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Letters to the Community: A Note of Thanks from the Fundy Albert Community Greenhouse Committee

1/4/2026

Big community projects rarely happen because of one person or one organization. They happen because a whole community decides something matters and steps forward to make it real.

The Fundy Albert Community Greenhouse is a good example of what that kind of dedication looks like. Projects like this take years of planning, fundraising, and collaboration. They require people who believe in the vision, partners who are willing to invest, and community members who show up again and again to support the work.

Building infrastructure that will serve students and the wider community is not a small undertaking. It takes resources, time, and trust. When local organizations step forward to help fund a project, they are doing more than making a donation. They are helping create opportunities for learning, food access, and community connection that will last for many years.

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The Right to Breathe: Why New Brunswick Needs Environmental Rights

18/3/2026

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By Deborah Carr

I remember the day with unsettling clarity. Late summer, walking my elderly dog near the gypsum silos in Hillsborough—a place where she could still wander safely off leash. With her fading eyesight and hearing, I was grateful we’d trained her with hand signals. Usually, she trotted only a short distance ahead, checking frequently to ensure I was close by.

But that day, she did something she’d never done. She veered suddenly and plunged into a ditch of stagnant, fetid water—sludge that had seeped for decades from the rotting refuse pile left behind when a gypsum plant closed in the eighties. By the time she noticed my frantic gestures and scrambled out, she was covered. I rushed her to the nearest creek and waded in to wash her. Whether she ingested any, I’ll never know. Months later, following a period of escalating symptoms—muscle weakness, vomiting, seizures—we lost her. Only years afterward, when three dogs died after ingesting blue-green algae in the Wolastoq River, did I consider a connection.

I still walk those marshes. And I still ask why we’ve normalized this toxic inheritance. Don’t we have a right to a healthy place to live?

In New Brunswick, the answer is no.

We have environmental rules—the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Environment Act—but no legally enforceable environmental rights...no clear standing for residents in a court of law. No guarantee that government must do its part to protect our health.

That could change.

The Provincial Legislature building + Supporters for Bill 23 gather with David Coon, Leader NB Green Party, after the bill is presented in the Legislature.

A Long Time Coming
On March 25, 2025, I sat in the Legislature visitor’s gallery as Green Party Leader, David Coon reintroduced Bill 23, An Act Respecting the Right to a Healthy Environment. It was a moving moment that reminded me that I’d first heard of the legislation more than a decade ago.

The idea actually took root in 2009, when parents and advocates started asking how they might protect children from industrial contaminants. They envisioned a process that would give ordinary people the ability to say: This is harming us. This is harming our children. This must stop.

Working with the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate and environmental lawyers in Ontario and Nova Scotia, they drafted a child-focused environmental bill of rights. It launched in 2014, but political interest was weak. Over the years, the bill was refined, strengthened, and is now supported by more than forty organizations.

It’s long overdue.

What Bill 23 Would Do
Bill 23 would enshrine the human right to a healthy environment in provincial law. It would:

Require government to protect health, with special attention to children and vulnerable people
Give any resident standing to go to court if that right is ignored
Create an Environmental Rights Commissioner to investigate contamination
Guarantee access to clean air, safe water, uncontaminated food, information about pollutants, and meaningful participation in decisions

It doesn’t eliminate conflict, but it changes the terrain—from citizen-led protests and roadside blockades to a level legal field where every New Brunswicker has recourse.

Why It Matters
New Brunswick’s history is full of communities left unprotected.

Belledune is the starkest example. For decades, a lead smelter released lead, cadmium, arsenic and other metals into the environment. Residents complained of illness, some died of preventable disease, scientists warned of danger. Yet officials resisted linking the pollution to poor health. Even when marine life and garden produce showed high contamination, government insisted levels were not high enough to cause harm.
A 2005 health study finally confirmed the area had elevated cancer rates, and soil testing proved dangerous lead levels: five times the safe limit for children. Still, change came far too slowly. The smelter closed in 2019, due economic reasons, after nearly 60 years of pollution.
Bill 23 is the tool Belledune never had.

