Municipal election season is upon us. Barring any pandemic tragedies, on May 10 Sackville will be heading to the polls to cast votes for the next group of people to sit around the town council table, even if it is a virtual one for the time being. In an effort to help inform you about who your candidates are, CHMA news plans to speak with all 12 council and two mayoralty candidates in the coming weeks.
This time we speak with candidate Sabine Dietz:
You can find Dietz’s campaign page on Facebook here. Dietz has also organized bi-weekly Ask Me Anything sessions for all council candidates, and links are posted on her page.
Check out all of CHMA’s local elections coverage here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Sabine Dietz, thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
SABINE DIETZ: I came down to Sackville in 2005. I’m a biologist, an environmental educator. I’ve worked on conservation, species at risk conservation for a number of years on the Acadian peninsula and then we moved down here to Sackville because I was hired as the executive director of Cape Jourimain Nature Center, where I was for five years.
Moving to Sackville was a very deliberate move. We liked Sackville. We had been in Sackville in the early 1990s, because my partner went to Mount A for an education degree. So we knew the community already, and we really liked what we saw back then. So we deliberately moved to Sackville because it had everything that we really wanted to have.
I worked for the provincial government for bit on climate change adaptation for three years. And then we founded a business, a local business, Aster Group environmental services cooperative. We’ve been running that. And then since last year, I’ve been working for Parks Canada.
So we’ve raised our two daughters in Sackville. They’re now grown. And we live out on High Marsh Road, in a little small hobby farm with two goats and a couple of chickens and a dog and a garden and a greenhouse.
And so since we moved down here, I’ve been involved in the community in one way or another, really, for the last 16 years now. I like the community.
CHMA: You have run for council before, for mayor. Is that right?
SD: Yes, I have. When Pat Estabrooks did not reoffer. It was really, really interesting. I learned a lot about the community because I went around door-to-door, almost the entire community on bike, and sometimes walking and sometimes the car. So I talked to a lot of people back then. It was fun doing it. I learned a lot, it was really interesting.
And I also ran against Shawn Mesheau for the councillor position in 2018 when the council seating became available after Megan Mitton got elected to the legislature. So both unsuccessful… So maybe the third time is the charm? I don’t know.
CHMA: Who knows? What made you decide to run again, this time?
SD: For a long time ever since I became interested in municipal politics or municipal governance especially… And that happened right when we moved down here. I went to council meetings. I remember still in the Old Town Hall. I just got interested in, you know, what are municipal councils all about? What’s municipal governance? What can municipalities do?
I’ve worked a lot with municipalities across the province through my adaptation work. I also learned a lot more about what difficulties and challenges there are for municipal governments to actually do things. You know, lack of money, a lack of roles that they have, because sometimes the roles are really limited when you look at provincial government versus municipal government.
And so I learned a lot also about the challenges of the councillors, of political elected officials versus staff. That whole municipal governance piece is a really difficult one. But it’s also a really important one. And I’ve become more and more convinced, in all my political activities, that’s actually where the rubber hits the road. You know, where change needs to happen. Where things really touch people’s lives.
Personally, I think now, I want to be engaged more directly in the decision-making process at the community level, and really focusing on what matters most to me, which is action on climate change. And when I say that, you might think, Oh, it’s just about climate change. Well, it isn’t.
In the pandemic over the last more than a year now, we’ve actually realized how things are all connected. Whether it is health care… No, we cannot get rid of our local emergency services. The health services in local communities is more urgent than ever.
And yes, this is linked to climate change, because with climate change, we’ll have more impact on our healthcare and our health. So we need those local health services more than ever, in a world where the climate changes dramatically.
We also saw how some of our supply chains, whether it’s toilet paper or whether it’s food, when they’re slightly disrupted or disrupted in a major way, that really creates trouble for local people. You know, when we all of a sudden can’t have access to our local food suppliers. The farmers market was shut down in the beginning of the pandemic. I found that was really disturbing and disrupting. Sure, the farmers pivoted. Local farmers pivoted and moved towards online systems and delivery. But that kind of disruption shows you how vulnerable these kinds of systems currently are.
And so local food supply is not just about food security locally, about poverty. It is also about ensuring that under climate change, we’re more resilient, we’re less vulnerable. We make sure that those kind of systems are really well supported locally. Just as an example, because food touches us all, right? And, you know, yes, climate change and food seem to be two disparate things, but they’re so intricately connected.
So being a bit more involved at the local level in municipal government, to me means that the activities that we’ve done or the actions that the community has taken on, specifically, climate change, whether it is creating a mayor’s roundtable on climate change (of which I’m a member), but also just on being, as a community, more aware about climate change in the community.
Taking more action, such as, you know, implementing a naturalized stormwater management system in Sackville. These kinds of actions, I want to be able to support them more directly and be more involved in putting a climate lens on the decisions that we make locally.
CHMA: Do you have specific issues happening in Sackville as of late that you’re hoping to highlight in your campaign?
SD: You know, whether it is skateboard on the town roads or speed limit on Pond Shore, I think those are all individual issues that need to be looked at individually. I don’t plan to have these items, particularly, on my on my list of things to do.
I want to look at all of these issues, weigh them against anything that has to do with climate change.
I’ll give you an example, Pond Shore. You know, I have issues with high speed limits. I know we’re speeding in town, people are speeding in town. I know all of that. I live on a road that is limited to 50, and there’s all the time speeding. So yeah, there are problems. This is also linked to climate change. And I think you know, the discussion with people highlighted as well, we want to encourage people to be more active, to do more walking, biking, cycling, rollerblading, skating, skateboarding. I don’t care what they do, but being out there and being active, physically active.
And so to me, in some ways it’s a no brainer to have all streets in town to [limited to] 50. It makes perfect sense to me. It’s just basic… And then put systems in place, or encouraged systems to be put in place that ensure that activity then becomes safe. And for skateboarding, it’s the same thing.
I bike a lot around town, out on Pond Shore, I bike downtown. I don’t see much of a difference. I want the roads to be safe for people that walk on them where there’s no sidewalks. And where there are sidewalks, make the road available and safe for cyclists and any associated activities.
So in that sense again, this is all linked. My plan is to look at all of the issues that are up, or that will come up on the town’s plate, through that kind of lens. Of being active, more physically active, to make ourselves more resilient to things that happen… mental health. Because all is linked, there’s no particular one issue. For me it’s not an issue. I don’t run on the issue of climate change. I run on: use climate change considerations as a thread that needs to permeate everything that we make decisions on in Sackville.
CHMA: This could be a difficult question or could be an easy question: what are your favourite and least favoirite things about Sackville?
SD: I just like the whole package of Sackville. It’s a great package. And when I say it’s a great package, it’s got the university, it’s got a lot of interested and keen young people, both from the university and from the schools, a lot of community involvement. It’s got the right size. It’s got nature around it. It’s got people who want to do good for the community. People who want to be engaged and are engaged beyond Sackville. It’s just a really nice package.
What I really don’t like is this… it’s really the piece that is difficult with municipal politics. You know, when folks go into municipal government, or into provincial or federal government, we seem to switch our mind around to thinking that they are doing it for their own gain. I really can’t stand that. I hate that.
That’s also why partially, I’m really not into having these debates on Facebook, on social media, because that makes it even more impersonal and very, very nasty. I don’t like that we cannot have these conversations out in the open, in public, and be respectful and reasonable about that.
CHMA: Well, heading into four weeks of campaign, I guess we’ll we’ll see how civil we can keep it.
SD: Yeah. And I hope everybody can stay respectful in this. Because in the end, you know, kudos to everybody who is running. We should all think, their priority is not personal gain. There is no personal gain. You know, it’s not something that is, ‘wow, now, you’re mayor or now you’re councillor, now you are above everybody else.’ No, it is literally folks who want to serve the community. And sure, it sounds really stupid to say ‘make Sackville a better place’ because everybody seems to say it… But, you know, everybody who has been on council and who wants to be on council, wants to do better, wants to help.
I think that if people could appreciate that, and could appreciate it’s not him against me or them against us. It’s trying to make this work for everybody, but also look forward. And I think looking forward beyond four years. Looking forward for the next 10 years, looking forward to the kids that I hope my children will have, and what the place will be like for them. That’s, I think, I hope anyway, what everybody that is running is working towards, right?
CHMA: Is there anything else you’d like people in Sackville to know, Sabine?
SD: I’m open to discuss any of the issues that are important to people and I certainly, I think in most cases, people in Sackville know that I don’t hesitate to be open and honest about what I think and what I believe.
I also plan to do this throughout this campaign, honest and transparent. And I will be answering questions and respond to the way I think we should move forward. And I will not, you know, be wishy washy, if there is reason not to be. In many cases in municipal government, often we don’t know what we actually can do in municipal government before we actually are councillors. So, you know, being realistic about what councillors can do and what they can’t do, that may cause, in some cases, a bit of wishy washi-ness. But I know my acts. I know the Municipal Act and the Community Planning Act, and I’m pretty much aware of what councillors will be able to do and what they can’t do. And so I’ll be honest and transparent and clear on what I think we can do and can’t do in municipal government if we get elected.
CHMA: Well, thanks very much Sabine, I appreciate you taking the time and we’ll be in touch obviously as the campaign rolls forward.
SD: Thanks a lot for your time.
