Interior shot of the Wheaton Covered Bridge showing holes in the roof and the closure sign that the provincial department of transportation & infrastructure erected in July 2024
Tantramar town council spent more than 35 minutes Monday discussing the membership and terms of reference for a committee that would investigate ways of saving the Wheaton Covered Bridge, but could not come to a consensus on how to proceed.
Councillors were considering a report from Matt Pryde, director of active living and culture, listing the names of nine Tantramar residents who had expressed interest in joining the committee.
The previous council voted to establish the committee on January 13th when it passed a motion directing town staff to “investigate options for preservation and long-term protection of Wheaton Covered Bridge and create an ad-hoc committee for funding sources, preservation, and recommendations on the structure.”
Committee too big
“The nine members seems a little bit large to me for a committee of this nature,” said Councillor Alyssa Greene.
“I think they may get bogged down. I think five members is perhaps a better option for us,” she added.
Councillor Alyssa Greene
Greene said there are people on the proposed committee she doesn’t know and asked for more information such as their letters expressing interest and their CVs.
“I’m sure they’re great community members, but it would be important that we be able to have informed decisions on approving who the committee members are,” she said.
Greene also questioned the committee’s terms of reference including its three year term and its requirement to report to council at least twice a year.
“In three years if we were waiting that long, there won’t be a bridge. So there won’t even be a conversation,” she said, adding later that the committee could be required to report to council in three months.
CAO Jennifer Borne said the committee’s terms of reference, including its three-year term and its requirement to report to council at least twice a year, are pretty standard ones. She added the terms can always be tweaked later both by council and the committee itself.
Borne said that bigger committees can also work well as the much larger Climate Change Advisory Committee has shown and that larger volunteer committees can more easily share the work among their members.
Options needed
Councillor Tori Weldon suggested the committee could be required to provide various options.
Councillor Tori Weldon
“Like what do we do if we want to save the bridge and what do we do if it’s determined that’s not what we’re going to do,” she said.
I just want to make sure we don’t have one thing on the table,” she added.
“I don’t know if this should just be exclusively how to save the bridge, but sort of how do we deal with the situation.”
Councillor Greene agreed that the committee’s terms of reference should spell out what council wants it to examine.
“Are we looking to make sure that the spirit of that portion of heritage is always commemorated, or are we actually looking to commemorate the actual physical structure?” Greene asked.
“We need to have very clear terms within this of what we want them looking at,” she said.
‘Consent agenda’
Councillor Barry Hicks
Councillor Barry Hicks said he would be voting against the motion to send the proposal to form a committee and adopt its terms of reference to council’s regular meeting next month.
In technical terms, the motion said the matter would be placed on council’s “consent agenda” which would mean it would be voted on with no further discussion or debate.
“I’d like to have more options than just saving the bridge or maybe a way that we make a replica or whatever,” Hicks said.
“I’d like to see the options before I vote for this.”
Urgent action needed
Councillors Allison Butcher and Kristen LeBlanc stressed the need to move ahead quickly.
“I think the group that we have right now listed here are very proactive individuals,” LeBlanc said referring to the nine people who expressed interest in joining the committee.
“I’ve known the majority of them most of my life,” she added.
Councillor Allison Butcher
“I feel like we really should be moving forward,” Butcher said.
“Our bridge is falling apart, it has been for a long time,” she added.
“We can’t take two, three months just to figure out who’s on our committee. We need to get moving with it, and I respect that these people have put their name forward, and they have been chosen or pointed out by staff who have the skill level to look through and see if someone has the ability to do this or not,” Butcher said.
“I think we need to put it onto the consent agenda and get moving with the hope of fixing our bridge.”
In the end, council voted 5-3 in favour of sending the matter to its consent agenda on September 8th.
In favour: Mayor Wiggins-Colwell, Councillors Kristen LeBlanc, Tori Weldon, Allison Butcher and Haidee Robertson.
Against: Councillors Alyssa Greene, Barry Hicks and Wayne Wells.
Deputy Mayor Josh Goguen was absent.
Commentary: The tricky world of misrepresentation — gas plant edition
By Logan Atkinson, Seniors for Climate — Tantramar
Pixabay Pinocchio image created by iffany
Children have a wonderfully efficient way of getting to the heart of the matter. “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!” If a peer steps outside the recognized moral order, then there’s no need for debate, reflection, appeals and counter-appeals. Instead, the kids go directly to their own system of justice – chants, ridicule, humiliation and, ultimately, banishment to the far reaches of the playground.
Rough justice? Perhaps. But effective? Almost certainly.
