Rural New Brunswick must stand up and be represented

    I predict that the future of New Brunswick rests with its local communities. Two decades of globalization following two decades of ‘provincialization’ has left citizens disempowered and communities hamstrung. New pressures of all sorts – economic, social and ecological – are going to make life a lot more difficult in the coming decades. The only way we are going to deal with them is for all citizens to re-imagine our collective future and set about achieving it. This is best done at the local level where people live and work. For that to happen, local governance needs to be re-organized and communities given the power to chart their own course and the tools they need for the journey.

     This government has set this in motion with its local governance reforms. The potential is there for a revitalization of our province from the bottom up. But if rural New Brunswick does not want to be dictated to by municipal interests (which are well represented in the news), they had better get on the local governance train. Either rural dwellers become engaged in shaping the future or it will be shaped for them and they may not like what they get.

     True to his word, local government minister Bruce Fitch is not forcing amalgamations or new governance structures on anyone. But he is providing a great deal of incentive for rural areas currently without any local representation to take a good hard look at it. The regional service commissions recently announced will entrench some basic – and undemocratic - inequities between communities with and without local councils that will quickly become apparent once the commissions are up and running next year.

     These regional service commissions are large, encompassing several municipalities and local service districts. They will be responsible for delivering (solid waste management, emergency services) and coordinating (policing, recreation) services throughout this region. Perhaps more significantly for rural areas, they will also carry out regional planning and local planning in unincorporated areas. What is important here is how decisions are going to be made. Who will sit on these commissions and how will they be appointed?

     It should come as no surprise that the mayor of each municipality and incorporated Rural Community within the region will have seat on the board that will govern the commission. After that, things get messy. Unincorporated areas, the Local Service Districts (LSDs), will be allocated a certain number of seats based on some unspecified ratio of population and tax base – in other words, not every LSD will get a seat. Who gets them? The Chairs of the LSD advisory committees within each region will get together and nominate from among themselves people to fill unincorporated seats. Those nominees would then be appointed to the board by the Minister of Local Government to whom they would be directly accountable (they are not accountable to the people within unincorporated areas). Where there are not enough LSD committee chairs to fill the unincorporated seats, the Minister will simply fill them directly.

     This structure is entirely undemocratic. First, people living in the many LSDs without advisory committees have no say in who sits at the table on their behalf. Second, far too much authority is vested in advisory committee chairs who are not elected by normal election rules as mayors are. In any case, their authority is limited to their own district, not the broad unincorporated area. Finally, having the minister appoint seats from Fredericton is simply feudal.

     These are not insubstantial issues. Here in Charlotte County, as many people live in LSDs as in incorporated municipalities, and most LSDs have no advisory committees. Yet only municipalities will have democratically elected representatives on the board. This will create an imbalance, probably in numbers and most certainly in legitimacy, in board decision-making.

     Three possible solutions come to mind. One would be to create a board seat for each LSD and require each one to form an advisory committee whose chair would take the seat.  Another would be to assign all board seats based on population and for citizens in unincorporated areas to elect their representatives directly, overseen by Elections NB. The third would be rural dwellers to take direct responsibility for their local affairs by incorporating Rural Communities with an elected mayor who would then take her seat on the regional commission board in this capacity.

     Like it or not, rural communities are going to have to step up to the plate and become more engaged in self-governance or let the municipalities and province dictate what happens in unincorporated areas. The time to step up is now. The train is leaving the station.

-          30 –

Janice Harvey is a freelance columnist, university lecturer and president of the Green Party of NB.  She can be reached by email at waweig@xplornet.ca.

February 8, 2012

©Janice E. Harvey, 2012.

The great river is silent
only sometimes it sounds quietly
deep under the ice

- Imma von Bodmershof, translated by Petra Engelbert

In The Eleventh Hour: What I should have said and a list of overdue resolutions

The world is as sharp as a knife. If you stand on the edge of the circle that is the present moment.What’s inside is knowledge experience: the past. What’s outside has yet to be experienced. The knife’s edge is so fine that you can live either in the past or in the future. The real trick is to live on the edge. A saying among the people of Northwest Canada - The Golden Spruce, John Vaillant

I’ve been lamenting, since sometime in 2008, the awful loneliness of single-womandom. For years I’ve tried to be subtle about my plight; no one likes the obviousness of desperation, but now that I’ve joined an online dating service, (for the serious pursuit of a potential life-partner this time rather than the entertainment of social experimentation like last time), I feel that public affirmation is the last unexplored vestige of my desperation. Thus, I seem to be ‘blogging’ feelings and events that may in fact be better kept to myself.

I digress; I actually hate the term ‘Single.’ The word, when used to describe my personal marital status, elicits memories of the inevitable quiz section in pre-teen magazines; nightmares of my five years in high school; the sickening feeling of being trapped in a top 40 dance party bar and, finally; my feministy unwillingness to bow to society’s stigma that a woman is whole only if married to, engaged to, in a serious relationship or, gasp, co-habitating with some man. (I have a similar abhorrence for the term ‘Attached’ when used to describe people in relationships, but without the same elicitation since I find myself less often described as the later).

