Author Archives: brucescribe

May 20 2016
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Communications, Culture, Economy

Word power in the picture-perfect province

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Never underestimate the propensity of the human mind to concoct new terms to express its latest preoccupations – or, in this case, its ability to find them perfectly suited to a place like New Brunswick, where two official languages provide plenty of linguistic elbowroom for clever word play.

What, for example, do we call people who belong to a certain social class that enjoys neither job security nor any real expectation of a safe, predictable retirement? I am tempted to answer: An increasing number of New Brunswickers. But we’re not alone in this western, industrialized economy. Forget the shopworn reference to the proletariat. Does “precariat” ring a bell?

How do we describe that workplace condition in which swaths of employees show up for their appointed rounds, after having pulled double shifts, too tired to keep their eyes open let alone focus on their keyboards? It’s not absenteeism. Enter the age of “presenteeism” – as in present in body only.

And when one of these members of the precariat, suffering from, say, periodic bouts of presenteeism, decides, in his desperation, that he needs a break from the daily grind but also realizes that the state of his bank account precludes a trip to some exotic locale, what form of vacation remains open to him? All hail “microtourism”.

Oddly enough, I have direct and personal experience with all three of these expressions, coined by others, in the course of my duties.

As the self-employed owner of my very own writing factory (with a workforce of precisely two), I have been an upstanding member of the precariat for more than a quarter of a century. I can couch what I do under the mantle of entrepreneurship and boldly go where so many men and women have gone before. But, if I were to be completely honest with myself, I would have to say that, in reality, I’m just a journeyman odd-jobber – no different, at least in terms of economic security, than a carnival barker in a travelling road show.

Indeed, my occasional struggles with presenteeism have manifested themselves at certain times of the year when two or more contracts conspire to throw up concurrent deadlines. This invariably requires me to pull a few ‘all-nighters’, which can be fun if you’re a college student. When you’re a guy in his mid-fifties. . .well, not so much.

Still, there is something ennobling about surviving the hour of the wolf, between 4 and 5 am, just as early-bird workers rouse themselves to trudge off to their various hamster wheels. I am reminded of the old U.S. army recruitment ad from the 1980s: “We do more before 9 am than most people do all day.” Oh yeah, semper fi my fellow mutant mole people.

All of which makes microtourism a necessity. According to one official definition, a microtourist is someone who enjoys “collective, individual or family-identified/driven tourism that focuses on the unique attributes of your community – both commercial (smaller off-the-commercial-track farm-stays, B&Bs, tours and tour-routes, camping/fishing/farms/lodges etc.,) and especially non-commercial attributes (such as historic sites, flora and fauna, ecological assets and uniqueness).”

I’ll buy that. Still, I prefer my own variant, which I’ll call “backyard tourism”. Here, all the monuments are familiar and lovingly tended with compost. The entrance fees are waived and the tours are short. And, if you care to, you can spend an entire day digging, with your hands, into the good earth, listening to the birds warble, and engaging in the best sort of presenteeism any card-carrying member of the precariat has a right to expect.

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May 20 2016
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Business, Employment, Government

Attacking the roots of unemployment

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Despite pockets of ‘jobfulness’ in New Brunswick, the more familiar phenomenon, joblessness, continues to haunt the highways and alleyways of the province like a pestilence against which no political or economic vaccine has yet truly worked.

This is not, of course, for lack of honest trying.

Consider the government of former Progressive Conservative Premier Bernard Lord. It had thought that it would lick the problem in a couple of years if only it could articulate a five-point “prosperity program”.

Consider the administration of former Liberal Premier Shawn Graham. It had believed that it would secure job-creation funding within its first (and only) term in office if only it could sell the major assets of NB Power and, in so doing, retire as much as 50 per cent of province’s long-term debt.

Consider the reign of former Tory Premier David Alward. It had assumed that a careful, deliberate approach to managing the public purse during its single, four-year mandate would restore confidence to the private sector if only it could stay the course.

Indeed, if only.

