With this CBRM Council vote on January 26, 2026, SHIP sank. (The Sydney Harbour Investment Partnership.) 

I asked my magic eight ball if there would be some secret shenanigans to try to turn back time and bring SHIP back: It rolled around and laughed at me before saying "It is certain." 

Albert Barbusci, CEO of SHIP,  took to the pages of the Cape Breton Post to ask for a do over of sorts:  You can read it here. 

(This OP-ED is strangely timed, would it not have be more useful before Council voted to discontinue negotiations with SHIP?) 

Let's start with the end of Barbusci's editorial:

"We (SHIP) believe the next chapter for Sydney Harbour should be built in partnership — with the municipality, with local communities, and with the people of Cape Breton."

Whoa.

This promise of outreach to the community, and the people of Cape Breton is surprising. If you have been trying to follow the progress of SHIP over the last eleven or so years, you know that SHIP has mostly moved behind closed doors.

Here is an amusing case in point: 

In May of 2019, The Chronicle Herald interviewed Albert Barbusci and attached this subheading to the resulting article: "Developer says he’s not prepared to reveal ‘secrets’ on proposed Novaporte terminal.

Barbusci is quoted directly; "Our secrets are being well kept right now and that’s the way I want to keep ‘em."

Barbusci was at Montréal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport during the short interview and hilariously, to me, anyway, when the Herald reporter asked him where he was flying to he refused to say. 

“Every time we come out with our strategy … I read our own strategies back in our own competitors’ news and so they use all of our strategic information for their benefit. I’m not about to do that anymore. And there’s no reason to do it.”

A second, and less amusing, example of Barbusci's penchant for secrecy and perhaps a little beyond that, was when the late and wonderful Mary Campbell of The Cape Breton Spectator asked Barbusci to clarify a part of his Novaporte bio which did not seem to be accurate, according to her research. Well, Barbusci cancelled a first meeting he was to have with Mary with the following: "That said, I will not be meeting with you tomorrow and I will send your file along to my attorneys for review."

We can all judge for ourselves whether we accept that SHIP's work will - here is the quote again:

"We (SHIP) believe the next chapter for Sydney Harbour should be built in partnership — with the municipality, with local communities, and with the people of Cape Breton."

Another point Barbusci tries to make in his OP-ED is that it is boringly normal for a project this size to take a long time to complete: We should not be concerned that there is nary a shovel nor a crane over there in Edwardsville yet. 

And then he drops the L word.

Library. 

He reminds us:  "Cape Breton residents know from experience that major public projects often take time. Even the new municipal library — a project many people support today — has taken decades to move from early ideas to final design. Large infrastructure projects follow a similar path."

It was not inevitable that our new central library which is now going to be part of an apartment/retail building on the waterfront took decades long to get to this point - where it is a promise. The citizens of Pugwash, Antigonish, Charlottetown, and Halifax are now benefitting from new modern libraries because their municipal government robustly supported the projects, and ours did not.

You can read about the "path" our not yet existing but promised new central library here.

Surely, an effective way to show his readers that building ports take time, particularly before construction begins, would be to provide them with a few solid examples. 

We should consider, when taking in Barbusci's OP-ED, that SHIP influenced our community's expectation of the timing of the harbour development with announcements of coming progress that later disappeared much like the early morning mist on the Bras d'Or on a  summer morning.  

A few examples: 

2016 Canderel Group of Companies: "All the stars have aligned and we've seen the shippers see the vision and they're anxious and we're moving forward. Our hope, our wish is that in the next 12, 18 months, the shovel's in the ground and the port is under construction."

2023: (SHIP) "We will now work towards completing all the pre-development requirements, with the goal of putting shovels in the ground this year. Novaporte intends to continue our dialogue with the community as the project develops, with the target completion date of phase 1 for 2026.”

2023: (Barbusci) "Construction is expected to start this year on land set aside in the Sydney, N.S., harbour for a proposed container terminal, but it won't be what the developer initially sought."

Before turning an important point raised by Barbusci, let me express concern over the fact that SHIP seems to chase businesses that are, in my opinion, far beyond their mission to develop a container terminal and now, an offshore wind marshalling yard. 

I learned, on Barbusci's LinkedIn page, that one of the SHIP's four projects is:

• Novaporte Energy Park – A 1,250-acre industrial campus for green hydrogen, ammonia, and hyperscale AI data centers powered by offshore wind and LNG backup.

Whaaaaat?

How did we get to a point where an hyperscale AI data centre is being planned by a developer that is meant to work on, initially, a container terminal? 

Hyperscale AI data centres use a lot of water: International Energy Agency, reported that these centres, in 2023,  used about 140 billion  liters of water just to cool down servers. Where did they get the water? From municipal utilities. 

Barbusci winds up his OP-ED this way:

"As council considers next steps, an important question for the community is how long-term, at-risk development — undertaken in good faith and encouraged through successive agreements and extensions — should be acknowledged when decisions are made about changing course. This is not about entitlement; it is about fairness, credibility, and how Cape Breton signals to future partners that sustained effort and private risk are treated responsibly."

I am for transparency in government. 

I am not for municipal government blindly giving a developer control of what could be the largest infrastructure development in CBRM in some time.

I think that the partnership between CBRM and SHIP came to be behind doors and stayed that way.

So, has CBRM led SHIP down the garden path? 

I don't think so, but how could any of us really know when a cone of secrecy was placed over this deal?

CBRM Council voted to end negotiations with SHIP and open up the Port development project for bids. (Just like like they should have done in the first place.)

SHIP can place a bid, and if it is as ready as it says it is, it will be hard to beat.