Monthly Archives: January 2016

Jan 27 2016
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Business, Democracy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

Running on empty in New Brunswick

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We become what we think we are.

If we believe that we are weak, uneducated and profligate, the chances that we will lie down, refuse to crack a book, and spend whatever money the state sends us to load up on Kraft Dinner and past Christmases’ chocolate treats rise precipitously.

If, on the other hand, we are convinced that we are strong, innovative and prudent, the odds of our crafting a real future for our neighbours and ourselves – one we build with reason, critical thinking, social deliberation, and daily service – improve significantly.

New Brunswick sits uncomfortably somewhere between those two poles of conscience.

On the one hand, in this province we are gorgeously engaged, generous and rational. On the other, we are thicker than a sack of hammers at the bottom of the Petitcodiac River.

We, for example, continue to muck and moil over the possibilities of a shale gas industry in this province even though we know that market forces, combined with our own government’s foot-dragging, have effectively shut the door on that avenue of commercial enterprise.

With the price of Texas crude spluttering just below $32 a barrel, the entire oil and gas industry in Canada is in suspended animation (if not actual free-fall). Now, there is almost no point in imagining a future in which we control the uses to which we put our indigenous fossil fuels (if we ever have).

Still, as Adam Huras of the Saint John Telegraph-Journal reported earlier this month, New Brunswick Energy Minister Donald Arseneault thinks “the 12-year lows facing natural gas prices could buy the province more time to get the industry right – that’s of course if the province decides to go in that direction.”

Says Mr. Arseneault: “In terms of lifting – or not – the moratorium (on shale gas development), even if there is down time, it gives people more time to get better educated with the issues. . .and it will give government more time to review the report submitted to us by no later than March 31.”

He refers, specifically, to the research his department has commissioned from a three-person panel on the environmental, social and economic efficacy of hydraulic fracturing in the province. The question now becomes: Is he kidding?

He’s right in one sense. What, exactly, is the rush? Given the industry’s pricing structures these days, we have all the time in the world to, effectively, decide not to decide, which is, after all, what this provincial government has desperately desired for this fractious issue since the beginning of its mandate.

Again, we become what we think we are. If we believe that we are, by nature, cautious and conservative, then we will rejoice in every opportunity that removes risk from the process of democratic decision-making.

Sure, let’s take this whole shale-gas thing and give it a good look-see. It’s not as if the issue matters much these days. The market has bottomed out; exploration companies are no longer testing, drilling or producing; and as for public debate, well, all is quiet on the eastern front of environmental protest.

Still, what if we applied that standard to every other challenge the province faces?

Should “wait-and-see” become the new motto we teach our children as we ask them to find their personal and professional bliss elsewhere in Canada or the world?

Should we “be” in this place or merely sleep in it?

Are we timorous or bold and forthcoming?

It’s a decision we choose for ourselves, and it always has been.

In the end, we become what we think we are.

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Jan 26 2016
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Culture, Democracy, Politics

Our poor overlords

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It appears that the problem with our democracy is not the character of our representation; it is our own wicked inclination to denigrate those who repeatedly disappoint us, even for good reason. Apparently, we’re in danger of electing only those people who can’t take a rhetorical poke from time to time.

Or, at least, so intimates New Brunswick Ombudsman Charles Murray in a recent commentary for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. Here the good fellow waxes poetic: “Governments, departments and agencies will always be made up of human beings. That guarantees mistakes will be made. The Bard of Scotland, Robert Burns, reminded us that ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.’ Putting mice and men on the same level gets to the heart of it. Perhaps we might do well to pat ourselves on the back a little less when things are going well, and kick ourselves a little less when things have not worked out as we hoped.”

In other words, we should stop castigating politicians in power for changing their minds, lest we run the risk of “getting a government that’s less flexible, that’s more ideologically closed in, that’s less likely to listen, share information and be open. . .Please give us a government wise enough to know there is always more to learn and brave enough to change when change is needed.”

It’s good advice, as a far as it goes. The blame game in politics is as old as mugging for the camera and kissing babies on the campaign trail. But left to its own devices, the caustic fallout can be truly nauseating. For proof, look no further than the United States where any backtracking on any issue, no matter how ludicrous, is a surefire recipe for career suicide.