In fact, none of these approaches to job creation were, on the face of them, intellectually bankrupt. They stemmed from genuine desires to right the ship of state, which was (and still is) listing badly.

A recent Statistic Canada labour force survey confirms that New Brunswick remains jammed on the shoals of economic perdition. In March, the provincial unemployment rate nudged up above 10 per cent, 0.3 per cent higher than the previous month. Of all Canadian provinces, only Saskatchewan posted a similar decline (though its overall joblessness rate stands at a mere 6.2 per cent; while the national average hovers around the seven per cent mark).

It’s tough to fault New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant for asking the province’s citizens to be patient. After all, this blight descended when he was still a senior in high school. “We are investing in things that will help us have the best climate for economic growth,” he now says almost poignantly. “It will take time. . .to make a difference.”

Lamentably, time is another resource we’ve managed to squander. We should have begun the “Save New Brunswick From Its Own Stupidity” project a generation ago.

Let us assume, however, that the hourglass has not finally run down on us. Where do we go from here?

The lack of jobs in New Brunswick is not the problem. It is merely the most obvious symptom of the problem. Attacking a symptom of an underlying disease might afford temporary comfort and respite from the ravages of illness, but it won’t cure the patient.

The root of this province’s jobs crisis runs deep into social mores that have kept an unacceptably large proportion of New Brunswickers functionally illiterate, unable to operate with even basic math skills and broadly unaware of their own diverse, ethnically rich heritage.

Within this context, jobs have become large corporations’ and governments’ duty to supply; they are not, as they should be, the productive outcomes of innovative entrepreneurs working diligently to make their neighbors and family members competitive with everyone else in the world.

If we are determined to excise the joblessness disease from the body politic in New Brunswick, we must ensure that every kid here gets a Grade A education in both official languages; in math, science, history, economics, and tcrucial mechanical trades.

We must insist that cultivating the next generation of thinkers, doers and entrepreneurs is our collective “Job No. One” in this province.

Only then can we truly start talking rationally about New Brunswick’s ‘jobfulness’.

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May 06 2016
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Municipal Affairs, Politics

Compensating the compensators

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A recent conversation I conducted with my very attractive, always persuasive in-house accountant at The Bruce Mansions went a little like this:

Me: “It has come to my attention that I earn less than a sparrow stealing bird seed from a pigeon on my own feeder. What are you going to do about this?

She: “Well, I can shoot the pigeons, but that’ll cost you.”

Me: “How much?”

She: “About twice as much for buckshot as birdseed.”

Me: “What about setting up more feeders around the backyard?”

She: “Yup. . .That would work, if you want to attract more pigeons and, of course, spend more money on buckshot.”

Me: “So, what’s the solution? I’m out of money.”

She: “Have you ever considered running for Moncton City Council? I hear the birds there have just awarded themselves a massive raise in salaries and perks – to the tune of $100,000 this year. Of course, all things considered, clay pigeons and plastic, pink flamingos might be a worthier investment in downtown development.”

Me: “You had me at $100,000.”

I must have been snoozing – having just consumed the great news about OrganiGram’s and WestJet’s job-creation expectations, about an expansion to the planned downtown events centre – when this news report, courtesy of the CBC, passed across my screen:

“Currently, Moncton councillors earn $24,789.72, but that amount will increase to $33,494.53 on Jan. 1, 2017. The deputy mayor makes $28,539.72, which will jump to $37,244.53. The city’s next mayor will receive the largest pay increase, getting an increase of more than $14,000 that boosts the mayor’s salary to $83,736.33.”

All tallied, that amounts to a 20-35 per cent pay hike in a single year – at a time when middle-class salaries in this city (population: 70,000), province, region, and country have nudged upwards by mere fractions since 1981.

Is this egregious? Frankly, the optics could not be more embarrassing to a city that bills itself as a lean, mean, fighting municipal machine.

The City of Toronto, with a population approaching 4 million, pays its mayor, annually, $184,666. It pays its councillors an average of $110,000 a year. The hourly rates it maintains for councillor staffs hover between $15 and $47.

