In Newfoundland, outrage is often presented as principle — a stand for the environment, for culture, for the community. But scratch the surface and you’ll find that outrage here is a resource like any other: rationed, redirected, and deployed where it serves existing alliances.
A clearcut is an environmental disaster if it’s for a paper mill, but a “green energy corridor” if it’s for wind-to-hydrogen exports. Seabird habitat is sacred until a turbine project offers political capital. A land claim is a matter of sacred rights — until the wrong company comes knocking.
When the same ecological harm is condemned in one case and excused in another, we’re not talking about environmental principle. We’re talking about environmental theatre — with the script written by those who stand to gain.
Local Hypocrisy on Display
Few examples capture this better than the shifting positions of Jasen Benwah.
Benwah was an early and visible supporter of the anti-fracking movement in the region. He even kept a “No Fracking” sign nailed to the side of his driveway for years; roughly a week into the GH2 wind and hydrogen push, the sign quietly disappeared. Locals noticed.
In September 2022, Benwah went public with praise for GH2, sending letters to government leaders describing the project as “forward-thinking” and aligned with Indigenous stewardship values¹. These weren’t lukewarm statements — they were endorsements, lending his credibility as a Mi’kmaq leader to the project’s legitimacy. By September 2023, the tune had changed: he issued a formal letter opposing offshore wind in Bay St. George and the Port au Port Peninsula while explicitly supporting onshore wind² — a distinction that makes little ecological sense given similar scales of land clearing, road-building, and blasting across both.
The selectivity doesn’t end with wind vs. wind. Benwah has voiced strong opposition to specific forestry activities³ while giving a pass to industrial wind projects that clear just as much, if not more, habitat. That isn’t environmental consistency. That’s selective outrage.
It also shows up in how information is managed. On December 12, 2022, the Protect Our Port au Port Facebook group shared a link to the Benoit First Nation website hosting a letter Benwah said was submitted in 2019 under UNDRIP⁴. Today, that link throws a 404 Not Found⁵. The letter itself is gone. Only the territory page — which also promotes a fundraising book as the place to access the 2019 land-claim material⁶ ⁷. Gatekeeping the most consequential details behind a fundraiser is not public transparency; it’s narrative control.
This pattern isn’t unique to Benwah. Under UNDRIP, Mildred Lavers has asserted sweeping claims across the Northern Peninsula, and Peggy White has posted public notices asserting rights from Caudroy Valley to Port aux Basques⁸. The urgency and visibility of these claims tend to shift depending on who backs the project and who stands to gain.
Inside the Port au Port Environmental Transparency Committee (ETC), the same choreography repeats. I, along with others, have watched efforts to steer discussion, decide what’s “safe” to surface, and filter which facts reach the wider community⁹. It’s the playbook I described in The Whisper Network: When Narrative Control Replaces Public Truth — control what’s visible, control what’s invisible, and you control the outcome¹⁰.
Political Opportunism as an Amplifier
Selective outrage thrives when political ambition feeds it.
Consider Darrell Shelley. In 2021, he ran as a People’s Party of Canada candidate¹¹. He had already attempted to form a provincial party — NL United¹² — before later seeking the PC nomination in Long Range Mountains, which he lost to Carol Anstey¹³. Multiple posts and statements tie the nomination decision to PC channels associated with Steve Kent — a detail Shelley himself has highlighted in public posts¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶.
When Shelley turned his attention to the ETC and Port au Port movement, he brought the same top-down instincts: trying to steer strategy without grasping that many members had entrenched Liberal loyalties and their own power bases to protect. When he couldn’t secure control, the focus shifted to undermining rivals — including spreading baseless claims about Brenda Kitchen’s involvement in a past court case, despite the defendant having pled guilty. The goal wasn’t clarity; it was discredit.
Shelley’s arc — align when it builds profile, fracture when it doesn’t — isn’t an outlier. It’s a template for how selective outrage gets weaponized.
The Bigger Stage — Where Finance Meets Silence
These local contradictions make perfect sense in the global context.
As I argued in When the Bank Calls the Shots, Newfoundland’s megaprojects aren’t decided in St. John’s. Their lifelines run through financial hubs in London, New York, and Zurich. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and similar frameworks prioritize projects that tick ESG boxes — even when the practical outcome is clearcut forests and industrialized coastlines¹⁷.
In that framework, a project’s ecological footprint matters less than its narrative footprint. Local actors who apply outrage selectively are ideal partners for global financiers: they maintain an illusion of community consent while ensuring that only projects inconvenient to their alliances face sustained resistance.
It’s Not About the Land — It’s About Control
Whether it’s Benwah’s shifting positions, Shelley’s opportunism, or the calculated deployment of UNDRIP claims, the through-line is clear: outrage follows the politics, not the impact.
Consistent standards — ones that hold whether the project is forestry, fracking, or wind — are rare. And those who insist on consistency are often punished. In a culture of selective outrage, stepping outside the approved narrative gets you sidelined, silenced, or smeared.
The same dynamic showed up when I published a network map of relationships between key actors. The backlash wasn’t about accuracy — it was about permission. The very people who preach “transparency” demanded silence once the spotlight turned on their own networks. If the exact same map had come from an insider, it would’ve been praised as transparency. Coming from me, it was treated as a breach. That isn’t principle. That’s control.
Until Newfoundland’s environmental discourse can survive without these double standards, the land will remain a bargaining chip — and the truth will remain negotiable.
References
[1] Screenshot – Sept. 8, 2022 BFN letter supporting onshore wind/hydrogen project. (689f7ac253d84_bfn-support-letter.png)
[2] Screenshot – Sept. 12, 2023 BFN letter opposing offshore wind but accepting onshore wind. (689f73b62d51a_bfn-letter-2024.png)
[3] Screenshot – BFN governance mandate webpage. (689f7b5343586_mandate.png)
[4] Screenshot – Dec. 12, 2022 Amanda Cornect post in Protect Our Port au Port linking to BFN website. Screenshot – 404 Not Found for 2019 UNDRIP letter link. (689f745b35adb_protectourport_bfn_link_post_2022.png)
[5] Wayback Machine – Archived BFN territory page, Aug. 13, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20250813204938/https://www.benoitfirstnation.ca/bfn_territory.html
[6] Local observation — public posts by Peggy White & Mildred Lavers asserting land rights. (Facebook Link) (Facebook Link) (689f85834cd28_Screenshot%20from%202025-08-15%2015-07-26.png)
[7] Screenshot – BFN territory fundraiser reference. (689f8249c1d90_Screenshot%20from%202025-08-15%2014-53-42.png)
[8] Bayman’s Paradox – The Whisper Network: When Narrative Control Replaces Public Truth. https://baymansparadox.com/explore/asch-experiments/post.php?id=130
[9] Personal witness statements & meeting observations regarding ETC conduct.
[10] VoteMate – Darrell Shelley, PPC Candidate 2021. https://votemate.org/canada2021/candidates/5683
[11] House of Commons – Carol Anstey. https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/carol-anstey(109872)
[12] Local political archives – NL United party announcements. (689f8692d3aa3_Screenshot%20from%202025-08-15%2015-12-06.png)
[13] Facebook post – Shelley discussing PC nomination loss and referring to Steve Kent’s influence.(https://www.facebook.com/DarrellShelleyNL/videos/398532985999246/?vh=e&mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=f4ByrDnrQqzVDjRc#)
[14] Facebook post – Additional nomination discussion in PC circles. (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?mibextid=wwXIfr&v=1217688426620831&rdid=7TzDkOtUtWsO3pTu)
[15] GFANZ – About. https://www.gfanzero.com/about/