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.
It’s that last front that has flared up again this week, after Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston decided on Sunday to send out a letter to all Nova Scotia Liberal MPs, asking them to back the plan for the federal government to cover the full cost to protect the coastline of the Isthmus. Houston argued that it was the federal government’s constitutional responsibility, and told the MPs that forcing Nova Scotia to pay a 25% share of the cost would divert much needed provincial resources from health care and other provincial projects.
Then on Monday, federal ministers Dominic LeBlanc and Sean Fraser responded with letters of their own, addressed to Premier Blaine Higgs and Houston respectively.
LeBlanc and Fraser threatened to reallocate the $325 million the government had already committed under the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund to other projects, unless the provinces would commit to cost sharing on the project. LeBlanc wrote that, “Without such a commitment, the project will be ineligible for support through the Program.”
LeBlanc’s letter goes on:
“If Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are not willing, together, to cover half of the cost of the project, Minister Fraser will be required to re-allocate the funding to other communities who are willing and ready to comply with the Program’s requirements. Given the potential impacts our communities and economies could face as a result of a severe weather event overwhelming the Isthmus, such an outcome would be obviously disappointing.”
Isthmus MLAs speak out
In a virtual media scrum on Tuesday afternoon, Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton weighed in on the probability that the federal government would actually follow through on their threat to pull funding from the project.
“I don’t think they could get away with not paying a cent,” said Mitton, adding her uncertainty over whether the final federal share should be 100%. “For the people in Tantramar, it’s our tax dollars either way, and so we want to see it fixed,” said the MLA (now a candidate for an October 21 election.)
Mitton agrees the Isthmus is, “of federal significance. This is really important for transport and supply chains, in addition to the lives and properties and agricultural land of the people here,” said Mitton. She points to the federal government’s substantial commitments to other major regional transportation projects, such as a 60% commitment to costs of refurbishing the Quebec Rail Bridge, and the full cost of building the replacement Champlain Bridge in Montreal which is owned by a federal crown corporation. She also highlights the potential federal costs of a clean up and rebuilding effort, should the corridor flood. “That costs a whole lot more,” said Mitton, “in addition to the loss of life and loss of property and all the problems [a flood] causes.”
Across the border, Nova Scotia independent MLA Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin is critical of what she calls playing politics between the Federal Liberals, and the two Progressive Conservative premiers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
“It’s very clear to me what they’re doing,” says Smith-McCrossin. “They are playing politics with the people of Nova Scotia and of all of Canada. It’s very risky, and they need to stop.”
Smith-McCrossin says the Nova Scotia premier has a pattern of blaming the federal Liberals. “We’re seeing it on the Chignecto Isthmus. We’re seeing it with immigration. We’re seeing it in all kinds of other areas,” says Smith-McCrossin. “We need to revert back from all of this partisan political play and remember why we’re elected, and that is to fix the problems that are before us.”
Slow progress
Both Mitton and Smith-McCrossin say that work on the isthmus should have started years ago. EMO officials have had their eye on the potential flood risk for at least a decade. In January 2020, the two provinces and the federal government commissioned an engineering report on potential ways to stave off rising tides. It took over two years to get that report publicly released, and another two years for the provinces to formalize a joint working group to oversee the work, now known as the Chignecto Isthmus Resiliency Project.
In its current year budget, New Brunswick allocated $750,000 towards the project, though the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure won’t answer requests for an update on the work.
For its part, Nova Scotia has yet to announce a budget allocation, despite the fact that in his letter to Liberal MPs, Houston writes that Nova Scotia is already spending “significant money towards the mitigation costs.”
On Tuesday, Premier Blaine Higgs responded to Dominic Leblanc’s threat of withdrawing funding. In another public letter, Higgs writes that New Brunswick had already confirmed it would participate in the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, but that doing so would not prejudice any legal action it takes in pursuit of full federal funding.
New Brunswick about to hire project manager
While the politicians butt heads over funding responsibility, there is a small amount of progress on pre-construction work happening in cooperation between the two provinces. In April New Brunswick and Nova Scotia signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the project, and in May, representatives from each infrastructure department were presenting on the Chignecto Isthmus Resiliency Project at a regional conference.
A spokesperson for Nova Scotia Public Works said that New Brunswick is in the final stages of hiring a project manager to oversee pre-construction work.
Blaise Theriault said via email that baseline environmental data was being collected and ”a conceptual corridor alignment has been completed and submitted to the Department of Fisheries and Ocean to help prepare for regulatory requirements.”
He also said consultation with Indigenous communities has begun, and an updated economic study is underway to help support contingency planning.
Mitton is hoping that the information on the project starts to flow. “I’d like for our governments to actually give us updates on things like this,” she says. “And let us know where we’re at. Things have gone way too slow, for way too long.”
