OPEN LETTER TO THE PREMIER OF NOVA SCOTIA

Dear Premier,Let me begin by offering a heartfelt apology. You see, I recently committed what now appears to be a serious criminal offense in the Province of Nova Scotia: I walked outside. On public land. On a trail. With intentions as subversive as breathing fresh air and enjoying the natural world. I now recognize that, in your newly imagined version of public safety, this makes me a threat on par with a domestic terrorist. Had I known that my sneakers posed more danger than a Molotov cocktail, I would have burned them in the name of compliance.Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the brilliance of this logic. Arsonists—whose acts are confirmed, not suspected—continue to set fires across the province. Their motives remain unexamined, their identities curiously unknown, and their impact catastrophic. Your response to this very real and very intentional destruction? Lock down the trails. Punish hikers. Issue fines of $25,000 to citizens whose only crime is having the gall to step outside without state permission. Meanwhile, the arsonists roam free, and your government appears to shrug with either helplessness or disinterest.it's nothing short of inspiring to watch a government capable of tracing a five-dollar convoy donation in 90 seconds suddenly become unable to identify serial firebugs burning down entire regions of the province. It seems the same technology that tracked 33 million cellphones without consent has mysteriously failed to function when actual crimes are being committed. But sure, tell us again how this is all about safety.how exactly will these hiking bans be enforced? Will uniformed officers patrol the woods on ATVs, charging through dry brush with exhaust pipes blazing, in hot pursuit of seniors with trail mix? If your concern is fire prevention, how does adding more vehicles into dry forests help? Are we expected to believe that wearing a uniform negates the fire risk posed by a combustion engine? Is the fire danger somehow neutralized by government-issued polyester?It is becoming increasingly clear that this has very little to do with preventing fires and very much to do with conditioning people to accept absurd orders without question. The measure is not only irrational—it is insulting. You do not stop crime by punishing the innocent. You do not deter arson by penalizing families walking their dogs. What you are doing is not governance; it is theatre. Bad theatre. Climate-themed, fear-based theatre with a ticket price of twenty-five thousand dollars and a target audience of the obedient.Which brings us to a more fundamental question. Do you agree that Canada is a common law jurisdiction, where government authority is derived from the consent of the governed? If so, do you also agree that individuals possess the right to revoke that consent, especially when faced with a government that imposes unlawful, illogical, and oppressive measures? If a person does revoke their consent to be governed, under what legal authority do your bans and fines continue to apply to them? Because what your government is currently doing constitutes textbook justification for such a revocation.This isn’t about fire safety, and it’s certainly not about climate protection. It is about social obedience, packaged in green language, quietly aligning with the directives of the UN's Agenda 2030. You are not responding to danger. You are manufacturing compliance. This is a training exercise to see how far you can push the people before they push back. You’re not banning hiking to stop fires. You’re banning hiking to normalize the idea that movement is a privilege, not a right. Today it’s trails. Tomorrow it’s gas. Then comes the travel ban, the mobility credits, the 15-minute city fences, and the invisible perimeter around every life that you will swear is for our own good.you are not protecting the province. You are testing the boundaries of your own authority. And I, like many others, have had enough of being treated like a suspect in a crime I did not commit, while the real criminals light the match and vanish into your convenient haze of plausible deniability.

A Concerned Canadian