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Phillips was transported back to Nova Scotia on Thursday. He was charged in Halifax with one count of threatening police with bodily harm or death, and a count of possessing a weapon. That weapon is identified as osmium tetroxide.

Police allege in a sworn information at provincial court that Phillips threatened a police officer.

The document alleges the offences took place between Boxing Day and Wednesday in Cole Harbour, a suburb of Halifax. An investigation into the discovery of hazardous chemicals at two residences linked to Phillips’s wife — one a home assessed to be worth about $515,000 in Cole Harbour and a second a tiny coastal cottage with peeling red paint — prompted separate evacuations earlier this week.

They alleged they found a “large quantities” of chemicals during their searches.

RCMP Cpl. Greg Church said two chemists from Health Canada were helping with the investigation. Church said an evacuation that was ordered around the cottage in Grand Desert, N.S., about 35 kilometres east of downtown Halifax, was expected to remain in effect overnight.

“We have here of course a situation with several unknowns,” Church said Thursday. “We do have two very serious criminal charges that have been laid against the individual.”

He said there was no reason to believe that the areas that were evacuated were contaminated. He declined to comment on whether the osmium tetroxide listed in the sworn information was found at the residences.