In the world of adult discourse, however, to accuse someone of lying is a business fraught with risk. Instead, we tend towards “misrepresentation” as the safer accusation. After all, a statement might be made innocently, without knowledge that it’s untrue. Perhaps it’s made negligently, made without checking the facts carefully enough. Or, in some cases, a misrepresentation might be fraudulent, made with the intent to deceive and to exact some advantage.
This last is the lie.
For over a year now, the proponents (NB Power and PROENERGY) of the Centre Village fossil-fuel plant in Tantramar have been accused of misrepresentation by members of the public fighting against the project. The subjects of concern have been many: water usage, operating times, the need for more power, emissions levels, the economic implications. And on and on.
Are the alleged misrepresentations innocent? Are they negligent? Or are they lies, made with the intent to deceive the public and to exact some advantage, perhaps support for the project among citizens-at-large?
Indigenous investment claim
At the beginning, the Centre Village project proponents claimed that they had secured an equity investment from Indigenous investors. This is important and merits greater scrutiny. We can start with the proponents’ filing with the New Brunswick environmental impact assessment agency, dated July 4, 2025.
In section 2 on page 4, you will see the following representation:
There it is, in black and white. The proponent is holding out to the provincial regulator, and to the public, that the NSMTC has invested in the project.
The proponents were required to file something similar with the federal Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. This document is also dated July 4, 2025, and in section 2, page 1, it says:
It’s less clear here that NSMTC is represented as an equity investor in the Project, although that’s safe to assume given that NSMTC is being held out as a signatory to the tolling agreement.
But any ambiguity is removed further along, in section 4 on page 4, where we find this:
Public info sessions
To this point at least, there’s nothing to suggest that the representation of Indigenous investment in the Centre Village project is a misrepresentation. But then proponents held two public information sessions in Tantramar, the first at the Music Barn in Upper Sackville on August 12, 2025, and the second at the Civic Centre in Sackville on August 13th.
One of the display panels at the first public meeting clearly indicated that the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council was an equity participant, an investor, in the project.
Innocent? Negligent? Fraudulent? Are we yet to the point of “pants on fire?”
At the second public information session, the same display panel appeared, with the same misrepresentation of Indigenous investment. I pointed this out to Mr. Jackson, and asked why the panel hadn’t been corrected to reflect the true state of affairs. He merely smiled in response.
A question and answer session followed. When pressed about the misrepresentation, John MacIsaac (speaking for PROENERGY) said something to the effect that we can’t control what the media say about ownership of the project. But it was pointed out to Mr. MacIsaac that the media are simply repeating what appears in the proponents’ own proposal to the environmental regulators.
After that, Mr. Jackson claimed that the proposal was written as it was (claiming a First Nations’ equity interest instead of the actual option) to make it easier to understand!
At this point, things are getting serious. Was this an admission that the misrepresentation was made with the knowledge that it was false? Are we slipping away from mere innocence or negligence? Is the possibility of fiery pants now too obvious to ignore?
A-G blows the whistle
In case additional evidence were needed about this misrepresentation, the New Brunswick’s Auditor General released his 2026 Annual Report in installments at the end of May and early in June. Volume 2 addressed the Centre Village project, and the misrepresentation about Indigenous investment was succinctly pointed out on page 15:
Then, a bit later in June, Lori Clark, President and CEO of NB Power, testified before the Public Accounts Committee at the New Brunswick legislature, and appeared to deflect responsibility for the misrepresentation back to PROENERGY.
All doubt was removed when Brad Coady, a Vice-President of NB Power, was interviewed following his appearance at Tantramar Municipal Council on July 14th. Mr. Coady confirmed that no Indigenous investment had been made, and went even further, suggesting that such an investment is a nice-to-have, rather than a must-have. Indigenous communities have the opportunity to invest, he said, and that’s good enough. There is no formal regulatory requirement that Indigenous investment be secured.
Maybe Mr. Coady is right. Maybe there’s nothing in the formal law to compel Indigenous partnership in a project like the proposed Centre Village fossil-fuel plant. But is formal law the only mechanism at work here? Is formal law the only basis on which the project proponents might be judged? The evidence is very clear that the question of Indigenous investment in the project has been misrepresented from the very beginning.
Do we really want to play with the American firm PROENERGY, a firm that misrepresents a vital feature of its project, and then over months and months of scrutiny fails to own up to that misrepresentation? Do you think that this misrepresentation is innocent? Negligent? Something worse?
What would the children on the playground say?
How loud might the chants become?
How might they judge the behaviour of PROENERGY?
Do you think PROENERGY would be banished to the farthest reaches of the playground?
Logan Atkinson is a member of Seniors for Climate — Tantramar, scantantramar@gmail.com