DTI failed to notify Tantramar about closing Hwy 106 and seems to have missed the beaver dam that may have caused the washout

Posted on May 25, 2024 by brucewark

Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne

Tantramar’s Chief Administrative Officer says the town received no notification on April 1st when the province closed Highway 106, the main route between Sackville and Dorchester.

Jennifer Borne says she expected such notification from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DTI) because of the need to inform police and fire in case of an emergency on either side of the washed-out highway.

“We were not notified and the information that I was given from their district engineer was to follow them on Twitter,” Borne said during the second in a series of community meetings held today at the Anglican Church Hall in Mount Whatley.

She was responding to a question from Sackville resident James MacDonald who wondered why the town did not inform residents of the road closure until the morning of April 3rd.

Borne suggested there should be “a direct line of communication” in such situations between a municipality and DTI.

She said town managers have now been asked to monitor New Brunswick 511 to stay up to date on road conditions in Tantramar.

‘Extreme disconnect’

Percy Best with his trusty cellphone camera

“There seems to be an extreme disconnect between DTI and the citizens,” said Sackville resident Percy Best.

He spoke of his frustrations trying to persuade the province to clear trees and brush from the sides of roads including the one that runs to Trueman’s Blueberry Farm near Aulac.

“This has gone on for like 20 years of growth,” Best complained.

“It’s extremely dangerous. If a deer jumps out, you’re going to drive into the front of another car or go into the ditch yourself to avoid it,” he said. “DTI seems to be in a no-man’s-land and they do not respond to citizens’ complaints.”

Best contrasted uncleared roadways here with the ones in PEI where, he said, you could play golf on the sides of their roads.

“These days with the mulchers, bushwackers and what have you, it’s a simple job,” he said.

Holding their ‘feet to the fire’

Mayor Andrew Black

“Most of the departments within the government don’t really want to hear from citizens, especially DTI it seems,” said Mayor Andrew Black.

He noted over the last 12-13 years, there’s been a spending shortfall on provincial roads of about $40 million.

“One of the big things is that the government needs to put more money into highway funding across the province.”

He added that some municipalities have managed to get DTI to come up with five-year asset management plans for provincial roads within their boundaries and once those plans are in place, they can hold DTI accountable for carrying them out.

“Some municipalities have had success with that and it holds the department’s feet to the fire, so if there’s some way that we can do that within Tantramar, I think that would benefit all of us greatly,” he said.

Busy beavers

Beaver blockage in big Highway 106 culvert. Photo: Percy Best. Labelling: Sharon Hicks

In the first community meeting in Dorchester on Thursday, Black announced that DTI had agreed to install a temporary bridge so that Highway 106 can be re-opened by early July instead of waiting for road reconstruction to be completed in September.

Percy Best reported at today’s meeting that he had gone out to the site of the highway washout and wearing rubber boots, had crawled inside the big culvert there.

“That four-foot culvert has a 30-inch high beaver dam located halfway through,” he said. “They constructed a dam, the water couldn’t get through,” he added, “and that’s what created the washout.”

Best criticized DTI for failing to clear the culvert.

“So, they’re not even taking a close look at the problem,” he said. “An ounce of prevention is worth, in this case, a tonne of fixing.”

Darlene Hicks-Phinney said that, years ago, when her husband worked for DTI, he talked for days about the discovery of a beaver dam inside that Highway 106 culvert.

“So, it’s the second time for sure that it’s happened,” she said.

“The culvert was fine,” Best said. “It was the beavers that caused the problem, so they should be the ones to go fix it,” he added as everyone laughed.

UPDATE on Monday, May 27/24

Warktimes sent a link to this story to DTI’s communications officer, but so far, has received no comment in response.

However, Tantramar Engineer Jon Eppell told town council on Monday that DTI does not believe that beavers built a dam inside the culvert blocking water flow and causing the highway washout.

“I was talking with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure district engineer about the culvert on Rte. 106,” Eppell said, “and DTI is of the opinion that in fact, what happened is that the culvert pipe collapsed and the debris got trapped there and got infilled with some silt.

“They don’t believe that it was actually a beaver dam.”

Eppell said the culvert was scheduled to be replaced next year and the design for a new pipe is ready.

He added that DTI is now seeking environment approvals so that a new culvert can be in place this year.

Posted in New Brunswick government, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Tantramar councillor denied chance to speak about public safety issue in Dorchester

Posted on May 19, 2024 by brucewark

Coun. Debbie Wiggins-Colwell seeks permission to speak

Last Tuesday’s 45-minute Tantramar council meeting ended on a dramatic note after Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell raised her hand just as Mayor Andrew Black was calling for a motion to adjourn.

“I would just like to make an observation if I may on the first responders. May I continue?” she asked.

“It’s not on the agenda,” said CAO Jennifer Borne.

“It’s an observation that happened and I don’t think it can wait,” Wiggins-Colwell interjected adding that the matter was too urgent to be held over for the next meeting.

“Yeah, it’s not on the agenda, so that….” the mayor said.

“It’s important but…” Wiggins-Colwell interjected.

“It just happened,” she added, then paused, “It’s up to council.”

Town Clerk Donna Beal delivering her verdict

The mayor turned to Town Clerk Donna Beal who delivered a decisive no.

“Thank you Councillor Wiggins-Colwell, but to add something to the agenda, it would have had to be requested before the agenda was approved,” Beal said, adding that raising the matter earlier would also have required the unanimous consent of council before it could be added to the agenda.

“So, a motion to adjourn,” the mayor said ending the drama and the meeting.

Wiggins-Colwell told reporters later that she wanted to direct council and the public’s attention to the failure of the emergency dispatch system in Dorchester.

“We had a 911 call seconds from the first responders,” she said, “and after 10 minutes, they did not appear, they did not come.”

It took an ambulance more than half an hour to arrive, Wiggins-Colwell said.

“It was pretty scary, it was a pending heart attack.”

In Dorchester, the fire department normally responds to such calls, but, for some reason she said, they didn’t receive notification of the 911 call.

“There’s something wrong with the system, it’s not working the right way,” she said, adding that “we’ll get to the bottom of it between the CAO and the mayor and myself.”

Note: the Dorchester Fire Department was told last October that Ambulance New Brunswick would reinstate the practice of directing emergency calls to it since firefighters there are trained as medical first responders.

Tantramar’s incomplete agenda

The proceedings of council bylaw the province imposed when the new council took office on January 1, 2023 lists the following agenda item:

Mayor and Councillor statements and inquiries.

But that item has never been included on Tantramar Council’s actual agenda prepared and distributed by the clerk’s office.

On Friday, Warktimes had the following e-mail exchange with Mayor Black:

Mayor Black asks the clerk to weigh in on Wiggins-Colwell’s request to speak

Q: I’m wondering why Councillor Wiggins-Colwell was not allowed to speak at the close of Tuesday’s meeting? I know the clerk said the “observation” she was trying to make was not on the agenda. But the standard agenda in the proceedings of council bylaw does allow for (k) Mayor & Councillor Statements and Inquiries. So why no opportunity for her to raise a matter concerning public safety in Dorchester?

A: In order to adhere to parliamentary procedure an elected official would have to request in advance of the meeting to speak under statements of members of council. This would then be approved during agenda approval. If this is not done it is not on the agenda. We take matters of public safety seriously, and this can always be directed to the CAO to address until the elected official can speak publicly at the next meeting.

‘Ridiculous’

“I think this is ridiculous,” Mt. A. Politics Professor Geoff Martin writes in an e-mail to Warktimes.

Martin, who specializes in the study of municipal politics and who served for six years as a councillor in Sackville, listed a series of points phrased as questions:

  • The standard agenda (for this item) is only followed if someone says in advance they want to speak?
  • What if they want to speak about something that happened during the meeting?
  • Also, why should their desire to speak be subject to the unanimous approval of council?

“They should design the system to encourage councillor participation, not to prevent it,” Martin writes.

“There is a shocking impulse to control people, yet voters hate it when elected officials are led around by the nose by staff like the clerk and the CAO.”

“It’s idiotic not to allow councillors to speak freely,” says Virgil Hammock, a retired Mt. A. fine arts professor who served 13 years on Sackville town council.

“The mayor should have asked the councillor what was on her mind instead of shutting her down,” he adds.

“Who is running the council anyway?”

In Moncton, a different story

Professor Martin writes that few councils are this restrictive and that he’s pretty sure the one in Moncton allows members to make statements without having to put them on the formal agenda.

When Warktimes watched the recording of the May 6, 2024 Moncton regular council meeting, the agenda was adopted without any councillors seeking approval to make a statement.

Then, when Mayor Dawn Arnold came to #8 on the formal agenda, “Statements by members of council,” Ward 3 Councillor Bryan Butler spoke for a minute and a half, congratulating Harrison Trimble High School for being the only school in Canada to receive a designation as a personal learning community from an international organization.

In an e-mail yesterday, Councillor Butler said that while he’s not sure about the procedure for all councils, Moncton has a regular agenda item on councillors’ statements and councillors do not have to get their statements added to the agenda before being permitted to speak.

Posted in Dorchester, Mount Allison University, Town of Tantramar | Tagged | 7 Comments

Sackville developer John Lafford backs co-op plan to build non-profit housing

Posted on May 15, 2024 by brucewark

Sackville developer John Lafford addressing Tantramar council last year seeking approval of the six-storey apartment bldg. he is currently building in downtown Sackville

Prominent local developer John Lafford is urging Tantramar Town Council to support construction of a big, non-profit housing co-op near the Sackville Golf Course.

“With such a high demand for housing, it’s great to see that Freshwinds is taking initiative to help provide a home for those in our community,” Lafford says in a letter addressed to the mayor and council.

He was referring to plans by Freshwinds Eco-Village, a  local, non-profit housing co-op, to build up to 60 housing units on about 19 acres of serviced land off Fairfield Road.

“By providing infrastructure support to Freshwinds it would help Sackville’s demand for affordable housing,” Lafford’s letter says.

“We look forward to seeing this project developed and this support would allow them to begin that process.”

Sabine Dietz and Eric Tusz-King, co-chairs of the Freshwinds housing co-op, mentioned Lafford’s letter Tuesday night as they asked Tantramar council for help in securing the federal and provincial money they would need to build 40-60, one-to-four bedroom housing units near 64 Fairfield Road.

They said at least one quarter of them would be subsidized, rent-geared-to income units with money-saving, environmentally friendly features such as solar panels and energy-efficient heating.

Municipal help

“We’re  going to ask the assistance of the municipality to provide [water and sewage] services into the lot,” Tusz-King told council.

“That usually is a cost that is the developer’s, but we’re not a private developer,” he said.

“There are funds available to assist municipalities to do that at very low cost to the municipality.”

Tusz-King and Dietz explained that Tantramar could apply to the multi-billion dollar federal housing accelerator fund that is designed to help local governments encourage the development of  affordable housing.

Eric Tusz-King & Sabine Dietz making their presentation to Tantramar Council Tuesday night

But first, he said, Tantramar needs a formal housing needs assessment from the Southeast Regional Service Commission.

“We’ve been promised that by the Regional Service Commission since last September,” Tusz-King said, adding that so far, it hasn’t been provided.

He suggested that Tantramar could push for one.

Later during an interview, Dietz and Tusz-King said they’re hoping to break ground on their Freshwinds project this fall with the first occupants moving in possibly by the fall of 2025.