The Halifax Regional Municipality, with a population of about 400,000, will soon pay its mayor $163,000 a year and its councillors $74,000 apiece annually. (This, after that city council recently approved cutbacks in the salaries it approves for its members).

All of which only indicates that, compared with their counterparts in other urban centres in Canada, Moncton’s elected officials were making pretty decent change before they gave themselves dramatic raises just in time for the upcoming municipal election. Now, some of them even bloviate on the hard work they must sustain whilst prosecuting what are, officially, part-time jobs.

But let us entertain that these positions are part-time in name only; that they are, in fact, more full-time than those of us outside city hall are prepared to admit.

That’s fair enough. But can’t some mechanism be found to award hard-working councillors with regular, annual bumps in their compensation packages that actually track those of the people they purport to represent?

Must we forever endure these public-relations disasters in the halls of government?

As for me, my in-house accountant advises me to hold off four more years before running for mayor. By then, she says, the good citizens of Moncton might be all too willing to allow me to roll in their dough for a good, long stretch of cutting ribbons and talking out of both sides of my splendid mouth.

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May 06 2016
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Economy, Technology

Cybernauts in New Brunswick?

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In his well-documented piece for Maclean’s magazine in March, Martin Patriquin – who japes that he “writes about Quebec and sometimes everything else” – makes a distressingly large number of good points about the tattered condition of New Brunswick society.

Naturally, we in “the picture-perfect province” bristle whenever a major, national magazine sets out to shine a light on our evident flaws – just as enthusiastically, perhaps, as we cheer when said magazine periodically rewards our universities with top-of-class status in Canada. (Yeah, go figure).

But Mr. Patriquin’s analysis is bolstered by several instances of “et tu Brute then fall Caesar”, all of them rather, well, revealing.

As quoted by Maclean’s, for example, Mount Allison President Robert Campbell apparently said: “You’d think small would be simple, but New Brunswick is the classic example of how that really isn’t true. For a little province like this, we just can’t get our act together.”

In fact, I know Dr. Campbell a little bit, and he has never effused anything remotely like that about this province to me. Of course, if accurate, his incendiary revelation doesn’t mean he’s now wrong; perhaps he’s simply discerning about whose lap on which he decides to spill the beans.

The same goes for former provincial, Liberal cabinet minister Kelly Lamrock, who Mr. Patriquin reports said this: “We’ve targeted our policies on just getting re-elected and so we prop up failing industries and we bail out failing companies. Atlantic Yarns went under and lost an $80-million loan. The government I was a part of lent $70 million to (Miramichi-based) Atcon, a failing construction company that went under a year later. The Marriott call centre closed. It turns out they were subsidized to the tune of $20,000 a job and just left when the subsidies ran out. And the list goes on. We have generally been about keeping the majority of people comfortable rather than attracting new people.”

Still, in the midst of this completely understandable ‘self-loathing-palooza-festiva’ comes word that all may not be lost to the furies of chance and negligence in this province. For one thing, we always have the cybersecurity industry – hacking the hackers ­ – on which to fall back. Don’t take my word for it. A guy from Israel was scheduled to say as much at a conference in Fredericton just last week.

Actually, Roni Zehavi, who runs something called CyberSpark, said it first in a pre-event interview with Brunswick News: “The first thing is to have a dedicated entity within the province. In our (Israel’s) case, it was establishing a non-governmental organization like CyberSpark that is in charge of establishing a logistical system and serves the table with the people around it and dedicated to growth.” His bottom-line message: “The government made a decision.”

Back to New Brunswick, where governments make decisions all the time – some of which are wise, even prescient.

The cybersecurity industry, or something like it, is not new to New Brunswick. Government-enabled investments here in the 1990s installed some of the most sophisticated IT infrastructure anywhere in the western world. Clusters of technology excellence soon developed around the province’s major cities. These persist, and with a little intellectual elbow grease they can take a bite out of a global industry that is, according to credible sources, expected to double in size from current values to $170 billion.

