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SAINT JOHN - Radio advertisements are warning voters not to choose Coun. Stephen Chase on Monday, but the third-term councillor says the attack ads misrepresent his views on the contentious issue of water privatization.

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Stephen Chase

"I feel like I'm a prime minister in a federal election," Chase said Thursday. "I guess I really caught some people's attention."

The councillor heard the ads while he was at The Wave and CHSJ preparing to air his own radio ads. Chase says the ads are from the "Coalition for Concerned Citizens" and criticize him for voting for the liquefied natural gas tax break and his belief the city should consider public-private partnerships for the city's needed water filtration plants.

"It says I want to 'give away your money to private companies for huge profits,'" Chase said with a chuckle, stressing the word "huge" as if he were the radio announcer.

During the early afternoon Thursday, ads from the coalition aired repeatedly on the station, but they were lauding mayoral candidate Ivan Court, not criticizing Chase.

Court's brother Bruce, who is running for a seat in the east side's Ward 4, says in his campaign literature that he is chairman of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Unions & Small Business, a group that was created in the wake of the LNG deal. But he said Thursday that he stepped back from the group when the campaign started.

"It's nothing to do with me," the council hopeful said. "I don't even know what the ads say." He said the correct person to talk to would be Linda Stoddard, an east side resident who sometimes writes letters to the Telegraph-Journal criticizing the LNG deal or weighing in on other topics.

Stoddard could not immediately be reached for comment.

"It's all very interesting," Chase said. "It's unfortunate that special interest groups want to misrepresent my position for self-interest."

Chase has come under attack before over his stance on the city's water infrastructure. The Canadian Union of Public Employees has been distributing signs and pamphlets urging "no to water for profit," while Chase says he has no intention of selling Saint John's water. He says he only wants council to look closely at whether the private sector can do a better, more cost-effective job running the filtration plants than the city's union workers have.

Chase says citizens want public ownership of the water itself and safe, clean drinking water - in both cases, he wants the same, he said.

But if a private company can do a better job running the plants then council should consider it, he said.

If the research shows that the union workers are still the best choice, Chase says he can live with that. But he says he won't let the union management control the agenda.

"If people return me to office, it will be with a clear mandate of pursuing better management at city hall and seizing control of services at city hall away from the union management and back to the people," he said.

As for LNG, Chase has been arguably the least repentant of all the councillors in his support of the deal. When the issue was resurrected in January after a dormant stretch, the councillor said, "I always expected there would be an element that would drag it up, but I think the wisdom behind that decision should be fairly evident in the economy," he said.