They said they’re not asking the town for money, but emphasized its support would be crucial in securing federal and provincial grants and loans.

“There is no way a non-profit housing development such as ours can be financially feasible without all of that support that currently, in a window of time, is available,” Dietz said.

Political urgency

She added with a federal election looming in 2025, Freshwinds needs to push ahead aggressively with grant and loan applications while a housing-friendly Liberal government is still in power supported by the NDP.

She said affordable housing is linked to poverty and homelessness, adding these are not usually social issues that Conservatives push.

“We as an organization need to make sure that we take advantage of everything that’s currently available,” she said, “so that we don’t run into a half-finished development and all the funding dries up because some political master thinks that we’re done with housing, that we don’t need affordable housing,” she said.

For previous coverage of the Freshwinds co-op, click here.

Posted in Federal Election, Housing, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Words & images: New book chronicles the beauty & love of birds

Posted on May 12, 2024 by brucewark

Harry Thurston (L) and Thaddeus Holownia at the Owens Art Gallery

Two Tantramar artists — a poet and a photographer — celebrated a long-time collaboration Friday as they launched, of a feather, their third book about birds.

“Harry and I are going to pretend that we’re just at the studio having a Scotch and talking about life, which we excel at,” photographer Thaddeus Holownia told a packed room Friday at the Owens Art Gallery as members of the audience laughed.

He added that he first met poet and science writer Harry Thurston at the gallery 35 years ago during events marking Mount Allison University’s 150th anniversary.

Thaddeus had organized an exhibit on “The History of Photography at Mount Allison” while Harry gave a reading featuring his poem JUNE BUGS, which describes the armoured insects’  erratic nighttime flight battering the clapboards before they crash like “kamikazes”.

The audience at Friday’s book launch laughed, then applauded as Thurston read the poem which ends:

“In the morning/ their wrecked fuselages/ litter the verandah/like unpleasant lozenges/that had been spit out

“But let’s be honest/It is not their manner/that bothers us most./It is the message they bear/as they burst from their earth crypts/into summer air:/This is June/long awaited/short lived.”

“How can you not fall in love with someone who looks at nature that way and describes it in such a magical way?” Holownia asked after the applause died down.

And then, in an emotional moment, he paid tribute to “the extraordinary dedication” of the late Gay Hansen, his life’s partner who taught in the Mt. A. biology department for 39 years, sharing her love of nature, and especially of birds, with generations of students.

Holownia’s current exhibition of photos at the Owens and his new book are both named “of a feather” and both are dedicated to the memory of Hansen who died in 2021 at age 67.

For his part, Thurston remembered first meeting Gay when they both were studying biology at Acadia University in Wolfville.

Then, he read words she wrote about “her great passion” ornithology, the study of birds:

I think that it is essential to educate people about birds — they are extremely important in ecological, environmental, cultural and recreational realms. Ornithology is one of the few fields of biology where citizen science makes significant contributions.

This screen projection of Gay Hansen was shown at Friday’s book launch

The 21 photos in Holownia and Thurston’s new book are of bird feathers that Hansen preserved through her skills in taxidermy and that are used as study mounts in what is now named the Gay Hansen Ornithology Lab.

Her extensive collection of birds’ eggs inspired Ova Aves, Thurston and Holownia’s first book in this series. They created their second volume, Icarus, Falling of Birds, after Hansen was called upon as an expert to help identify migratory song birds that were killed by the thousands in 2013 at Saint John’s Canaport Liquefied Natural Gas plant.

Plumage of the common raven (Photo: Thaddeus Holownia)

The last of the 21 photos in of a feather shows the plumage of Corvus corax, the common raven, taken from a bird that Hansen preserved as one of her study mounts.

Holownia described how he and Gay gathered two ravens’ nests from collapsed hay barns on the Tantramar marshes.

“They’re large scale, like this big,” he said spreading his arms to show that ravens’ nests can measure several feet across.

“And there’s this incredible organic weaving of sticks and baler twine of different colours,” he added.

Harry Thurston said one of the large nests served as part of the inspiration for his poem that accompanies the photo in the book.

“I wish I could see
Into the black box
of your mind,”

Thurston read, his poem going on to describe the raven as a weaver of sticks, grasses “and the blond hairs of a mare’s tail” bound in the nest by baler twine.

I wish I could see
Into the black box
of your mind—

even the glass eye,
the curious cock of the head
in this mounted specimen

is wise.

Thaddeus Holownia’s of a feather exhibition, which also features work by Sackville artist Karen Stentaford, runs until May 15 at the Owens Art Gallery.

Thurston and Holownia’s of a feather can be ordered through Tidewater Books.

To read my report on Peter Sanger’s book about the life and photography of Thaddeus Holownia, click here.

Harry Thurston (L) and Thaddeus Holownia at their book launch on Friday

Posted in Arts | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Troubles persist in Sackville fire dept. in spite of recommendations in pricey Montana report

Posted on May 8, 2024 by brucewark

Nearly three years after consultants submitted a $31,500 report with 20 recommendations on how to end the turmoil in the Sackville Fire Department, multiple sources tell Warktimes that morale still remains low among volunteer firefighters.

The former town of Sackville hired the Montana Consulting Group to investigate working conditions after Warktimes published reports in April 2021 revealing that persistent bullying, favouritism and the flouting of safety rules had led to the resignations of about 17 volunteer firefighters over a five-year period.

In a sworn affidavit submitted to New Brunswick’s Court of King’s Bench in March, Tantramar Councillor Bruce Phinney says that volunteer firefighters have told him that the workplace problems have not been resolved.

The affidavit adds that the firefighters themselves haven’t been provided with any follow-up since the Montana recommendations were first presented to them in September 2021.

Phinney filed his affidavit in his unsuccessful attempt to persuade a judge to order the release of the Montana recommendations.