More recently, residents near the Coastal Shell Products plant in Richibucto endured years of noxious odours, headaches, and nausea. Hundreds of complaints, protests, petitions, inspections, equipment upgrades—yet the stench persisted. Regulatory tools existed, but residents were never truly protected. Some initiated their own lawsuits. The plant shut down only after declaring bankruptcy in 2024.
And during the shale gas protests of 2012–14, communities argued that fracking threatened health, water, land, and Indigenous rights. Valid concerns were framed as political opposition rather than basic human rights. Communities had to fundraise for years to pursue legal action.
(As an aside, just this week, public health experts in British Columbia called for an independent study of oil and gas impacts on health, warning of cumulative harms to air, water, and future generations. As Dr. Tim Takaro of Simon Fraser University stated in the CBC article, “If we really accounted for all of those health effects… this industry would have been shut down a long time ago.”)

And I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the increased reports of neurological illnesses in New Brunswick. Years later, we’re still no closer to discovering the causes.

What About the Economy?
It’s a fair question, and one that often surfaces whenever environmental rights are discussed. Yet the global evidence is clear: countries that have legally recognized the right to a healthy and sustainable environment—now more than 160 nations, along with the United Nations—have not watched their economies collapse. They’ve watched them evolve.

Environmental rights tend to shift economies toward greener growth models, higher compliance standards, and increased investment in clean technology and infrastructure. Rather than stalling progress, these laws often spark innovation, pushing industries to adopt more efficient, less polluting technologies, while creating new jobs in renewable energy, sustainable farming, and tourism.

How can we afford it?
How can we not. NB Lung notes one in five of us lives with lung disease, worsened by pollution and climate change. Researchers and advocates have also raised repeated alarms about glyphosate and other contaminants showing up in our bodies and waterways, with links to neurological and chronic illnesses.

We pay the price for pollution with higher healthcare and insurance costs, workplace absences, expensive land and water reclamations. Prevention saves money across our healthcare, personal finances and infrastructure, while strengthening our workforce.

Some opponents warn of job losses, yet we’ve already watched hundreds of mill and mine jobs disappear due to market shifts—long before anyone proposed a legal right to a healthy environment. Too often, our communities are left with the environmental damage and the cleanup costs. We know our local economies are strongest when they’re built on a diverse mix of small and medium-sized businesses, rather than dependence upon a single large employer whose departure brings serious consequences.

Farmers, loggers, and property owners are already facing mounting financial risks as climate impacts accelerate. Bill 23 would require government to plan ahead for floods, storms, wildfires, and heat waves instead of reacting only after the damage is done.

An environmental rights bill doesn’t hinder prosperity—it shifts the focus from industries with the most to gain to the people with the most to lose.

Changing the Story
Our past tells one story. Beyond Belledune, Richibucto, the fracking protests, cancers and neurological diseases already mentioned—and countless others just like them—a 2022 Auditor General report revealed a backlog of more than 1,000 contaminated sites, many left open for over a decade. The area around the gypsum silos—where I still walk—is one of them.

Despite the hidden contamination, the landscape remains beautiful: community-built wetland ponds, cattails, wildlife and trails, with the towering silos standing like sentinels. They remind us of the many jobs that industry once brought, but also the mess it left behind and the community efforts to restore it.

We can stay in this story, or we can write a different one.

A story where every New Brunswicker has a recognized right to a healthy environment. A Commissioner to back them up. And the ability to ask a court to step in when government will not.
In the long run, rural economies can only thrive where the rivers are clean, the air is breathable, the marshes support life, and our children can grow into healthy adults. That’s how we keep real businesses and real families here for the next generation.

Choosing the Future
On March 26, 2026, MLAs will choose which story New Brunswick will live in when they vote on Bill 23. Please write to your MLA and implore them to vote YES—for our children, our communities, and the generations who will inherit the land we leave behind.

Because every New Brunswicker deserves more than rules. We deserve rights. And a future where the marshes are simply marshes again. Where the water is just water. Where both the wildlife and creatures we love can wander safely, and so can we.

Bio: Deborah Carr is a writer, author and environmental activist whose work explores the deep connections between people and place. She most often writes about nature, conservation, and human stories rooted in community.

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Letters to the Community: Gas Plant Fiasco

26/8/2025

Time for NB Power to Put Canada First:  The Tantramar Gas Plant Fiasco Demands Answers & Transparency Submitted by: Derek Lackey

As NB Power faces a "comprehensive review," their American-first energy decisions look even worse. In fact, all of their decisions should be questioned.

