Monthly Archives: February 2016

Feb 15 2016
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Culture, Economy

Breaking up the culture club

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In a budget that does little to up New Brunswick’s game in the big, wide world of economic competitiveness, the Gallant government’s decision to ‘trim’ $400,000 from ArtsNB seems malignly small-minded.

Freddy Beach’s recent talking points on the matter suggest that the move is designed to render the organization more accountable to the artists it supports by ensuring that more public money flows into the pockets of creators, and less into those of administrators.

This is the typical, chimerical argument that governments trot out whenever they decide to defend a frankly indefensible position. They get away with it for two reasons: First, the sums in question are almost too small to generate much widespread opposition; and second, who gives a fig about the arts when there are roads to build and natural resources to plunder?

But if the underlying argument is that arts and culture in New Brunswick – indeed, across Canada –comprise a shuddering economic sector, then the facts, which are easily accessible, say otherwise.

An Industry Canada monograph, updated in 2009, makes compelling points: “The cultural sector contributes $40 billion to Canada’s GDP and directly employs close to 600,000 Canadians. Cultural industries are a significant contributor to Canada’s economic growth. Examples of cultural goods include: books, newspapers, videos, compact discs, sculptures, paintings. Examples of cultural services are film production and post-production services, broadcasts, live artistic performances.

“In 2002 . . .Mining and Oil and Gas Extraction contributed only $35.4 billion. The Agriculture and Forestry industry contributed $21 billion to Canada’s GDP, approximately half that of the cultural sector. Put differently, cultural activities in 2002 amounted to a 3.8 per cent value-added contribution to Canada’s GDP.”

What’s more, between 1996 and 2001, employment in the cultural sector grew annually at 3.4 per cent, which outpaced the overall national rate. And this measurement only included “direct jobs created”, not the indirect ones generated over this period.

Statistics Canada’s 2010 report on the industry may be even more persuasive. It said, “Culture industries accounted for 3.2 per cent of the total output in Canada, reaching $99.3 billion (in that year). GDP of culture industries was $53.2 billion, contributing 3.4 per cent to Canada’s total GDP. Of which culture products accounted for $40.7 billion and other products (i.e., non-culture products), $12.5 billion.

“In 2010, the total number of jobs in Canada was 17.3 million. Culture industries accounted for 703,900 (of these), a four per cent share. This includes jobs associated with the production of culture and non-culture products.

The largest contributors to the GDP of culture industries (presented by domain) were: Audio-visual and interactive media ($13.8 billion) followed by Visual and Applied Arts  ($13.4 billion), Written and published works ($10.1 billion), and Governance, funding and professional support ($8 billion).”

Still, in the face of these facts, governments continue pandering to stereotypical perceptions of arts administrators as lazy and artists as feckless – the latter needing either abandonment (if the reigning political class is Conservative) or infantilizing (if the government of the day is avowedly Liberal).

In New Brunswick, though, the arts and culture sector play an enormously important role in shoring up the bulwarks against this province’s final socio-economic dissolution.

Apart from the GDP, job and export numbers they represent, musicians, writers, sculptors, and painters (among many others) promote the broader virtues of literacy, numeracy and critical thinking – in fact, all features of solid primary, secondary and post-secondary systems of education.

They remind us that we, all of us, are invested in both past and future.

That’s a benignly large-minded act of creation to embrace.

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Feb 12 2016
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Economy, Government, Municipal Affairs

Dear Dad: Send money soon

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Canada’s municipalities want the federal government to avoid the middlemen and send them their allowances directly and without delay.

Given that the middlemen in this instance are the nation’s provincial governments, can you blame the burgermeisters for their impudence?

The country’s tripartite system of democratic rule has been, since Confederation, both a blessing and a curse. Lately, it’s been more of the latter than the former.

Cities – big ones, in particular – have become the indisputable magnets for international and domestic migration. Simply put, these are where most people in Canada now live, work, build businesses, and care for their families; in the process, they exert enormous pressures on physical, technological, social and economic infrastructure. These burdens are now beyond the capacities of many urban areas to shoulder.

At a recent meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, several mayors made their case.

Said Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi: “Ideally, the funds should flow directly from the federal government to the municipalities. If we have to involve the provinces in another layer of authority, it’s going to slow everything down.”

