Group calls for province to axe or fund service commissions' social mandate

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An organization representing 55 New Brunswick municipalities is now calling on the province to remove social issues like homelessness and poverty from a growing list of responsibilities facing regional service commissions – or give municipalities the money to resource it.

The membership of the Union of Municipalities of New Brunswick voted at their AGM last month to have the organization lobby the provincial government to nix a social mandate from the regional service commissions or, failing that, to fully cover the costs.

“It’s very important that we recognize what our abilities are, and what our challenges are,” said Quispamsis Mayor Libby O’Hara, who also chairs the Fundy Regional Service Commission board. “And we see that as a challenge, because we don’t have the the expertise in the fields that have been downloaded, nor do we have the funding for it.”

In 2023, the province’s 12 regional service commissions were saddled with new responsibilities like regional transportation, tourism promotion, economic development, public safety, facilities and recreation and community development on top of previous offerings of solid waste management and land planning.

In 2024, the commissions that comprise Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton – Southeast RSC, Fundy RSC and Capital RSC – will be expected to tackle social issues like poverty, homelessness and mental health.

In a motion introduced by Quispamsis, the town noted that municipalities lack the skills, resources and funding to take on social issues.

“By downloading these areas of responsibility and associated costs to the municipalities who fund the regional services commissions, the provincial government is clearly abdicating its duty; and encumbering these local governments with further significant financial costs,” the motion said.

Social file complex

Of all the new responsibilities handed down to the RSCs, the social development one has to be one of the more complicated ones, said UMNB president and Tantramar Mayor Andrew Black.

“These are huge, complicated problems that municipalities in some cases are already working on,” he said. “They’ve been sort of pushed over the years to take a stance on it, to get involved.”

On top of that, there’s all the organizations that already work on the social development files within the municipalities, Black added.

“Adding a layer of this social development mandate to the RSCs, some would argue, is complicating a complex issue.”

Then there’s the question of affordability.

When the Fundy Regional Service Commission passed its $19.3-million 2024 budget – itself up $1 million from the year before – the social mandate wasn’t included in the figures.

The budgeting question is part of a wider issue across the province, Black said.

“Funding the RSCs, period, is a concern for many municipalities,” he noted. “Adding this in, for municipalities, is an extra amount of money that maybe municipalities wouldn’t have to otherwise spend.”

Few details released on social mandate

On Tuesday, FRSC spokesperson Brenda MacCallum said the commission has yet to receive “any further information from the province about the social focus.

“We have not included any actions in the Regional Strategy pertaining to it, nor have we budgeted anything for it for 2024,” MacCallum continued.

O’Hara said the service commission needs more guidance from the government and has received “nothing that gives us a clear mandate with no kind of a business plan in place that says, ‘here’s what we our expectations are.'”

She said that the commission’s community development committee has had discussions on the matter.

“And the results of that is that they can’t seem to gain traction,” she added.

“They feel that anything that has to be done is going to come at a cost, whether it’s housing, affordable housing, mental health, addiction, all of those mandates require money. And they also require skilled people in those fields. And as municipal representatives, as the elected, we don’t have those skill sets.”

Letter being sent to local government minister

Black said the UMNB is prioritizing the issue and will be sending a letter to Local Government Minister Glen Savoie and the deputy minister.

He noted that municipalities have just passed, or are in the process of passing, their 2024 budgets, with the new year looming.

“We have to strike while the iron is hot,” he said, adding the UMNB hopes to have a sit down with the minister and the department.

When the motion was first discussed at a Quispamsis council meeting in September, town CAO Aaron Kennedy said the motion was unlikely to make the province budge.

“That ship has sailed,” he said at the meeting. “The province has done the heavy lifting on what they want to do in terms of these mandates, and they’re in place and I think we’re all stuck with them.”

Black had a slightly more optimistic outlook.

“We won’t know until we sit down and have a conversation with the minister and his office to see where we can get with our advocacy.”

O’Hara said the Fundy Regional Service Commission is “committed to working within the mandates that have been placed upon us.

“We want things to work, we want to do well and we want to be able to serve our residents,” she continued. “But there are some things that, as I say, we simply don’t have the skill set.”

Brunswick News has reached out to the Department of Local Government and Local Governance Reform but did not receive a response by publication time.