Inverness County Update April 24

CHNE prepares regular segments with municipal officials from Inverness County to keep the community up to date. Since the pandemic, council meetings have stopped being public. This week, Chief Administrative Officer Keith MacDonald talks about recycling, the beginning stages of a food security project and the development of a volunteer network during the pandemic. 

The municipality has received no updates from the Nova Scotia government on when to re-open the Strathlorne Recycling Facility, which has been closed since March 25. To help residents save space at home, the county will start picking up blue recycling bags to keep in storage at the facility.

Council has also started working on a project proposal to develop food production in Cape Breton. The proposal will be shared with neighbouring municipalities and First Nations communities to see if they can work together and seek funding from other levels of government. The project would be across the board, including all aspects of food production and getting the product to market. “How do we make sure we have proper seeds?,” MacDonald asked, “how do we make sure we have land to be able to utilize … and how to get that to production; how do we get more people into this industry?"

MacDonald said that several residents have expressed concern about food security in the last few months. “The pandemic has certainly demonstrated,” he said, “and there are many articles and commentary about this -- this country’s reliance on not necessarily just even food, but products being produced in other jurisdictions and that we have no capabilities to produce in our own country or province. I think, from reading the material out there, there is going to be a shift back to how do we produce more, again, not only food but other products locally that we need for these very challenging times.”

Another project the municipality is working on - helping existing community groups from across the county (MacDonald counted 14 for now) to work together. The county has organized a first conference call between the groups and will support further collaboration.