Added Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson: “Prime Minister Trudeau is breaking down the silos between cities, provinces, federal government and First Nations. Canada’s cities compete against cities around the world that have more jurisdiction, more tax revenue to work with. And frankly for us to compete economically, our cities need to have more resources and (a) stronger partnership with the federal government.”

Or, as Montreal’s Denis Coderre declared, “Cities are no longer just creatures of the provinces.”

Uh-huh. . .Tell that to the provinces. Here, in New Brunswick, this is exactly what the province’s three major cities are: creatures of provincial jurisdiction.

We love talking about our civic innovation, vibrant cultural amenities, dynamic entrepreneurship and “punching above our weight”. But, let’s face it, we’re still fly-weights in the arena of government funding and, with populations denuding across this province of ours, we’re not likely to land a palpable blow against the status quo anytime soon.

Still, perhaps we can learn from our more muscle-bound brethren across Canada (you know, in case we do have an even chance of someday emerging from our 98-pound-weakling cocoons).

According to a recent survey conducted by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, “The 2016 (infrastructure poll) included a section on asset management for the first time. These questions shed light on the state of Canadian municipal asset management practices. Survey results point to varied asset management practices according to community size. For instance, 62 per cent of large municipalities, 56 per cent of medium-sized municipalities and 35 per cent of small municipalities reported having a formal asset management plan in place. All communities, particularly smaller municipalities, would benefit from increased asset management capacity.”

Read: More direct control over federal government assets specifically targeted at municipalities; fewer provincial middlemen.

In fact, the prime minister does seem cautiously optimistic about embracing a new paradigm for cities – though, by doing so, he would surely bite off a chunk of constitutional reform that would, by comparison, render a Senate makeover appear like child’s play.

“We are restarting a relationship that had been significantly neglected over the past 10 years,” Mr. Trudeau said at the mayors’ meeting. “Ensuring that we get the money flowing in a responsible and rapid way is a priority for all of us.”

If ‘Dad’ and his cabinet do manage to pull this off, of course, think of all the money that would liberate for the provinces to. . .oh, I don’t know. . .lure multinationals.

After all, middlemen never waste money.

Not ever.

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Feb 12 2016
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Corporate Responsibility, Culture, Government

Mother Nature trumps ‘Mother Canada’

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Rarely do governments come to their senses in time to make an efficacious difference in the lives of the people they represent. But when they do, it’s occasion for commemoration.

So it was last week when agents of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau announced that a planned war memorial for Cape Breton Highlands National Park – the brainchild of a private consortium that had received fulsome, moral support from the former Conservative government under Stephen Harper – would not proceed.

The so-called ‘Mother Canada’ monument would have been a 24-metre-tall testament to the dogged determination of a Toronto businessman who, having seen the graves of the nation’s war dead in Europe, thought it would be a swell idea to erect a statue in honour of them along one of the prettiest and ecologically significant coastlines in the country.

Writing in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald last year, columnist Ralph Surette fairly foamed at the mouth about the proposal and the evident support it received from the federal government at the time.

“For those who still don’t fully understand the game, the ‘Mother Canada’ controversy should provide some enlightenment,” he wrote. “The discovery that Parks Canada has furnished $100,000 to the project – after swearing that the statue in Cape Breton Highlands Park was a purely private project – blows the lid off the scheme. The political engineering comes from the Prime Minister’s Office.

“This is Stephen Harper building yet another monument to himself. It’s not just the money. The fact that the rules governing national parks have been casually trashed to accommodate the project has the PMO’s fingerprints all over it. No use hollering at Parks Canada bureaucrats. Like everyone else in government, they’ve been reduced to yo-yos of the PMO, detached from their guiding principles.”

Not anymore, it seems. Parks Canada officials, now presumably untethered from their partisan leashes, have correctly adjudged that Canada requires another war memorial of this monstrous sort like it needs a hole in its head. After all, what possible benefit to memory and national pride does a stone giant facing Europe – which can be seen properly only by denizens of international fishing trawlers – actually provide?

For their part, government reps are explaining their decision in more diplomatic and circumspect terms. According to a report in the Globe and Mail this week, “Daniel Watson, the chief executive officer of Parks Canada, said that the agency reviewed the war memorial proposed for the Cape Breton park and concluded there were too many problems preventing its completion by July 1, 2017, the date of its planned unveiling, including the availability of funds to the private foundation backing the project.”

Specifically, Mr. Watson stipulated, “As a result, the project will not be moving forward on Parks Canada land.”

