About & method

What this is

A documented account of how one family came to hold New Brunswick, what that has cost the people who live here, and what this province could build instead. It is assembled from court filings, government and regulatory records, an auditor general’s reports, a United States federal trade investigation, the books and award-winning reporting of journalists who covered the family for decades, and the companies’ own published statements. Where a primary source could be read directly, it was, and a copy of it was archived.

How a claim is scored

Every factual assertion in the piece is filed in an open ledger, scored one of three ways. The point is to never blur the line between what is proven and what is felt.

• Locked

  Documented in named, credible sources. Stated as fact because it is one.

• Needs source

  Almost certainly true or widely reported, but not yet tied to a citation we have read and archived. Written with hedging until it is, never as flat fact.

• Testimony

  Firsthand, lived experience. Presented as exactly that, clearly labelled, never as a proven published finding.

The full ledger is public on the sources page. So is every citation, each with a live link and an archived copy.

What it deliberately does not say

A few claims circulate about the Irvings that feel powerful and are false, or unprovable, or out of date. Each one, stated as fact, would discredit everything around it. So they are left out, and the true version is used instead. The family does not own NB Power or the province’s dams; the real story is a mandated public subsidy. The trees are not genetically modified; they are a clonal monoculture. Irving did not cause the Lac-Mégantic derailment; it was the customer that mislabelled the crude’s danger and paid. The refinery was reviewed for sale and then kept private; it is not being sold. Removing the false claims is not caution for its own sake. It is what makes the true ones impossible to dismiss.

Reader accounts

The investigation invites people to add their own accounts. Those submissions are moderated: every one is read before it appears, nothing is published automatically, and defamatory or unlawful material is removed. Reader accounts are presented as unverified testimony, kept visually and editorially separate from the documented investigation, and are never cited as proven fact. Submitting an account does not guarantee publication, and accounts may be edited for length or clarity.

Fairness, corrections, and right of reply

Irving is a major employer in a province with few alternatives, and the companies dispute much of the criticism here. Some matters, like the safety of glyphosate or the merits of the forestry model, are genuinely contested, and where a company or its defenders have a stated position it is noted in the relevant section. If you can show that something here is wrong, it will be corrected in the open, with a note of what changed and when. Any party named in this work is entitled to reply, and a substantive reply will be published alongside the relevant section.

Contact

Corrections, sources, replies, and reader accounts: info@3d3d.ca.