A new Battle of Chignecto sees provinces and federal government dodging the bill to fortify the Isthmus
It’s been about 275 years since the Battle of Chignecto saw two of North America’s colonial powers fight for control of the Chignecto Isthmus.
These days the strip of land is still highly valued, particularly as the only transportation corridor connecting Nova Scotia and Newfoundland with New Brunswick and the rest of the country.
But the Chignecto Isthmus is vulnerable to the realities of climate change. Sea level rise and more frequent, severe storms mean the threat of dykes breaching and flooding the corridor with coastal waters increases every year, as does the price of fortifying it, currently estimated at about $650 million.
And that’s why there’s a new battle of Chignecto in 2024, this time not about taking control of the Isthmus, but about giving up responsibility for maintaining it. While the federal government has committed to covering 50% of the substantial estimated cost, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are insisting that it cover 100% of the bill to make the national transportation corridor future-proof.
The battle over paying for the Isthmus has three fronts: a constitutional case working its way slowly through the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, a senate sponsored bill making its way to the House of Commons this fall, and a very public shame and blame exercise between the two Premiers, Blaine Higgs and Tim Houston, and the two federal ministers associated with the project, Sean Fraser and Dominic LeBlanc.… Continue
‘Like a punch in the gut’: Mitton finds progress slow, contingency planning just started on Isthmus protection
The provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have just started contingency planning for the possibility of flooding on the Chignecto Isthmus before permanent protections can be constructed.
Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DTI) Deputy Minister Rob Taylor shared the news with Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton is a recent legislative committee hearing in Fredericton.
“It’s a ten year timeframe to turn something around,” Taylor told the committee. “We definitely need a solution in the interim. So I apologize that nothing was done before… but honestly, yes, the past six months, we’ve made a push on it.”
CHMA checked in with Mitton to get her reaction to the news, and updates on her other recent activities. The MLA says the fact that contingency planning had not started sooner “felt like a punch in the gut.”
The Isthmus project only received a passing mention in one of the annual reports that DTI presented to the committee in February, and Taylor admitted that progress has been slow in the two years since an engineering consultant’s report was released outlining options for the project.
“I will say that I have the same mindset that not a lot of progress has happened on this,” said Taylor. “I mandated the team to come up with a critical path schedule, that we could actually identify what activities are slipping or what can we actually get done in the interim while we are waiting for this federal funding that we’re all hearing about.”… Continue
Higgs and Houston argument is ‘hot air’ says prof, as federal funding deadline approaches for Chignecto Isthmus
Federal infrastructure minister Dominic LeBlanc has responded to a threat from premiers Blaine Higgs and Tim Houston, who have said they will take the federal government to court over its refusal to fund 100% of the Chignecto Isthmus protection project.
In a letter on July 4, Higgs asserted that the Constitution Act of 1867 outlines the responsibility of the federal government to “maintain and secure transportation links between provinces.” Previously, Higgs compared the Isthmus project to the Confederation Bridge, which was funded by the federal government in the 1990’s.
A spokesperson for LeBlanc says the constitutional argument is “inaccurate”, and a political science professor from Mount Allison agrees.
Here’s the full statement from LeBlanc’s spokesperson, Jean-Sébastien Comeau:
… Continue“Our position is and has always been clear – the protection of the Chignecto Isthmus is a shared responsibility between the Government of Canada, the Government of New Brunswick and the Government of Nova Scotia. It is inaccurate to pretend that the Government of Canada has a constitutional responsibility to maintain the provincially-owned highway that runs through the Isthmus, or to compare this situation to an article of Confederation negotiated by some other Province at the time they joined Canada. It is unfortunate that Premier Higgs is threatening a legal battle which would be a waste of time and public funds. Such a move does nothing to protect communities and critical supply lines along the Isthmus.