It may, however, move forward in another guise on private land. More’s the pity. Still, that’s not a matter for public policy to settle.

In truth, the most irksome feature about this project was never its grandness or aesthetic effrontery; it was the very notion that land held in trust by the Government of Canada on behalf of the people of Canada – all people of Canada – could be so easily and cavalierly betrothed to private interests who may, or may not, have an ideological bone to pick with our common heritage.

Good Lord! What would be next?

Carving the faces of Canada’s first prime ministers, Mount Rushmore-like, into New Brunswick’s world-famous flowerpot rocks? Erecting the ‘Tomb of the Unknown Corporate Donor’ to boot?

Governments don’t do many things right. But when they do, it’s time to commemorate.

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Feb 12 2016
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Business, Economy, Wealth

Circling the jobs drain

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It’s not hard to understand why politicians vying for elected office routinely proclaim the number of people they intend to put back to work, if only the great unwashed would be so kind as to hand over the keys to the garden.

After all, job creation is the lowest-hanging fruit on the vine of campaign promises.

Who, among us, doesn’t understand the importance of a fully employed, adult citizenry? More to the prosaic point, who doesn’t want steady, reliable work for himself? And who isn’t, at least once, willing to swallow whatever sweet and succulent promise a politician offers, especially if it has to do with one’s livelihood.

Still, the problem with low-hanging fruit is that, all too often, it’s past its ‘best before’ date.

New Brunswickers witnessed this during former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward’s term in office, in which he promised to create jobs across the broad spectrum of the provincial economy, only to preside over losses approaching 4,500.

Now, perhaps, we prepare ourselves for a repeat performance by the Liberal government of Brian Gallant (different party, same story), which, according to its own Department of Finance, appears fated to watch the provincial labour market shed hundreds, perhaps even thousands, more by 2018.

The reasons are pretty straightforward, and can apply to any government in this age of perennially straitened circumstances, regardless of ideological stripe and partisan palaver.

According to the Economic Outlook 2016-2017, which accompanied the most recent New Brunswick budget, “Weaker growth at the national and global levels, challenges in the export and manufacturing sectors, slower-than-expected growth in investment and continued weakness in the labour market contributed to subdued growth in 2015. . .Real economic growth of 1.3 per cent in 2015 (is estimated), down from 1.8 per cent projected at budget last year. This estimate is consistent with the latest consensus among private sector forecasters.”

On the other hand, “Economic activity is expected to be tempered by demographic realities, private sector investment, fiscal measures and the recently announced suspension of operations at the Picadilly mine. Private sector forecasts may not reflect the latter development, which will put downward pressure on their projections.”

In fact, “Growth conditions will be further limited by PotashCorp’s announcement that it was indefinitely suspending operations at the Picadilly mine. The economic impact will be partially mitigated in the short-term by transitional measures being offered by the company. However, the effect of the suspension will continue to be felt well into 2017.”

Add to this boiling cauldron of trouble New Brunswick’s rapidly aging population and low birth rate and you have the perfect recipe for moribund economic conditions and, at best, stagnant job prospects. Or, as the finance department’s report observes, “Looking ahead to 2017, external demand and further government capital spending will drive economic activity. However, an aging workforce, overall population decline and weak private sector investment will curb growth.”

Naturally, all this translates into job losses, not growth.

Indeed, evidence of deep-rooted rot in the province’s economic garden has been extant for several years. And, except for specifically dunderheaded moves by certain elected officials, none of it is actually any individual’s or even government’s fault.

It’s a product of decades of short-sighted policy, calcified programming, and uncompetitive and complacent private-sector players. And, don’t underestimate the effects of rolling, increasingly deep recessions on resource-based, export-oriented jurisdictions, such as New Brunswick’s.

Despite their proclamations, politicians don’t create employment in the private economy.

But when they fail to deliver the fruits of their campaign promises – jobs – perhaps it’s only right that they should lose their own.

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Feb 09 2016
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Democracy, Politics

Membership has its privileges?

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Trust New Brunswick to tilt at the beast of federal complacency and partisanship. After all, didn’t this province help invent the Senate of Canada? Shouldn’t we, of all this great land’s citizens, now properly tame it, if not actually slay it?

Two senators from this fair province – and from two different parties, no less – prefer door No. 1. But how much luck are they having travelling the high road to reform?

