For the second time in a little over a year, Moncton Headstart had to take one of its buses off the road after noticing its catalytic converter had been stolen.
That means roughly 20 children from the vulnerable population the non-profit serves weren’t able to come in for services and meals on Wednesday.
“For us, when kids aren’t here we worry about them,” Headstart executive director Caroline Donnell said in an interview.
“So (the kids) do need to be here and it’s not just an inconvenience, it’s awful. Stop stealing from us. It makes me mad.”
She’s frustrated that this has happened for a second time, and isn’t sure how the organization will come up with the $2,000 to $3,000 needed to replace the catalytic converter.
Leaving the bus idle in the parking lot isn’t an option.
“We can’t keep that bus off the road. I can’t not have kids here. So it needs to be fixed pretty rapidly,” she said.
She said a garage owner donated a new catalytic converter to the organization when the first catalytic converter theft occurred last winter.
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The Department of Justice and Public Safety introduced new legislation to curb catalytic converter theft in the province in October 2022.
Changes included requiring salvage yard dealers to ask sellers for a government-issued ID, as well as the registration number of the vehicle the catalytic converter came from.
“The New Brunswick government has a Salvage Dealer Licence issued by the Department of Public Safety under the Salvage Dealer Licensing Act – – for those buying vehicles for scrap,” Automotive Recyclers of Canada executive director Steve Fletcher told Global News in an e-mailed statement. “They also have a Motor Vehicle Dealer Licence issued by the Department of Public Safety under the Motor Vehicle Act – – for those buying vehicles for parts. Neither are particularly well understood or enforced.
“New Brunswick remains the sole province with two seemingly overlapping licenses that have little to no enforcement resources, and they have rebuffed any overtures by industry to harmonize and modernize the licenses.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice and Public Safety told Global News that an announcement on amendments to the Salvage Dealers Licensing Act would be coming “in the next few weeks.”
Global News reached out to the Codiac RCMP for comment on Wednesday.
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