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COMMENTARY: Three provinces, one coastline, zero co-ordination  

Atlantic Canada's great coastal split

Nova Scotia has a law it won’t use. New Brunswick wants a plan it doesn’t have. Prince Edward Island is quietly building a hybrid model of community action and emerging policy — but still lacks the legislative backbone that would ensure its longevity.

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The three Maritime provinces share the Atlantic coastline, but their approaches to protecting it — particularly the vital estuaries where rivers meet the sea — reveal a patchwork of ambition, delay, and uneven progress. The examples that follow focus on large, high-profile rivers in each province: the Petitcodiac in New Brunswick, the Avon in Nova Scotia, and the Hillsborough in Prince Edward Island. These are not obscure backwaters but iconic waterways that have become unlikely test cases for how — or whether — governments can manage the places where land meets sea.

The land-sea connection 

Estuaries sit at the bottom of watersheds. They accumulate whatever runs off the land — agricultural fertilizers, livestock waste, urban stormwater and industrial contaminants. Effective coastal protection therefore requires two things: removing physical barriers that block tidal flow and managing upstream inputs that poison the water. The Maritime provinces have pursued these twin goals with strikingly different philosophies.

Nova Scotia: The law that only exists on paper

Nova Scotia did something remarkable in 2019. It passed the Coastal Protection Act, legislation explicitly designed to stop development that interferes with “the natural dynamic and shifting nature of the coast.” The act recognizes that shore-stabilizing structures often accelerate erosion. It defines the coast broadly, including estuaries. It even acknowledges sea-level rise as an inevitable threat.

It’s a genuinely forward-thinking piece of law. There’s just one problem: it has never been proclaimed in force. The regulations necessary for implementation remain unwritten. Nova Scotia has a coastal protection law that exists only on paper — a political gesture rather than a functional tool.

Nowhere is this failure more visible than on the Avon River, one of the province’s most significant estuarine systems. In 1970, a causeway was built, creating an artificial freshwater reservoir called Lake Pisiquid. In 2021, the federal government ordered the gates opened, restoring tidal flow. The lake drained. Saltmarsh regenerated. Fish returned.

COMMENTARY: From coastal management to stewardship: What we can learn from Indigenous worldviews 

COMMENTARY: Keeping Nova Scotia from becoming an island (again) 

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