As Mr. Zehavi says, “I look at cyber like health care.”

New Brunswick might well look at cyber as a lifeline to long-term economic health, before the next major magazine in this country pronounces us all but brain dead.

 

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May 06 2016
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Democracy, Politics

Biting the watchdog

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When governments and their duly appointed protectors of public probity begin to feud, the result is always, lamentably predictable: The poison infects the body politic, and no one is safe from the vile cynicism that now, too often, afflicts our democratic institutions.

What, for example, are we to make of the on-again-off-again dispute between the New Brunswick government and its auditor general Kim MacPherson about their proper, respective roles in the province?

The former wants to clarify what she should be able to do, to whom she should be able to talk, and how she should be able to investigate matters that cross her desk as the province’s chief forensic accountant.

The latter wants to clarify what that actual clarification means.

The issue is the new, proposed Inquiries Act, a bill the Gallant government hopes will settle any lingering confusion about the operational independence of its legislative watchdogs (the auditor general, the provincial ombudsman and a handful of others).

But was there any real confusion, until now?

A report in Brunswick News states that the new bill, “introduced by the Liberal government last week includes specific provisions that could restrict reporting on public hearings and even exclude the public from attending. . .Now, the province’s auditor general is questioning the changes.”

In an interview with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Ms. MacPherson declared that she has concerns with one section of the proposed legislation – specifically the one that removes her authority as a provincial “commissioner”, a position which currently endows her with the same powers as a Court of Queen’s Bench judge to launch investigations and inaugurate hearings on her own steam.

As she said, “I have concerns with repealing that section (of the existing Act).” Furthermore, she stated, she worries about the coupling of one line in the legislation that gives the A-G genuine commissioner authority with another that appears to insist that these powers, nevertheless, defer to government direction. In other words, Premier Gallant and his relevant cabinet ministers seem to be saying: Investigate, but only if we initiate and approve the object of your scrutiny. “For independence reasons, I thought that section should be decoupled so that the auditor general, when and if (he/she) thought it was necessary, only in very, very extreme circumstances, would invoke the powers of inquiry,” Ms. MacPherson noted.

What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with an independent officer of the government – mandated to keep a watchful eye on all things the public is owed a right and a need to know about the fiscal apparatus of its society – asking important questions, and getting answers?

Conversely, what’s right about an elected political regime curtailing the scope and effectiveness of these duties simply because these duties remain, without partisan or bureaucratic meddling, independent?

Now, as if to add further mud to the spring run-off around Freddy Beach, the Gallant government has decided, in estimable wisdom, not to decide. It’s sent the whole issue off to the law amendments committee where bills of this sort go to be remodeled, or, as often as not, to die.

Says Attorney General Serge Rousselle: “This is not a priority for our government. . .That said, in the spirit of collaboration and to listen to what everyone wants to say, I will propose an amendment to refer the Inquiries Act to the standing committee on law amendments.”

Not a priority for this government?

Who, then, wins under these circumstances? Ms. MacPherson? The provincial government?

Certainly, it can’t be the voters who, witnessing these shenanigans, might be forgiven for the cynicism they feel rising daily and all around them.

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Apr 29 2016
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Politics

Chickens in every pot?

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New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant seems to have no problem functioning as the province’s “Minister of Everything”.

After all, he’s not only the youngest provincial leader in the country (at age 33), he’s President of the Executive Council, Chair of the New Brunswick Jobs Board, Minister responsible for Innovation, Minister responsible for Intergovernmental Affairs, Minister responsible for Women’s Equality, Minister Responsible for Rural Affairs, and Minister responsible for the Premier’s Council on the Status of Disabled Persons.

Now, he purports to become the go-to guy for a new and vast job creation and economic growth fund in a province that can barely find clean socks to darn before it dons decades-old Birkenstocks with which to impress international bondholders.

No matter. Though he remains the second-handsomest man in New Brunswick (the first honour apparently belongs to one Jason Betts, 39, of Moncton, who has advanced to the final round of First Choice Hair Cutters’ campaign to locate the nation’s one and only Adonis), he persists as its most ambitious and implacable.