While New Brunswick ratepayers grapple with soaring electricity bills and NB Power projects "significant future rate increases that are creating affordability challenges,"¹ the utility's leadership continues making decisions that prioritize American interests over Canadian ones. The July 14th award of a 25-year, 400 MW gas plant contract to Missouri-based ProEnergy, despite five Canadian firms submitting competitive bids, now looks even more troubling against the backdrop of an ongoing trade war.² My mentor, Robert H. Lane has always said “Follow the money - find the truth”. Our local reporters need to dig in here.

Local Actions Matter on a Global Scale: NB Power's Gas Plant Proposed for Centre-Village on the Chignecto Isthmus

26/8/2025

Submitted by Deborah Carr, Albert County Resident

I want to share the letter I submitted on NB Power's gas plant proposed for Centre-Village on the Chignecto Isthmus. In this time of wildfires and heat, drought and dangerous air quality, political strife and polarization, wars and genocides, it's easy to overlook projects that do not seem to affect us directly. We're all carrying a lot of weight these days.

But, as I point out in my letter, we are all connected and our actions have long-lasting impacts. People can enjoy watching the miracle of the shorebirds at Dorchester and Mary's Point right now because protective measures were taken long ago to secure a critical stop along the route of travel for millions of these species. They are a perfect example of how local actions matter on a global scale. Here's my letter:

Enough with "Business as Usual" at the Expense of Canadians

1/8/2025

Submitted by: Derek Lackey, Lackey Agency, www.LACKEY.agency/[email protected]

On July 14, 2025, NB Power awarded a 25-year, 400 MW power-purchase contract—with the option to extend—to ProEnergy. ProEnergy is a subsidiary of a Missouri‑based U.S. company and has been given the contract, to build, own, and operate a fossil gas plant in Tantramar, NB, even though five Canadian firms submitted bids. Let that sink in: amid ridiculous tariffs and ever-strained cross‑border trade relations, especially under Trump‑era rhetoric, NB Power chose an American provider over Canadian competitors. That reeks of either gross incompetence or a blatant disregard for Canadian sovereignty and local industry.

An American Project on Canadian Soil for 25 Years
The deal locks New Brunswick into U.S.-sourced fracked gas for the next quarter‑century. All while Canadian companies, presumably with better knowledge of local supply chains and regulations, were passed over. This isn’t just a business decision, it’s a political and moral fail. Local Green MLA Megan Mitton calls it a contradiction: “we’re in an economic war with the U.S., yet our government signed a deal with an American firm.” Tantramar Mayor Andrew Black blasted NB Power for blind-siding locals with no prior consultation or discussion before the announcement. ProEnergy’s own environmental impact filing estimates up to 900,000 tonnes/year of GHG emissions—but only calls it “worst-case” while NB Power claims a typical 100,000 tonnes/year. That gulf is nine times higher and shouldn’t just raise eyebrows; it demands a full reckoning. Meanwhile, the facility threatens sensitive Chignecto Isthmus wetlands, critical wildlife corridors, and local groundwater (nearly 7,000 m³/day draw) without adequate consultation with experts like those at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute.

What’s Worse: Ratepayers Sealed the Deal
Can you believe NB Power won’t disclose how much this will cost consumers? The company crows that ProEnergy’s bid was the “least‑cost solution” that met the 2028 deadline, but ratepayers have zero transparency.

Canadians Deserve Better
This fiasco reeks of broken promises and failed priorities. Canada‑first? Not when U.S. firms get the contracts and locals are kept in the dark. Renewable integration? Hardly, this is fossil infrastructure masquerading as “transition.” Protecting provincial sovereignty? More like outsourcing.

It’s Time We Demand:

A public disclosure of why every Canadian bidder was rejected.
A thorough review of the supposed cost‑competitiveness.
Local and Indigenous consultation that wasn’t done quietly after-the-fact.
Commitment to explore local, or at least Canadian ownership, and renewable alternatives.

We will cough up the power bills. It’s only fair we see the full picture. Why were Canadian companies kicked aside? Why does U.S. fracked gas gets priority? Why no one, or no in accountability, is putting New Brunswickers first?

NB Power, provincial authorities, Premier Holt: this is not leadership. It’s surrender.