Mr. Justice Jean-Paul Ouellette ruled that the recommendations could not be made public under New Brunswick’s Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act because they concerned personnel matters that must remain confidential.

New bylaw

Former Sackville CAO Jamie Burke

Although the recommendations have never been released publicly, former Sackville CAO Jamie Burke told Warktimes in 2022 that most are contained in the new fire department bylaw that the town passed nearly two years ago.

That new bylaw gave more power to the fire chief and CAO:

—the old fire department constitution and internal bylaws, which gave firefighters the right to elect their own officers as well as a say in the hiring of new members, was eliminated.

—standard operating guidelines developed over the years by the firefighters were replaced by policies and procedures written by the chief in consultation with firefighters and the CAO and approved by town council.

—the grievance committee, which had never been set up, was replaced with a complaint procedure requiring volunteer firefighters to discuss their complaints with the chief and then, with the CAO.

The new bylaw complaint procedure directs aggrieved firefighters to the chief with an appeal to the CAO

—firefighters became part-time employees with higher wage rates. (Treasurer Michael Beal says current hourly rates for firefighters in Tantramar range from $15.30 to $17 while non full-time secretary/treasurers, chiefs and deputy chiefs have an additional honorarium that ranges from $1,000 to $4,500. He emphasized that these rates are under review. Fire Chief Craig Bowser is classed as a manager level 3 with a salary scale ranging from $70,473 to $93,964 as of January 2023.)

— as part-time employees, firefighters are subject to the town’s social media use policy which bans any commentary that would reflect badly on how the town is run

—firefighters must refer any requests for information or comment from the media to the fire chief.

Other recommendations

It’s understood that the Montana consultants made several other recommendations including:

—clarify the town’s expectations regarding the role and duties of the fire chief

—provide proper training for each firefighter and for each supervisor

—the chief should conduct firefighter performance reviews on a timely basis as determined in consultation with the CAO

—the CAO should get feedback from the firefighters at least every three years regarding the performance of the chief.

Final note

Warktimes helped Councillor Phinney prepare his court case seeking public release of the 20 Montana recommendations.

To read Phinney’s pre-hearing court brief, click here.

To read the Town of Tantramar’s response, click here.

To read Judge Ouellette’s decision, click here.

As the court documents show, the Montana recommendations were discussed by Tantramar Town Council in a closed meeting on March 12th, two weeks before Phinney’s court date on March 28. Councillor Phinney did not provide any information to Warktimes on the Montana recommendations.

Posted in Town of Sackville, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Distraught former councillor shares painful stories of health-care ‘failures’ at public meeting

Posted on May 1, 2024 by brucewark

Sabine Dietz addressing the public health care meeting in Sackville last week

“I’m here to bear witness,” former Sackville councillor Sabine Dietz said last week as she stood before senior officials from the Horizon Health Network and an audience of about 400 local residents at the Tantramar Civic Centre.

“I’m shaking and I’m exhausted from how I’ve had to deal with the system,” she said, adding that her family’s ordeal began on January 23rd when her 85-year-old mother went to the emergency room in Moncton suffering from chest pains before being taken to Saint John for heart surgery.

“We’ve been lucky as a family that there’s always been somebody with her,” Dietz said.

“She’s always had a family member there and you will not imagine how many failures of the system we caught and some that we couldn’t catch,” she added.

“The failures are manyfold — they go from prescribing the wrong blood thinner, to the waiting time in the ER for an 85-year-old who has pain in her chest, to lack of staff in Saint John to start the rehab right after the operation.”

Dietz praised doctors and nurses who took time to listen, but criticized bureaucrats for imposing a revolving-door policy for medical staff in the Moncton hospital’s intensive care unit.

“I don’t know how I can be more angry with the system forever circulating doctors, family doctors, through an intensive care unit where there’s no…continuity of care,” she said.

The harried ICU staff had no time to listen, she said, and failed to recognize that her mother was delirious when she asked them to stop all care, a decision the family quickly got reversed the next day.

‘Lumps of meat’

“There is really no recognition that there’s more than a body that’s lying there, more than a body that needs care, but actually the mind that needs care,” Dietz said.

“I have seen patients being treated as lumps of meat.  I’ve seen my mother treated that way,” she added.

“Any of us who have gone through that are injured by that system,” she said.

“There is an intense lack of listening to the next of kin throughout the system [and] there’s a lack of supporting next of kin.”

Dietz said her mother’s rehab treatment is scheduled to end on May 2nd and no one knows what will happen after that.

“I don’t know if she’s going to going to stay in Moncton or coming to Sackville. I have no idea,” she said, adding that the hospital’s wait-and-see attitude is painful for both her mother and her family.

‘Scared out of my wits’

“After she comes out of the hospital, I don’t think I want to go there because we all know what long-term care looks like and I’m scared out of my wits,” Dietz said.

She stressed that she does not blame medical staff, but does blame politicians and bureaucrats for fiddling with the health-care system and neglecting to recognize and fix its many failures.

“If you want talk to me about the problems or my family about all the problems in the system,” she told officials from Horizon, “I’m happy to talk about it.”

Horizon CEO Margaret Melanson thanked Dietz for sharing her story.

“I’m very apologetic for the deficiencies in our system that led to the issues and the anxiety and upset that you and your family have experienced.”

Melanson said she’d be happy to follow-up after the meeting and arrange for Dietz and her family to speak to Horizon’s patient representative.

“Really, it’s only by bringing forward these concerns that we can take action and obviously, address them,” she said.

To listen to Sabine Dietz’s story click on the media player below:

Posted in Health care | Tagged | 1 Comment

MLA Megan Mitton presses Horizon to extend access to family docs and lengthen ER hours in Sackville

Posted on April 28, 2024 by brucewark

MLA Megan Mitton organized Thursday’s public health care meeting at the Tantramar Civic Centre and set the tone by calling lack of access “unacceptable”

Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton opened Thursday night’s public meeting on health care by thanking senior officials from the Horizon Health Network for attending.

