Councillor Allison Butcher (R) questioning Premier Holt about the plan to put toll booths on the highway at Aulac
Premier Holt tried to defend her government’s plan to put toll booths on the TransCanada highway at Aulac near the Nova Scotia border as she answered persistent questions from Tantramar Councillor Allison Butcher and several of her council colleagues during a wide-ranging discussion Wednesday that lasted just over nine minutes.
“I am not sure if you’re aware, but Sackville, Cumberland, Amherst, Strait Shores, we’re really intertwined,” Butcher told Holt.
“There are many people who live here and work there and vice versa, where we share family members,” Butcher said, adding that two of her four siblings live in Amherst.
“People move back and forth across that [border] daily for work, for enjoyment, for business, all of that,” she continued.
“We saw what a huge difference it made for us when it was closed because of COVID,” Butcher said.
She added that she realized New Brunswick residents would not pay the tolls themselves, but they would affect families, businesses, people going back and forth for work and health care and even custody arrangements affecting children.
“Is there anything in the works to protect these people?” she asked.
Friends & family passes
“There are some things in the works, but I think there’s an opportunity for some creativity here,” Holt replied.
She suggested the Nova Scotia health authority could issue toll passes for professionals who work in Sackville but live in Amherst while New Brunswick could consider the concept of a friends and family pass or good neighbour’s pass.
“Something that’s dramatically less expensive,” Holt said, “you know a cost of, I shouldn’t even throw out numbers, like it’s $50 a year and that just gets you covered.”
“With all due respect, we don’t pay $50 now and there are many people living in our communities for whom $50 could make a huge difference,” Butcher shot back.
“We have university students travelling back and forth, we have the Irving Big Stop on the border. My daughter works there and she has as many co-workers from Amherst as from Sackville,” she said.
Butcher added that it may be fine for the Nova Scotia government to pay for health care workers’ passes, but what about patients who need to cross the border to get knee surgeries or other procedures at the Sackville hospital that the community here fought so hard to save.
“The cost of their tolls can get covered if that’s what you mean,” Holt replied.
‘Best location’
Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne questions Premier Holt as Mayor Wiggins-Colwell (L) listens
Mayor Wiggins-Colwell wondered if the government had considered installing the toll booths in Salisbury to avoid the disruptions they would cause to the closely knit communities on either side of the border.
“I believe that multiple locations were evaluated and this one was determined to be the best location where there was an alternate route,” Holt answered.
“You have to have an alternate route, that’s a requirement,” the premier said.
When Butcher asked about that alternate route, both Holt and Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne said it would be Rte. 970, the 11.4 kilometre road that connects a Nova Scotia highway at Tidnish Bridge to New Brunswick routes 15 and 16 at Port Elgin.
“It’s not even shouldered,” Borne said. “It’s not adequate at all.”
“I think there’s lots of ways that we can work out options,” Holt said as the discussion returned to the effects on intertwined communities.
She suggested, for example, that residents who live near the border could be issued friends and family toll passes to give to their friends and family in Nova Scotia.
“The toll proposals have been kicking around for ages as ways to help us pay for infrastructure,” the premier said.
Borne suggested that trying to administer friends and family passes would be “a bit of a mess” because of everyone potentially claiming connections and she wondered about the financial impact of these passes on the $10 million the government is hoping to raise in toll revenues.
“We’ve just tried to recover from local governance reform,” Borne said.
“There’s fiscal reform, there’s property tax reform, so we’re going to tackle all of it,” she added before referring to the effects tolls would have on Tantramar.
“When you look at just these two themes, the economic impact, the social impact, mental impact on our community, we will not survive it.”
“So what are your suggestions?” Holt asked quietly.
“Not yours,” Borne replied as everyone around the table laughed.
This is the second of three reports on Tantramar council’s meeting with Premier Holt. Warktimes was able to attend the meeting after Holt said she had no objection because this was council’s meeting and it was up to them to decide who could attend.
I also oppose the border tolls but think that others who do need to have the courage to answer the final question by saying “raise the HST” by a point or raise income tax rates, or raise the gasoline excise tax. Governments are doing us a disservice if they tell us we can have all the services we now have (e.g. education, health care and highways) and not pay more. Make everyone pay instead of this death by a thousand cuts and increases in targeted fees and nuisance taxes. I expect word has come down from major investors and party donors saying “No new taxes” (on us)! And the rest of us are forced to live with that.
Thank you, Allison Butcher, Mayor Wiggins-Colwell, and other Tantramar Councillors for raising with Premier Holt the many, many problems associated with the imposition of toll booths at the border between N.B. and N.S. — tolls which would have a catastrophic impact on the centuries-old, closely-knit, inter-dependent communities on either side of the border in this location.
Premier Holt found herself at a table of bright, intelligent Councillors and a Mayor who posed the hard-hitting, logical questions that all of us who live in the border communities of Sackville and Amherst are asking. Her manner of responding repeatedly underscored the fact that she is a rookie Premier who lacks the honed skill of an experienced politician to deftly (and yes, maddeningly!) shift on a dime to another topic when faced with questions they choose not to answer because to do so would mean telling the truth — a “truth” something like: “Well, although what you say makes perfect sense, we’re going to put in tolls anyway!”
In the strange world of AI and bott-think — a world that unfortunately increasingly defines governments today — perhaps a bizarre plan has been created to compel most of the population of N.B. and N.S. to relocate elsewhere. What else are we to think? While countless other communities across Canada are saying an emphatic “no” to water-consuming data centres such as the one proposed for Lorneville, and mega polluting shale-gas and diesel-powered electrical plants such as RIGS — Premier Holt and her Liberal government are encouraging them to be built here!
I wonder… are her words and actions enmeshed with the new federal “master plan” for Canada — Build Canada Strong — to turn our beautiful part of Canada into a new sort of 21st century wasteland? Are we slated to be the Maritime “services provider” for globally destructive mega data centres? Has NB been intentionally selected by federal “visionaries” to be the Canadian province most easily sacrificed for the national good? The “sacrificial lamb”? Are we slated to be swiftly wiped clean of what remains of our ravaged forests, our animals, birds, fish, and people, our potable drinking water, and clean air, in order to become the provider of services “needed to Build Canada Strong” in this AI, Trump-tariffed New World?
These are tremendously challenging times, frightening times, in which we find ourselves living, and I do not have the answers. No one does. But I will continue to fight for right of the people of Canada to be significant, important players in decision-making. That is the essence of democracy, right? The reported conversation about the wisdom of imposing border tolls between the Tamtramar Councillor Allison Butcher and CAO Jennifer Borne as representatives of the people of this region, and Premier Holt, was deeply disheartening in this regard. That they were talking with each other was good, was democratic, but was Susan Holt really listening? — the sort of deep listening which includes intelligent, thoughtful, processing of the information received. That remains to be seen.
If Holt is concerned about provincial revenue and expenses, she shouldn’t have approved a raise for NB Power’s CEO that’s the size of the average household income in NB. It’s outrageous to approve a raise on that scale in a time of fiscal restraint.
The obvious revenue source for infrastructure like highways is a small tax on fuel, because that affects road users in proportion to how much they use the roads, without targeting any particular region the way this toll does, and without discouraging interprovincial trade, which we should be increasing instead of taxing with a toll at the border.
Highways are expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere, but tolls are not the best method.