Ian Thompson, Executive-in-Residence at Cox & Palmer’s Halifax office, has spent most of his career assessing the interaction between governments, business, the news media, special interest groups and society.
As public relations counsel, he played an intimate role in activities that led to support for the successful development of Canada’s first offshore oil field. As a deputy minister in the Nova Scotia government, he was intimately involved in activities associated with the province’s successful “Ships Start Here” initiative. He was also responsible for the initiative that led to publication of “Defined by the Sea: Nova Scotia’s Ocean Technology Sector Present and Future,” a document that catalogued the extraordinary breadth of the ocean sector in Nova Scotia and helped set the foundation for development of the Supercluster initiative. As a newspaper executive, he led coverage of the pre and post work of the Ivany Commission and dealt on a daily basis with contentious issues around, for example, the sometimes divided interests between rural and urban communities and the growing demands for “social license” as a prerequisite for, in particular, natural resource related developments.
In the roles of public relations counsel and deputy minister, he was called upon to determine how best to manage conflicting interests in ways that led to successful outcomes. In the role of newspaper executive, he was required to think about how the media could responsibly balance the interests and concerns of third parties while also supporting initiatives that would create opportunities for more Nova Scotians.