Pierrette Ringuette, who was appointed as a Liberal senator but who has announced that she will quit the Grit caucus and sit as an independent, declared last week that “Canadians have been clear in their desire for a non-partisan Senate. The Senate, as an institution and senators themselves, should be working to remove partisanship from the chamber and with that goal in mind, I believe in taking the proactive approach and sitting as an independent.”

In this, she joins fellow New Brunswicker John Wallace, a former Conservative senator who is now an independent. At the time of his resignation last November, he stipulated in a letter, “Differences that I consider to be irreconcilable exist between myself and Conservative Senate Leader Claude Carignan and other Conservative Senate Caucus members regarding the required Constitutional roles, responsibilities and independence of Conservative Senators. These differences are fundamental to the roles and responsibilities that I have sworn to uphold as a member of the Senate of Canada.”

In an interview with the CBC’s Jacques Poitras, Mr. Wallace said, “I believe in order for the Senate to function as it was intended by the Fathers of Confederation. . .political partisanship, as much as it can be, has to be removed from the Senate,” he told CBC’s Jacques Poitras in New Brunswick. “Others can think otherwise, but I don’t want to find myself constrained by feeling that every time I go against the will of my political leaders, it’s an act of disloyalty.”

Still, as fine and noble as these sentiments ring, when it comes to the Senate of Canada, independence does not necessarily confer any privileges – except, perhaps, those of conscience. In the meantime, just try and get a committee appointment. Go ahead, Mr. Wallace, I dare you.

Since his resignation from the Tory caucus, the good fellow and other independents in the chamber are having a dickens of a time getting a seat on any of the signature quorums that essentially comprise the Senate’s raison d’etre. “The total exclusion of myself and other independent senators from any committee, it’s completely outrageous,” he told the Telegraph-Journal’s Adam Huras not long ago. “It goes right to the heart of the credibility, the reputation and the integrity of the institution. There couldn’t be a clearer example of that problem of irreconcilable difference than what this represents. There is a message that is being sent to me.”

For her part, though her political associations may differ from Mr. Wallace’s, Ms. Ringuette is sympathetic to her colleague’s cause, which is, naturally, also her own. “It’s a sad state of affairs,” she was quoted as saying last week. “You would think that individually and collectively with the events of the last three years that independent spirited senators would rise to the challenge.”

Actually, given those very events of the last three years, I would expect nothing less than the officious, foot-dragging, obstreperous behaviour from the partisan-aligned majority of senators we witness today.

Mr. Wallace’s and Ms. Ringuette’s principled stand, notwithstanding, notions of meaningful reform do not pass frequently through the Upper Chamber’s gilded doors.

Perhaps it’s time to slay the beast, after all.

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Feb 07 2016
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Government, Politics

The dummies of small things

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Let’s face it, no government drops a budget without engaging in a substantial amount of tortuous explanation and twisted logic.

The problem, of course, is that elected officials are notoriously poor spin doctors; voters, more often than not, easily penetrate their veils of assurances and, worse, never forget the degree to which political prevarication undermines everyone’s faith in public institutions.

Still, two measures in the New Brunswick government’s most recent budget, announced last week, are precious, to the point of being almost adorable, for their utter lack of perspicacity.

It’s almost as if communications personnel at Freddy Beach downloaded a page from some apocryphal version of “Public Relations for Dummies” and attached it to their media emails.

In the first instance, provincial brain trusts thought they could explain a palpable drop in the personal income-tax rate (to about 20 from 21 per cent) for the highest earners in New Brunswick (those netting $150,000 or more a year) by emphasizing that the feds are planning to raise levies on these putative one-percenters anyway: a kind of glass-half-full-empty sort of argument.

In the second, the Gallant government justified its $400,000-a-year cut to the New Brunswick Arts Board – a move that would effectively render the arms-length organization extinct – by absorbing its staff into the civil service, which would then prosecute the defunct group’s mandate. This is despite the fact that the Province intends to eliminate as many as 1,300 public employees before its reigning Libs head to the polls again.

Uh, huh. . .What, pray tell, is credible about any of this?

If we were, for example, to accept the Gallant government’s contention that fat cats in this province will still wind up paying their fair share in taxes, we must also perceive that a substantial amount of these levies will now travel to Ottawa’s coffers, leaving New Brunswick with an unfunded shortfall (based on original expectations) of close to $10 million a year.

