In March 2025, the government of Nova Scotia repealed a ban on uranium exploration and mining that had stood for more than four decades. That May, it opened a request for proposals on three sites known to hold uranium deposits, with a deadline in June. Nobody applied.

But for the people who live near Millet Brook in Hants County, N.S., one of the sites chosen for exploration, the matter is far from settled.

“The lack of applications has provided some immediate relief, but it has not provided the sense of finality that many residents are hoping for,” municipal Councillor Kayla Leary-Pinch said. “For them, the concern was never solely about whether a company would come forward through this particular call for proposals. It is about the fact that the moratorium was removed in the first place and that the door remains open for uranium exploration in Nova Scotia.”

As councillor for Vaughan and Upper Falmouth, N.S., her district in the municipality of West Hants covers the Millet Brook site. 

“Until there is greater certainty about the long-term status of Millet Brook, I think that concern will remain,” she said. 

Those concerns include potential environmental impacts, especially to groundwater, as well as private property rights and what exploration now could mean for mining in the future, Leary-Pinch said.

“There is frustration with how quickly the issue moved forward and a feeling that communities were reacting to decisions rather than being meaningfully involved before those decisions were made,” Leary-Pinch said. 

Like many other governments in Canada, Nova Scotia is passing policy meant to supercharge resource extraction. The uranium moratorium, which dates back to 1981, became a legislated ban in 2009. The province repealed the ban as part of Bill 6, An Act Respecting Agriculture, Energy and Natural Resources, an omnibus bill that also amended the Petroleum Resources Act to allow fracking. 

It’s been more than a year since the ban ended and it’s still on community minds. On Sept. 8, 2026, two petitions were tabled at the provincial legislature with over 2,000 signatures asking for a “permanent legislative ban” on uranium exploration and extraction. These new signatures bring the grand total to 10,652 signatures collected since October 2025, NDP MLA Kendra Coombes said.

Despite half a century of scattershot uranium interest, Nova Scotia has never developed the industry. Now, the federal government, along with dozens of countries worldwide, is pushing for what’s often called a nuclear renaissance. Canada is among at least 38 countries that have pledged to work toward tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. 

Part of uranium’s appeal is energy density. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a single uranium fuel pellet produces as much energy as one ton of coal, 149 gallons of oil or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. But that energy comes with a long-term cost. Canada has long been trying to find a permanent home for decades’ worth of nuclear waste, with a proposed $26 billion underground repository in northwestern Ontario still years from approval.

NS premier says uranium mining is essential to economic growth and clean energy transition

When the request for proposals was live in June 2025, a unanimous council vote made West Hants one of four municipalities, along with Annapolis, Lunenburg and Pictou, to request a pause on exploration. Premier Tim Houston responded with a letter saying the government was committed to moving forward “on all natural resource projects so long as they can be done thoughtfully and safely.”

The world needs uranium for nuclear energy and cancer treatments, Houston’s letter said. 

 “Uranium hasn’t changed but mining has,” it said, echoing the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, an industry group representing mining and quarrying companies. The group’s website says uranium mining today “is very different” from when the ban was put in place: specifically, it says a shift toward solution mining, also known as in-situ leaching, “produces basically no tailings or waste rock.” 

Uranium is essential to Nova Scotia’s economic growth, the premier said, adding that a blanket ban without discussion is lazy public policy.

“The sad reality is that when you look at the [gross domestic product] per capita across all 60 American states and Canadian provinces, Nova Scotia ranks last,” Houston said. “The worst performing economy in North America.”

But so far, uranium mining has not been an economic driver in the province. The June deadline came and went with no bids to pursue exploration.

In an email to The Narwhal, Lynette MacLeod, communications director for the Department of Natural Resources, said the repeal of the ban didn’t approve any uranium mining or exploration projects. 

“It removed a legislative prohibition and allows the province to better understand the occurrence of uranium using modern science and regulatory safeguards,” MacLeod said.

MacLeod said the province is not exploring for uranium but is doing research using existing data and core samples. She was clearer about the province’s broader mining ambitions.

The department’s focus is ensuring “Nova Scotia remains one of the most competitive jurisdictions for mineral exploration investment in Canada,” MacLeod said. The province is “expanding investment attraction efforts with our partners [and] supporting exploration through targeted funding programs.” 

That means implementing the provincial mining strategy; completing NovaMINE, a government website detailing regulatory requirements and listing the status of mining proposals and projects; digitizing the province’s assets and data; and continuing regulatory modernization, she said. 

Uranium has been on the federal critical minerals list since it was released in 2021, but it’s only been on Nova Scotia’s list since May 14, 2025, the same day Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton announced a request for proposals for exploration sites at Millet Brook, East Dalhousie and Louisville.

“We’ve lifted blanket bans and we’re targeting minerals that are in great demand for the clean energy transition in Canada and around the world,” Rushton said in a press release. “We’re also focusing on minerals that will help us grow our economy and create good-paying jobs for Nova Scotians.”

The economic promises of uranium have never been enough to convince Nova Scotians it’s worth the cost, Karen McKendry at Halifax’s Ecology Action Centre said. Exploration by companies such as Shell and Esso in the late 1970s prompted a public inquiry that held 44 meetings across the province. The majority of submissions opposed uranium mining, and the government imposed a moratorium in 1981. In 2009, the NDP government led by Darrell Dexter turned that moratorium into a permanent legislative ban.

“We’ve learned that it very much is a radioactive zombie,” McKendry said. “It’s come back. This is the third time we’ve had a big fight around uranium.”

Even without a proposal on the table last year, people put up signs expressing opposition and began organizing in the areas most promising for exploration, she said. Locals heard there was a company considering a proposal, she said, and so they posted online to make their opposition clear.

“I think it scared them off,” McKendry said. “One thing that’s somewhat real in the mining industry is what they call social licence. Do you have community buy-in for the kinds of things you’re proposing?”

Experts say opposition and low quality make NS uranium unappealing to industry

Exploration is a high-risk economic activity, Erin Adlakha, a professor in the department of earth science at Saint Mary’s University, said.

“Fewer than one per cent of exploration targets ever become mines, so companies must rigorously vet historical data to ensure they are spending capital wisely,” Adlakha said. The province’s request for proposals was only open for four weeks, she said, requiring companies “to digest historical data from the late 1970s and 1980s, evaluate land access constraints, build a technical exploration strategy and allocate capital, on very short notice.”

Mining companies also want political stability, according to Brad Redden, the president of the Society for Safe and Responsible Resource Development, a non-profit dedicated to protecting communities and the environment in Nova Scotia’s resource sectors.

“These guys plan a long way into the future,” Redden said, adding it can sometimes take decades to bring a new mine online. “The Houston government won’t be forever, and when they’re gone, the Liberals or the NDP are going to be in power.”

While some parts of Canada have what companies consider stable mining policies, companies are very careful about volatile situations such as this one, he said.

Redden, who has worked as an exploration geologist and held public office as a municipal councillor and deputy warden in Annapolis County, said he is skeptical of the province’s interest in uranium. 

“I don’t think they genuinely thought there was uranium here,” he said, adding that fracking and uranium were probably bundled together on the same bill as part of a bigger industrial drive. “It’s a political statement to say we’re open for business.”

He said he wouldn’t work on a uranium project in Nova Scotia, because he doesn’t think the deposits here are good enough. Uranium in the province tends to sit in thin, centimetre-wide fractures rather than deep deposits and grades are far lower than in Saskatchewan’s uranium heartland, Redden said.

He offers as an example Cigar Lake in the Prairie province, which at a grade of 15 per cent is “the world’s highest grade uranium mine” according to its owner. Redden said this translates to 150,000 parts of uranium per million parts of rock. By comparison, New Ross, N.S., “has some higher-grade areas …but they are still less than one per cent,” or 10,000 parts per million. 

