Antigonish town, county councils moving ahead with vote to ask province to approve merger

A mayor and warden in Antigonish, N.S., have vowed to move forward with a vote on a plan that would see the Town of Antigonish dissolved and the Municipality of the County of Antigonish expanded to absorb it.

If a majority of both councils votes for the new plan, the mayor and warden would go to the provincial government and request a special piece of legislation to merge the town and council.

That would let them avoid following the Municipal Government Act, which would require a plebiscite and a review from the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board before a municipal merger.

Antigonish did apply to merge under the act in 2006. The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board rejected that application because residents of the town voted against it. Asked if they wanted to merge town and county into one municipality, 74 per cent of town residents said no. County residents went the opposite way, with 84 per cent in favour of a merger.

Every town councillor CBC News contacted was given a "friendly reminder" from town spokesperson Shannon Long that all interview requests had to go to the marketing office so that "we have consistent messaging."

Sean Cameron is an elected councillor for the Town of Antigonish, but would only speak to CBC News as a citizen. 

"The [town] CAO, Jeff Lawrence, has a tight grip on councillors and the only message that gets released is the mayor's (and his since the two work together)," Cameron said via email. 

Cameron said he is now against the merger. He said when his council, and the county council, voted to "explore" consolidation in September 2021, it was to look at both municipalities dissolving themselves and asking the province to form a new municipality. 

But Mayor Laurie Boucher and Warden Owen McCarron realized this September that would lead to a $1-million increase in the RCMP contract, so they announced that the plan is now to dissolve the town and hope the province lets the Municipality of the County of Antigonish merge with the town. 

McCarron said he backs the plan to dissolve the town and merge it with the county. 

"All staff would be treated equally. Currently the town staff are unionized workforce, most of their staff. The county is not, but they would all be treated equally," he said.

The warden said he will call a vote on the new plan this fall, but wasn't specific on the timing.

Mayor says rising policing costs a 'deal-breaker'

Mayor Laurie Boucher said the policing price rise would be a "deal-breaker," so they changed the plan to dissolve only the town and then ask the province to create special legislation to expand the county. 

She said she worked with the province and the federal government to devise the new plan and avoid the more expensive RCMP contract, as the county can grow as much as it wants, while the town contract is limited to policing 10,000 people. The Town of Antigonish has 4,300 residents, while the county has 20,000.

"That doesn't mean the county will be absorbing the town. What that means is that the town will dissolve and the county will reconstruct. We will be 50-50 partners. Everything will be the same," she said Friday.

She said if the merger happens, the town would honour its existing contracts with workers until they expire. If the town was dissolved and if the county was expanded to take it in, the new workforce could vote to unionize, she said. 

She said the town's power utility would continue to provide power for its current customers, and that varying area rates would mean no one who isn't able to use it would pay taxes for it. She added that the town's utility makes money. 

She plans to call a vote to dissolve the town this fall. It would require only a majority in favour to proceed to the province.

She said the vote likely won't be held at a scheduled council meeting this fall, but at a special meeting sometime after Oct. 18. She said the date will be announced three days in advance, as is legally required.  

Two county councillors told to consider recusing themselves

Harris McNamara represents District 9 in the Municipality of the County of Antigonish and is one of ten county councillors. He said on March 30 he was called into a meeting and told he was possibly in a conflict of interest and should consider recusing himself from voting on any merger question.

He wouldn't talk about the specifics of his supposed conflict, but said he got independent legal advice that said there was no conflict and he could vote. 

"The CAO and the warden showed me … a highlighted report on the conflict of interest," he said.

"One of the sections highlighted that really garnered my attention was a $25,000 fine and I think a year in jail. I'm a councillor of a small area in Antigonish County. I don't need that. Will I vote? We'll have to see."

County Warden Owen McCarron also told CBC News he told Coun. Sean Brophy he may be in a conflict of interest and should consider not voting because Brophy also works for the Town of Antigonish. Brophy did not respond to a request for comment.

Report 'falls short,' councillor says

Between March and June of this year, a consulting group hired by the Town and County of Antigonish conducted a community engagement process to get feedback on the proposed merger and produced a report.

McNamara said the report "falls short of getting us information that will allow us to make an informed decision on the benefits and drawbacks of consolidation. There's not really a fiscal analysis of the pros and cons of amalgamation."

The councillor used the example of the town, which has its own unionized power utility, while the county mostly uses Nova Scotia Power.

"In an amalgamated world, the only benefit will be to town people and it will not be a benefit to the county. So what's going to happen down the road?"

He said he has received eight emails and no phone calls in favour of amalgamation, and "hundreds" of emails and phone calls opposed to it, plus a petition with 1,500 signatures calling for a plebiscite. 

"It seems like we're saying vote now, plan later," McNamara said. 

'What are those hidden costs' 

Anne-Marie Long lives in the county. She said the report only increased her concern about the plans for a merger. 

Long noted the county has its own employees collecting garbage and recycling, while the town contracts that out. The town's public works department is unionized; the county's is not. It's not clear how those will be merged. 

"That's part of the fears of a lot of the county people — what are those hidden costs that are going to happen if you merge the county with the town?" she asked. "What are the actual reasons, other than a provincial priority, that are forcing this to come to be?" 

'Misunderstanding of the democratic process'

Tom Urbaniak, a professor of political science at Cape Breton University who specializes in Canadian municipal politics, said the memo telling councillors not to speak to journalists was an "overstep." 

"It displays a little bit of a misunderstanding of the democratic process," he said Thursday. "It is totally reasonable to say that if there is an official statement to be made on behalf of the town as a whole, that will normally be made by the mayor or by the CAO. But it would be completely inappropriate to tell members of council that they are prohibited from speaking to the media to share their own views.

"This is because councillors are elected officials and voters need every mechanism possible to be able to ascertain what their particular elected officials are saying and doing."

He said he's unaware of anything in the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act that would stop councillors from voting on such a "core" issue of governance. 

"If the assertion here is that amalgamation, yes or no, or merger or consolidation or reduction in the number of councillors, represents for each individual councillor a conflict of interest, there is no real precedent for that, no legal basis for that, as far as I can tell."