Responding to Darrell Dexter

In this week’s Letters to the Editor section, premier Darrell Dexter says that in my coverage of his intervention on the Bridge Terminal issue I was “factually incorrect” and that I misrepresented his position. He references two blog posts I wrote, here and here.

In the first blog post, I reported that in 1995, when he was a Dartmouth city councillor, Dexter voted to move the Bridge Terminal onto its present site next to the Dartmouth Sportsplex, which I claim is on the Dartmouth Common. Dexter disputes this, saying, “the land belonging to the Dartmouth Sportsplex had long been exempted from the Common as defined by the Dartmouth Common Act. Mr. Bousquet fashions this a ‘linguistic’ problem. It was not. I chaired the Commons Committee and we knew exactly what land we were charged with responsibility for. he looks back through time without having the facts and tries to interpret what happened. He is just plain wrong.”

But it is Dexter who is just plain wrong. The boundaries of the Dartmouth Common, as defined in Dartmouth Common Act of 1986, and reaffirmed on June 30, 1994, clearly include the Sportsplex land, although the act does just as clearly exclude the Scotiabank property:

“ALL [capitals in original] that certain parcel of land on the northeastern side of Wyse Road, southeastern side of Nantucket Avenue and northwestern side of Thistle Street…”

The full legal description in the act clearly draws a boundary line from Thistle Street, north along Wyse Road, to the corner of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) property—that is, to the west of the Sportsplex, leaving the Sportsplex and the parking lot that Dexter voted to move the terminal to, inside the Dartmouth Common.

But don’t take my word for it, read the act here.

Secondly, Dexter disputes that he agreed that the changed orientation of the Bridge Terminal complies with amendments to the Dartmouth Common Act, writing that “Bousquet says that I ‘admitted that the city’s plan was consistent with the Dartmouth Commons Act.’ This is something that I did not say.”

I don’t know what Dexter thinks he said, but what he actually said can be found in the transcript of my interview with him. The relevant exchange came when I told Dexter that the city’s viewpoint was that a recent amendment to the Dartmouth Common Act allowed the updated, re-oriented transit terminal to be placed on Common land:

Bousquet: My understanding of the city’s viewpoint, for what it’s worth, is that all along they’ve said, ‘yeah, ths fits under the amendment that the province…’

Dexter: [interrupting] Yeah, and I have no doubt that it fits within the amendment, but that’s not the question.
[emphasis added]

Again, readers needn’t take my word for it. Here’s a recording of the entire interview; the above exchange is at the 6:28 mark.

This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.