Ports, power, and who benefits: Lessons from the past

A report released mid-December by Statistics Canada was a bit of an early Christmas present for the country’s economy. For the first time since the trade war with the US began, exports increased, imports decreased, and Canada posted a trade surplus. Exports to countries other than the US rose sharply (11%) and imports from the US declined by 1.7% in September, the third straight month of decline. Early fruits, perhaps, of new or renewed trade agreements Canada has forged with the UK, Indonesia, Ecuador, Brazil, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the EU, the UAE, and Mexico since January 2025.

For Nova Scotia, this new era of US trade policy has meant increasing interest in both offshore wind and provincial port assets, including those of Sydney Harbour. As trade with the US becomes more difficult for countries around the world and they seek out alternative trade partners and routes, as Canada invests in large east-west projects including rail and energy transmission, as US ports and the Port of Halifax struggle to expand in dense urban landscapes let alone find space for the laydown and assembly of wind turbines, the Port of Sydney has never been more valuable.

And we own it. For now.

Ownership Matters

Looking back at one of North America’s largest economic development projects, Michael Shuman contends that although Tupelo, Mississippi attracted several outside manufacturers and doubled the number of manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2022, the median income, which was at the national average in 1999, was now 23% lower. And the poverty rate, which was well below the national average in 1999, had risen to the national average.

For Shuman – an economist, attorney, author, entrepreneur, and adjunct professor – ownership matters. Ownership disconnected from the community eroded, rather than enhanced, Tupelo’s prosperity.

This is a lesson that Cape Breton knows well. If the legacy of outside ownership of coal and steel had begun to fade from sight, the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Davis Day in mid-2025 brought it back into our consciousness and conversations:

• Decisions about investment, expansion, closures, and wages were made far from Cape Breton, with little accountability to the people and communities most directly affected.
• Profits flowed away from everyday Cape Bretoners and left the island with little to no real reinvestment in capacity, infrastructure, diversification, and economic development.
• Outside ownership prioritized cost-cutting and profit extraction over worker safety. This led to some of Canada’s most famous labour struggles, including the death of William Davis.
• With ownership distant, there was little incentive to mitigate long-term environmental damage. As coal and steel prices dropped, the owners packed up shop leaving open coal dumps and subsidence from old mines, and the coke ovens, one of the worst toxic waste sites in Canada.

A Familiar Crossroads

Today, we find ourselves at a familiar crossroads; one that calls on some of these hard-learned lessons of our industrial past.

Rarely do municipalities own a significant, globally relevant economic asset. For the CBRM, this opportunity first presented itself in 2012 when CBRM Council voted unanimously to purchase the 500-acre Greenfield site from Laurentian Energy and take responsibility for its development as a community resource.

A subsequent Council, under a new administration, voted to outsource responsibility for development to the entity now known as SHIP (also known by/for its lead proponents and majority shareholders, Albert Barbusci and Barry Sheehy). Typically, a contract of this magnitude would go to tender to enable a transparent and competitive process that would ensure the community was getting the best value, and that the selected proponents had the required expertise and track record.

Barbusci and Sheehy were awarded the contract without a tender. The contract was renewed in 2019 and 2021 without a tender or any material progress on the port, though Membertou First Nation – an organization widely respected for its governance and development expertise and achievements – was brought in as a minority shareholder in 2020

The contract expired in November 2024.

Lessons of the Past

We would be remiss at this juncture, not to heed the lessons of our past. And these lessons tell us that majority outside private sector ownership of our most valuable resources has not served us well. It has made us sick, broken our bodies, broken our families, and poisoned our environment, all while making the owners of the companies who arrived to extract whatever value they could, extremely rich.

The CBRM – or the CBRM in partnership with Membertou or a consortium of Mi’kmaw Nations – must maintain ownership of the Greenfield site. This ownership must include reasonable limits on any long-term lease, rescinding the 99-year lease option Barbusci and Sheehy were granted.

Most North American port leases range from 20 to 50 years. This is consistent with previous limitations on Nova Scotia municipalities through the Municipal Government Act (MGA) to lease public assets (limited to 20 years) that Mayor Clarke worked to eliminate through Bill C-85 (2018).

A 99-year lease would be of the same duration as that used by the British to secure its authority over Hong Kong. Claude MacDonald, the British representative during the negotiation, picked a 99-year lease because he thought it was “as good as forever”.

In the now-expired agreement, Barbusci and Sheehy also cemented their ability to purchase outright the Greenfield site for $10 million should they find a way to develop it. This option expired and it is one that we should be grateful to see in the rearview mirror.

No Community Benefit Guarantee

If the Barbusci-Sheehy contract is renewed for a fourth time, as some speculate is afoot, and previous conditions are carried forward, private sector (non-Membertou) interests have a clear path to owning 87.5% of one of the community’s most valuable assets. Despite having ten years to work out the details with the CBRM, the community still has no information on the benefits they can expect (via something like a Community Benefit Agreement) from a fully developed port.

A Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) is a legally binding agreement between a project proponent (often in infrastructure, development, or resource extraction) and a community, which ensures that economic, social, or environmental benefits are shared with the community.

It has become standard practice in CBRM Council to deal with matters in-camera to protect the interests and competitiveness of private sector proponents. Ten years into the Barbusci-Sheehy contract, it’s hard to imagine – where no parts of port development were publicly tendered and where no demonstrable progress has been made – that sharing the details of community benefits is the thing that would undermine SHIP’s success.

Will the community receive any royalties related to the commercial activity in the port? Are the royalties proposed competitive, in other words, do they compare to royalties paid in other ports in Canada? If increased tax revenue is a benefit, is there discussion of municipal and provincial tax concessions (lessening this benefit)? How much of port operations will be automated? In 50 or 100 years from now, who will be responsible for cleaning up the remnants of earlier developments?

Lessons Learned?

Most ports in the US are owned by the city or state. They are not privately owned. Public bodies, like municipal governments, can work effectively with private sector shipping lines, terminal operators, and wind turbine manufacturers, for example, provided governments commit to being informed, professional, responsive, consistent, and defenders of community, not private sector, interests.

If the CBRM lets go of this asset now (through a sale or 99-year lease clause of a fourth untendered contract to Barbusci and Sheehy), it appears as though we have learned very little from the last time we surrendered valuable community resources.

As we head into a new year and as we continue to find our way in a new era of trade, may we understand the incredible value of the Greenfield site at this moment in global shipping and green energy development. As a result, may we insist on a public tender for any future port marketing or development, administered by a neutral community actor like the Port of Sydney.

May we come to conversations about the port armed with knowledge of how these projects happen elsewhere (transparently, rigorously, publicly) and with the hard-learned lessons of our past.

And may we find the confidence, power, insight, and fortitude to do it differently this time around: with community ownership, benefit, and environmental and clean-up responsibility embedded in all agreements, and with the most important outcome – and the bare minimum – at the forefront of our minds always: the health, wellbeing, vibrancy, and prosperity of all.

Erika Shea is the President & CEO of New Dawn Enterprises, Canada’s oldest non-profit community development corporation.

Cape Breton Post, January 2, 2026