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have a partner; someone whose natural inclination is to dote lovingly upon me, to father piles and piles of my babies, to travel the world with me (and my piles of babies) or, at the very least, to do the dishes, but as I seem to find myself more and more often without said partner, others have come to know me as ‘Single.’ I, on the other hand, choose not to think of myself so dreadfully. I prefer to think of myself as Liberated, Autonomous, Independent, Self- Determining, Individual, Self-Sufficient, Not-Attached, Spouse-Free, or Not-in-a-Relationship.

Oh, but these are not the monikers by which normalized society views my status. No. To them; on the government forms and the social media sites and to the extended family and peripheral high school friends one only sees around Christmas time, I am more easily categorized as ‘Single.’ How pitiful to be so separate, so only, so solitary.

I’d been home for 18 days between Home, Guelph and Christmas, but it wasn’t until around 2:30 am the morning before I would leave Narnia to come back to New Brunswick that I would meet a man. A tall, hansom but otherwise unassuming man; a man whom I would surely have grown to loathe had we been able to spend sufficient time together, not that I’d had any indication he was the type of man to loathe, only that this (my intense loathing of most human beings) seems to be the reason I am so very… shall we say Liberated?

Upon conversing, however; the man and I noticed we had a few things in common; our both being in Guelph at the time, our being human and adults, perhaps our being slightly older than some of the other adults in the vicinity, our having been to a similar region of the world, our both having participated in a rather uncommon extreme sport and of course our both being… Not-in-a-Relationship.

The man, after an appropriate amount of chit-chat asked rather pointedly if I was “Attached.” To which I most likely snickered in snobbish protest of the terminology and then said politely “No, I am very much Not-Attached.” Men, at this hour of the day, by now closer to 3am, tend in my experience, to sway toward the desperate, the slurring, the tactless, but not this man. This man, although he succeeded in educating me on the extreme acuteness of his own Non-Attachment, did so with reticence and modesty.

We lamented our locations and the unfortunate circumstances for dating therein:

Mine: Knowlesville, New Brunswick.

Status: Hamlet

Population: 859

Demographics of the Non-Attached: Me, 5 children under the age of 6, one heterosexual female over the age of 64, one former drag queen aged 37.

His: Guelph, Ontario

Status: University town

Population: hundreds of thousands of mostly suburb dwellers (shifty eyes, SUVS, etc.).

Demographics of the Non-Attached: Queer folk, Men over the age of 40, Alcoholics under the age of 40 and ‘University girls’ (his term).

Lately, I feel, more and more, like the lab rat in my own strange psychology experiment especially in the way I have been explaining myself to others. Perhaps this has something to do with the vast amounts of self-reflection I have done in the absence of other things to do in the winter in remote rural New Brunswick. For example: I am using this and other similar experiences to try and ‘learn’ what to do and not to do when faced with a potential mate in a social setting. Also: I tend to experience a lasting pleasure in being ‘hit on’ which temporarily increased my sense of self-worth. Finally: I am beginning to learn the importance of clarity especially concerning my intentions, but am learning less quickly how to articulate them.

By now it was at least 3:30. With a coy grin, I excused myself to the bar for a glass of water and he, seemingly content to reconvene thereafter, adjourned to smoke. Unfortunately, somehow in the mix of time and space and ambiguity of intentions the man slipped off without another word.

What I meant to say, before I so confidently walked away from a captivated and not in the least unattractive man, is “What are you doing later?” I feel this would have, both; a) been funny since it was already nearly 4am and b) secured in the man’s mind the seriousness of my own acute desire for… Attachment, I suppose.

Like I said, and as in the fable about the fox and the grapes, I would, no doubt, have ended up hating the poor man and if not, how sad I would certainly be now; here in New Brunswick, knowing that such a fine specimen exists far away in Narnia. Better not to have had the opportunity to be disappointed than ever to have loved at all… Still it does seem an opportunity lost.

I resolve, then, among many other things this year, not to be Single and even if I continue to be Liberated or Not-Attached I shall not dwell in the realm of fantasy despite my incredible imagination and propensity for living out all possibilities in my tiny crazy head. I shall be present, live on the edge of the knife, focus more on things; ideas, events and people that I know with a degree of certainty rather than speculation or hearsay. Secondly, as promised; I resolve to be a better and more communicative friend. In so doing, I shall try not to base every conversation and interaction on complaints even if they are hilarious and I shall try harder to call more often. Third; I resolve to take my vitamins before breakfast and again with dinner and finally; I resolve to walk the 1 kilometre to work and back more often than hitchhike.

As for the man, as far as my imagination is concerned he is in Guelph - my magical Narnia with its great lore and amazing characters and mythical vegan food - however, while I’m here and he and all my favourite people are doings things that I won’t know about until I go back there I shall learn their stories directly or from firsthand sources and shall not infer, assume or surmise. I shall focus only on the things I know and not presume, guess or take-for-granted. I shall write a convincing profile and post it on GreenSingles.com (what an unfortunate name) and I shall not wait until the eleventh hour to join the limbo contest.

February - Good Oak

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from a furnace.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.

To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside.  If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator.

A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold