 Camila Baquerizo Bayona -Jacques Poitras, CBC photo The chronology of the Holt government’s decisions on this file is dizzying: On Feb. 17, the Board of Governors of St Thomas U. (STU) announced that Sandra Irving had been chosen as the university’s next Chancellor. At that time Mrs. Irving praised the faculty, staff, and alumni for putting “students first and have a close-knit and successful learning environment.” She is to be installed on May 20. On Feb. 18, the provincial government presented a document to the province’s university presidents and CEO’s of Community Colleges, including the president of STU and the University of New Brunswick (UNB), about a merger of STU into UNB. The document asked for ideas to be presented to cabinet “this week.” Post Secondary Education Minister Jean Claude D’Amour told reporters Feb. 23: “The discussion was a discussion.” Why, we might ask, was the government floating something with no plan for implementation? D’Amour said the document in question was authored by his Deputy Minister, Dan Mills. “I realize the timeline is very short,” Mills wrote in his one-page document. On Feb.24 STU student Max Green learned on his cell phone late at night that his university was going to be “merged” with UNB. Camila Baquerizo Bayona, the STU student union’s VP for education commented: “It’s completely crazy the way they thought about cutting post-secondary education without talking to a student…it would also imply that a lot of staff members and faculty that we appreciate would be gone.
The above is not the only time that Premier Holt has leaped to a conclusion without a cabinet, caucus, or legislature debate on a proposal.
It was reported in the Telegraph-Journal on March 25 that the Premier and officials have met with a company planning to build Canada’s largest explosives factory since World War II. It would involve a new Canadian company Nalagx which partnered last November with Eurenco of France, said to be Europe’s top producer of propellants and explosives “to build an industrial campus in Canada, including the construction of energy materials plants.” New Brunswick is no stranger to military installations, having been the home of the Cape Gagetown military training base since the 1950’s. The province has also seen metal de-fabrication plants such as the American Iron and Metal plant in Saint John which caused a massive fire in 2023 and heavy pollution of the west side of the city. These are nice sounding words. But it is a fair question whether these are defensive armaments and if not, which of the current wars in the world, the Russia-Ukraine war or the more recent U.S.-Israel-Iran one would use them?
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Back in May 2025, Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, coined the acronym T.A.C.O. to explain U.S. President Donald Trump’s tendency to back down on his threats, hence, “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The original use of T.A.C.O. referred to Trump’s habit of threatening tariffs against country’s such as Canada as a negotiating tool designed to win concessions. Trump has tended to back down on those threats when his precious stock market makes a sharp downturn. When a reporter asked him about his T.A.C.O. habit he retorted that his was the “Nastiest question” in the history of journalism, a profession which encourages reporters to “speak truth to power.’ As we all know, the truth sometimes hurts. In the last few days, Trump has turned to a new use of his T.A.C.O. strategy. Trump’s heavy bombing campaign delivered with Israel against Iran, has proved to be very unpopular with Americans who do not like the consequences of the bombing, Iran’s effective shutting down the passage of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent plus of the world’s oil passes. Consequences include the sharp rise in price of oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel, as well as groceries, and other necessities.  Republicans hoping to hold on to both houses of Congress fear that the jump in the cost of living will surely hurt their party’s chances in next fall’s mid-term elections. Wall Street and stock markets throughout the world have plummeted, and Trump got the urge for another T.A.C.O. meal. This was further exacerbated when dead American soldiers began returning home coffins; Trump was there to welcome them home “the heroes” wearing a new style of white baseball cap, this one with golden U.S.A. letters. Trump called on traditional allies of the U.S.A. to step up and help to police the Strait with their ships. He called on U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer who declined, prompting a bitter response from Trump, who said Britain was once the “Rolls Royce” of U.S. Allies, but no more.
Both Germany and France also declined immediate requests to send warships to the Strait, while supporting the principle of keeping the Strait open. Canada’s defense minister, David McGinty, said firmly: “We will not be engaging offensively in this war.” Japan, China, New Zealand, and Australia are also in the “no” camp. How, in the name of good statecraft, could Trump expect allies to support him in this stage of the war, when the Trump Administration had not informed them or even American congressional leaders prior to the bombing campaign. The writers at the Against the Flow blog do not normally state their identity above each column, but this week is different, as this writer introduces his experience in an earlier part of his career when he was Deputy Minister of Environment in the New Brunswick government. At that time, the Environment Department had an important staff member, Mike Sprague, who had terrific knowledge of the mining industry and some of the environmental impacts of that industry in the Province of New Brunswick. What follows is a requiem for Mike. Back in the day, the jovial and very effective Minister of the Environment, Vaughn Blaney, and this writer, as his Deputy Minister, teamed up to enforce the “polluter pays” principle and introduce a number of measures and new legislation including the Clean Water Act, the Beverage Container Act (placing deposit return on containers), the Environmental Trust Fund Act, and as well, closed down most rural “dumps” in favour of engineered Sanitary Landfills with leachate collection in order to protect groundwater supplies.
We also hired tough and knowledgeable retired RCMP officers to prosecute alleged polluters, no matter what their last name was. The staff at the Environment department was proud of our strong protection of the environment. One of these was Mike Sprague, mentioned above. When we asked high-powered industry executives into our minister’s office to explain a pollution situation, particularly about the mining sector, Mike was one of the staffers we called in frequently. to explain such situations, particularly in the mining sector. Mike was extremely articulate and able to explain our concerns about the need for care in handling mine tailings.  There is no doubt that the regime in Iran is one of the world’s most violent and repressive regimes which has killed thousands of its own people. However, the war which U.S. President Donald Trump has started with a massive bombing campaign appears to have been launched without a plan and is loaded with deadly consequences.
The Middle East has long been a powder keg, and as Trump blithely donned his white ball cap emblazoned with the initials U.S.A. to announce his campaign of bombing Iran in partnership with Israel, he didn’t appear to know what he was getting into. This is the same president who openly covets the Nobel Peace Prize, who once said the war-torn Gaza Strip could become a new Mediterranean Riviera complete with luxury hotels, and who has deployed the U.S. National Guard and I.C.E. agents against American cities. Trump perhaps believed that his bombing campaign could halt the slide of his personal popularity heading into next fall’s mid-term elections, and that his beloved stock market would respond well to the air strikes. Instead, launching the war against Iran has not reaped favorable reviews and the stock market tanked on day four of the campaign, while oil prices have shot up. |
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