But she also made it clear, as she spoke for many of the approximately 400 people in the audience, that the health care system is in crisis.

“I’ll be the first to say that the lack of access to health care for many people in New Brunswick is completely unacceptable and sometimes it causes terrible outcomes,” Mitton said.

“I know there are people in this room, in our community, who are suffering because they don’t have access to health care and because, over time, our health-care system has been allowed to crumble.”

Last summer, Warktimes published government statistics revealing a steady rise in vacancies for family doctors in the province with official figures showing that nearly 74,000 New Brunswickers did not have a primary care provider such as a family doctor or nurse practitioner.

NB Health Link, the privately run agency responsible for providing access to health care for people without a primary care provider, has nearly 12,000 people on its waiting list in southeastern New Brunswick alone with 962 waitlisted in the Tantramar region.

At the same time, emergency room (ER) service at the Sackville Memorial Hospital is restricted to eight hours per day (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) with many patients experiencing long wait times when the ER is open.

Positive steps

“There will be some things tonight that are positive,” Mitton acknowledged.

“We have secured $776,000 to go to the Tantramar primary care clinic,” she added.

“But that is not enough. That will not meet the needs of everyone in our community.”

She was referring to the clinic that operates three days a week in the building across the parking lot from Sackville’s hospital, but so far its primary care services are restricted to the patients of three Sackville doctors and a nurse practitioner who closed their practices last year.

“It’s scary,” Mitton said.

“I have people who come into my office. They don’t know where to go to get their prescriptions filled. They don’t have access to health care. They don’t know where to go and I’m really worried about the health outcomes as a result.”

More clinic services on the way

Richard Lemay, Horizon’s director of primary health care for the Moncton area

Richard Lemay, the Horizon official in charge of primary health care for the Moncton area, told the meeting that the $776,000 that Mitton mentioned will be spent expanding services at the Tantramar clinic.

He said a nurse practitioner will join the clinic in June to supplement the services of the two part-time doctors and two nurses who are already there.

“We’ve also posted a second nurse practitioner position,” he added, “so we’ll see if we have any luck in recruiting a second person.”

Lemay said Horizon plans to add six new positions to the clinic that he hopes will be filled by this summer.

They include a full-time dietician, full-time pharmacist, an administrator, patient navigator, a social worker and a part-time respiratory therapist.

He said Horizon is hoping to get money from the province to expand the clinic’s physical space so that it can hire additional staff in 2025/26 including a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, rehabilitation assistant, licensed counselling therapist, another administrator and a speech-language therapist.

“So, as you can see, there will be close to probably 20 people working in this clinic.”

Possible extension of ER hours

Christa Wheeler-Thorne, head administrator for both the Moncton Hospital and Sackville Memorial outlined tentative plans to extend ER hours to 10 p.m. in Sackville by the fall.

But she cautioned that the extra six hours would depend on Horizon’s success in recruiting more ER doctors.

When will I get a family doctor?

Sackville resident Heather Estabrooks asked a key question

During the public question period, Sackville resident Heather Estabrooks said she hasn’t had a family doctor or nurse practitioner for almost five years.

“I’m looking to have some sort of insight into when I could actually expect a physician or nurse practitioner for primary care,” she said as the audience applauded.

“That pretty much depends on how quickly we can recruit new people to come into our clinic,” Horizon’s Richard Lemay answered.

“It’s hard to predict, but we have a new nurse practitioner coming in June, so hopefully we can see more people, but it’s really hard to predict,” he said.

“I’d like to give you a more precise answer, but for now, it depends on how many new providers come to help us.”

“So, what should someone do if they haven’t had a doctor for five years and they need access to care?” MLA Megan Mitton asked.

“What should someone do if they need a prescription filled and they don’t have a doctor?”

“This is a hard one to answer,” said Ravneet Comstock, Horizon’s chief of family medicine for the Moncton area.

“I would like to say, ‘This is the number you call and here you can get the help you need,’ but I can’t say that and the majority of our province, I think unfortunately pretty much everywhere you go, this question is being asked,” she added.

Comstock said patients without doctors should knock on all the doors available including any walk-in clinics they can find and NB Health Link even though there’s a long waiting list.

“The other thing is, holding onto hope,” she continued.

“I really do believe that in the next few years, in the next few months, you’re going to see much more uptake at this clinic,” Comstock said, adding that as the Sackville clinic’s support staff grows, it will become more attractive for doctors to move here.

No real answer

When asked later what she thought of the answer she was given, Heather Estabrooks was blunt.

“The answer was really not an answer,” she said.

“My question was, ‘When could someone in my situation expect to be guaranteed some sort of primary care contact, whether it was a doctor or nurse practitioner,” Estabrooks added.

“The answer was, ‘We’re working on it,’ so there is no time frame.”

To listen to an audio recording of the meeting from CHMA 106.9 FM, click here.

Posted in Health care, Town of Sackville, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Tantramar moves ahead on wilderness park in the heart of Sackville

Posted on April 23, 2024 by brucewark

One of the ponds on the 20-acre quarry site where more than 80 species of birds visit or nest every year. More than 20 kinds of mammals can also be found here along with frogs, turtles, garter snakes and several species of small freshwater fish. See 2017 report by Richard Elliot & Kate Bredin

The Town of Tantramar is moving ahead with the development of a municipal park in Sackville’s old Pickard quarry.

The park will include a network of walking trails looping around quarry ponds, a 5-6 car parking lot off Charlotte Street, a wheelchair-accessible lookout and a footbridge crossing a small waterfall.

“The concept of the park would be a natural trail surface, a single-track, natural surface,” Matt Pryde, the town’s recreation director told Tantramar council at its meeting yesterday.

