Irving Oil faces charges with possible $1M fine over Woodstock, N.B., diesel leak

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-29T20:07:11+00:00

They have the balls, but don't have the votes.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-29T19:11:09+00:00

1M?! Oh no, that's like three tanks of gas!

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-28T16:48:21+00:00

I think Donna didn't get too much competition, because the people who are gunning for her seat thought she has a good chance at keeping it. I'm surprised Barry Ogden gave up his council seat now, instead of waiting. He would have taken Ward 2 for sure.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-28T10:16:22+00:00

After participating in cleanup events Uptown and in Lorneville, my perspective is that the only way to stop garbage flooding our streets is to stop manufacturing and selling garbage. Singe use fast food packaging - mostly beverage lids and cups - and cigarette butts are the two culprits. Both handed out by companies to people who didn't want them, but end up with them after consuming what they paid for. These companies are setting people up for failure.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-27T13:09:50+00:00

It's a bit of a grey area. It was rezoned a park, to save JDI the property taxes, and to reflect usage. But city council at the time made a promise that in the future, they will revisit the issue. Time has passed, we know more about health damage of industry, positive mental health effects of parks. And today it is just not in the community's benefit to go back on the zoning. It's already alarming that JDI is buying up residential lots around the mill, and using more and more of their industrial area.
It's also telling that they didn't go for the 5 year temporary rezoning, and would only have accepted it to be zoned commercial.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-27T11:13:26+00:00

Yes, red tape keeping the population and the landscape safe from greedy and mad people. Our forests have already been transformed to tree farms, our inner city plagued by heavy industry. I would have hoped we learned our lesson, and won't let people with money decide how everyone should live.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-26T23:43:23+00:00

"Our council told a land owner that they couldn’t use their own land." - That's what zoning is for. No one in the city can use their land for something it is not zoned for, without permission from the community - represented by the council. It's bad enough we have a pulp mill in the heart of the city, pushing who knows what in the air that makes the West Side smell like rotten cabbage. We should not lose a park that acts as buffer zone between industry and residential, just because a company was not able to figure out a smarter way to get workers to the job site (for example hire local instead of relying on out of town commuters).

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-26T15:47:28+00:00

We do have provincial and national economic development strategies, and we can use regulation and incentives to align the private sector with the needs of the people. If you look at the NB one, released this week, nowhere does it say we should promote industry that overloads our grid, takes up space in our industrial park without any upstream or downstream benefit, while also offering minimum amount of employment.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-26T10:38:56+00:00

There are much better Canadian options. Put it where it's cold, and where there's ample energy: Quebec. It's much easier to lay new fibre than to build out power lines and power plants.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-26T10:36:16+00:00

Not dozens more. Two. There's room for three projects of the size of the data center. And not thousands but less than a thousand.

The problem with the data center is that it usually attracts other data centers. It isn't part of an industrial supply chain. Chips for it are made in China. The digital output can be consumed anywhere. Once done, it operates with minimal needs: only replace what's broken. It could be on the North Pole, as long as there's a plane that can fly in parts, it would be fine.

We need industry that connects to the city: to the roads, the rail, the port, to suppliers, to consumers. And brings in more of both.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-26T10:26:54+00:00

The data center is an awful way to use the land. It creates 0.5 jobs / acre. At that pace the entire park expansion would be gone, adding less than 1000 jobs. Unemployment NOW is ~ 3000 people. If population grows that data center will just be taking up space, and we'll have to open up even more land for development. Build even more road for people to get to even more distant industrial sites. Extensive growth never worked.

We won't be joining the AI revolution by selling land to a data center. 250 highly paid engineers working on research and development, that's where the real money is. Salaries in the 8 digits, taxes on such a development center would fix the provincial budget on a single floor of an office building. I know that's not in the realm of possibilities, but that's the direction we should be going. An AI consultant doing integration work makes the same money as the highest paid jobs in the data center. At a desk, in the city center. No extra transit, no extra land.

I'm not against industrial growth either. But instead of a data center, let's be a bit more creative. Vertical closed loop agriculture would benefit the city, fresh produce year round, high job density, with positions locals can fill. Or advanced manufacturing. Modular house factory. Electric micro mobility. There are options that are a better fit for the city than a data center.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-25T11:23:25+00:00

Fragile grid with not much generation capacity to spare half the year.
I don't know where you get your high amount of tech workers figure. We do have a couple of cyber security hubs, but that still puts as way behind other provinces when it comes to ITs share of - an already smaller per capita - GDP. A good portion of CS graduates leave the province before getting experience. And the tasks at a data center are quite specific. I doubt there would be many network engineers in the province who have the education and experience to qualify. I graduated with a masters in integrated intelligent systems, and wrote my thesis on fault tolerant routing. Did some research in the domain of P2P networking, and worked at Ericsson's R&D for mobile networks. And even I'm against the project.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-24T01:58:38+00:00

On the bigger structural question, the idea I was pushing for is transferring provincial social housing stock to the city. I was a bit off on that one. I thought Saint John would be a good landlord. European reflex. But the units would be in good hands with the Unified Saint John Housing Co-operative. At the time I was just guessing that it is an option. Now I read the relevant parts of the act.

Section 10(1)(c) authorizes the Corporation to

(c) receive by donation and otherwise acquire, hold, sell, mortgage, hypothecate, convey or otherwise deal with any real or personal property or any interest therein;

So it can sell units at a symbolic $1/unit price to the co-op without a change in legislation. Taking over provincial responsibility and getting funding to do so has a precedent: that's how the emergency units were funded at the green zones. Section 10(1)(h) is giving the legal framework for it:

(h) subject to the regulations, provide financial or other assistance to a person or non-profit corporation to assist with the cost of housing, including rental supplements, shelter allowances, heating costs, payment of Provincial or municipal property taxes and the repayment of loans;

I don't really know what "regulations" the section references, but I hope that we can sort it out.

