NB datapoints

Data and Comments on New Brunswick Issues

Text of the ‘Responsibilities for Roads’ Document

Last Updat­ed on 2026-04-08

Last Updat­ed on 2026-04-08


Who should pay for local roads in New Brunswick? Towns and cities take care of their own road main­te­nance, with some cost-shar­ing from the provin­cial gov­ern­ment. In rur­al areas, that respon­si­bil­i­ty is tak­en on by the province. Is that fair? Should rur­al res­i­dents, most of whom live in ‘one-acre-lot’ rur­al sub­urbs, be asked to pay more?

[This is the fourth in a series of posts on ser­vice costs in Local Ser­vice Dis­tricts (LSDs) in New Brunswick. I sug­gest read­ing these pre­vi­ous posts, which add con­text to the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed below:

In 2011, the New Brunswick gov­ern­ment moved towards reform of the sys­tem of local gov­er­nance by adopt­ing some ele­ments of the Finn report. By grad­u­al­ly trans­fer­ring respon­si­bil­i­ties (and tax points) for pro­vi­sion of local ser­vices to Region­al Ser­vice Com­mis­sions, the Province hoped to relieve itself of cer­tain costs and also trans­fer deci­sion-mak­ing for cer­tain polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive issues to the region­al com­mis­sions. Finan­cial analy­ses car­ried out by the Province in pre­vi­ous years indi­cat­ed that prop­er­ty tax­es col­lect­ed from rur­al New Brunswick (in par­tic­u­lar the unin­cor­po­rat­ed Local Ser­vice Dis­tricts) were insuf­fi­cient to cov­er the costs of local ser­vices. This means that once local ser­vice deliv­ery is com­plete­ly trans­ferred the Region­al Ser­vice Com­mis­sions, prop­er­ty tax­es in at least some parts of rur­al New Brunswick may rise, and rise con­sid­er­ably.

Among the doc­u­ments released as part of the process of tran­si­tion to the new sys­tem was one enti­tled ‘Respon­si­bil­i­ties for Roads’. In brief, this doc­u­ment sets out an eight year tran­si­tion peri­od dur­ing which respon­si­bil­i­ties for local road main­te­nance and repair would become a local respon­si­bil­i­ty. The Province would no longer fund snow­plow­ing and main­te­nance of what it deemed to be local roads. Those would become the respon­si­bil­i­ty of rur­al munic­i­pal­i­ties, towns and vil­lages and/or Region­al Ser­vice Com­mis­sions. There would cer­tain­ly be some tax impli­ca­tions in this trans­fer, espe­cial­ly for rur­al areas with falling pop­u­la­tions and a weak­en­ing  tax base.

The ‘Respon­si­bil­i­ties for Roads’ doc­u­ment was once found at this URL:

 http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/trans/pdf/en/Publications/Responsibilities_for_Roads.pdf .

How­ev­er, it seems to have been removed or relo­cat­ed.  I had pre­vi­ous­ly down­loaded a copy of the doc­u­ment and have placed the text below (and here’s a link to the down­loaded pdf   —   Responsibilities_for_Roads).  I don’t know why the doc­u­ment has been removed — per­haps the gov­ern­ment is no longer intent on down­load­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties for local roads, per­haps the issue is deemed too polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive for dis­play, or per­haps the plan is ‘under review’.

In addi­tion to the text of this doc­u­ment, I sug­gest read­ing pre­vi­ous posts on this sub­ject:

Note: I have bold­ed cer­tain text below to empha­size what I con­sid­er to be key points. Also, note that the doc­u­ment pro­vides for a tran­si­tion peri­od of no more than eight years. That would take us to 2019 or 2020.

Text of the Respon­si­bil­i­ties for Roads doc­u­ment fol­lows:

____________________________________________________
Pub­lished Decem­ber 19, 2011 (cre­ation date Sept 22, 2011; down­loaded Oct 7, 2014)

Responsibilities for Roads

In the Action Plan for a New Local Gov­er­nance Sys­tem in New Brunswick, the Provin­cial gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to the devel­op­ment of a pol­i­cy toward fair­er allo­ca­tion of local respon­si­bil­i­ties for roads, so that com­mu­ni­ties that choose to join togeth­er can afford road ser­vices.

Devel­op­ment of this pol­i­cy will involve:
- a detailed analy­sis of the road net­work in unin­cor­po­rat­ed areas, includ­ing a re-exam­i­na­tion of road clas­si­fi­ca­tion
- a deter­mi­na­tion of road con­di­tions
- an assess­ment of road main­te­nance and cap­i­tal costs
- an assess­ment of fair allo­ca­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty across com­mu­ni­ties

In the inter­im, the Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment has put in place the guide­lines out­lined below to mit­i­gate the finan­cial impact asso­ci­at­ed with assum­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty of local roads as a result of unin­cor­po­rat­ed areas choos­ing to become part of a new or exist­ing munic­i­pal­i­ty.
These guide­lines pro­vide an overview of Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and Infra­struc­ture (DTI) ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed with­in new munic­i­pal enti­ties.

Provincial Interim Guidelines – Local responsibility for Roads
Department of Transportation
Guidelines

1. DTI con­tin­ues to pro­vide sum­mer and win­ter main­te­nance ser­vices [defined under s. 49 in the High­way Act] to the local ser­vice dis­trict (LSD) sec­tion with­in the new munic­i­pal enti­ty, per cur­rent ser­vice lev­els.

2. Main­te­nance ser­vices pro­vid­ed by DTI (includ­ing new developments/subdivisions) will be fund­ed by the new munic­i­pal enti­ty. Admin­is­tra­tion and con­trol of all roads locat­ed in the new munic­i­pal enti­ty will fall under respon­si­bil­i­ty of the new munic­i­pal enti­ty, except those that will be clas­si­fied as provin­cial and regional; munic­i­pal roads will be des­ig­nat­ed as per the High­way Act for cap­i­tal fund­ing pur­pos­es dur­ing the cap­i­tal tran­si­tion peri­od (see # 4 below).

3. The new munic­i­pal enti­ty may enter into a con­tract with a dif­fer­ent ser­vice provider, or under­take to devel­op inter­nal capac­i­ty, for main­te­nance ser­vices in the LSD sec­tion, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the col­lec­tive agree­ment in place at DTI. Where the new munic­i­pal enti­ty wish­es to enter into a dif­fer­ent arrange­ment, the new munic­i­pal enti­ty will pro­vide a min­i­mum of 12 months notice to DTI; the new arrange­ment then becomes per­ma­nent.

4. Fund­ing for cap­i­tal projects (exclud­ing new developments/subdivisions) will be exe­cut­ed in the fol­low­ing man­ner:
a. A devel­op­men­tal plan will be estab­lished for the tran­si­tion of fund­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for Cap­i­tal projects from DTI to the new munic­i­pal enti­ty;
b. The plan will trans­fer all, or a por­tion of the respon­si­bil­i­ty to fund cap­i­tal costs asso­ci­at­ed with the road infra­struc­ture;
c. The finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion of the new munic­i­pal enti­ty in rela­tion to road cap­i­tal expen­di­tures will be such that the tax­a­tion bur­den will be equi­table to that of oth­er sim­i­lar munic­i­pal­i­ties;
d. The tran­si­tion peri­od will extend no longer than eight years.