That’s ten million bucks that won’t be available to offset the cost of the HST hike here, which affects pretty much all but the poorest. It’s certainly not going to defray the price of higher education or health care.

It is, purely and simply, a political giveaway to a higher level of government pursuing its own agenda, but which wears the same-colored jersey on the political football pitch.

Again, if we were to accept, in principle, the evisceration of the province’s arts board, what assurances do we have that the new ‘civil service’ to cultural workers will be fair and politically unmotivated. How do we know that it will even survive the next round of budget cuts?

As Akoulina Collins, the Arts Board’s executive director, lamented to the CBC last week, “We were informed that the (government) wished to respect the arm’s length nature of (the organization), yet in the same breath (they) informed us that they would be making contact with our employees to move them over to become employees of the government. . .It’s problematic.”

You bet it is. Political interference is always a danger in arts funding.

To be sure, these two, juvenile adventures in budget butt covering are minor; given New Brunswick’s enormous fiscal challenges, they amount to nothing but chump change.

Still, they are troubling for a government (in fact, all governments in recent years) that fails to appreciate the effect even its littlest decisions have on its ability to govern.

It is, after all, the small thing voters remember.

Remembering that might save the next government from torturing its explanations to justify its logic.

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Feb 05 2016
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Government, Politics

The deficit facts of life

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Balance the budget, certainly; but not just yet. In a nutshell, this was what New Brunswick Finance Minister Roger Melanson told assembled ladies and gentlemen of the press and other observers at Tuesday’s provincial budget announcement.

Still, though it seemed to take almost everyone off guard, the news that annual deficits – despite this year’s combination of tax hikes and spending cuts totaling nearly $600 million – would be facts in our lives until at least 2020-21 was not actually surprising.

In fact, a careful review of the budget measures reveals that some sort of pernicious shortfall was always in the cards.

On the revenue side, yes, the Gallant government raised the Harmonized Sales Tax to 15 per cent, from 13 per cent, effective July 1. And, yes, it also goosed the corporate income tax rate to 14 per cent, from 12 per cent; increased tobacco taxes by three bucks a cigarette; boosted the one-time property transfer tax; and hiked capital tax rates on banks.

On the other hand, the finance department decided against tolling any roads in the province, and even snuck through a modest decrease in the income tax rate the province’s top earners face.

On the spending side, yes, the government announced it was slashing 1,300 civil-service jobs over the next five years; 30 per cent of middle-manager positions were on the chopping block. And, yes, it also terminated the Gagetown ferry; amalgamated its 40 contact centres across the province into four; and froze operating grants to universities.

Again, though, it left both the departments of education and health virtually untouched – at least, in any significant way. Both Mr. Melanson and Health Minister Victor Boudreau recently confirmed that there’s very little appetite among the voting public for dramatic cuts to these, the province’s largest and most expensive program portfolios.

The results, then, are largely predictable: a deficit this year of $347 million; a deficit of $267 million in 2017-18; $167 million in 2018-19; $49 million in 2019-20; and a yet-to-be determined surplus in 2020-21.

Said Mr. Melanson about his “fun-with-figures” exercise over the past few weeks: “The decisions we are announcing today on expenditures and revenues will lead us to a balanced budget and meet our commitment to get our finances in order. This is very important because we currently spend more on serving our debt than we do on post-secondary education.”
Complicating matters, of course, is the economy, which isn’t broadcasting especially cheerful signals these days. “Economic activity is expected to be tempered by demographic realities, private-sector investment, fiscal measures, and the recently announced suspension operations at the Picadilly mine,” Mr. Melanson reported.

Naturally, what frustrates close political watchers in this province is the fact that a $300-million tax-revenue boost haul will have only a modest impact on New Brunswick’s bottom line.

The deficit is now running at approximately $466-million. If the Province’s projections prove to be accurate (and, be honest, when have they ever?), the next-year-over-this-year improvement in the annual shortfall will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$120 million.

That’s not bad, but it’s nothing to write home about. And it’s certainly not likely to quell the concerns of business lobbyists, who think taxes are the devil’s work, and fiscal hawks, who believe New Brunswick can find multiple savings in its health and education systems if its political leaders are willing to close surplus classroom, consolidate hospitals and clinics and take a meat cleaver to the associated labour force.

To be fair, though, who’s going to do that?

Our deficit, it seems, will be with us for a while.