According a recent piece in the Huffington Post, “It turns out there are some gun control proposals that Republicans and Democrats actually agree on. New findings from the Pew Research Center (show that) fully 85 per cent of Americans – including 88 per cent of Democrats and 79 per cent of Republicans – believe people should have to pass a background check before purchasing guns in private sales or at gun shows. Currently, only licensed gun dealers are required to perform background checks. A majority of Americans (79 percent) also back laws to prevent those with mental illness from purchasing guns. There is a greater divide between the parties on other gun issues. Seventy percent of respondents support the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales, including 85 percent of Democrats but just 55 percent of Republicans. A more narrow majority (57 percent) would like to ban assault-style weapons. That proposal draws support from 70 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans.”

But those Republicans who have reversed their stand on any aspect of gun control have been more furiously vilified by the right-wing press than any Democrat in recent years.

There are, of course, instances where a politician who reverses himself ought to be criticized, especially when his decision is clearly not in the best interest of the people he represents or, indeed, the society he his sworn to protect and preserve. In general, though, a healthy democracy depends on the degree to which we welcome critical thinking in public office. And this necessarily embraces the concept of sober second thought. In fact, this cuts to the heart of the Senate of Canada’s signature mandate.

Do we want cohorts of yes men and women cluttering our assemblies? Lamentably, this is, all to often, our current predicament.

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Jan 26 2016
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Business, Economy, Government, Politics

Debt does not become us

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Is New Brunswick officially a black hole?

In cosmology, the phenomenon generally refers to a gravity well that’s so dense, so impenetrable that not even photons escape its event horizon.

Here’s what Canada’s national debt clock says about our particular partner in Confederation: $12.8 billion in arrears to domestic and international creditors, which translates into more than $17,000 for every man, woman and child in New Brunswick. (Add that to your mortgages John and Jane Doe if, that is, you’re lucky enough to have them).

The right-leaning Fraser Institute likes to portray this province as one of Canada’s weaker sisters. I, in turn, like to portray the Fraser Institute as a bunch of fatuous blowhards. But, alas, not this time. This time, they appear to be right on the money, which they keep in their big, fat billfolds.

Still, consider their latest analysis: “The growth in government debt over the past eight years reversed a positive trend from the mid-1990s to late-2000s when Canada’s federal and provincial governments made considerable progress in reducing their debt burdens. After a period of debt reduction, combined federal and provincial debt reached a low of $833.8 billion in 2007/08.

“However, the economic recession in 2008/09, combined with the significant increases in government spending that took place in 2009/10, meant that every government fell into deficit in either 2008/09 or 2009/10. This started Canada’s governments down their current path of persistent deficits and growing debt. The trend has largely persisted since then and will likely continue in 2015/16 through the upcoming round of federal and provincial budgets.

“Total debt in 2015/16 is estimated to be just shy of $1.3 trillion. This growth in combined federal and provincial debt has not been limited to just a few jurisdictions. The federal and every provincial government increased their debt levels between 2007/08 and 2015/16.”

In New Brunswick, for example, the provincial government now pays $685 million a year to service its long-term debt. That’s money that does not go to improve and expand health care, public education, city streets, and cultural venues. It’s a giant’s share of a shrinking pie that does not feed the poor, educate the illiterate, invest in private-sector innovation, bolster entrepreneurial diversity, or keep our universities and colleges vibrant, relevant places where our children might purchase a real sense of hope in this region.

In fact, we’ve all been circling the drain for some time in this province. So have Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. We’ve all been living on borrowed time and money. It’s merely a cold comfort to be reminded that so has the rest of the country.

“Canadian governments (including local governments) collectively spent an estimated $60.8 billion on interest payments in 2014/15,” the Fraser Institute’s analysis concludes. “That works out to 8.1 per cent of their total revenue that year. To put the amount spent on interest payments in perspective, it is more than what is spent on pension benefits through the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans ($50.9 billion), and approximately equal to Canada’s total public spending on primary and secondary education ($62.2 billion, as of 2012/13, the last year for which we have finalized data).”

Ouch, indeed!

Of course, New Brunswick has a way out of this black hole, this gravity well. Embrace, for once, the idea of community. Reject the partisan bickering that keeps good notions on the lonely blueprints of policy wonks.

Recognize that New Brunswick must prepare for a new event horizon, where imagination escapes pessimism at the speed of optimism every time.

