Juno News - INTERVIEW： The NS veteran fined $28k for woods walk

00:00:00.000 like many Canadians this time of year I'm enjoying the woods and recently Nova Scotia

00:00:16.320 Premier Tim Houston declared the woods to be off-limits due to fire risk providing a handy

00:00:22.440 snitch line for those of a certain curtain twitching disposition over the following

00:00:27.660 days other maritime provinces appear to be taking a similar approach who knows soon I might not be

00:00:34.020 able to be in these woods in Ontario in the near future while most appear to support the fines of

00:00:40.500 $25,000 for Nova Scotians who defy the ban others are fighting back today I'm joined by retired

00:00:47.880 veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces Jeff Everly who tested Premier Tim Houston's fire ban with a video

00:00:54.840 that has since gone viral and joining us is retired forestry technician Peter MacIsaac with decades of

00:01:01.800 experience in both firefighting and fire management in Nova Scotia is this ban on travel constitutional

00:01:08.580 let's find out I'm Melanie Bennett this is disrupted

00:01:12.540 I am currently in the woods you can't see it right now but I am in the woods and my guest here Jeff

00:01:27.600 Everly has had some experience recently with being in the woods is that right Jeff yes that is absolutely

00:01:37.020 right I received a $28,872.50 fine for going into the woods in Nova Scotia and by the way Nova Scotia is

00:01:48.300 the woods and Peter thank you for joining us as well you have some particular experience with the woods

00:01:55.140 yeah actually I was for 29 years a professional forest fire fighter for the province of Nova Scotia and slash

00:02:03.360 firefighter game warden so we didn't fight many fires down here in the winter but for my entire career

00:02:08.940 I was involved in fires I was incident commander on probably over a hundred fires and I've fought fire

00:02:13.200 fires all across Nova Scotia and in Alberta and so right now just as of yesterday I think it was

00:02:21.060 possibly this morning I saw there were some fire fire bombers in in Nova Scotia fighting fighting those

00:02:26.640 fires that are raging right now do we think that any any of those fires might have been caused by

00:02:31.380 people walking in the woods I saw a report last night where categorically they claim initially that

00:02:39.100 it was started by someone splitting rocks or working with a piece of equipment next to the woods

00:02:44.120 and I believe it may have been on a construction site which means they probably would have had to

00:02:49.060 have a permit with conditions on the permit that they should have had firefighting equipment

00:02:52.720 how that one happened is beyond me but people need to know that Nova Scotia has legislation that if

00:02:58.360 you start a fire you can be billed for the entire cost of the suppression effort and in this one it's

00:03:04.800 going to be very expensive for the people who lit this one I mean joking aside this is a serious matter

00:03:12.560 everything is very dry the country is at risk of fires all over the place and so the province has

00:03:19.480 decided to take some rather authoritarian or all sweeping methods to to potentially prevent these fires

00:03:27.960 and and interestingly I came across some data researching for this chat that we're going to have

00:03:34.160 but where what the sources of these fires were why we would stop people from entering the woods to prevent

00:03:43.100 fires and as it turns out arson is the number one cause of fires in Nova Scotia between 2007 and

00:03:49.460 2023 with a grand total of 1144 fires caused by arson and the second largest is debris fires of 580 so

00:03:59.260 and on the on this particular graph it doesn't mention the any fires being caused by anyone walking in the

00:04:07.040 woods and so it's really interesting Jeff that you decided to then go take a walk in the woods and test

00:04:12.140 the fines that they were putting out that I believe is $25,000 for anyone walking in the woods

00:04:17.260 what why would why would you stop people from walking in the woods I think what we're seeing is something like the

00:04:29.640 paternalism of the guilty mind that is central to the essence of totalitarianism on full display in in the

00:04:37.100 Atlantic provinces we're living through a management crisis where the one thing that nobody seems to be

00:04:43.560 doing anymore is managing and as Peter alluded to there our forests in Nova Scotia are no difference

00:04:49.400 we have deadfall down everywhere still from the last hurricane that blew through here that that never

00:04:56.620 got cleaned up and limitations on our citizens with respect to how much of that deadwood they can

00:05:01.340 collect for the purpose of heating their homes so there are any number of things that they could have

00:05:05.120 been doing in terms of prevention leading up to this and now we're in this situation where like a wildfire

00:05:12.440 would be catastrophic because of all this deadfall but their failure to plan constitutes an emergency

00:05:19.100 on the rest on the part of the rest of us so I find that to be totally unacceptable you know these people

00:05:26.960 are put in these positions of power of management for the purpose of managing crises and facilitating the