He explained that the town will use the $40,000 allocated for the park in this year’s capital budget to construct the small parking lot and a wheelchair accessible trail leading to a lookout over a cliff face and pond.

He said the Tantramar Outdoor Club would develop the walking trail network with the help of Marc Leger, trails co-ordinator for the Southeast Regional Service Commission and Tantramar Heritage Trust will design interpretive panels on the history of the quarry as well as its function nowadays as part of Sackville’s flood control system.

Pryde added that the town is hoping to receive money from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and New Brunswick’s Regional Development Corporation to build the waterfall bridge and replace old metal, safety fences with wooden, farm-style ones.

Rough map

Council saw this rough map showing the looping trail network in red, the parking lot off Charlotte St. (bottom left), the small, wheelchair accessible lookout area near the waterfall bridge. A second park entrance off Quarry Lane is marked in yellow (centre right) with an additional lookout at the top of the map

Pryde said staff are still working out estimates for the total cost of the project which could be completed over the next two to three years.

The town allocated its $40,000 share of the costs after hearing a presentation last September from Richard Elliot on behalf of the Tantramar Outdoor Club.

To read Matt Pryde’s notes on his presentation to town council, click here.

Posted in Environment, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 1 Comment

NB Green leader calls for more local decision-making & greater investment in final report on his health-care tour

Posted on April 21, 2024 by brucewark

Green leader David Coon answering a question in Sackville on February 27th during a stop in his health-care tour of the province. He was accompanied by local Green MLA Megan Mitton

New Brunswick Green Party leader David Coon has renewed his call for major investments in health care combined with more local say in decision-making.

“Granting greater autonomy to local managers and engaging local citizens on community health boards would ensure primary healthcare is community-driven and responsive to local needs,” Coon writes in his final report on the findings of his “Healing Our Healthcare Tour” of the province in February and March.

“The same applies to hospitals, where staff are forced to operate in silos, responding to remote managers rather than working collaboratively with local hospital administrators,” he adds in the report released today.

Coon, who visited community health centres and nursing homes accompanied by deputy Green leaders Megan Mitton and Kevin Arseneau, reports that during a town hall in Richibucto, a local doctor called for substantially more health-care spending in line with recommendations in a report from the New Brunswick Nurses Union and the New Brunswick Medical Society which called for a $600 million investment in the first year.

“Both seniors and their care providers continue to be challenged with inadequate support,” Coon writes.

“Nursing homes face challenges in attracting and retaining qualified registered nurses and personal support workers, exacerbated by inadequate budgets and the rising costs of living. Effective efforts to recruit and retain staff at all levels are vital for the long-term sustainability of senior care.”

Local inititatives

The Green leader’s report refers to a local initiative in Saint John that linked the main community health centre with smaller satellite centres as well as with health professionals at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“This initiative resulted in a collaborative network of multidisciplinary healthcare teams, significantly enhancing primary healthcare access for thousands in Saint John who would otherwise lack a family doctor,” Coon reports.

“In Rogersville, the local health clinic collaborated with a diverse team of health professionals operating from a nearby heritage home rented by Horizon Health to provide community-based health services,” he adds.

“In both instances, these interconnected and interdependent healthcare teams were established through the proactive efforts of dynamic local healthcare managers. It’s baffling that the Department of Health doesn’t recognize these initiatives as potential models for improving primary healthcare access elsewhere.”

Coon’s report also highlights the Nursing Home Without Walls project in Port Elgin that operates out of a local nursing home.

“The work of the staff is increasing the quality of life for seniors, ending loneliness and isolation, addressing care needs, and helping seniors to stay in their homes longer,” Coon writes.

“This community-based effort holds significant promise to support seniors at home through[out] New Brunswick, but requires adequate funding to match the success of the impressive initiative in Port Elgin.”

Coon concludes his report with a call for greater provincial investment in community-based health care.

“The goal for the Green Caucus is to ensure all New Brunswickers have access to proper healthcare, where they need it and when they need it. As Greens, we believe the solutions exist to heal our healthcare system. We just need the political will to implement them.”

To read Coon’s final report, click here.

For coverage of the town hall he held in Sackville, click here.

Upcoming community meeting

Mail out from MLA Megan Mitton on this week’s health-care meeting with Horizon Health

Posted in Health care, New Brunswick politics, Nursing homes | Tagged | 2 Comments

Dozens renew their call to ‘axe’ the federal carbon tax in ongoing border protest

Posted on April 13, 2024 by brucewark

A few dozen protesters gathered today in the parking lot at the Nova Scotia Visitor Information Centre and along the TransCanada highway calling on the federal government to “axe” its carbon tax on fuels.

Traffic crossing the provincial borders sped by normally with many motorists — especially truckers — honking their horns in support.

On April 1st when the current series of protests began, the RCMP closed the highway for several hours after about 50 cars had pulled over on the shoulder.

‘Holding the line’

Carbon tax protester Kevin Hicks says he’s “holding the line for a better future.”

“We’re just here holding the line for a better future for the kids,” said 54-year-old Kevin Hicks as he stood beside the highway waving a Canadian flag.

“The taxes keep going on top of taxes upon taxes and we can hardly afford to live today,” he added.

The price of gas, groceries, it’s just rough times.”

Hicks has been taking part in the border rallies since they began two weeks ago.

“I’m 54 with five kids and three grandkids and they’re hardly making it today. It’s sad to see the homeless out there and the amount of starving people because nobody can afford to live. They’re pushing people to the streets.”

Hicks says he works on roofing and siding and lives in his 5th wheel trailer parked in his sister’s Amherst yard because he can’t afford his own apartment.

He scoffs at Prime Minister Trudeaus’ repeated assertion that eight out of 10 households receive more in the quarterly carbon tax rebate than they pay in added fuel costs.