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Jan 26 2016
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Business

Innovation in NB is alive and well

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Daily journalism can be a truly Oz-like experience for those who travel down the yellow-brick road only to pull back the curtain and find utterly confused, old codgers pulling the levers that keep our steam-punked imaginations firing on contradictory versions of reality.

A case in point emerged recently in the pages of Canada’s self-anointed national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. On the one hand, noted columnist Barrie McKenna insisted that the nation’s innovation agenda is a complete disaster; on the other, labour economist Jim Stanford declared that value-added manufactured exports (which rely on innovation) from here are enjoying a late-season renaissance.

Says Mr. McKenna: “Every two years, the federally appointed Science, Technology and Innovation Council issues a status report on how Canada is doing in the global innovation race. The council has now produced four such reports, the latest released this fall. And each time, it’s the same distressing finding: Canada’s business sector is not stepping up to the plate. Companies are investing less now in research and development than they were in 2007, and every year they’re falling further behind the countries that lead the world in generating great ideas and economic growth.”

Then, there’s this from Mr. Stanford in his own Globe commentary: “There is growing evidence that the national economy is starting to pivot away from its past over-reliance on the extraction and export of raw natural resources. Instead, Canada’s high-technology industrial base is starting to flex its muscles once again. And the first place this economic reorientation is becoming visible is in recent data on international trade.”

He continues: “Statistics Canada defines five broad categories of ‘value-added’ merchandise exports – industries that rely primarily on technology, productivity and skilled labour, instead of just the availability of natural resources. These sectors include industrial machinery, electrical and electronic products, motor vehicles and parts, consumer goods, and aircraft and other transportation equipment. These technology-intensive products typically command premium prices on global markets, in contrast to depressed commodity prices.”

Of course, these pundits are both right and wrong in their own special ways, and the only question reading both of them raises is: Whose version of the world do you want to believe?

If I were forced to choose between the doom and gloom of Mr. McKenna and the hope and sun of Mr. Stanford, I would, with no reluctance at all, select door No. 2. Here’s why.

One of the very few economic bright spots in New Brunswick these days is home grown innovation. Given the province’s fiscal woes and perennial lack of financial resources, that seems like a paradox worthy of economic pundits. Nevertheless, it appears to be durable.

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation reported last month, for example, that Eigen Innovations, a Fredericton-based start-up “got an international boost placing third in the Cisco Systems’ Global Innovation Grand Challenge at the Internet Of Things World Forum in Dubai. Eigen was the only Canadian company to make it to the final six, and as the third place winner will receive a $25,000 cash prize plus business opportunities with the network solutions giant.”

The company’s main product “tells operators and engineers the where, when and how processes or product quality is starting to degrade within highly complex manufacturing systems. . . .After a series of elimination rounds, Eigen made it onto the list of 15 semi-finalists, announced in October 2015.”

Sadly, daily journalism too often fails to capture the stories of these jewels of hope and opportunity. We’d do better to pull back the curtain and discover the utterly brilliant among us.

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Jan 26 2016
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Democracy, Politics

New Brunswick’s chance for change

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It should be clear by now that if New Brunswick has a three-card-monte player’s chance of turning over a new leaf and leaving the mean streets, where gambling on the future is a permanent feature of economic policy, it will be through the resilience, courage and conviction of individual men and women.

Call it the “New Prohibition”. And its temperance leaders include social activists, political players and even a few economists.

“It’s crunch time, New Brunswick,” the provincial minister for strategic review, Victor Boudreau, wrote in a commentary for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal earlier this January. “In one month’s time, we will complete the Strategic Program Review (SPR) process.”

Why anyone would want to slap an acronym on what should be business as usual for any elected government has mystified scholars and plebeians, alike, for at least the past 5,000 years. Still, I digress.

“The. . .process,” Mr. Boudreau said, “consisted of several engagement opportunities allowing New Brunswickers to provide input and ideas on how to right our fiscal ship so we can sail to a better, sustainable future.

“Those opportunities included: 14 public dialogue sessions, five regional stakeholder sessions, community groups hosting their own session, Strategic Program Review forums, and online input through email or by regular mail.

“More than 1,200 people attended our public dialogue sessions, more than 100 representatives of stakeholder groups attended our meetings; more than 9,000 ideas were submitted online, by email or mail.”

All of which might suggest that this provincial government will have to hire back all the people it has laid off just to scrum through the suggestions it has received to, among other things, cut the size of the civil service.