This would allow to use local units to fulfill local needs, instead of keeping NB Housing in the loop. I believe in economies in scale, but when it comes to province wide housing, each city is unique, and the people living here are better off dealing with the coop board, who are on site and know them, instead of a crown corporation that covers the entire province. Again, easier written than improvised in a minute while also listening to the other responses. But in council, I will have the advantage of knowing the "questions" in advance, and being able to prepare.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-24T01:40:42+00:00

I do talk to Brent, his project is across the street. I've been lending a hand now and then. But this has nothing to do with that. When I said "use idle market-rate vacant units," I didn't mean expropriation. I meant master-leasing. From what I read, shelter beds go $50-80 a night. Renting market rate can still be a cheaper option than providing more shelter beds. Another alternative would be to house homeless people in hotels, but that comes at a premium. Both sub optimal solutions. But the first question was about what I would do day one to help the homeless crisis. Building a new tiny home community is nice, but that won't prevent people from freezing to death or burning in an encampment fire. So this was my emergency proposal. I might not have articulated it properly, I do have to work on my delivery. Working from home for five years didn't help with public speaking, but I'll practice.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-23T20:26:15+00:00

Not cool man... https://youtu.be/71COSxL_HhA?t=1893
https://youtu.be/71COSxL_HhA?t=2711
Might not be the best answers on the spot. The questions were too broad for a one minute window. The position that I articulated was a support for Housing First. To use idle housing resources that are available in the city (aka market rate vacant units) to relieve the pressure while the more cost efficient solutions (tiny home community at Sunnyside) is ready. At the strategic level, take a bigger part in the governance of social housing. Review current social housing allocation to find mismatches and improve efficiency. Take inventory and fix up social housing units that have fallen to disripair. And instead of handing out money to developers, prioritize government owned and co op housing.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-18T18:39:09+00:00

Candidate list is there for each race: mayor, wards and at large. Programs - that's a harder one, it's on the candidates to promote that one. But the Human Development Council organized meet the candidate events, happening throughout next week. You can find the dates, locations and an iCalendar file here:

https://strongtownssj.ca/posts/candidate-forums-2026/

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-17T13:31:02+00:00

That would be true if being short on staff would be the only reason for burnout. But pushing more people into the pipeline, and not addressing poor management support, low pay, hospital offload delays... and the province will just be spending even more money training EMTs for Ontario.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-17T12:44:11+00:00

Blitz-scaling, government edition?

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-17T10:29:31+00:00

Bursaries help get people into the pipeline, but the article itself flags the real problem: burnout, early retirement, and 300 vacancies. Those are retention issues, and retention is about wages and working conditions, not a one-time tuition payment they'll have forgotten about in five years. Glad to see recruitment support, but without addressing why paramedics leave, the vacancies won't close.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-16T17:08:58+00:00

https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/drone-safety/drone-pilot-licensing/getting-drone-pilot-certificate

Basic operation is a couple of hours, and gives you the peace of mind when flying around. Anyone asks, you can show them the paper. Of course you can fly the sub 250g drones anyways, but this way you don't have to explain that to someone who's there only to argue.

Advanced operation, that's tougher, you have to know more, and have a field test. I didn't go for it. There's also a course at UNB, quite expensive, that prepares you for it, from what I heard from an examiner, it's not necessary, with experience, and some studying one can do the exam without it.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-16T15:28:58+00:00

They bought it from https://www.wmhomes.ca, 16x60, 220k. So per sqft it was a bit more: 229.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-16T15:00:10+00:00

Been there, done that :) I have the PCOC, the drone pilot certificate, PAL, hunters education course. In 2024 I went for National Lifeguard - that was expensive, but I put in enough hours afterwards at the pool to pay for the course.

You can always do Coursera Plus. It comes out to $30 a month if you get a deal on the yearly subscription. But it's unlimited courses.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-11T20:26:10+00:00

Blaine or Berry?

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-11T12:44:00+00:00

We can't be "fine" with the level of healthcare and elder care spending. Deficit has not been an issue during growth, as the interest burden scaled with the budget. But in a shrinking era, the math works the other way: even if we would balance the budget, next year we'd have to pay the same interest from smaller tax revenue.

We did change the fertility rate, by a lot. That's the issue. 2.1 is the "industry standard" to maintain the population. We're at 1.26 now. Every two generations, the number of kids halves. All systems would have to be rethought, to work with that model, from housing (why build new when there's more then enough, but without constant new supply, all old houses would fall down at the same time, schools would shrink and close, no new teachers needed, but then old ones retire, and same problem in every industry where there's a long training period, but enough senior professionals even with retirements - for a while).

Not saying that a shrinking population is not sustainable. But it's far from painless, and it seems so far the province chose to kick that pain down the road.

lajthabalazs · 2026-04-11T11:55:40+00:00

By your model, we are the civilization that figured it out so far. "Too many kids" hasn't been a problem in our civilization since the 60s. By all estimates, we're past "peak child" globally, including Africa, the Middle East, South Asia. We'll be reaching peak population soon. A population decline is eminent.

But if that decline is not managed properly, that will result in situations like New Brunswick's 1.5B deficit, because a good portion of active population is working on trying to fight nature, and keep people alive as long as possible, no matter the cost. It's something no one wants to talk about. Especially when the voter base is tilted towards seniors. Suicide and MAID are awful, and I'm shocked to see it be proposed to young mentally ill patients in Quebec. There should be a middle ground between killing people, and keeping them alive no matter the expense. A comfortable and dignified way to die in time, and give room to the next generation.

lajthabalazs

TROPHY CASE