine covering more than two square kilometres adjacent the glorious St. Mary’s River isn’t total lunacy.

Shouldn’t Nova Scotia’s attorney general be at least a little concerned that the company used 9-1-1 in a non-emergency to call police to a disturbance that never happened?

What the B.C.-based company managed to do instead was expose itself as a heavy-handed corporate bully, and by enlisting the RCMP as a partner in its thuggish behaviour, another diminishing twist was added to the downward spiral of the Mounties’ reputation.

Accounts of the event from multiple sources in attendance are nearly identical and consistent with the video. Only the company and the cops told a different tale.

The company’s account was initially subject to minute-by-minute revision, but eventually seemed to settle on something like “we get to decide who attends our public meetings. We asked this guy to leave. He didn’t, so we called the Mounties to remove him.” Perhaps sensing the public relations disaster it brought down on itself, Atlantic Gold has apologized to the community for the incident and promised to try to do better in the future.

The company was well represented in Sherbrooke. Its chief operating officer Maryse Belanger was at the meetings — incognito in the back for the first one but at the head table for the second, where she refused to identify the man who turned out to be Atlantic Gold security and the most likely suspect for the 9-1-1 call that brought the cops to a placid public event.

Justice Minister and Attorney General Mark Furey.

The RCMP claims it responded to a report of “several persons causing a disturbance” and when a Mountie arrived, John Perkins of Earltown was identified (by Atlantic Gold security) as one of the “persons responsible.” Perkins naturally protested his innocence and was summarily hauled away roughly by the Mountie.

Perkins is a member of Sustainable Northern Nova Scotia, a group that opposes the prospect of a gold mine on Warwick Mountain in Colchester County, and he is well-versed on the environmental hazards associated with gold mining. At the first of the two meetings, he asked a few questions that Atlantic Gold clearly found inconvenient. He got railroaded off to jail before he had a chance to ask any questions at the second meeting.

That there was no disturbance at the event is confirmed by many who attended, and the video evidence bears that out. That being the case, shouldn’t Nova Scotia’s attorney general be at least a little concerned that the company used 9-1-1 in a non-emergency to call police to a disturbance that never happened? There are a couple of acts in there that we have laws against and an average citizen behaving the same way would face the music.

But not Atlantic Gold. It employs people and in Nova Scotia that seems to carry a get-out-of-jail-free card. Nova Scotia pretty much gives its gold away. The province’s royalty is one per cent of the net proceeds of the mine, and you can bet most companies can find a lot of expenses before netting out the province’s cut.

What happened in Sherbrooke was a travesty. An innocent man was hauled off to jail at the behest of a company that didn’t like his point of view. The Mounties, rather than ask any of the non-threatening folks attending the meeting what happened, mindlessly did the bidding of the corporate bully.

It seems like the government should care just a little bit more when its citizens are subjected to wrongful arrest at a meeting on an important public issue.

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