Councillor Bruce Phinney (L) and Mayor Andrew Black discussing why council won’t meet with 12 Sackville firefighters
Tantramar Councillor Bruce Phinney quizzed Mayor Andrew Black for more than six minutes on Monday about why a dozen Sackville firefighters, who turned in their pagers on January 5th, will not be allowed to meet with town council.
“I’m asking on behalf of the residents and the 12 firefighters and maybe some of the councillors that don’t know exactly your reason for not wanting to meet with the firefighters,” Phinney said.
“What meeting?” Black asked.
“Well, they’ve asked for, requested a meeting as a matter of fact,” Phinney answered. “From your response, it’s ‘no’ and I would love to meet with them. You’ve already heard me saying that and I think a couple of others as well. We would like to meet with the 12 firefighters that have requested to get together,” Phinney said.
Black responded that it was “inappropriate” for Phinney to ask the question because the e-mail from the firefighters requesting a meeting was a private one. He then explained his reason for turning down their request.
“The response that I gave is that we have an investigation ongoing,” he said, referring to the town’s announcement in January that it had hired a Saint John law firm to investigate allegations that included workplace harassment and favouritism in Sackville Fire & Rescue.
He went on to say that CAO Jennifer Borne had responded to the firefighters’ concerns about the limited scope of the investigation; that the Saint John law firm had re-issued letters to the 12 firefighters outlining the investigation’s full scope and that they now seemed satisfied.
Legal concerns
Black also suggested that the town’s legal firm would advise against meeting with the firefighters because if such a meeting had a negative effect on the investigation, someone could sue the municipality at considerable cost to the public purse.
“This is risk mitigation,” the mayor said. “Our legal counsel would say that it [a meeting] is not a good idea or advisable to do so.”
“You said, ‘our legal would probably say that we shouldn’t meet with them or whatever,'” Phinney replied.
“That’s your opinion,” he added.
Phinney argued that a meeting with council would have no effect on the investigation.
“That’s completely separate,” he said.
“The people in the community, they’re asking me every day, ‘why aren’t you guys willing to meet with them’ and I said, ‘I don’t know,'” Phinney added later in the exchange.
“Anyway I asked my question, you’ve answered I guess, so thank you,” he said.
Public safety
Former Sackville councillor Ken Hicks
During the public question period, former Sackville councillor Ken Hicks expressed concerns about public safety now that the Sackville fire department’s staffing is hovering around 40% of full complement.
“To ensure community safety and alleviate the pressure on remaining personnel, it is imperative that leadership initiates an immediate dialogue with the 12 members who have stepped back,” he said.
“Will leadership commit to an immediate sit-down with the 12 sidelined members to negotiate a return-to-work agreement that protects their rights while restoring our frontline response strength? ” he asked.
“I can’t answer that question,” Black said.
“The CAO is the person who is responsible for HR and this case dealing with the fire department members and the investigation. So it would be up to the CAO to answer that question Mr. Hicks. I can get her to send a response to you.”
Montana recommendations
Hicks also pushed for the release of the 20 recommendations that the Montana consultants made when they submitted their workplace assessment of the fire department in 2021.
The mayor said they would not be released during the current investigation, but seemed open to that possibility later.
However, when Councillor Phinney tried to obtain the recommendations in 2024, Mr. Justice Jean-Paul Ouellette of the Court of King’s Bench ruled that under the law, the town could not release the results of a personnel investigation.
Earlier, Mayor Black said the current investigator’s report would not likely be made public either because of the need to protect confidential information from those interviewed.
He did say, however, that the results of the investigation might be made public.
“I’m not sure about that piece if it would be public or not, but I can get the CAO to get back to you,” he said.
NOTE: CAO Jennifer Borne wasn’t present at Monday’s council meeting.
For earlier coverage, click here.
“Black also suggested that the town’s legal firm had advised against meeting with the firefighters because if such a meeting had a negative effect on the investigation, someone could sue the municipality at considerable cost to the public purse.”
Did Black explicitly say that the town had received legal advice that the meeting would carry the risk of lawsuit? The quoted statement by Black,
“This is risk mitigation,” the mayor said. “Our legal counsel would say that it [a meeting] is not a good idea or advisable to do so.”
is phrased not as a quote or reference to actual legal advice, but is Black speculating about what the town’s legal counsel would say.
Note from Bruce Wark: Thanks for pointing this out Jon. I’ve gone back and listened to the tape again and changed the quotes and paraphrases accordingly. I’ve also added one from Councillor Phinney in which he says that what legal counsel would say is only the mayor’s opinion.
VanBuskirk Law, 12th floor, 1 Germain Street, Saint John New Brunswick 506-633-3535 .. phone them up and reference the Tantramar file #MR-TFS-2026-04 and let them know you wish to make a signed statement about the behaviour of long time elected Tantramar Touncillor Bruce Phinney in his witchhunt of our fire Chief Bowser… its just that simple folks. Democracy requires your participation, 365 days a year.
Yup, I agree. Bruce is best friends with multiple of the 12 firefighters who walked away, from what I’ve heard. That tells you where some of the 12 firefighters stand. This seems like a witch hunt with a councillor behind it, which is sickening.
Years of reports of a toxic work environment in the fire department, half the fire service leaving because they can’t stand it any more, but S.A. Cunliffe and Jean-David think that Bruce Phinney is to blame for believing there’s a problem at the top of the FD?
In any organization with a history of dysfunction like the FD, the logical place to look for problems is at the top. If management was working, these problems wouldn’t have gone on this long.
The witch hunt looks like it’s against Bruce Phinney, with S.A. Cunliffe campaigning for the public to complain to the town’s law firm about a councillor who has mostly been trying to make information on the FD available to the public, and Jean-David spreading hearsay (“Bruce is best friends with multiple of the 12 firefighters who walked away, from what I’ve heard”) and blaming the firefighters (“That tells you where some of the 12 firefighters stand”).
Bowser deserves the same fairness any other town employee deserves. But if you run an organization and you can’t make it work after years of trying and failing, you don’t belong in that job. And the changes to the FD, like putting everything under central control instead of letting firefighters choose their leader, and muzzling firefighters, aren’t working either.
About 20 years ago the Cumberland County Regional Heath Care Centre (Amherst Hospital) became quite dysfunctional. I believe it was the Moncton City Hospital that stepped in and basically took over running it until things could be straightened out many months later. Even though it was two separate provinces with two separate systems, it certainly got things back to ‘normal’.
Why not request that the Moncton Fire Department step in to get Sackville back on track? Moncton’s Fire Chief is Keith Guptil who not that many years ago was the ‘elected’ Sackville Fire Chief and things seem to run amazingly well back then. When things are not working then just reach out for help instead of blundering on through, which seems to be the case now with Sackville Fire and Rescue. —- Whatever happened to “SACKVILLE, A NEW KIND OF SMALL TOWN”?