AUDIO: What should the future look like for the Sydney Harbour Greenfield site?

In early January, Mayor Cecil Clarke told Information Morning Cape Breton host, Steve Sutherland, that CBRM council was negotiating a new port contract and it could be decided within weeks. That topic is on the agenda for the Tuesday, January 20 council meeting, so a decision could be made sooner rather than later. New Dawn President and CEO Erika Shea joined Steve Sutherland on Information Morning to talk about why she wants that lease to be taken to a public tendering process.

“Our concern is that community interest, community benefit, be at the centre of all of these conversations and negotiations, and there isn’t a sense of trust in the community that that is how this is being handled,” Shea said, adding that a transparent tendering process is the solution.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around why we wouldn’t tender an opportunity of this magnitude, and so if there’s been substantial progress over the last ten years that warrants not tendering this time around, the onus is on the CBRM to explain that to the community — what progress has been made, what does it mean, and how are we going to move forward — and we just exist in the absence of all of that information.”

Listen to the full conversation here.