Katherine Pomerleau is a Commissioner of Oaths for New Brunswick, based at Grand-Barachois, about ten kilometres east of Shediac. A commissioner administers oaths and affirmations and witnesses statutory declarations and affidavits — the signature and the wording that let a form be accepted as sworn. It is a short, specific job, and it has to be done in person, with the person signing present and identified.
Shediac is a town of roughly seventy-five hundred people whose population changes shape with the season. Cottage and waterfront property brings in owners who live elsewhere for most of the year, and property that is used seasonally generates paperwork that year-round property does not: declarations about occupancy and residency, insurance claims after a winter of nobody being there, and the estate paperwork that follows when a family property changes hands between generations. Those forms usually carry a line that has to be signed in front of a commissioner rather than simply signed.
Most of the reasons people need a commissioner are not planned. A form arrives with a deadline, or a bank, an insurer or a government office sends something back because the declaration was signed but not sworn. Shediac sits far enough from Moncton that making that trip twice — once to discover the problem and once to fix it — costs most of a morning. Being seen locally is usually the difference between a form going out this week and going out next week.
The distinction that catches people out is not what the form says but how it is signed. A witnessed signature only records that somebody saw you sign it. A sworn declaration is a statement you make on oath or affirmation, in front of a commissioner who identifies you, watches you sign, and completes the jurat at the foot of the page. That is why a form cannot be signed at the kitchen table and dropped off afterwards, and why an office will send back a document that was signed first and sworn second. It takes a few minutes to do in the right order and most of a week to put right when it is done in the wrong one.
If you have a statutory declaration, an affidavit, or a form that says it must be sworn or affirmed, it can be dealt with in a single short appointment. Please note that a commissioner of oaths is not a notary public: she does not notarize or certify documents, and cannot advise you on what your document should say.