00:05:33.120 lives of their citizens and they're doing the opposite they're not managing and they're burdening us

00:05:38.580 with additional hardships to make up for their own failures and by the way it's it's like a mass

00:05:44.740 conscription exercise all over again just like it was in COVID where everybody in the province is

00:05:51.400 conscripted to provide labor free of charge for Tim Houston's effort so I find that it's kind of like a degree

00:05:58.820 of slavery at the same time and the whole thing is pretty dehumanizing because I mentioned the paternalism

00:06:05.000 and all of it and I saw the New Brunswick premier there yesterday who contradicted Tim Houston and

00:06:11.180 said that no the reason that we're not the reason you're not allowed in the woods is not because

00:06:14.940 walking causes fire but because we're fighting fires and you need your hand held because you'll

00:06:21.160 break your leg without us and you know they'll have to come rescue you but they can't do that because

00:06:26.420 they have all the resources dedicated to to fighting fire so and my comment was so Nova Scotians are fire

00:06:33.260 hazards New Brunswickers are klutz's both of us need our hands held and that is the paternalism of

00:06:41.880 the guilty mind that is I think central to totalitarian thinking on full display for the rest of us right

00:06:49.040 now and Peter you have quite significant experience fighting fires as well is that correct right correct

00:06:57.080 I've actually been incident commander I'm probably over a hundred fires I've been on fires as big as you

00:07:03.020 know want from one acre up to uh or half an acre up to 60,000 acre fires and in 2023 Nova Scotia had its

00:07:10.340 largest fire in its history a little over 60,000 acres and that cause of that fire was arson as you've

00:07:16.620 already mentioned yeah so what I mean this is pretty unheard of to ban people from being present in in the

00:07:25.680 forest for during a fire season but from what I understand too that doesn't necessarily apply to

00:07:30.540 indigenous land or crown land is is that right so just applies to provincial land well it does apply

00:07:38.980 to crown land but it doesn't apply to it's a partial application to private lands so under this uh under

00:07:45.160 this government decree uh you can actually walk on your own land in the woods but you can't have

00:07:50.800 anybody with you who's not a landowner so you can walk apparently safely and the person beside you

00:07:57.380 will get flying twenty eight thousand eight hundred and seventy two dollars and fifty cents which Jeff

00:08:01.420 can attest to so when you look at proportionality but it doesn't apply to indigenous land

00:08:07.780 uh no it doesn't so straight up yeah I I just find that quite curious because it seems to be saying

00:08:17.760 that in certain conditions on certain terrain you could potentially cause a fire by your presence

00:08:24.560 but not on other lands and it doesn't seem like it's particularly well thought out so that points

00:08:28.700 to me that there might be a management issue here so not just a forest management issue but perhaps

00:08:33.020 even just a general political management issue but I want to go back to land management for for a bit

00:08:38.420 because why what would be the changes in in forest management that will require such a sweeping ban

00:08:47.560 of people being present in forest land well I can give you some information beginning in I think

00:08:54.760 around 2005 2006 in Nova Scotia every district office for department of natural resources had five

00:09:01.480 men fire crews in the summer and they get cut back to three and then in 2012 we had a rapid response

00:09:08.440 helitac team so they're the best of the best firefighters that the province had and they were positioned in the

00:09:14.060 center of the province at fire control with a bell 212 helicopter and when a fire got called in if

00:09:21.020 conditions were extremely bad and it was in a remote area at all that we would call helitac and they would

00:09:28.300 be in the air within 15 minutes and in many cases they would be a rapid response team and first people

00:09:33.900 on the fire they would start a fire attack and then the biggest helicopter the province had at the time

00:09:39.100 would start dropping water I've seen cases where they were on the fire battling it for one to two

00:09:44.380 hours before ground crews were even able to get there and so what those guys did was they kept

00:09:49.580 fires at three to four acres rather than turning into 30 to 40 thousand acre fires so those guys got

00:09:55.980 disbanded that big helicopter got sold we bought new helicopters that don't have the same lifting

00:10:01.420 capacity and none of them are big enough to be able to transport a helitac team and then the province

00:10:06.540 also dismantled our entire fire tower system that was our early warning system for the province and

00:10:13.020 this relates heavily to what i'm about to tell you they when they shut down that entire system

00:10:20.220 the justification was that with the advent of everybody having cell phones on them on their

00:10:25.100 person that they would be the new early warning system from one end of the province to the other and

00:10:30.380 the province would rely on those people calling in and reporting fires and as a result of that we no

00:10:35.900 longer needed the tower system and the premier thought it was wise to put all of those people

00:10:41.820 out of the woods and anybody that's in the woods even with a travel permit they're restricted from