“Most of the grades reported in Nova Scotia are much lower, in the hundreds of parts per million,” Redden said. The Mining Association of Nova Scotia says the site at Millet Brook “is known to have 1.3 million pounds of 0.2 per cent uranium.”

The more important difference, Redden said, is that in Nova Scotia, uranium deposits tend to be closer to population centres than they are in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin.

Last year, in his response to the West Hants council’s request for a pause, the premier noted provincial investments of more than $227 million in West Hants during his time in office.

“I have no doubt that your council has many more wants and needs,” the Houston letter said. “We would love to be able to meet every ask, but to do that, we need the resources to move forward.”

However things move forward at Millet Brook, Leary-Pinch said the people of West Hants deserve to be consulted about what the province intends to do in their backyard. “Many of the residents I have spoken with want to see the moratorium on uranium exploration and mining reinstated.” She said the absence of bids this time around was never the point. For the people of West Hants, she said it’s about closing  the door on uranium for good.

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When I ask Ricky Hicks about his business, he tells me about fishing. When I ask him about fishing, he says it’s so much bigger than business.

“Fishing is life,” he says.

Hicks’s business is a mobile tackle shop that he drags from the Northumberland Strait, which separates Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to the Bay of Fundy.

“Wherever the fish are running,” Hicks says. “That’s where I’ll be.”

One of the fish he follows is the striped bass, a once-threatened species that has made a dramatic comeback in Atlantic Canada. From collapsing salmon runs to dwindling smelt populations, the limits of the ecosystem are being tested, and some say the big fish are among the stressors. Federal regulators have reopened commercial access to striped bass — and a conservation triumph has become a flashpoint for the region’s ecological and economic future.

Hicks says he’s usually on the Shubenacadie River, north of Halifax, in the spring for the spawning season. Then he heads to the Bay of Fundy for the summer and back to the Shubenacadie before the fish migrate into the lakes for the winter.

He makes a business of knowing where the fish are because he is supported by a network of striped bass anglers.

“I sell them all the stuff that they need to be successful,” Hicks says. He teaches them what he learned through years of observation.

“Bass are very temperature-temperamental. If it’s too cold they’re not moving. If it’s too warm they move offshore to cooler waters,” he says. 

Hicks sells bait to fishermen from as far away as Quebec and Maine, all travelling to Nova Scotia to catch striped bass.

Federal moves on striped bass divide commercial and recreational fishermen

The salmon fishery on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick has lured recreational anglers since at least the 19th century. The population on the river suffered as time went on, part of a trend Fisheries and Oceans Canada has tracked since the 1970s. Atlantic salmon populations declined by 68 per cent from 2003 to 2019 on the Miramichi, according to a research document prepared for the federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada in 2023.Factors affecting Atlantic salmon include high water temperatures, predators and other ecosystem changes caused by climate change and other human-induced pressures, the federal department told The Narwhal in an email.

Martin Mallet, the executive director of the Maritime Fishermen’s Union, says among those pressures is the explosion of striped bass. Salmon fishermen aren’t among his members, but he says the massive predator species is affecting other commercial catches, including lobster, herring, mackerel, gaspereau and smelts.

Mallet says it’s not just a question of predation. Striped bass get tangled in fishing gear and damage equipment and it’s “creating havoc for our fishermen,” he says.

In June, the Maritime Fishermen’s Union made an emergency request to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, asking the federal department to reopen the striped bass fishery for commercial bycatch — unwanted fish and marine creatures caught during commercial fishing for a different species — for the first time since 1996. The department complied: the order requires gaspereau harvesters to keep the first 500 striped bass caught each day between 50 and 65 centimetres and return the rest. 

At the same time, the department took other measures to manage striped bass stock. It reopened a section of the Northwest Miramichi River where striped bass spawn and raised the recreational limit on the Gulf of St. Lawrence from three to four fish per day. Fisheries and Oceans Canada also increased the Indigenous allocation of striped bass by 125,000 fish in July, an amount to be shared among First Nations in the gulf region, in addition to the 50,000 granted to Natoaganeg First Nation in 2018.