Please sign the petition to stop this from happening: chng.it/B5tyRwnJbc

References: greencaucusvert.ca/tantramar-gas-plant-eia-must-include-robust-public-consultation-and- expert-review theregional.com/green-politican-alarmed-that-big-gas-plant-will-be-built-in-her-riding ca.news.yahoo.com/big-emissions-estimate-worst-case-090000189.html theregional.com/green-politican-alarmed-that-big-gas-plant-will-be-built-in-her-riding warktimes.com chmafm.com/welcome/gas-fired-power-plant-announced-for-rural-tantramar-environment al-impact-assessment-underway

Vandalism at Railway Museum: Community Help Needed

29/5/2025

Image of train and train station from www.facebook.com/NBrailwaymuseum

Submitted by: David Briggs, Board Member, New Brunswick Railway Museum

I have been involved with the local New Brunswick Railway Museum now for over 4 years. I am currently on the board along with a few others. The main reason I became involved is I have a huge passion in preserving our past and our heritage.

The NB Railway Museum is a non profit organization run by mainly volunteers all year round and local area students during the summer months and a few weekends during the fall. We also are open for group bookings, special events, meetings or functions. It relies heavily on support from many local area organizations, local volunteers, donations and some government funding.

Never did I think I would see what is happening now...

28/2/2025

Dear friends, former students, colleagues, business operators and all who love Albert County:

I spent my youth in the rich natural culture of the Demoiselle Creek Valley here in Albert County. My memories are filled with pictures of swimming in and skating on the creek, exploring the many brooks that fed the creek and experiencing the many activities of a family who lived and loved the land.

In later years, after 27 years of teaching, I have been working on the land near the marshes and the powerful tides, and entertaining visitors who are amazed by our tides. Since my first seminar on Climate Change in 1970, I have conveyed concerns about what is happening on our earth.

Tips from a reader in response to the Village of Fundy Albert Information regarding registering your dogs using Docupet...

28/2/2025

Hi, I read your news and I always enjoy it.

I have been using docupet for years. You actually get 1 - $20 for Ren's Pets in Dieppe and 1 - $20 for Global Pets. I get two of each for 2 dogs.

It also gives you a free tag. You end up getting a free licence (coupons are worth more than the cost of the license). - Lynn Thebeau

Letter from the Chair of Connecting Albert County

30/1/2025

Submitted by: Heather Alward, CAC Board of Directors Chair

As the current Chair of Connecting Albert County, I applaud the talents that have put their efforts into building this publication into what it is. From the moment I had heard that there was such a way to keep Albert County connected I was in complete support of it as I felt that the four communities representing Albert County fell short on communication with each other in the past.

I have volunteered on the board for half of the time Connecting Albert County has been around. In answering the call for volunteers, I started out by adding events into the calendar, being a board member and then by taking on the position of Chair; all the while I was learning a lot about this publication. I’ve always had interest in the many qualities that Albert County has to offer. Whether you are in Alma or Lower Coverdale or back in Elgin, we have the history, tourism and family connections to keep us all sitting around a table talking together for hours.

As the community comes together and supports our little publication it will grow to become a needed fixture in our home. As my five years are up and it’s time for me to move on to other interests, I know Connecting Albert County will be here for the extended future and will see even more challenges than we did in the last 10 years. So here’s to hard work, a great publication and a community of inspiring people.

Congratulations on year 10!

News from the New Brunswick Senior Citizens’ Federation In Memory of Percy Huntington

23/12/2024

Image of Percy Huntington provided by NBSCF

Submitted by: Lise Guignard, Office Manager  

It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Percy Huntington, current Past President and a devoted and longtime member of the New Brunswick Senior Citizens Federation (NBSCF). Percy’s commitment to enhancing the quality of life for seniors across New Brunswick shone brightly through his decades of dedicated service, where he made a lasting impact on both the organization and the broader community.

Percy, a resident of Upper Salmon Creek, first joined the Minto Senior Citizens’ Club in 1993. He quickly became a valued leader, taking on the role of Vice-President in 2003 and President in 2004. His engagement with the NBSCF grew from there; Percy served as Chairperson of the Transportation Committee in 2005 and 2007, and later, as Chairperson of both the Ways and Means and Nominating Committees in 2007. His leadership extended to the 55+ Games, where he served as President from 2008 to 2015 and continued as Past-President on the Committee thereafter.

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