Warden Luke Charbonneau receives the Warden's Pin from CAO Christine MacDonald on December 5, 2024
Bruce County’s new warden is reflecting on 2024 with a sense of pride in the accomplishments made by the upper-tier government.
Luke Charbonneau says that he’s most proud of the county agreeing to an Indigenous Reconciliation Framework with the Saugeen Anishinaabek.
“A lot of work went into that,” said Charbonneau in a interview with Bayshore News. “We really appreciate the work that the Saugeen Ojibway Nation did on it, and the help that they gave us.”
He said that the framework acknowledges that the Saugeen Ojibway Nation are the knowledge keepers in the region, as the land is their traditional territory.
“It recognizes our unique government-to-government relationship that we have between the county and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, so it’s an important document that represents a significant amount of work that has gone on between the county and the First Nations, and we’re very happy and proud to have the framework in place, and [we’re] eager to start implementing it.”
Over 2024, Bruce County has done good this for its member municipalities, including opening the new Paisley branch of the Bruce County Library, dedicating Bruce County Road 9 as the Highway for Peace in honour of the 150th Bruce Battalion from World War I, and opening the new paramedic station in Port Elgin.
“It’s a beautiful building, but most importantly it’s going to provide a level of service for our lake shore communities that we need and it provides a good facility for our outstanding paramedic staff, so we’re really pleased with that.”
He says that Bruce County is in for some exciting developments, namely expansion of Bruce Power’s additional isotope production, and the Bruce C project that’s in the works.
“At the county level, we have a lot of big things happening. We have Bruce [Power] looking at an exciting future there, whether it’s continued expansion of their work around isotopes, or their looking at a new build with the Bruce C project, and so the county I think is going to play a lead role it terms of the municipal engagement on those projects, making sure that we have the infrastructure in place, making sure that we have everything we need at our disposal to accommodate and support that work,” he said. “We really want to see, obviously, our nuclear sector to expand and grow, but that’s going to mean we’re going to have to position ourselves to be able to put forward the municipal perspective and talk to the province and the federal government about things we need to support a nationally and provincially significant infrastructure project like a new build at the Bruce so that’s certainly something that we’ll be working on.”
Charbonneau says that there’s still work to be done for 2025, particularly with having the province take over provincial responsibilities that have been downloaded to municipalities over the years.
“I think the big challenge – and this is a challenge for all municipalities – but one that the county has been highlighting, [is the fact that] our municipal budgets are under a lot of pressure. The county in particular does a lot of work on areas of provincial responsibility. In fact, we [the county] support areas of provincial responsibility at a rate of more than $30 million a year. The big push, and as I said is not just for Bruce County, it’s for all municipalities, and under the leadership of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has been to call on the province to reassess the funding model that it has with municipalities.
He says that in terms of goals for 2025, he’s hoping that the county will be able to explore bringing rideshare transportation options to the region, and to look into introducing green bin organic collection to help divert waste from local landfills.