Mallet says his union didn’t request an emergency bycatch measure to protect salmon, but to protect commercial fishermen and their livelihood. He says early in the season, fishermen were catching so many striped bass they had to throw back their whole catch, losing days of work. 

“These are expenses for our fishermen,” he says. “Direct losses to their business. So, by enabling our fishermen to keep a portion of the bycatch … our guys can sell those and recuperate their costs.” Striped bass are an enormous potential resource, he says, especially since bycatch fish released from lobster traps often die anyway. 

Mallet says the new regulations were a step in the right direction. “We still think we need to go a little bit further,” he says, adding that while the union wants a healthy fishery, he’s not out to “destroy the striped bass population.” 

“There’s a balance there that needs to be met. We did not have this predation five to 10 years ago,” he says. 

Mike Brideau, a fishing guide on the Miramichi, disagrees. Posting on Facebook about the federal order, he echoed the fears of striped bass anglers in New Brunswick.

“Enjoy the fishery. It’s not going to be around forever,” Brideau wrote, warning the changes could crash the striped bass population.

Striped bass made a big comeback. But are they safe?

Brideau guides all over the province, living out of a tent to target different species for his clients, a nomadic lifestyle that is “part of the fun of the game.” He says he can adapt if bass stocks fail, but he thinks Fisheries and Oceans Canada doesn’t have any understanding of what fishermen remove from the water.

“Anecdotally, I can already say I feel the bass are past their peak in growth [in population] due to our shift in regulations,” he told The Narwhal in an email. “There’s no way the population can withstand taking upwards of a third of itself year over year.”

Tommi Linnansaari, the Atlantic salmon research chair at the University of New Brunswick, supports the re-opening of the commercial striped bass fishery as a pro-salmon move. 

“The predatory pressure could become large enough that the recovery of the salmon population is no longer possible,” he says. 

But he also says it’s unclear how much the striped bass population can shrink before triggering a catastrophic collapse like the one seen in the 1990s. He says the recreational fishery is a large “grey box,” since it is unlicensed and unmonitored and the impact of the increased First Nations quota and renewed commercial fishing won’t show up for at least a few years, as fishermen change their operations to accommodate new species. 

For now, “I do support the striped bass harvest levels,” Linnansaari says. “I don’t know yet whether it could withstand a larger harvest but I do think that we should see how this plays out.”Trevor Avery is the head of the striped bass research team at Acadia University. He says the success of the species should be received with cautious optimism, especially since numbers are trending downward since the population peaked.

“There’s a lot of them, but they only spawn in two places,” Avery says. “That level of threat is increased if their spawning area is impacted by humans or industry.”

Striped bass may be threatened by overfishing, pollution and water flow changes that affect habitat, according to a Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada report from 2004.

Better monitoring needed to identify true threats to Atlantic salmon

Avery says it’s easier for federal and local management efforts to affect striped bass because it is a coastal species, while salmon are targeted by offshore industrial fishing operations across the globe.

“Salmon go on these long treks, you know, up to Greenland or across to the U.K., and then they get vacuumed up in commercial fishing there,” he says. Fisheries and Oceans agrees, telling The Narwhal declining Atlantic salmon isn’t just a Miramichi River issue. Rivers throughout the eastern provinces, Quebec and Europe have seen substantial declines as well.

That’s one reason Avery says he isn’t convinced striped bass is the problem. 

“In a lot of these rivers we don’t find striped bass,” Avery says. “So, this smoking gun, direct effect of saying striped bass are eating all the salmon on the Miramichi … may not be the full picture.”

He adds that there were high populations of both salmon and striped bass in the past. “All that data is quite clearly there over the last 100 years,” he says. “It’s only recently that we have this mismatch in things where we have lots more striped bass and fewer salmon.” 

Linnansaari and Avery both want better monitoring of Atlantic fish, including measuring environmental and industrial impacts. With proper management, Avery says he believes the populations can co-exist.

“We don’t sacrifice one species for another. That’s not a conservation measure that has ever had any lasting good effects.”

