The Consultant and the Keepers series: Part Two

The aftermath of a single photo-op tells you more than the picture itself.

Within 48 hours of Nick Mercer’s smiling appearance beside the Screaming Eagles, Port au Port’s already fragile resistance landscape cracked wide open. Coreen Tourout, once aligned with the larger ProtectNL movement, took to Facebook to publicly disavow Brenda and Sally Kitchen—the very women who had helped build and lead the group.

The accusations were swift and emotional: sabotage, manipulation, gatekeeping. Tourout claimed that the No Wind Turbines on Port au Port Peninsula group had been “taken over.” The membership count was changed from around 2,000 to over 5,000, and the group was rebranded as ProtectNL—now numbering more than 6,100 members. Others cheered her on.

Mercer didn’t have to say a word. He didn’t have to interfere. The optics had already done their work.

This isn’t just the story of a community in conflict. It’s the story of how strategic infighting—whether spontaneous or encouraged—can serve the interests of higher policy frameworks.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, where governance is often informal, emotional, and dependent on social networks rather than structure, a fractured front is not just a weakness. It’s a tool. And Mercer knows how to use it.

The Optics of Fragmentation

For outside observers, it might look like a passionate community defending its land in different ways. But for federal policy strategists, it’s a dream scenario: two opposing local factions, each claiming legitimacy, while consultants like Mercer drift between them harvesting narrative material, documenting “dialogue,” and walking away with the optics of consent.

On July 15, Mercer was photographed with women from the Screaming Eagles faction—smiling, united, and color-coded. Within days, the post was flooded with likes, hearts, and praise from government-aligned environmental figures and members of other narrative-driven campaigns. The timing wasn’t just coincidental. It was strategic.

When Tourout distanced herself from the Kitchen sisters, she didn’t just start a public feud. She provided plausible deniability for Mercer’s future work. If challenged on bias or selective engagement, he can point to the “fracture” as a natural community split—justification for choosing one side over another.

What’s left behind is a curated version of resistance: tidy, non-threatening, emotionally resonant, and conveniently aligned with federal research objectives.

How SSHRC-Funded Research Becomes a Tool for Capture

It’s easy to mistake Mercer’s work for mere documentation. In reality, it’s closer to narrative engineering.

Under the umbrella of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Mercer’s projects are part of a growing national push to “understand community needs” in energy transition zones[1]. On the surface, that sounds benign—even progressive. But in practice, it often means using oral storytelling, participatory sessions, and “stakeholder interviews” to gather stories that can be shaped, framed, and deployed in support of top-down policy[2].

What begins as lived experience is filtered into academic case studies and policy briefs—minus the defiance, minus the contradiction, minus the power imbalance. The mess gets cleaned up. The resistance becomes manageable.

The Kitchen sisters, inconveniently vocal and increasingly alienated, are no longer useful to that goal. But the Screaming Eagles, now publicly de-escalated and visually affirmed, are.

This is the power of optics—not just as images, but as mechanisms of consent[3].

Van Assche Was Right: This Is the Local Paradox

In The Local Paradox in Grand Policy Schemes, Van Assche and his colleagues warned that grand policy initiatives—especially those framed around climate transition—require the appearance of local buy-in to function[4]. When real governance is weak, optics take over. Symbols stand in for substance. Public emotion stands in for policy analysis.

Tourout’s public takedown of her former allies didn’t resolve the issue. It served it up.

In a setting like Port au Port, the “governance environment” is not a formal institution—it’s a rotating cast of Facebook admins, informal leaders, social workers, land defenders, and activists-of-the-moment. When that environment splits, federal actors don’t retreat. They move in.

Grant Cycles and Narrative Laundering

And here’s where it gets even more convenient. Because once SSHRC researchers collect enough filtered quotes, sympathetic photos, and roundtable footage—something remarkable happens.

Those same consultants can apply for another round of funding to study the effects of the fragmentation they just helped facilitate[1].

The cycle feeds itself. Conflict becomes content. And content becomes currency.

The federal government gets to show its commitment to “listening,” the researchers secure more money, and the public is left with a series of glowing PDFs—none of which reflect the dysfunction they helped shape, or the people they helped erase.

Meanwhile, the few remaining voices willing to question this machine are labeled difficult, paranoid, or fringe. And just like that, the movement collapses into a feedback loop of blame and burnout.

The End Goal Is Not Resolution—It’s Redirection

If you wanted to co-opt a movement, this is exactly how you’d do it. You wouldn’t silence everyone—you’d spotlight the compliant. You wouldn’t debate the critics—you’d dismiss them through social cues. You’d pit factions against each other, reward those who play nice, and ignore the rest.

And when the dust settles, you'd call it community input and move on to implementation[5].

Job done. Optics achieved. Resistance neutralized.

Conclusion: Splintered for a Reason

This isn’t just dysfunction. It’s a feature of the system. The federal strategy doesn’t need to win hearts and minds across the board—it only needs to capture enough narrative material to justify the next round of funding, legislation, and infrastructure.

In a province like Newfoundland and Labrador—where emotions run deep, and governance is more social than structural—fractures aren’t just predictable. They’re exploitable.

Nick Mercer didn’t create the split. He doesn’t need to. All he has to do is keep the camera rolling and the SSHRC funding flowing.

Because in the age of narrative control, even resistance has a casting call.

References

[1] Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. “Imagining Canada’s Future: Energy and Natural Resources.” https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/icf-iec-eng.aspx

[2] Holmes, David & Wendling, Risa. Capturing Indigenous Perspectives through Engagement: A Meta-Analysis of SSHRC Reports on Energy and Environment. Canadian Institute for Climate Choices, 2020.

[3] Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.

[4] Van Assche, Kristof, Greenwood, Robert, & Gruezmacher, Monica. The Local Paradox in Grand Policy Schemes: Lessons from Newfoundland and Labrador. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 38 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2022.101212

[5] Healey, Patsy. “Building Institutional Capacity through Collaborative Approaches to Urban Planning.” Environment and Planning A, vol. 30, no. 9, 1998, pp. 1531–1546.