Mayoralty candidates radio forum, L-R: Terry Jones, Sabine Dietz, Moderator Carol Cooke, Debbie Wiggins-Colwell

Tantramar’s three mayoralty candidates — Debbie Wiggins-Colwell, Terry Jones and Sabine Dietz — discussed whether they would push for question periods at all public council meetings during their radio forum last week at CHMA-FM.

Before amalgamation in 2023, Sackville Town Council held public question periods at the beginning and at the end of its regular monthly meetings for at least 30 years. After sustained lobbying by Warktimes, Sackville added a public question period at the end of its monthly discussion meeting in 2021.

But after amalgamation, Mayor Black said Tantramar council would have to follow provincially imposed rules allowing for one 15-minute, public question period at the end of its monthly Committee of the Whole meetings. Under the new rules, questions were limited to topics discussed during the meeting and the time limit was strictly enforced.

At Tantramar council’s first regular meeting in January 2023, Councillors Michael Tower and Allison Butcher moved a motion to add a public question period at the end of the agenda, but Councillors Matt Estabrooks, Debbie Wiggins-Colwell and Bruce Phinney voted no denying the unanimous consent needed to change the agenda.

Since then, Tantramar council has not changed the rules limiting public question periods to one 15-minute session during Committee of the Whole meetings which are held at 3 p.m. on a weekday afternoon.

To hear what Tantramar’s mayoralty candidates had to say about public question periods, click on the media player. A lightly edited transcript appears below it.

Tantramar Mayoralty Candidates Radio Forum, Friday April 17, 2026 at CHMA 106.9 FM.

Question on council public question periods

Carol Cooke: Question number six. Many people complain about the lack of public participation during Tantramar Council meetings. Under the current Council Procedures Bylaw, there’s only one, 15-minute public question period per month. And it’s strictly limited to topics that were discussed at that one particular meeting. As Mayor, Sabine, we’ll start with you. Would you ask the clerk to present a new procedures bylaw for consideration by the new council so that it would include public question periods on any municipal topic at every public council meeting?

Sabine Dietz:  Yeah, so I’m going to just go step back a little bit. The procedures bylaw is meant to guide the council in terms of how to hold its meetings, including how much time, how much time for public input, etc. So it is clearly outlined in that bylaw. It’s actually a very useful bylaw to read because it also sets a bit of an ethical and moral standard for how you behave in the room. What I would like to do is I think it’s sad that the 15 minutes are restricted to issues that just have been brought up by council. So many of the urgent issues can never be brought up that way. I would certainly want council to reconsider opening the bylaw and changing the bylaw. There are not many things that would have to be changed, so it wouldn’t be a massive rewrite of a bylaw. But some things council needs to consider. And this is not a mayor’s decision. This is a decision of all of the council. And so all of council would have to fully understand what the procedural bylaw actually, what it is like, and what it does, and why it does certain things.

Carol Cooke: Sabine, I’m going to jump in. At this point, if you were a regular Tantramar resident, would you feel that you had enough opportunity to express your point of view at any public council meeting?

Sabine Dietz: No. So in fact, the last times I’ve been there, I don’t think I stayed until the end, simply because the 15 minutes are not open. And often there are things that have popped up in a community within a month.

Carol Cooke: And Sabine, just to clarify, don’t you have to get permission to be part of that 15 minutes per month?

Sabine Dietz: No, not at the end.

Carol Cooke: Okay, excuse me. Tell me more. Educate me.

Sabine Dietz:  No, no. At the end, you can ask questions, but you can only, and this is only once a month, but you can ask questions, but you can only ask questions of things that have come up during the council meeting. And so theoretically, the mayor has to interrupt you if you come in and bring up anything that’s of concern at that time, but was not brought up during a council meeting. So, yes, this is very restrictive and it doesn’t open the floor to having a council being informed at that time of something that may really be of importance to the community.

Carol Cooke: So would you advocate changing that slightly?

Sabine Dietz:  I would. I would discuss with council and make sure that we reconsider this and we discuss it as council. And then we make a decision whether we direct the clerk to make certain changes.