Across much of the eastern seaboard, striped bass conservation has become a rallying cry. In the United States, the fish is managed under the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission through the Interstate Fishery Management Plan, supported by the federal Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act. When stocks decline, managers call emergency meetings, implement catch reductions and seasonal closures and tighten recreational and commercial rules. 

By contrast, in Atlantic Canada the recovery of the Gulf of St. Lawrence stock occurred under federal control, with limited public engagement and little regional coordination, the scientists say.

In Brideau’s opinion, Fisheries and Oceans Canada should close the salmon fishery on the Miramichi, instead of “trying to say we need to critically intervene in nature through killing native species.” He says the major threats to salmon are clear: increasing water temperatures due to climate change, commercial angling, forestry — which can degrade salmon habitats by altering waterflow, nutrients and sediment — and aquaculture, which can spread pathogens such as sea lice from farmed salmon to wild populations.

Every year, Brideau purchases a Crown reserve spot — a special fishing parcel in an area owned by the federal government, managed to control pressure on the fish population. He uses it to count the few salmon that remain, without catching any.

“I have no interest in harassing a species that’s on life support,” he says.

A house divided

Linnansaari sees the current move to reduce the predatory species as just one of two potential solutions. The other is to supplement the prey. “We should actually increase the salmon population,” he says.

This would encourage working together across fishing interests, and could be a more fertile approach, says Linnansaari.

But that approach, too, is debated. The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization has said supplementing salmon can compromise the fitness of wild populations through interbreeding and pathogens. It also won’t help commercial fishing that targets other species, like those the Maritime Fishermen’s Union focuses on. 

Avery agrees that progress depends on co-operation.

“I think if we sit in two different camps, we’re going to stall,” Avery says. 

Hicks manages his own business amid the politics. Today there are more than 35,000 members in the Nova Scotia Striped Bass Facebook group and 29,000 in the NB Striped Bass Sports Fishing group, all of them looking to join the exclusive 40-inch club by snagging a lunker.

“I see a lot of new faces every year,” he says. “I do help them catch fish. I don’t just sell them fishing gear.”

The idea is to get them hooked.

“Some people are in it for life.”

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After 24 days of being forbidden from entering the forest, some Nova Scotians are returning to nature. The province lifted its wildfire-related ban in Halifax and counties farther northeast on Aug. 29, with Premier Tim Houston saying in a news release that conditions were “heading in the right direction in certain parts of the province.” 

Every Atlantic province had some form of fire or burning restriction at different points during the dry summer of 2025, but Nova Scotia invited fresh controversy when it banned all access to the woods provincewide on Aug. 5. The province set its fine for violating the woods ban at $25,000, the same amount it fines those that set illegal fires. According to CBC, more than $1 million in fines has been issued for illegal burning in the last two and a half years. 

New Brunswick followed Nova Scotia’s lead and restricted industrial and recreational activities on Crown land, a ban that was mostly lifted on Aug. 26. 

Nova Scotia’s problems aren’t over. Crews are still battling fires in Long Lake, along the province’s north shore in the Annapolis Valley region. Despite the continued risk and considerable damage — over 1,000 residents were evacuated because of the Long Lake fire and 20 homes were lost — not everyone agrees with the restriction on entering the woods, which remains in place in 11 of the province’s 18 counties. In mid-August, Jeff Evely of Westmount, N.S., recorded himself violating the ban.

“I want to challenge this in court,” Evely says to Department of Natural Resources officers in the video. “And the only way for me to do that is to get the fine. So, I’m not trying to make trouble for you guys, okay? I just want a piece of Tim Houston and I want to be as accommodating and as nice as I can be.”

Evely, a veteran who was a People’s Party of Canada candidate for Sydney-Glace Bay in last spring’s federal election, wasn’t alone. The social media response to the woods ban invoked COVID-inspired debates about safety and government overreach. 

