Bonnie Swift is an environmental engineer who worked for years in Alberta, moving east to Sackville in 2010 and serving as the town of Sackville business development officer for two years. Swift describes herself as a “small town girl” from Dorchester, and says she’s running for mayor of the new municipality of Tantramar after encouragement from friends. Swift became active in Sackville politics this past year, advocating for reconsideration and public consultation of a zoning change that made way for the AIL pipe plant now under construction on Walker Road.
CHMA’s David Gordon Koch has interviewed all three mayoral candidates for Tantramar. Listen to his interview with Bonnie Swift here:
CHMA is compiling all its election coverage in one place, for your convenience. For more candidate interviews and other local elections coverage, click here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: I’m speaking with Bonnie Swift. She’s one of three candidates in the race for mayor, the first-ever mayor of the new town of Tantramar. Bonnie, thanks for speaking to CHMA today.
Bonnie Swift: Thank you. You’re welcome. Glad to do it.
CHMA: First of all, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? This is your first run for a municipal council seat, isn’t it?
Bonnie Swift: Yeah, well, as far as I go, I’m a small town girl. I grew up in Dorchester. I went to high school in Sackville. I left home at 18 to get a job in Alberta so I could pay my way through college. I had no free rides, I had to pay for my own education. So after working for a couple of years, I decided to go back to school and get my civil and environmental engineering degree. And it was not long after that I decided to start my own environmental engineering firm. And there were not very many women at that time that were starting their own engineering firms. It was kind of a unique thing. So I was told many times, I’m not going to succeed in this industry. But you know what, eight years later, I seriously did. I mean, I had built a $25-million engineering firm from a desk and a telephone. I had some partners. I had 100 staff and seven offices in Western Canada. So I think it was a success story for me. And I also obtained my MBA while I was starting my firm and later on, I went to get my Chartered Professional Accounting designation.
I’m someone who loves to volunteer in the community. I volunteered in Calgary for the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society. Now, I came back here, and I did some volunteer work for the Atlantic Wildlife Institute. I really like volunteering in the area of wildlife. I’ve also volunteered on the International Right of Way Association as their environmental chairperson. They’re a resolute group of professionals, it’s a global organization that wants to improve people’s lives through infrastructure development projects. And I’m now currently the president of the Westmorland Historical Society in Dorchester, where I manage the historical properties and the museums there. So that’s kind of me in a nutshell.
CHMA: What made you decide to run for mayor in this election?
Bonnie Swift: I didn’t really want to run for mayor, I was getting a lot of pressure from my friends that said, you know, we need more representation, we keep on getting the same cast of characters and nobody’s stepping up to the plate. And some were actually concerned of if they had the right people to take on this new amalgamation. And so I had friends that were saying, you know, Bonnie, you could do this, and we need people like you, people with business skills to be able to negotiate these things and work through these processes. And that’s why I decided finally I would cave in, because there [were] a lot of friends and people in the community asking me to run. And I actually decided the day before the election was going to close that, yes, better get my application in there and, you know, get this done, because, why not? Why not try and see if we can make things better for the community?
CHMA: Okay, and I want to get your take on some of the local issues that we’ve been watching at CHMA, starting with housing. As I’m sure you are aware, there have been a lot of issues with people being able to find affordable housing, with the market having become very, very hot in recent years. And often tenants, finding that they can’t afford rent hikes, whereas often home buyers are finding that homes are out of reach. What do you see as the town’s possible role in protecting housing affordability and availability?
Bonnie Swift: Well, you know, when I was the economic director for the town, because I did work for the town for a couple years. And I was very, very, very concerned even back then in 2010, about the availability of affordable housing. So one of my major initiatives was to bring in an affordable small-scale housing development, so these were affordable homes. So I was working on a project that was a 30-acre project on King Street that was going to be developed into affordable homes. And sadly, the demand for affordable homes wasn’t quite as high then, so the developer at the last minute didn’t think the market was out there and he eventually pulled out of the project. Which is kind of sad, because I actually acquired a million-dollar development grant to service that site. So all he had to do was kind of build and get it going. But [there] wasn’t the market for affordable homes, then. But there certainly is a market for affordable homes now. And I think there are still grants out there for this initiative. And I’d like to work on that because I hate the fact that long-term tenants, elderly tenants, are losing their apartments that they’re living in, because a lot of their apartments are being converted into university housing, and they’re asked to leave the buildings. And that’s something that I think is just terrible. And you know, these are working-class people that just want a place to live. We’ve got to offer them a place to live. And you know, they want to be in our town, let’s keep them in our town. Let’s do everything we can to keep them here.
We’ve got to find ways to — we’ve got great developers in town, and they’re concerned about it as well. And so I think working together with the developers on some initiatives and grants and stuff, we can get this affordable housing thing moving again. That would be one of my goals.