Carol Cooke:  Okay, great. Terry Jones, to recap slightly, is 15 minutes per month enough time to discuss things and only be confined to that one meeting? Would you try and change it? Please let us know.

Terry Jones: Most definitely. I think that that bylaw does have to be looked at. I think we need to communicate with our citizens, and we don’t have. Fifteen minutes could be two people. There could be 20 people that have questions. Now, can we run on for hours and be there till midnight every council meeting? No. Should we have 15 minutes at every meeting? Definitely, if we’re only allowed to speak about what takes place at that meeting. So, yes, I would definitely support and ask the council to support changing that bylaw, asking for the wording, making sure that it gives some open, honest communication from our citizens to us. We’re here because of them. They need to be allowed to have their voices heard.

Carol Cooke: Okay. Terry, thanks for that. And closing off this question, Debbie Wiggins-Colwell, do you think that the public needs more time to ask questions at meetings?

Debbie Wiggins-Colwell: Thank you, Carol. I believe with the open communication with the citizens of Tantramar and the council, many inquiries can be addressed with more information from outside of the council, outside of the official question period.

Carol Cooke: And can you elaborate on how the public would get those questions in?

Debbie Wiggins-Colwell: Well, if you have an open communication with your residents, you have this coming up. But the council meetings are conducted with a pre-approved agenda. And to address the issues of concern. Outside of the agenda, we risk losing structure of our meetings. However, a motion could be put forward that would allow council to vote on this topic. So say if the council wanted to put not only on the regular council meeting, but the community of the whole meeting, If they wanted to have a question period at the end of that, our two major meetings that we have per month is our regular council and our committee of the whole. So if council would like to bring a motion forward to have that changed, to have another, an open session at the end of that, maybe to discuss other things. But there again, we have to be very strict on because that could get off as Terry had said, we could be there until midnight answering questions that just everybody could pop in their head at the time. It’s got to be consistent and we’ve got to work on what we have on the agenda.

Carol Cooke: Okay. Thank you for that.

Terry Jones: There is nothing that says we can’t say if you’re coming and you have a question that you would like to bring forward, that that has to be presented and put on the agenda at the very end and keep that within the limit of 15 minutes. And then that would give other citizens who haven’t had a chance or thought of the question there could bring it up on another date. There’s the more communication, the more openness, the more transparency we have, but that having strict, or not strict, but having a time limit set and having the questions pre-approved not, not that we approve them but that we get them so that we can put them on the agenda will give us time to have documents or any other information that we need there.

Carol Cooke:  Kind of in the same way that all three mayoralty candidates have had, you’ve had the questions in advance and I see what you’re saying. Sabine do you want to add in anything more just because everyone said some back and forth here.

Sabine Dietz: Yeah I think and I think you know structure, structure is fine and needed and absolutely otherwise I think council and council has sat very late when I was on council, is not comfortable. It’s too long, so I appreciate that. I think in a large community, municipality like Tantramar, there are two meetings per and I don’t think there have necessarily only been two meetings per month. There have been special meetings and that needs to be the case.

It is necessary and the issues and challenges that the municipality will have over the next four years are huge and I don’t think we can limit it. And for those issues, all of them, the community will have to play a really large role. So no, it is not, it is not, it is a question of balancing structure and limiting time and making sure that councillors are not dead on their feet at the end of the meeting with the community’s access to council meetings, councillors, and to open discussion.

And I just want to remind everybody that it is very clear from recent decisions or recent statements that council meetings need to be open. And I take that as also a statement about councils need to be open to discussing and debating with the community, not to the end of everything, but a good mayor will be able to manage with leadership to manage that kind of debate. It needs to happen, especially right now, especially during the four years that are coming.

Carol Cooke: Great. Thank you for that.  Quick, go Debbie, quick.

Debbie Wiggins-Colwell: Yes, I agree with that.  But like, say for instance, this week I had four meetings. I mean, one open and three behind closed doors. So it does. And our meeting on the regular council meeting, I got out of there at 10:45. So that is a long meeting.