00:10:46.940 having a smart watch or a cell phone so this is not about this is not about uh protecting the woods from fire

00:10:55.260 yeah so to be clear there were towers and those towers were detecting fires there were people

00:10:59.260 they were manned towers is that right so people actually in the towers tracking for these fires no

00:11:03.260 longer the town the towers are now gone expecting people with cell phones relying on people with

00:11:09.740 cell phones to uh to contact emergency services about these fires and now these people aren't

00:11:14.060 even allowed in the woods correct 100 so what happens is it's nonsensical just flat out doesn't

00:11:20.380 make sense the people of nova scotia for example need to realize that there is no monitoring system

00:11:25.420 right now in any remote areas in the province for fires and i haven't seen any indication that they've

00:11:30.540 they're running a uh you know single pilot aircraft which what which would be aerial monitoring from

00:11:38.460 one end of the province to the other which what should be happening and i haven't seen any indication

00:11:42.460 that that's actually happening and so what's happened is the province has entirely dropped the ball

00:11:47.580 and after the big jasper fires uh the federal government made money available and the province ordered

00:11:53.340 four new helicopters and instead of ordering one with hell attack capabilities they ordered four of what we

00:11:59.340 already had and it's nonsensical yeah so not only putting uh essentially creating a situation that

00:12:08.220 would make the fires worse should they happen by removing the towers and banning people with cell

00:12:13.180 phones to be able to report on these fires but there's another concern which is a freedom of movement

00:12:17.820 concern because as far as i understand the canadian charter of rights does have within it a freedom of

00:12:24.380 movement people are supposed to be allowed to move freely now there are restrictions and one of those

00:12:29.820 restrictions we uh was challenged i believe in nova scotia during the pandemic or um around the

00:12:35.660 pandemic time where the that freedom of movement could be limited by things like public uh public health

00:12:42.620 was one of them but as far as i understand that case was was one for the freedom of movement so people

00:12:48.060 should have freedom of movement in this country uh based in in charter rights and so jeff i'll turn

00:12:53.100 it to you is that what you're trying to challenge right now yes absolutely and um what you're talking

00:12:59.580 about in terms of limitations uh they must be reasonable they cannot be arbitrary that is the

00:13:04.940 difference between totalitarianism and uh our society so um the uh when it comes to any measures that

00:13:13.260 they put in place that interfere with my liberties they need to be minimally impairing um and there was

00:13:19.260 no effort to make these measures minimally impairing with respect to my liberties whatsoever they went

00:13:24.300 all the way to a full-scale woods ban of my presence period within the woods um and instead of uh taking

00:13:32.460 any other steps leading up to that like say for example they could ban smoking in the woods they could

00:13:37.100 ban like any uh source of ignition from the woods if uh if they wanted um but uh you know like i said

00:13:44.140 there was there was out there there appears to have been no thought given to lesser measures that would

00:13:48.700 be less impairing um prior to going straight to a woods band so so that is the issue with respect to

00:13:55.580 the limitations and also um those limitations must be logically connected to the goal in this case the goal

00:14:02.460 is uh preventing wildfires my sneakers are not a fire hazard um so there's no logical connection

00:14:08.860 between my sneakers in the woods and uh the prevention of uh of wildfires so so that's what

00:14:15.660 i find to be so unconstitutional on its face in terms of the ban itself and then we get into the fine

00:14:21.900 which is uh like peter just mentioned um you know it's a 28 872.50 fine grand total because they put

00:14:31.020 victim fees on top of that uh 25 000 initially and that would be i think prohibited under section 12

00:14:39.260 of the charter that um that prohibits uh cruel and unusual punishment so i think we have plenty of

00:14:45.260 grounds charter grounds on which to stand to uh to challenge this ban yeah so what would you hope to

00:14:52.380 see jeff as a as a a positive outcome for this ticket um you know i i think i would like to see

00:15:01.020 uh our leaders show some respect for our rights and our freedoms especially in light of the fact

00:15:07.100 that they are so hard won and uh so many canadians have paid the ultimate sacrifice for uh for the

00:15:13.660 rest of us and you know having had my experience in the military and particularly in afghanistan

00:15:19.100 i saw more young canadians loaded into the back of the hercules in the flag draped coffin

00:15:23.660 than potentially any other living canadian so i have some sense of what it really takes to win these

00:15:28.620 freedoms especially once they're lost and to see our uh our political and our public service

00:15:35.020 leadership wiping their asses with the legacy of our fallen the way that they have been over the last

00:15:39.180 several years i think is a gross indignity to veterans and an affront to human dignity more broadly