Opinions were just as mixed last weekend in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park and Shubie Park in Dartmouth, as families, dog-walkers and runners headed back into the woods. Some parkgoers said they were glad to follow the rules to help keep the province safe from fire, while others said at least some public spaces should have stayed open. 

Everyone said they were happy to be back.

Interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Point Pleasant Park — Halifax

James Byers, public servant

What he was doing in the park: walking his dog.

“It gets boring walking the same routes and I like feeling grounded, but I think the ban was a good preventative measure and I think that most people respected it. I had coworkers that lost their cottages and had to evacuate last year with the fires out in the Beechville, Hammonds Plains area.

We did our camping and our summer trips earlier in the season, so it didn’t impact our vacation plans. We had family who went camping and couldn’t light a fire but they still had a good time.”

Chris Webster, student, and Lauren Theriault, film and television costumer

What they were doing in the park: walking their dog.

Theriault: “We’ve had a sad dog. It was really hard because it was too hot during the day to walk her on pavement.”

Webster: “It’s been a long month and a half. I think the worst thing was trying to get the unhoused community in Halifax out of the woods. They have nowhere else to go and they’re already kicking them out of encampments. They go to the woods to get away from the city that they’re being kicked out of and then they’re being kicked out of the woods.”

Abdoulaye Barry, founder, Ten Toes Down run club

What he was doing in the park: leading a run.

“I’m the type of guy that loves the outside, and every member here loves Point Pleasant. We tried running at [a local track called] The Oval but a lot of people didn’t like it that much.

Honestly, Point Pleasant, there’s no better place to run. I think a place like this should always be open to the public, because everyone has reasons why they’re here. For the run club, it’s health benefits, right? Social benefit and psychological growth.

I live downtown in an apartment that has a gym and equipment. So, when it came to physical fitness, I had other [options], but I’m sure other people were affected.”

Jay Gaerlan, digital creator

What he was doing in the park: running with Ten Toes Down.

“This community really started in Point Pleasant Park. To have that taken away was really awful. It feels good to be back. A lot of people relieve stress by being in nature. It felt like something was missing.  

We almost had to evacuate when there was a fire in Bayer’s Lake. My house was like a kilometre away.”

Shubie Park — Dartmouth, N.S.

Jared MacPhee, comic artist

What he was doing in the park: walking his dog.

“I have a very high-maintenance dog and the ban prevented me from going to parks in the area, so he was going stir crazy in my house.

I thought it was reasonable. I understand the precautions. Obviously, I don’t want forest fires. Obviously, post-COVID you never like government lockdowns. A bit of a PTSD situation, but I go along with the rules, even if I don’t like them.

There’s a little trail in the woods that we walk every day. It’s just weird, having a little slice of your neighbourhood you’re not allowed to go into anymore.”

Roberto Guebara, chef

What he was doing in the park: showing a friend from Italy “one of the most beautiful parks we have in the city.”

“Feels great, bringing the kids back to breathing fresh air and enjoying the views, seeing this beautiful thing we have here. I’m not really completely in agreement with the ban but we had to follow the rules and respect the fires that were happening.”

Donna King, anesthesia assistant

What she was doing in the park: walking her dog.

“I think it was a little over the top. I wish they’d have kept those city parks open, because it wasn’t deep in the woods. There’s not many places to go in the city. It’s tough not being able to take [my dog] Dino to water.”

Cheryl Cort, retired, and Kimberlee McTaggart, film and television editor

What they were doing in the park: running with the Heart and Sole Running Club.

Cort: “If it had to be, it had to be. We don’t want fires. That’s what they thought was necessary.”

McTaggart: “I’m glad they left the path along Lake Banook open. I really wish they would have opened the waterfront trail, which is a paved path through a tiny bit of woods that people use as commuters.

I like to bikepack and I was hoping to get one more weekend in August. My usual is out to Dollar Lake. That was the only thing that affected me and I wasn’t that upset about it because we needed to do it.

We have a place in Porter’s Lake and there was a fire nearby, mostly in Lake Echo. It didn’t hit us but it hit Mineville Road and it felt like it was on the way.”

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