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:

For this Project, WattBridge [one of PROENERGY’s related companies], together with the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council (NSMTC) as a minority equity holder, is entering into a power purchase tolling agreement with NB Power.

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:

For this Project, WattBridge, together with the NSMTC, is entering into a power purchase tolling agreement with NB Power.

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:

WattBridge will also continue to engage NSMTC as a minor equity partner in the Project.

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.

When pressed by a small group of observers (I was a participant in the conversation), however, Tristan Jackson (speaking for the investment advisors to the NSMTC) admitted that no investment had actually been made. Instead, the NSMTC had a mere option to acquire an equity position, an option that had not yet been exercised. Turns out that the representation to the provincial and federal regulators, and then on the panel during the public information session, was actually a misrepresentation.

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