Folks, let’s be clear. These exercises are almost always rigged to separate a fool from his or her aspirations for democratic representation. These road-show barkers don’t really want to hear what you have to say; they desire only to convince you that what you crave for your corner of the world is more important than inspiring you to embrace a true communitarian response to the problems that, to one degree or another, afflict all of us in this province.

What did Machiavelli say about dividing and conquering?

Like three-card-monte, this is a chump’s game that no one but the dealer can win on the mean streets of the villages, towns and cities of one of the least promising provinces in Canada. This is politics, and it rarely changes, though the partisan colours it variously adopts shift and adjust with nauseating frequency.

When will we learn that we are one people in a small, undistinguished part of the world whose best chance at long-term prosperity is to work together in creativity, good humour and risible innovation?

And yet, through the predictable darkness comes some light. Over the past several months, men and women of good conscience in New Brunswick have come forward to embrace the game of chance at a new future. One of these is my colleague and good friend David Campbell, the province’s chief economist. On a mild, wintry day before Christmas, he sat down with a few people in Moncton and outlined his growth plan for the province. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest, genuine and compassionate.

I’m certain that his provincial bosses coordinated his effort. His disposition and ideas, however, were all his own.

In the end, it will be through the resilience, courage and conviction of people like him – and, like us – that New Brunswick turns over a new leaf.

Call it the “New Prohibition” against the status quo.

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Jan 26 2016
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Culture, Democracy, Economy, Employment

The exodus conundrum

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As Canadians wring their hands and gnash their teeth over the arrival of as many as 25,000 refugees from strife-ridden Syria, the conversation inevitably turns to a sometimes irresponsible and xenophobic question of whether we want them.

To be clear and to our credit, most of us say we do. Our country is, after all, one of the world’s last remaining go-to places for people who are, through no fault of their own, in deep trouble.

Lately, though, the other shoe has fallen: Do Syrians want us?

A rather distressing, yet revealing, report in the Globe and Mail earlier this month suggests that more Syrians than we’d like to admit are saying “no” to the Great White North – fearing the effect of cultural and linguistic differences, the lack of good, durable employment opportunities, and even Canada’s rather parsimonious social policy regarding the disposition of foreign nationals in this country over the past decade.

According to the Globe piece by Sara Elizabeth Williams, reporting from Amman, the capital of Jordan, “Omayma al-Kasem. . .is one of a sizeable number of Syrians turning down the chance to become permanent residents of Canada. UN figures (show that) just three out of every 10 households contacted about resettlement in Canada go on to relocate.”

Although Ms. al-Kasem – a well-educated, 26-year-old, fourth-year law student – readily describes her life and that of her family, effectively hiding from harm’s way in Jordan, as “the lowest level of hell”, apparently that’s better than taking a chance on a cold, strange nation half-a-world-away from everything she knows and still cherishes.

She must, she says, “think like a mom.” In her case, she reveals, “In Jordan we are already separated from my two sisters who are in Syria. If we went to Canada we would have to leave my brother, his wife and their baby. I don’t want to separate my family any further. . .Even in the move from Syria to Jordan, we lost some connection to our religion. If we go to Canada, how can I raise my little sisters in a language and culture I don’t understand?”

Aoife McDonnell, an external relations officer at the UNHCR refugee agency in Jordan, provides the broader context: “Some families are still hoping to return home, others are concerned about their ability to integrate into another country.”

Still complicating matters is the recent transition in Canada’s federal government, from avowedly Conservative to Liberal, just since October. What are potential newcomers from every background to make of the molten lava of our national policy towards them?

For New Brunswick, which has agreed to welcome hundreds of Syrian refugees, the response must be something better than the national standard.

We have jobs that need filling, homes that need building, ideas that need spreading, and hopes that need fulfilling. We must craft the ways and means to assure the next wave of immigrants to this province that we understand – and are prepared to deliver – what they need to survive in the short term and thrive in the long one.

What, in fact, do we have to offer Syrians in New Brunswick? Winter coats and boots are fine. But what of the job and career opportunities? What of educational, linguistic and cultural assistance initiatives?

The single imperative on which all intelligent citizens in this province must concur is immigration. To achieve our commercial and fiscal goals, we simply need more people from around the world to find our friendly place economically efficacious. And we want them to stay.

The question is: How do we persuade them that we’re serious?

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