On Nov 20th, Co-founders of Atlantic Wildlife Institute in Cookville, NB, along with founding members of the Stop The Tantramar Gas Plant group, accompanied by Tantramar MLA, Megan Mitton, traveled to Fredericton to meet with NB Minister of Environment and Climate Change Gilles LePage and his Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) team. They discussed our immediate concerns regarding the Centre Village (Tantramar) 500MW fossil fuel plant planned in the Chignecto Isthmus. Below is the follow up letter to Minister LePage, highlighting once again their concerns for this project. They’re demanding if not at least a full and comprehensive environmental assessment be done, but to fully cancel this project. Please read why this area – the Chignecto Isthmus – is of vital importance and must be saved from industrial development of this scale. The environmental and health effects will be irreversible.
Open Letter to the Honourable Gilles LePage, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, December 1, 2025
Honourable Minister LePage,
We would like to thank you and your staff for giving us the time on Nov 20th to express our concerns about the Centre Village RIGS Gas Plant’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process. It was unfortunate we were unable to convince you to stop this ill-conceived project nor garner your support for a more extensive comprehensive review to be done. Although we now have a better understanding of the process and that a more comprehensive review is still not off the table, we did not leave the meeting with great confidence that our concerns were adequately being heard and appropriately addressed.
The most important message we hope was made clear was that NB Power has already inflicted extreme and unwarranted anxiety and damage to our community. We were intentionally blindsided, and our overall public and environmental health is now under assault. The most disconcerting element of this is that our provincial government, has either been unknowingly complicit or intentionally involved in assisting to facilitate this. The following facts exemplify how we have been mistreated through this process and why we are losing trust in government and the EIA process to defend our interests and not that of industry’s, particularly from an environmental protection standpoint:
- Marketing it as an Indigenous led project, a key element in avoiding public scrutiny and trying to fast-track this project once it was announced.
- Secretive dealings between NB Power and PROENERGY, for over a year, creating a site selection plan via a tailor-made RFP that would minimize public scrutiny/involvement and be pushed through on an accelerated timeline.
- Marketing it as an environmentally friendly project.
- Intentional mislabeling of the project and location, ignoring the sensitivity of the Chignecto Isthmus.
Indigenous led: FALSE. Through its Canadian president John MacIsaac, PROENERGY has falsely claimed that the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council is an equity partner in the project. This claim was made in the project proposals filed with both the federal and provincial regulators, was repeated during public meetings in Tantramar in August attended by both PROENERGY and NB Power and was defiantly put forward before the Tantramar Municipal Council by Mr. MacIsaac at a public meeting in September. The misrepresentation appeared to have worked in the beginning. Both Premier Holt and our federal MP Minister LeBlanc repeated the misrepresentation in public pronouncements, apparently thoroughly deceived by PROENERGY’s misrepresentation.
There is no equity investment in this project by the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council. There was no consultation with indigenous peoples on site selection. At best, the Tribal Council had an option to become involved in the future.
Was this misrepresentation deliberate? Of course we don’t know for sure, but it strains credulity to think that a sophisticated corporation such as PROENERGY would not know who its project investors are. And at the second public meeting held in Tantramar in August, Mr. Tristan Jackson, representing the interests of the Sovereign Wealth Fund counselling the Tribal Council on the matter, said that the project proposals claimed an indigenous equity investment, rather than the actual option, because an investment would be easier for all of us to understand! Fundamentally then, the misrepresentation appears to have been made with full knowledge of its falsehood.
This is a core breach of trust, perpetrated on all levels of government, the local population and our Indigenous peoples. It renders suspect all other representations of the project proponents. Even with nothing further, it is sufficient to justify cancellation of the project.
Site Selection review is a critical, foundational component of any environmental impact assessment process. It is essential for identifying and evaluating potential project locations to minimize negative environmental and social impacts, manage risks, and ultimately ensure project viability and success. It is very disturbing to see that site selection was so carelessly handled and not done publicly which eliminated the input of multitude of citizens and environmental organizations regarding the location.
The goal of an EIA is to inform decision-making, and evaluate site alternatives early in the planning process, allowing potential negative impacts to be avoided or minimized before significant time and money are spent on a specific location. Proponents are advised to engage with regulatory authorities and potentially affected parties (public and Indigenous communities) as early as the project inception and site evaluation stages.
Public engagement in the Centre Village site selection process simply did not happen. In fact, none of our community concerns are being heard and addressed at the appropriate time before actions are already being taken. Our community is being railroaded through this EIA process.