It’s a point that Nicole Kitsko, who lives in Oxford, N.S., also scoffs at.

“Trudeau is full of shit,” she says.

Nicole Kitsko holds a protest sign with a blunt message

“The rebate is nothing compared to the cost of everything going up because of the carbon tax,” Kitsko says, adding that as a single mother, she no longer qualifies for the child tax benefit because her son is 19, yet he can’t get the GST rebate either.

“He’s been working full-time since he was 15 and just worked 100 hours in the blueberry industry and they took half his pay,” she says shaking her head.

“It’s the way we get taxed.”

When asked if she’s planning to vote for federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who promises to rescind the carbon tax if he becomes prime minister, Kitsko shakes her head again.

“I’m not sure I believe in our voting system anymore,” she says.

‘Globalist agendas’

Greg Campbell (L) and Darrell Hudson question the “globalist agenda” of the “one percenters” who make up the world’s elites

Over near the barbecue tent, Greg Campbell from Wolfville, N.S. and Darrell Hudson, who runs a haskap farm in Nova Scotia’s Musquodoboit Valley, are engaged in lively conversation.

The two, who met today for the first time, also question the effectiveness of Canada’s electoral system while they worry about the “globalist agendas” of the world’s elite classes who gather every year in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum to promote “sustainability” while supporting the United Nations and its World Health Organization.

“It’s all tied in, it’s all about making money through monopolies and glad-handing one another,” Campbell says.

“We need to stand up against that and say, ‘OK, a transition [to a greener economy], but we need to be all involved in consenting.'”

Campbell argues that the federal government is using the carbon tax as a ruse.

“They’re telling us the carbon tax is going to make a difference and they’re trying to pressure us — they come right out and say it — they’re trying to ‘incentivize’ us to buy electric vehicles and to stop using fossil fuels,” he says.

“Yeah, maybe that can be done, but the way they’re doing it is by punishing us.”

People are already going hungry, he says, others are losing their homes because they can’t make their mortgage payments and the carbon tax will make things worse.

Campbell also dismisses Pierre Poilievre’s carbon tax promise as a Trojan horse to get him elected as yet another, out-of-touch and unaccountable prime minister.

“Stephen Harper was as bad as Trudeau,” he says, “these politicians are living in ivory towers, we need to start taking back power for the people, we need to be attending municipal council meetings and educating people on how our systems have been compromised by the UN and like organizations and how we’re not really living in a democracy anymore.”

For his part, Darrell Hudson questions the purpose of the federal carbon tax rebate.

“They’re taking money from the poor with this carbon tax and they’re giving it to the people that are more poor and they’re making us all poor,” he says.

“The only people that I see that are getting more money back than they’re giving are people that are already on welfare and they don’t have a car and they’re being supported by the government, so that would be a sure vote for them,” he says.

“It’s all about votes and if they can make us reliant on them and expecting that $200 or $300 HST and carbon tax, all these rebates that they’re taking from us, then we’ll be on board with them because we’ll need them and from what I see, that is a communism tactic, I believe that we’re creeping into communism and I think that’s the end goal, to muzzle us all and have us under their control.”

Hudson says COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates were also examples of coercive control.

“COVID kicked it all off and divided us like never before.”

‘Taxed on tax’

Kim Dickson stands beside her truck in the parking lot at the N.S. Visitors Info Centre

“We’re getting taxed beyond what we can handle as a society,” says Kim Dickson who works as a home support worker in New Brunswick.

“We’re being taxed on tax now, have you seen the receipts?” she adds.

“Our official mandate here today is to axe the carbon tax.”

Dickson laughs heartily when asked how she would respond to those who say we need the carbon tax to fight climate change.

“Whatever we do is not going to fix the problem we don’t have,” she says.

“One tree is enough to remove our carbon dioxide,” she adds.

“One tree can sustain me for 40 years and look at the trees all around us. Canada is three percent I think of the world’s carbon emissions, so we don’t even have any emissions problem.”

Dickson also maintains that climate change is a natural phenomenon and that the scientists warning us about it are trying to cause panic.

“What they do to us is control by fear,” she says.

“Make sure you watch your five o’clock news. That’s why I asked who you were with. If you were CBC or CTV, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Kim Dickson’s truck also warns against COVID mandates as a form of coercive control

Posted in COVID-19, Environment | Tagged , | 6 Comments

FACT CHECK: Inaccurate, misleading, incomplete statements on Gaza war by members of Tantramar council

Posted on March 31, 2024 by brucewark

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who works with Doctors Without Borders, sent this photo of ER treatment of Gaza children to Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/gaza_msf

Tantramar Town Council once again rejected a call last week to write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau asking Canada to press for a stop to the massacre in occupied Gaza. Warktimes reported what members of council had to say and published a word-for-word transcript of their remarks. Given the scale of what the International Court of Justice found to be a plausible genocide, I’m publishing a “fact check” calling attention to inaccurate, incomplete or misleading statements from some members of council. 

Background

In nearly six months of fighting, 32,600 people have been killed in Gaza, including 14,000 children. More than 75,000 have been injured, with thousands more buried under rubble and increasing numbers dying of malnutrition, dehydration and disease.

“It is without precedent in modern times,” says famine expert Alex de Waal, “and I can’t emphasize that enough. If we look at Gaza in comparative historical perspective, it is the worst and it is entirely man made.”

Waal, who is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, was interviewed last week on CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine. He is the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

In an earlier interview on Al Jazeera, he said: “Nothing is comparable in terms of the speed and concentrated effort devoted to destroying what is essential to sustain the life of people. Nothing compares to Gaza.”

‘How would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?’

The bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes are buried in a mass grave after they were transported from al-Shifa Hospital to Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Speaking from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday, James Elder of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) pointed to Israel’s refusal to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks, you know, five miles from where I am now. You could get hundreds and hundreds of trucks within 10 minutes, if that border crossing was open in the north, to those people who are cut off. That’s an important thing to remember,” Elder said.

“When I’m on the street [in the north], every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is, ‘We need food. We need food,'” he added.

“They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?”

Council Fact Check

A Palestinian man carries a child following Israeli strikes on houses in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was the only member of council who spoke in favour of sending a letter to Trudeau. “At least it’s a little bit that we could do to show our support.”

Councillors Barry Hicks, Matt Estabrooks, Josh Goguen and Deputy Mayor Greg Martin remained silent.

The four others who spoke agreed that, as Mayor Black put it, “this really is not within our jurisdictional responsibility to do.”

Yet many municipal councils in both the U.S. and Canada have done just that. While it’s clear municipal councils do not set foreign policy, their members are always free to speak out, individually or collectively, on matters of concern to their local constituents. (See also the municipal list compiled by the National Council of Canadian Muslims.)

Ceasefire confusion

Councillor Michael Tower argued that “the federal government has already said they want a permanent ceasefire.” But in fact, Trudeau and his ministers have carefully avoided the word “permanent,” preferring the term “sustainable” instead. Meantime, Israel has vowed from the beginning to fight as long as it takes to destroy Hamas and achieve “total victory.”

On December 12, Canada voted in favour of a UN resolution calling for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” which is not the same as the “permanent ceasefire” that Tantramar council was asked to push the prime minister for. Global Affairs Canada issued this statement on the UN resolution, which referred to an earlier four-day “humanitarian pause” in November:

“The recent pause in hostilities saw the release of more than 100 hostages and allowed for greater humanitarian access to affected Palestinian civilians. Canada regrets that this pause could not be extended and continues to call for much-needed fuel, water and other humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza.” [Emphasis added]

Arms to Israel 

Councillor Michael Tower

Councillor Tower also stated that the federal government has “already said they’re going to not sell any more weapons to Israel.”

Yet arms experts explain it’s not that simple. The Reuters news agency cites a letter from Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly acknowledging that Canadian companies can continue their military exports to Israel as long as they have existing military export permits (see report in Defense News. written by longtime journalist David Pugliese).

Furthermore, Project Ploughshares–the independent peace and disarmament group sponsored by the Canadian Council of Churches–expressed disappointment at this “significant weakening” of Canada’s promise to stop arms exports to Israel. It also noted that in the two-month period “following the onset of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Global Affairs Canada approved more than $28 million in military exports to Israel” — a figure about equal to “the total annual value of Canada’s arms exports to Israel at their peak in 1987 at $28.7 million, followed closely by $27.8 million in 2021.”

Councillor Tower also claimed that the war is unpopular in Israel and that the Israeli people do not want war. The day after Tower’s comments, however, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a column by veteran journalist Gideon Levy that began with this bitter observation:

Israel wants war. More and more war, as much as possible, and perhaps even more…Israel wants war. Now it is being said explicitly, without pretense and without whitewashing. As much war as possible in the government’s words, as much war as possible in the opposition’s words. More of this war even from the mouths of the protesters in the squares, who are certainly not crying out for the opposite. They only want a halt in the war to release the hostages and kick Benjamin Netanyahu out, and then as far as they’re concerned we can return to the killing fields forever…One can argue that if we don’t destroy Hamas, the war will continue forever, and anyway it’s a war for peace. But one cannot buy this when there’s no strategic plan behind the lust for war. So what remains is the bare truth: Israel simply wants war. Left and right and center too. Everyone.

Hamas is to blame

Councillor Bruce Phinney

Councillor Bruce Phinney admitted that: “We don’t know exactly what’s been going on in that area for however long it’s been going on,” but then added that moving a motion to write a letter to Trudeau would be taking sides and blaming Israel, not Gaza.

“Hamas was the one that started it on October 7th,” Phinney said referring to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in which 1,139 people were massacred in Israel. The dead included 695 Israeli civilians (36 of them children), 71 foreign nationals and 373 members of the Israeli security forces. About 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken hostage.

Yet the Israel-Palestine conflict did not start on Oct. 7.  According to Amnesty International, “Since the [Israeli] occupation began in June 1967, Israel’s ruthless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlement and dispossession, coupled with rampant discrimination, have inflicted immense suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their basic rights.” Most of the world’s countries, including Canada, agree the continued occupation is illegal under international law and call for a homeland for the Palestinians, the so-called two-state solution that Israel now says it will never support.

Israel and Egypt have imposed an economic blockade on the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took over in 2007. Many, including Human Rights Watch, describe Gaza as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

How could it happen?

Councillor Allison Butcher

Councillor Allison Butcher appeared torn between her expressed belief that municipalities have no role to play in foreign affairs and her concern about “standing up for ceasefires, for releases of hostages, for humanitarian aid to get through.”

She mentioned restrictions on the emigration of Jews fleeing Nazi death camps during World War Two, a possible reference to Canada’s refusal to accept Jewish refugees as well as its decision to deny entry to 907 of them aboard the ship MS St. Louis, which was also turned away by Cuba and the U.S. After the ship returned to Europe, 254 of its passengers died in the Holocaust.

“When you hear about that [restrictions on Jews], at this point, and you look back and you think, ‘Gosh, how could people have allowed that to happen?'” Butcher said.

“I think to send a letter to our federal government to say, we as a municipality believe that the horrors that are happening there should be stopped, without us even having any idea about how to fix it, is still something that we should consider.”

But later, she told CHMA’s Erica Butler that she would not be moving a motion to send a letter to the prime minister calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

A mourner reacts while burying the body of a Palestinian child of al-Agha family, who was killed in Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 11. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Posted in Town of Sackville, Town of Tantramar | Tagged | 17 Comments