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Feb 03 2016
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Economy, Government, Politics

Our feet of clay in a cold place

The hole we're in

The hole we’re in

If hell freezes over in New Brunswick, it doesn’t actually solidify until Canada Day 2016, when the sun warms us just enough to let us know that we owe, we owe, and, so, off to work we continue to go.

July 1st is when the Brian Gallant government has decided to impose a two-percentage-point bump in the harmonized sales tax – from 13 to 15 per cent. His second budget makes his reasoning clear. As Finance Minister Roger Melanson explained in his speech on Tuesday, “When we completed our review of the books, it was clear that there would be no way to lay the foundation we need without an HST increase or significant cuts to education and health care. . .New Brunswickers made it clear that they do not want deep cuts in education or health care.”

For years, here, raising the HST has been a bedevilling proposition for every political party. Only more controversial has been a full-court embrace of shale gas development and highway tolls. Times have changed.

In this budget, the Grits have neatly embraced the fiscal fix that former Prime Minister Paul Martin imposed in 1991 to balance the federal books at that time. Indeed, rip a page from the old Red Book, and you will find the 33-year-old Mr. Gallant holding the hands of the old, Grit guard.

Still, he’s not wrong; he’s just late. And so were his federal predecessors, when Ottawa’s brain trusts dropped the federal (GST) portion of the HST one point to six per cent, and again in 2008 to five per cent, leaving N.B.’s HST at 13 per cent.

Consider where this province might be today had successive provincial governments – those under Messrs. Shawn Graham, David Alward, and Gallant – possessed the political courage to hike the HST two points back then and applied its proceeds to economic diversification, innovation and . . .oh yes. . .the humungous, horrific deficit and debt we now so cheerfully enjoy.

Why, just for fun, we might even conduct a work-back of lost revenues, lost opportunities and truly myopic public policy and service.

The Gallant government now claims that its hike to the provincial portion of the HST will net a total of some $300 million over the last nine months of the current fiscal year. Had it introduced such a measure when it rode into office back in 2014, it would now have in the bank a total of $800 million with which to cover New Brunswick’s pernicious and perennial deficit and chomp a commanding chunk out of its multi-billion-dollar long-term debt. What’s more, through appropriate tax rebates to middle- and low-income earners it would have done so with nary an argument.

Now, had former premier David Alward pursued a similar course while he was in Freddy Beach, those savings, today, might actually amount to a budgetary surplus.

As it is, despite the Gallant government’s efforts to balance the books, the annual deficit in New Brunswick this fiscal year is likely to amount to something close to $300 million, as the long-term debt rises to $13.4 billion. That’s nearly $18,000 for every man, woman and child of less than 750,000 benighted, underemployed, anxious souls in this province.

Higher consumption taxes were never the way out of this mess; they were, in the minds of thoughtful people, a means to an end, the point of a spear. That end remains building a more durable, innovative, productive economy without having to constantly check the balance in the public bank account.

Will we do this now, before our hell truly freezes over?

Feb 03 2016
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Democracy, Government, Politics

Vision becomes us

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There have been times in the storied history of the Atlantic region when meaningless, self-destructive, icy battles over trade, skills and labour mobility between and among the provinces have almost melted away under the warming sun of common sense. But those times have been rare.

Prior to Confederation, a century-and-a-half ago, Maritime political leaders gathered in Charlottetown, originally to consider establishing a united, regional economy. Then, of course, certain Upper Canadians, led by John A. Macdonald, crashed the party and rewrote the agenda. Suddenly, the urgent conversation was about creating a bi-coastal nation (without, at that time, a railway to connect is disparate bits).

How’s that for vision?

How’s ours on the East Coast in the second decade of the 21st Century?

We might just remember an almost-concerted effort to forge closer, more efficacious economic ties, leading to some sort of durable political union among Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island in the mid-1960s. But as the counter-argument went at the time, “Where would we put the capital?”

Twenty years later, the debate flared again. This time, though, the political class in this part of Canada had no appetite for the concepts of either economic or political union; for they had become too complacent, too inculcated in the status quo thanks to decades of federal government welfare (transfers) to prop up their perpetually underperforming public accounts.

Now, when the rest of Canada reflects on us, it conjures a region of people wise in the ways of the sea, determined to give the shirts off our backs, willing to throw down a kitchen party. This, it seems, is the stereotype we gladly proffer in return for free money from other parts of the country. As long as Ontario and Quebec can laugh their rumps off at our expense, we court jesters can count on a cheque in the mail.