Environmentally friendly: FALSE. We want to be clear; we know this project is a gas/diesel power generation plant for providing power up to 500MW of additional electricity to the grid and should be assessed for its full potential power output. How the proponent chooses to run it is optional and questionable at best. Greenhouse gas emissions, the draining of an aquifer, diesel gas backup, destruction of an ecologically sensitive ecosystem and wildlife corridor, light and noise pollution are anything but environmentally friendly. Anything short of this acknowledgement is a tremendous breach in this communities trust in government’s role in protecting our environment and community well-being.
Chignecto Isthmus: the location for the Centre Village RIGS project. The Chignecto Isthmus is one of the most ecologically sensitive regions in all North America. It holds not less than 27 environmental designations and protections, whether internationally, nationally or locally. To put this project in such a location is a fundamental contradiction of Canada’s and New Brunswick’s goals to combat climate change and biodiversity loss.
A United Nations study identified two North American locations most vulnerable to climate change effects. Number one is New Orleans Louisiana, and number two? The Chignecto Isthmus.
Currently, there are two major government led initiatives taking place in the Chignecto Isthmus.
One focuses on Climate Change Adaptation. The Chignecto Isthmus is vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges. A major $650 million joint project by the federal, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia governments is underway to raise and reinforce the dyke system to protect critical infrastructure and communities. The other initiative is focused on Biodiversity Conservation. The isthmus serves as an essential ecological corridor, home to an abundance of wildlife including many protected species and habitats.
In 2022 the United Nations adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework responding to evidence that, despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide at rates unprecedented in human history. Canada took a lead role in the development of the Framework as it was moved forward for adoption. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy: Halting and Reversing Biodiversity Loss in Canada was developed to address the concerns and goals.
These initiatives identified the multiple activities th
at are altering nature on a global scale with the greatest being land-use change while climate change and pollution being listed as third and fourth. It also identified biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution as being intrinsically connected and posing as a “triple crisis.”
Geese on the Chignecto Isthmus, photo Pam Novak
The Centre Village RIGS project will impact all three elements of this “triple crisis.” The pollutants that are being proposed throughout the life span of this project will intensify the effects of our climate crisis. Biodiversity loss will be irreversible.
Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy is an implementation roadmap for the global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The Chignecto Isthmus is a priority area within this strategy, designated as a critical ecological and infrastructure corridor connecting Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The proposed plant sits directly in the centre of the most important “pinch point” for terrestrial migration between these two provinces.
To halt and reverse biodiversity loss requires a whole-of-government, whole-of-society management strategy built on partnership and collaboration. Public and private interest working together for the common good.
The management and review of this project through the provincial EIA process is the antithesis to these national strategies. All the environmental, public health, and socio-economic groups and organizations involved in protecting and operating in the Chignecto Isthmus region, that can publicly speak out, have taken the stance that at minimum this project requires a more comprehensive EIA review. All are adamantly opposed to this location. The Atlantic Wildlife Institute has formed the Protect the Chignecto Isthmus Coalition (PCIC) primarily to represent their concerns and have our voices join in solidarity. To date, seventeen (17) organizations have joined the coalition publicly with many others supporting behind the scenes.
It is the express responsibility of the New Brunswick Minister of Environment and Climate Change to protect the environment on behalf of New Brunswickers, not NB Power or any industrial venture.
The EIA process has not been transparent when it comes to protecting New Brunswickers from the serious concerns of the triple threat of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution. At a time when nationally and internationally the climate crisis is being addressed, New Brunswick should not be taking steps backwards, allowing for the continuation of fossil fuel plant development, particularly in extremely ecologically sensitive regions like the Chignecto Isthmus.
On behalf of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, operating for three decades on the Chignecto Isthmus, and on behalf of the many environmental organizations and other NGOs who have joined us in resisting this project, we urge you to exercise your discretion to stop this project now. The social and environmental costs of this project are just too outlandish, especially in a world where economically viable efficacious alternatives exist. Please do the right thing on behalf of all New Brunswickers and cancel the Centre Village RIGS project. We are confident that, were a comprehensive environmental impact assessment to be done, our concerns would be proven valid.
Sincerely,
Barry Rothfuss, Pam Novak
Co-founders
Atlantic Wildlife Institute
atlanticwildlife.ca
cc: NB Premier, Susan Holt; Minister of Energy, Rene Legacy; Minister of Health, John Dornan; Beausejour MP, Dominic LeBlanc; Tantramar MLA, Megan Mitton; Tantramar Mayor, Andrew Black; Tantramar CAO, Jennifer Borne; NB Power CEO, Lori Clark, Minister of Local Government Aaron Kennedy