Darce Fardy, President

 

Darce Fardy is the former Review Officer overseeing the Nova Scotia Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.  Before taking over that position he was a long-time journalist as a reporter, producer and manager with CBC Television.

 

He was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland some time ago where he joined the CBC as a reporter.  As Director of Television for Newfoundland he moved to become the Director of Television for the CBC in Halifax.  With the CBC he has also worked in Edmonton and in the United Nations newsroom in New York during the General Assembly session of 1960.

 

He retired in 1992 after eight years as the CBC’s Head of Network TV Current Affairs.  He became Review Officer in 1995 and retired in 2006 when he decided to form a Right to Know Coalition.

Brian Awad, Secretary

 

website: Burchell Hayman Parish

Anne Smith

 

Anne wants to be known as a researcher, writer and volunteer and a devoted user of freedom of information legislation. Anne lives in East Jordan, Nova Scotia and is a member of the Shelburne County Community Health Board.

 

Anne is a driving force in her community in keeping government and municipalities transparent in their decision making and accountable to the public.  The finest hour for Anne and other concerned citizens of Shelburne County came after residents of the county received a letter from El Paso Corporation, a Texas company with plans to build a two-billion dollar gas processing plant in the county, including a transmission system to deliver Nova Scotia’s offshore natural gas to New York/New Jersey through a thousand km subsea pipeline.  The plant would be built on a 4.8 acre parcel of land.     

 

Concerned citizens determined they had not been provided with enough information. Fishermen  were naturally concerned.  But there was a strong attraction for the project: jobs, a tripling of municipal revenue, compensation for fishermen’s gear; and inflated real estate values.

 

Through hard work and thorough research, Anne and her colleagues discovered that the plant, far from occupying 4.8 acres, would in fact require 5800 acres.  El Paso had also applied for 19 km of walking trails and abandoned rail line for the gas pipelines.  The line would have passed through the town of Shelburne, past homes, businesses and a children’s camp.

 

Much of the information was provided to the citizens committee through the Freedom of Information Act.  The citizens action persuaded El Paso to close its office in Shelburne, which it it did in early 2006.

 

Ms. Belinda Manning

Belinda, a native of Nova Scotia, returned to Nova Scotia after living for ten years in Europe. As a community activist and advocate of sustainable development, she has and continues to assists numerous community groups and municipal units throughout the Province on matters of environmental protection, stewardship, conservation, sustainable development and legislative interpretation. Through her investigative research capabilities she has become an autodidact focusing in the interrelated fields of environmental legislation, regulations, and best management practices for aggregate industries and wetland operations.

She has been a board member of the The Environmentally Concerned Communities of Kings Association, Valley Watershed Stewardship, Clean Annapolis River Project, Coldbrook Community Association, and a member of Nova Scotia Public Lands Coalition, and Kings County Wildlife Association. In 2004, she sat on the Wellfield Planning and Advisory Committee for the Town of Kentville.

In 2003, she was awarded the Canadian Environment Award (Canadian Geographic) for environmental learning. She was a part of a citizen’s request to the Provincial Ombudsman’s Office to investigate several government departments. This work was made possible largely because of the use of the FOIPOP Act and the information found with the many requests. Belinda lives in the Annapolis Valley with her husband and teenage daughter.

Jan 2004: CBC Land and Sea Documentary: Baltzer's Bog - featuring Belinda

 

Neal Livingston

 

Neal is an award-winning independent filmmaker who produces documentary films for television broadcast on a variety of subjects. He has been producing films since he was young. Since 1978 he has produced a collection of award-winning political documentaries on the environment, including: “The Battle at Our Shores”, documenting the fight against the first inshore oil and gas permits in the country; “Toxic Partners”, narrated by David Susuki, about two communities, Sydney, Nova Scotia and Fort Valley, Georgia, both with toxic waste sites; and in 2007 is releasing his newest film a one hour biography "Rudy Haase" about this elder Nova Scotian life long environmental activist.

Livingston was one of the leading activists in the successful battle and political scandal in the 1990's to re-protect the Jim Campbell’s Barren wilderness area in Cape Breton. He worked for years on the successful campaign that stopped forest spraying on Cape Breton Island, and has over the last 30 years been an activist on numerous environmental and social campaigns for good governance in Nova Scotia.

Neal is the first landowner on Cape Breton Island to have his woodlot certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international green certificate program. He has a commercial maple syrup farm operation, and was the first person to net meter from his home power system in Nova Scotia in 1993. In 1984 his company Black River Hydro Limited became the first company to sell green power to Nova Scotia Power.

website: Black River Productions Limited

Ian Johnson

 

Ian works as a policy Analyst/Researcher with the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union.  He has earlier worked as the Senior Policy Analyst with the Nova Scotia Provincial Health Council and as a Social Development worker with the former City of Halifax.  In his current job, he has been a frequent user of FOIPOP applications and appeals.

 

Ian is currently Vice-Chairperson of the Nova Scotia Citizens Health Care Network and helped to establish the Nova Scotia Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 

 

In 2002 he received recognition for his contribution to Medicare and health care with the awarding of a Golden Jubilee Award by the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.

 

He has a Master of Continuing Education degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

 

Ian lives in Halifax.

Charles Cirtwill

Charles Cirtwill is the President at AIMS, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, Atlantic Canada's public policy think tank.

Cirtwill’s published works focus on government structure and organization, business-government relations, inter-governmental relations, performance measurement and accountability. He has spoken across Canada and the United States on the role of think tanks in society, the appropriate assessment of government activities and the use of school performance data to improve classroom practice and fully engage all education stakeholders.

His work on education, fiscal management, debt reduction, taxation, the growth of government, and the importance of government accountability regularly appears in local, regional and national media. He continues to expand his work in the area of testing and accountability in education with a particular focus on education indicators and school performance.

As head of AIMS Education and School Reform Initiative Charles has played a key role in building this into AIMS largest project with a focus on research and data driven discussion of school system reform, education effectiveness and accountability for results. AIMS has built an innovative and balanced approach to school performance measurement that focuses on maintaining a high standard while testing schools against reasonable expectations based on prior performance and the performance of their peers. Charles is regularly involved in district and school level outreach working with educators, administrators, parents and the public, instructing them on how to use the tools AIMS has developed to make schools better.

Cirtwill has worked in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors as a program manager, policy analyst, senior administrator, consultant and entrepreneur. Cirtwill has served as policy advisor to several political campaigns and has provided advice and direction to provincial and municipal administrations throughout Atlantic Canada. He served for three years on the Nova Scotia Municipal Assessment Appeal Court and has had leadership roles in multiple community organizations including Scouts Canada, local school associations and local homeowners associations. He attended Dalhousie University, earning a BA in Political Science, a LLB, and a MPA with a focus on quantitative analysis and program outcome assessment.

website: Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS)

Donna MacCready

Donna brings a wealth of experience to the Coalition having worked as a communications and policy advisor with the province of Nova Scotia. She also served as a departmental FOI administrator. Since leaving government, she has been working as a communications consultant and writer.

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Former Board Members:

Dean Jobb

 

Dean is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax.  Before that he was an award winning investigative journalist with the Chronicle Herald with a special interest in the law and freedom of information.

 

He chaired the first committee set up to review the Nova Scotia Freedom of Information Act.

Dean's personal website

 

We of the Coalition want to thank Dean for his term of service with us and his help in getting the organization on its feet.