CANSO – After years of controversy, a contentious local tax rate in District 8 — which includes the former Town of Canso — has been reduced, but only for a small group of properties on Durrell’s Island, as the Municipality of the District of Guysborough (MODG) approved its 2026–27 budget last week.
Under motions passed March 18, council lowered the additional local services rate for residential properties in District 8 on Durrell’s — a small island community off Canso — from $1.5145 to $0.9438 per $100 of assessment, a reduction of roughly 38 per cent, and removed the rate entirely from resource properties in the district.
The broader rate structure, which has been the subject of years of complaints in Canso and surrounding communities, remains largely unchanged. Across the municipality, residential and resource properties are taxed at $0.77 per $100 of assessment and commercial properties at $2.74. In District 8, however, an additional local services rate applies to residential properties at $1.5145 per $100 of assessment and to commercial properties at $1.3470.
The move marks the first change to the additional local services (ALS) rate since council received a consultant’s report last month examining long-standing concerns about tax fairness in District 8.
Prepared by KPMG and presented to council on Feb. 18, the report did not recommend reducing or eliminating the additional area rate. Instead, it proposed a series of structural changes aimed at aligning taxation and service funding more closely across the municipality, including shifting sewer costs to a user-fee model, reviewing policing costs and deployment, and requesting a provincial review of property assessment methods.
The review was commissioned following years of complaints from residents and business owners in the former Town of Canso, where properties have been subject to the additional local services rate since amalgamation in 2012. Consultants found that concerns about tax fairness are driven in large part by differences in property assessments rather than the rate itself, noting that residential properties in Canso are assessed at significantly lower values than comparable properties elsewhere in the municipality.
They also concluded that the tax structure in Canso is unique among Nova Scotia municipalities and that services funded through the additional rate are financed through different mechanisms in other jurisdictions.
In most parts of MODG, properties are subject only to the general rate, with services such as sewer billed separately to users in communities including Guysborough, Hazel Hill and Little Dover through dedicated user fees.
In District 8, however, the KPMG report said, “there have been significant problems with how the ALS has been implemented since amalgamation,” noting that as the levy is applied on top of the base rate “District 8 properties without sewer are paying the ALS.”
In his remarks to council at last week’s meeting, Warden Paul Long said the Durrell’s Island adjustment “reflects that these properties are not expected to be included in the wastewater management district that will be defined under a new equivalent unit sewer fee structure.”
Council has not yet indicated whether it intends to adopt the broader set of recommendations outlined in the KPMG report.
Despite the tax break for some residents of Durrell’s Island, District 8 Councillor Fin Armsworthy expressed disappointment prior to the meeting’s adjournment last week, saying the measure did not go far enough. “I still think that Canso is not getting a fair shake,” he told his council colleagues.
In a follow-up interview with The Journal, Armsworthy said the change does little to address broader concerns in the district. “We haven’t made any headway in just about 11 years,” he said. “Everything’s still the same.”
Bill Bond, president of the Eastern Guysborough County Ratepayers Association, also said the change falls short of what residents in District 8 have been requesting. “I’m happy for them — it’s a start,” he said of the reduction on Durrell’s Island. “But it should have been across the board for all of Canso, not just a selective few. It’s a slap in the face to the rest of the people in Canso.”
In response to questions from The Journal, Christina Bowie, the municipality’s manager of strategic initiatives and communications, said further information about “the ways we are making progress” would be released separately.