And there’s also a lot of other pressures, we have a lot of young people that want to buy homes, but you know, with the high interest rates, they’re afraid. And so it’s kind of a double edged sword, and it’s not going to be an easy fix. So for the people that actually want to buy homes, that’s going to be difficult. But in the interim, we can certainly find housing, some way for people to rent homes. And I think that’s really important.
CHMA: Now, one issue that I know that you’ve been campaigning on is transparency and openness. What’s your philosophy when it comes to municipal government, and the transparency of decision-making in those local governments?
Bonnie Swift: Well, you know, there’s an old quote that goes, ‘those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.’ But currently, our government is hiding information from the citizens. That begs the question, what are they trying to hide? I mean, I think a transparent government is the type of government in which they give all information that they legally can give to the citizens. So one of my biggest complaints that I hear from the citizens in this community, is there is an extreme lack of transparency in our current municipal government. So the citizens are witnessing all these expensive investigations going on inside their town, payed for with their tax dollars. Yet, at the end of the day, they are given no details on why they were started, what the outcomes were, or even the final recommendation. And I’d like to know why. It can certainly be a sign of both government mismanagement and managerial dysfunction. And that’s something if it is, we have to clear up. Because why are we paying for so many investigations? It doesn’t seem right, that the citizens are paying for information that they’re never allowed to have access to. And I think good government is open government. And that’s what my campaign will be about.
CHMA: We’re seeing the amalgamation process, the municipal reform process take place. As part of this, the province has mandated the Southeast Regional Services Commission to take on economic development. In your view, should Tantramar continue to have its own business development activities, as well as the Southeast Regional Services Commission?
Bonnie Swift: Well, as far as the town having its own economic development, and the Regional Commission having its own economic development, if they do that, they have to make sure there’s no overlaps and doubling of efficiencies. We’re not going to pay for the same thing twice. So I think that it has to be really, really clear what their plan is around economic development, and what specifically Sackville wants around economic development. So if that’s going to work, I mean, one of the goals is to reduce duplication. So if there’s a strategy at a higher level that the Regional Commission will be using, that’s different from the strategy at the local level, then we wouldn’t have that duplication. But no, I do not believe in paying for the same stuff by both parties.
CHMA: And what do you see as the town’s role in terms of supporting local businesses?
Bonnie Swift: Well, I think the town’s role in supporting local businesses is making sure they have access to everything that they need. So if it’s, you know, they need help with getting certain permits, it could be somebody who advises them on what the processes are. I did that with a couple of small businesses when I was there. If it’s something like, where are the grants that you can use to start a small business, would this small business qualify for a small business grant? Those are the kind of things that we can point them to and give some direction. I mean, you can’t really do a lot. You’re the public sector and they’re the private sector. But you can guide them in the right direction. And I did that when I was the economic director there. I worked with small businesses, I would help them find grants, you know, talk to them about what their permitting issues would be and stuff like that. So you know, you’re sort of giving them direction. But I mean, and I think that should be the major goal, is helping them get what they need.
CHMA: And now, an issue that’s been on a lot of people’s minds, especially following Hurricane Fiona in September, is climate change and its impacts, notably because of the vulnerable position of Tantramar, with respect to sea level rise, flooding. People have talked about the about the historical Saxby Gale, and the… seeming inevitability of another such weather event happening at some point. With all this in mind, what actions do you think the town needs to take to protect it from flooding and the impacts of climate change?
Bonnie Swift: Well, I’ve been working on these issues for 20 years, I’ve been working on climate change issues for 20 years, because I lived in Calgary. And it’s a huge city, and it’s also in a huge floodplain. It’s built right along the bed of the Bow River. And so you know, I mean, climate change is a global issue. So until we get, you know, all the other high-emitting countries on board, locally it’s not much we can do about climate change.
But engineers have been adapting for climate change, or adapting to things in our environment forever. I mean, we’ve been building all kinds of things to work in our environment, to make us safer. And that could be from transportation to flood mitigation to stormwater management, we’ve done it. Now some of the things we can do is, we’ve been typically designing for the 100-year flood events. And so what that is, is a flood that is one per cent likely to occur in 100 years. But I think that’s too low, I think we need to step up our designs, and start designing for even more extreme flood events. Those that are bigger, that happen less frequently. But bigger floods are now happening more frequently. So we should be designing for things like the 200-year storm or the 500-year storm. So these would be massive storms, that are happening more frequently.
And engineers are really good because we can model. So you know, we understand how we design around that. For example, if you have a bridge that you designed for the 100-year storm, you can remodel that bridge and design it for a 200-year storm, or a 500-year storm. And you can do that with the storm trunks and all kinds of things that we use in our infrastructure to make it safer and better and more climate change resistant.
The other thing that you can do around flooding… You know, when I was in Calgary, we used to do these things called functional dry ponds. And what they were, these dry, sunken ponds that were dry, and inside the ponds, we would have a functional use. We would have like a baseball diamond, soccer field or something like that. Now, when there was a major flood or storm, those ponds would fill up. But they would be connected to the storm trunk. And so as flooding receded, they would drain into the storm trunk, and the pond would be dry again and it would go back to its original function. So in essence, we’re creating a storm facility to contain the flooding of these storms. But we’re also creating an asset for the community. And so if you do both things, I think that in the climate change equation, I think I think that’s the way to go.
