A small group of Sackville citizens took to the streets in front of Sackville town hall Wednesday for a second day of protest over the amalgamation process as its being rolled out in the region.
A group of 14 people, a few of which were also out on Tuesday, walked along with signs calling for more consultation from the provincial government.
“I really have nothing against the amalgamation,” said longtime Sackville resident Wendy Burnett. “It’s just simply that it’s a very complex procedure, and I think it’s being railroaded through very unfairly. The government should be consulting people in an area that’s going to be amalgamated.”
Listen here for the voices of protesters on Wednesday, March 2:
Local government Minister Daniel Allain responded to the protests in an emailed statement to CHMA News on Wednesday, but did not address the lack of consultation in the wake of his decision to force the amalgamation of Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding areas. Allain wrote:
“While I can appreciate that some people have concerns, the way to get through the details is to follow the process and the committee is doing its work. Once there are decisions to communicate, they will be and in the meantime, council representatives continue to be encouraged to share information with their councils and the public, just as the LSD reps are doing for their committees and residents.”
Protest organizer Carol Cooke has requested meetings with provincially appointed facilitator Chad Peters as well as Sackville advisory committee representatives Mayor Shawn Mesheau and Deputy Mayor Andrew Black. Peters told Cooke by email that he was simply a contractor, and she should direct her enquiries to the provincial government. Mesheau directed Cooke to information about decisions that is published on the town of Sackville’s website.
The appointed advisory committee will meet today to finalize the electoral system for a new Entity 40 council, which will take over control of Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding areas in January 2023.
The majority of protesters in front of Sackville town hall on Tuesday and Wednesday were calling for a pause to the amalgamation process to allow for more consultation about how it moves forward.
The amalgamation process actually started just under one year ago on April 7, 2021, with the release of a provincial green paper on local governance reform. A series of meetings across the province ensued, which garnered a wide variety of feedback. The town of Sackville participated in the process, recommending the province adopt a system similar to that in place in Nova Scotia, where rural areas are represented in county governments.
Then in November 2021, the province dropped its white paper, recommending widespread and forced amalgamations, including one to create Entity 40. Many on town council were shocked, and attested that the Minister had previously assured them there would be no forced amalgamations in the province’s plan.
The white paper also included an aggressive timeline for achieving the restructuring, with dozens of entities dissolved and recreated, municipal elections held, and new councils up and running by January 2023, less than 2 years after the release of the initial green paper.
“There were hard feelings for a long time”
Wendy Logan and Rick Fleet have only been in Sackville a short time, but they bring experience of amalgamation from their former home in Ontario. “We had the same thing happen to us, where three communities and the rural area were amalgamated, and it was just ‘tough luck, it’s gonna happen’.” Logan says with one community better off and the other two struggling, “it wasn’t a happy situation.”
Logan and Fleet says the contention over the amalgamation lingered for years after the two-year long process to make it happen. “There were hard feelings for a long time,” says Logan.
When she saw the news that Sackville would also undergo a forced amalgamation, Logan recalled her previous situation. “It’s a very painful thing,” says Logan. “And people need to feel they’re heard, you know.”
Logan joined the protest to throw her support behind the call for some community input into how the new entity will be structured. “We didn’t get any say,“ says Logan, of her experience.
“It’s a hope but not an expectation”
Gerry Hannah has lived in Sackville for 61 years, and while he’s hoping the provincial government will take a step back in the process to amalgamate Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding areas, he says he doesn’t actually expect it to happen. “I’m very sorry to say it’s a hope, not an expectation,” he says.
Hannah says he disagrees with what the province has proposed, and the method it’s using to force it into reality. And he has an alternative proposal.
“I would like to see the government recognize that there are rural areas, in which a good many people live. And if they are currently not paying taxes to support some of the services they’re using, that they institute a system that will allow that to happen,” says Hannah. “And happen peacefully in what I would call a normal, democratic fashion.”
Margaret Ann Capper says she suspects the reason behind the urgency to rush through local government reform is financial, on the part of the province. “There’s no information about that big picture,” says Capper, and she calls on the province to “be honest about it. We know that we’re in very, very difficult financial straits provincially, that something has to be done, but be honest about it.”
Anne Miller says she’s shocked at how the process is being rushed through, and doesn’t buy arguments that reform has been a long time coming. “If you waited that long to do it, you can spend a little more time doing it right,” says Miller.
Miller was out on Wednesday with concerns over both consultation levels and representation. “Sackville has eight councillors right now, and it would only have four under the new process. That doesn’t seem right,” said Miller. “And Sackville and Dorchester seem very separate to me, very distinct communities. And they just kind of lump them all together… It just sounds like the representation, the way it’s set up, isn’t very good, or hasn’t been thought out well.”
Like his partner Wendy, Sandy Burnett is agnostic about amalgamation per se, but is unhappy with the process that’s making it happen. “The assumption that you can simply assign somebody, who is away from the community, to come and say, ‘alright, here’s how we’re going to reorganize you’, is entirely contrary to any kind of community participation that I’ve ever heard of,” said Burnett.
But like Gerry Hannah, Burnett is not holding his breath that the province will listen. “This government tends to operate from a top down model,” says Burnett, “where there’s an executive decision taken and then minions are sent out to implement it.”
“But to the extent that we can influence things, I would certainly hope that there would be a longer process with more opportunity for community participation,” says Burnett.
Check out CHMA’s coverage of local governance reform and amalgamation here:
