Anglican Church won't talk about role in controversial campground development

The Anglican Parish of Shediac is refusing to discuss why it has become the official proponent of a controversial Shediac campground.

Last week's environmental impact assessment, filed publicly with the province, lists the parish as the proponent.

Rev. Keith Borthwick, the church's priest and rector, is listed as the campground project's chief executive officer.

The church owns the 32 hectares on which the campground would be built and plans to lease it to the developer, Shediac Camping Ltd., a company that included Liberal Health Minister Victor Boudreau as an investor.

"The diocese has a policy that all media requests have to go to the bishop's office," Borthwick told CBC News.

But in an email statement to CBC News, Bishop David Edwards suggested he is not aware of the details.

"As the EIA states, the Parish of Shediac is the proponent of the project," he wrote. "Until the diocese receives a proposal from the parish, we have nothing to comment on. We are letting the process play out."

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Pointe-du-Chêne residents who have been fighting the 600 to 700-site campground say they believe that by listing the church as the proponent, Shediac Camping Ltd., can continue keeping its list of investors a secret.

Only two of the investors have been identified publicly: Michel Boudreau, the lead spokesperson, and Victor Boudreau, the Liberal minister and MLA for Shediac-Cap Pele.

Victor Boudreau said this week he would "forfeit" his 20 per cent investment in the project.

Boudreau said in March there were five other investors, but he refused to identify them.

Section 1.0 (i) of the province's EIA rules say that when there are two or more "corporate entities … the legal names of all parties to the project must be provided."

Pointe-du-Chêne resident Arthur Melanson says his interpretation of the rules is that the names aren't required if the landowner is listed as the proponent.

"If you register under that criteria, you don't need to divulge any of the investors or whatever," he said. "It's just the owner that's identified and does the registration."

In an email statement late Tuesday, Environment Department spokesperson Marc-André Chiasson said Melanson's interpretation of the rule was wrong.

"The term 'corporate entities' represents the proponent of the project," Chiasson said. "In some situations there can be multiple proponents, but corporate entities does not refer to investors."

Melanson said he and others suspect the church itself is one of the other investors in the project.

"They've never come out and said yes or no, a clear position," he said, "so yes, we're making an assumption they're part of the investors because of all of the effort they've put through to get this campground in place."

The province acknowledged in March it made a mistake when it told the church it did not need a watercourse and wetland alteration permit to built the second section of a new walking trail on the land.

Melanson said the new trail replaces an existing one that cuts through the centre of the proposed campground site.

The existing trail would have complicated the creation of the campground, he said.

"The way we looked at this, it was a strategic move to put that trail where they did," Melanson said.

In a January 2014 letter obtained by local residents, Victor Boudreau, then an opposition MLA, told government officials that "the parties have agreed that this trail needs to be relocated" to accommodate the campground.

He said the parish would apply for the required permit.

But in an October 2015 email to the province, the church claimed the trail relocation "is not connected to any particular development that may in future happen on the Parish's land," the church's land manager Bill Murray wrote.

He said the new route was safer where it crossed two roads and would also allow "nature observation sites."

It would also increase the property's value by replacing the existing trail that bisected the land.

"Contrary to the opinions and narrative some residents are now expressing, moving this trail is not the beginning of the campground project that was discussed in 2014," the email said.

Victor Boudreau said Monday he was close to finalizing his divestment from the project and would not comment further.

Michel Boudreau did not respond to an interview request Tuesday.

Victor Boudreau owned a 20 per cent stake in Shediac Camping Ltd., which he put in a blind trust in late 2014, after the Liberals won the election and he returned to a position in the cabinet.

In March he said he would recuse himself from any government discussions about Parlee Beach because a working group of officials was considering a moratorium on development in the area to address water contamination.

The province has yet to announce a moratorium, but it has rolled out a new water-testing protocol and $3 million in federal and provincial funding to find and fix the source of the contamination.