00:15:45.980 so i would like to see some respect come back in that regard they don't respect their citizens and

00:15:50.220 they don't respect veterans um and uh you know also i think on the legal front uh they're standing

00:15:57.420 on section 25 1 of the forest act that says the minister may prohibit anybody from entering any part

00:16:02.780 of the woods at any time um which i took to mean within you know there are limitations on that within

00:16:08.940 the confines of the constitution but it didn't seem to be the position that the crown was taking so

00:16:13.100 if that's the case then perhaps the all the uh the forest act should be declared ultra vires and uh

00:16:20.140 rewritten i would like to see them write some uh some metrics into the uh into the law with respect

00:16:29.340 to how they're going to impose these measures in the future i think you know in my amateur assessments

00:16:36.460 that we use the weather fire index to make these determinations so just tie the measures escalating

00:16:42.460 measures to an elevating weather fire index and say at this stage we're going to impose these measures

00:16:47.820 and at that stage it's these measures that come into place there should be as little wiggle room

00:16:53.020 for judgment on the part of my fellow primates as possible written into the law because as you can

00:16:59.020 see we can't rely on them to uh to exercise good judgment so that raises a really interesting question

00:17:05.740 for you peter if uh so if there's no standardization within the fire weather index how are these decisions

00:17:11.020 being made well the fire weather index system which is used all across north america was put in place

00:17:16.700 in 1970 that is the bar and the premier completely ignored the bar i'll give you an example when the

00:17:22.220 fire ban was first put in place uh 40 of the province was in low to moderate it's completely unheard of so

00:17:28.860 what happened is is the premier um is exhibiting signs of i'm no doctor about ptsd because he say he's

00:17:36.620 telling his mlas that he can't sleep at night he's haunted by the fact he sat with people when their

00:17:41.180 homes were burning and where the would they find charred bodies in the remains and apparently the

00:17:45.900 fact that no one's ever died in a forest fire in nova scotia is irrelevant but he made that decision

00:17:51.260 and completely skipped over the hard data and i have to agree with jet with jeff 100 the issue being

00:17:57.660 is it has to be someone other than a politician who sets that actually actual framework as to when they

00:18:03.660 can call an emergency because if you allow them to set that they're going to set it fairly low so

00:18:09.340 even when the even when the travel ban was put in uh i believe there was 13 out of 31 areas that

00:18:16.700 weren't in extreme and as jeff pointed out the province when they make these bans in accordance

00:18:23.420 with the charter they have to use the less invasive means as possible and they have to have accommodation

00:18:29.660 i heard from brian peckford last night and he's the last signat living signatory to our charter of

00:18:33.980 rights and freedoms and he pointed out to me that it this probably won't even make it to the oaks test

00:18:39.580 on a charter challenge that jeff's case will probably be won just on the fact of the lack of

00:18:44.700 proportionality and proportionality is already baked into that fire weather index and the premier

00:18:51.100 completely ignored it and i heard people on talk radio today saying well these guys are experts but

00:18:55.980 they don't understand how things work in the province of nova scotia the premier makes a decision

00:19:00.940 he tells his minister what he wants done the minister contacts the deputy minister who contacts

00:19:06.140 a senior director who contacts a manager and says here's what you're going to do here's what the

00:19:10.940 premier wants done now find a way to justify it and unfortunately they can't justify it because people

00:19:16.540 myself know how to read all the fire weather indices because i worked with them for 29 years

00:19:21.020 and the data is the data and it can't be screwed with even though the premier is running a full-on

00:19:27.660 fear campaign and i'm watching probably 60 percent of nova scotians that are making comments on social

00:19:34.540 media and on talk radio for example uh and they're all based on fear i've seen comments from people

00:19:40.140 living in downtown halifax where they're worried that their house is going to burn down and they're living

00:19:44.220 in a 20-story apartment yeah well that might be the case uh this particular uh charter challenge

00:19:52.700 i'm going to be watching it closely and obviously another nova scotian had the previous challenge to

00:19:58.540 the covet travel ban so that would be two wins if you win jeff so not all is lost even though most

00:20:04.220 people seem to want to comply as they say but um i really appreciate your time today and explaining

00:20:11.180 this situation to me so thank you peter and jeff my pleasure my pleasure thanks very much for now

00:20:17.900 i'll keep enjoying the woods here in ontario thankfully last night we did have a rainstorm so

00:20:24.780 perhaps we'll avoid a climate travel ban altogether which would be nice if you've enjoyed this episode

00:20:31.180 please like and subscribe and join me next week here on disrupted

Juno News - August 15, 2025

INTERVIEW： The NS veteran fined $28k for woods walk

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