Again, how’s that vision thing going for us?

Each year or so, Atlantic Canada’s provincial premiers and their mandarins gather in capital cities around the region to consider how best to work together, how marvellously they may transform their tiny economies into what they have recently termed a “global force” of growth. At the same time, they just can’t seem to figure out how to rationalize the rules concerning the transfer of honeybees and booze across their provincial borders.

This small collection of principalities remains one of the most economically divided of any in the developed world. We make it virtually impossible, in this region, for university students to transfer their credits from one institution to another; for skilled tradesmen and women to find meaningful work if they choose to leave the jurisdiction in which they received their accreditations; for doctors, lawyers and veterinarians to move between provinces without first obtaining professional papers proving that the practices of law and medicine are, somehow, locally relevant and compliant.

Certainly, each Atlantic province must develop its own vision for economic and social security, And, indisputably, each jurisdiction should maintain the right and responsibility to protect and preserve its cultural heterogeneity.

But do these priorities obviate the common sense in pursuing the stock of our common story along the East Coast?

Should we continue to ignore the fact that the tales and travails that unite us are richer than those that currently divide us?

Shouldn’t this propel us to write the next chapter of a region that embraces its constituents as members of the same extended family of social, economic and political players?

All we need is the vision.

Once again, always again, let’s have that now.

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Feb 02 2016
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Humour, Personal History

The countdown begins

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A word to the wizened, if not always the wise: Only 35 shopping days remain before spring raises its lovely, garlanded head. Unless, of course, you count the weekends which, given the lack of money in various bank accounts around the region these days, why would you?

I like to pretend that in a little more than a calendric month, we in southeastern New Brunswick will be well on our way to a long, beatific summer. Of course, I like to imagine a lot of things that only rarely come true.

About this time last year, I was feeling pretty much the same way as I am today about the universe. In the first place, it looked like we had, for once, dodged the great, white bullet of winter. No more talk of polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and Nor’easters. Only sunny skies and gradually warming temperatures stretching ahead as far the mind’s eye could see.

We all know how that worked out. Two days before the official start of spring 2015, the Weather Network, with its irritating, trademarked cheerfulness, recapped the winter that was:

“According to unofficial totals as of March 18, this winter has now brought snowfall amounts that crack the Top 5 in Moncton, N.B., Saint John, N.B., and Charlottetown, P.E.I. As of Tuesday, March 17, Moncton was only 2 cm away from reaching the Top 5 with a snowfall total of 450 cm. As of 9:35 a.m. AT Wednesday morning, Moncton unofficially reported about 4 cm, which would put them in the no. 5 spot, knocking off the 1991-1922 winter.”

Still, what gives me hope that February and March of this year won’t, again, prove me a liar to myself is another Weather Network bulletin issued just last week. To wit: “The past two winters were dominated by a particularly resilient weather pattern, which kept the warm influence of the Pacific confined to the West Coast, and left the Eastern US open to persistent outbreaks of brutal Arctic cold. The winter of 2015-2016 finally looks to bring an end to this stubborn setup.”

Ah, yes. Good, old El Niño, the oceanic phenomenon that typically brings milder-than-average weather to the eastern seaboard, and chillier-than-seasonal temperatures to the southwest. The continent is experiencing an usually strong one this year. Or as the Weather Network reported a couple of months ago, “El Niño set a new record for heat in the central Pacific Ocean this week (November 24). Is it on track to become the strongest El Niño we’ve ever seen, and what could this mean for the winter?

“So far, El Niño 2015 has been very unusual. Teasing NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) orecasters with signs and signals through 2014, it ultimately procrastinated in its actual development until early 2015 and it has been growing since, into a rival for some of the strongest El Niños we have on record. As of now, it has already set a new record, though. Weekly measurements of temperatures in the central Pacific ocean are now 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for the very first time in the quarter century that these measurements have been taken.”

On the other hand, as in all things weather related in this region, we hold our breath in abeyance of any certainty that our faith will be rewarded. For my part, I’ve lined up my seven shovels on the front veranda as if to challenge the first truly big blow to hit the city.

C’mon, I dare ya!

Tomorrow, it’ll be a mere 34 shopping days till spring. And I’m on a roll to blossom time.

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