Even bigger than this is around our climate change standards. And what I want to talk about because I think it’s important for people to know: We are not allowing small businesses to come into town or even expand because of car idling… It’s been a big issue. It’s on the mandates of the town. But we have an 18-acre development up here on Walker Road, that’s a plastic manufacturing facility. And it’s a huge facility. This is a very large company. I mean, high-density polyethylene alone, MIT did the studies on it, cradle to grave, from the time you’re pulling the hydrocarbons out of the ground, from the time you’re processing them, to the time they are sitting in some landfill as a plastic somewhere. They were releasing greenhouse gases. It’s so significant that it has now replaced the concerns over coal. So for example, climate-warming pollution from plastic by 2030 will be equivalent to 295 coal-fired power plants. That’s huge. But we’re questioning small business about idling, but we’re not questioning big businesses about their climate footprint. And that’s a double standard that needs to be fixed. There was not one question asked about this development at all from the council or even our climate change committee about what the climate change footprint would be around this plastic plant development. Not one, and I thought that was really surprising. So if we’re not going to have regular regulations that are consistent that evaluate every corporation equally, small and large businesses, then we shouldn’t have these policies at all. They have to be equitable. And this is not equitable. And so I would like to relook at some of those things.
CHMA: Any other issues that you’re hoping to highlight in your campaign?
Bonnie Swift: Yeah, I really want to highlight the hospital issue, I think it’s really very important. Because we’re losing nurses, and it’s a national issue as well as a local issue. And you know, when COVID-19 hit, there was a significant stress on the nursing community. And a lot of those nurses left. And the sad thing is, a lot of them didn’t come back. I mean, for example, 13 per cent, of our Canadian RNs 26 to 35 said they were highly likely to leave their professions after the pandemic. Now, the other issue is we have 1000s of foreign nurses and doctors moving into Canada, but are getting sidelined by these regulations. And these regulations are very comprehensive and very difficult to work through. So there needs to be a better way of assessing foreign credentials, so we can get more nurses into the community. And I think once we have more nurses, we can open up our hospital emergency room doors. So I think that’s very important to look at the nursing situation. I mean, we’re going to have to. If this is the province, and the MPs, who are who are mostly taking care of the health care situation, we’re going to have to be on top of them to make sure that they’re aware and try to find a way to get rid of some of these bottlenecks for our nursing community.
CHMA: Big issues to be sure, anything else you’d like people in Sackville and Tantramar more generally to know?
Bonnie Swift: Well, one of the biggest things this town lacks is and everybody talks about it is a citizen engagement process. I think it’s really, really important. I mean, we’ve seen things go on where the citizens haven’t been engaged at all we’ve had people had their land they bought for their residential home that they were going to build actually be rezoned without any notification at all. Everybody should be getting notifications around these zoning processes. And this has actually happened in Sackville. We’re also getting large projects, you know, I mean, for example, this project, there was no real public engagement at all on which…
CHMA: When you say this project, you mean the plastics plant.
Bonnie Swift: The plastics plant. I mean, it’s an 18-acre plant. It’s one of the largest developments the Town of Sackville has seen, if not the largest. And we never got a citizen engagement process. There was nothing. I mean, there was, on their website, there was a bylaw change that significantly changed what could happen on that site. But there was no public engagements, for the community to ask questions or feel safe. And the councillors were sitting up there saying they didn’t even want to… one of them said they didn’t even want to know what was going in there. But, you know, we are the first line of defense in protecting our citizen’s safety and welfare and the environment. So if these councillors do not care enough to find out about a project and engage the citizens, they’re not representing the people. And so I think they missed the boat. And I think that we have to improve our citizen engagement process.
Every time we asked a question about the facility, we were told all it’s a wonderful thing. It’s a state-of-the-art facility. But we were asking questions about the safety and the health of the community, and those weren’t getting answered. So in a sense, they were acting as an advertisement for the developer, but they were ignoring the concerns of the citizens. That’s not right. You should always be acting as a citizen or representative of the citizen. That’s why you’re in office. They selected you to do that. And it seems like they forgot that in this process. So I think getting back to citizen engagement, we need to improve this process. Now luckily, some of the counselors did admit, they were embarrassed by it. They feel bad about it, and they would like to improve it. So hopefully that does change.
CHMA: I’ve been speaking to Bonnie Swift, the candidate for mayor of the new town of Tantramar. She’s running against [Sackville mayor] Shawn Mesheau and current Deputy Mayor Andrew Black. Thanks for taking the time to speak to me today, Bonnie.
Bonnie Swift: Well, I really enjoyed speaking with you David. And I’m happy to get the information to the public on what my platform is going to be all about. I want open government. And that’s my major goal. So hopefully we’ll get there. Thank you.
