Cabot Golf: Ye Olde Land Switcheroo

Lorna MacNeil goCapeBreton.com - Feb. 26, 2023 Full article published here

On May 10, 2018, Former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Duff Montgomery had this to say when he was speaking to the committee of economic development in Nova Scotia:

"Part of the options we have is if the company we’re dealing with commits to buying other land that can stay protected, that’s pristine. That’s what they did. They bought - I can’t remember how many acres of land around a lake in Inverness, and of course, they have a world-class golf course, and the economic side of Inverness is just booming. I think if you were to even go on the beach, you would hardly see a dune that was altered - other than there’s one hole, I think, that’s surrounded by dunes.”

Cabot builds luxury real estate and exclusive golf courses. They are not environmentalists. They are not elected government representatives who are meant to listen to us. Simply put, they are developers who want land that our government, based on a plan titled Our Parks and Protected Areas, has protected from development.

In a better world, companies like Cabot would respect our protected spaces, and the collaborative process that led to them being so.

And our government would answer important questions with urgency and clarity.

On Cabot’s plans, Premier Houston has said, "If something comes before the government, we'll look at it through the lens that we would normally look at things, but to speculate on it ... there's lots of things to speculate on. That's why I try to reserve my energy to [deal with] the number of real issues that are actually on the desk.”

There is a real issue on Premier Houston’s desk that is being ignored. We are asking our top elected government official to tell us that our protected lands are safe from development, as they are supposed to be. Why are our concerns not “real” but a request from a developer to build golf on a protected space would be “real”?

Read the full article here.