Cape Breton councillor frustrated by lack of info on port project

A Cape Breton Regional Municipality councillor is upset she had to get an update on a proposed container terminal for Sydney, N.S., through the media.

Earlier this month, Earlene MacMullin pushed her colleagues to ask for a public update on the proposed economic development project.

She said council hasn't heard from Sydney Harbour Investment Partners, the company given an exclusive contract to market the municipality's land for a container terminal, for more than a year.

MacMullin said that's why she was concerned when she heard about a new financing deal on the news just last week.

"It feels like we're just sitting in the dark, again, and that seems to be the standard for this, actually, and that's what's extremely frustrating," she said.

Last Wednesday, New York investment firm Avaio Capital announced plans to finance the proposed container terminal project.

Albert Barbusci, CEO of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners, told CBC the next day that the project had been financed by a Chinese firm, but he was forced to find new backing due to trade tensions between Canada and China.

MacMullin said the port marketer's last update to council was in March 2018.

Informal updates offered

Council members have been offered informal meetings with Barbusci since then, she said, but that's not good enough.

"There needs to be a more formal update to council," MacMullin said.

"This telling that somebody's in town and 'Oh, if you have a couple of questions or if you want to see them, go ask,' it's not really the same context.

"That's just a general conversation between two people. It's not actually official, so it's frustrating."

Barbusci said he has been in town several times in the last year and has made himself available to council.

He was also willing to meet with council members last week.

"Informally, I was wanting to update everybody, all of the councillors," Barbusci said.

"And then at one point I understood that some couldn't make it or whatever, and then it got cancelled."

But Barbusci said he couldn't officially alert council ahead of time about the new financial arrangements last week.

He said that's because Avaio is a publicly traded company and he couldn't make any official announcement before the investment firm made the deal public.

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