Indeed, he’s committing one billion bucks over the next few years on an “education and the new economy” fund.

Sheesh, boy, where have you been hiding all these years? Or, perhaps, the better question is: Where has the money to pay for all of this in a province that lurches from a $13-billion long-term debt to roughly $500-million in annual deficit financing been, well, hiding?

Mr. Gallant now takes a page from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s policy playbook. As federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau described his recent budget for the country, “Our plan will recapture the hope and optimism for the future that existed in previous generations, and put it to work for the next. Real change is about revitalizing the economy in the years and decades to come.”

What, then, does Mr. Gallant offer? At a press conference in Fredericton last week he said, “I will be working with ministers in the departments responsible for the different programs and initiatives of the fund to ensure that the parts are co-ordinated, complementary and realize maximum benefits.”

Furthermore, he stated, “This fund will support and coordinate new and existing programs in areas of jobs and education. . .For the 2016-17 fiscal year, our government will invest at least $261 million to support students, entrepreneurs, businesses, scientists, and New Brunswickers as they look to build an innovative economy here in New Brunswick.”

The question, though, is: How?

How will this new fund offer any more opportunities to the people of this province than any other promised and variously delivered by previous governments? How will it depart from its predecessors? How will it improve on, say, the “opportunity” agendas of the old Lord and Graham governments? How, specifically, will it build the “new economy” it promises? No news on this, yet.

The problem with a provincial premier who has his finger in every pot of his administration is that the details of his overarching agenda conveniently get forgotten, shelved or otherwise ignored by those who must, ostensibly, execute them. After all, why take the risk of running afoul of the king, even though you might hold the keys to the castle?

Mr. Gallant is evidently smart, educated, ambitious, and implacable. He’s young, energetic and well intentioned. He’s also an acolyte of the current federal program to breath new life into the national economy by spending liberally.

Fair enough. But to be successful, he must delegate his responsibilities to those under his command – those whom he has appointed to decide which chickens are delivered to which pots.

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Apr 29 2016
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Business, Economy, Environment

Fracking, we hardly knew ye

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It was fun while it lasted, but the people have spoken. So have New Brunswick’s all-but-departed, hydraulic-fracturing development and production companies. Now, we can declare it: Dear fracking, rest in peace.

You were the bad boy of the oil and gas industry in these parts. With your exploitation of sedimentary rock, your hidebound determination to squeeze every last drop of fossil fuel from the ground, your propensity for threatening supplies of drinking water, and your potential for causing the odd, situational earthquake, you were Marlon Brando or James Dean to our Julie Andrews or Jean Simmons. We, you and I, were never matches made in economic heaven, after all.

Even a rebel with a cause needs a willing audience to survive. Without this, casual affection – let alone love – fades, withers and eventually dies.

That happened a few weeks ago, when a special commission of the provincial government sent down its report, declaring that elected officials had but two options: proceed with building an environmentally responsible industry around tight plays of onshore reserves of natural gas, or forget the whole thing.

Through its silence on the issue, the Brian Gallant government has chosen Door No. 2, though this hasn’t prevented the province’s energy minister, Don Arseneault from jamming his foot in the stoop for what’s likely to be one last time. “At the end of the day,” he told Brunswick News Inc. last week, “there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“Even if I lifted the (provincial government’s standing) moratorium (on hydraulic fracturing) tomorrow, there’s still not going to be any fracking because no one from industry or the municipalities has stepped up to give us a plan on how to treat wastewater. So a lot of things are unresolved.”

Well, not really. As Jim Emberger of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Alliance noted, not unreasonably, last week, “It’s hard to fathom a case for shale gas in (this province). It is an industry that is shedding jobs by the thousands. How will it bring jobs here? It is an industry that has seen dozens of bankruptcies and is in debt up to its neck. Who will be making major investments in those companies, many of (which) may not survive the next year due record low prices (for oil and gas) and record high debt?”

This, of course, doesn’t stop the diminishing, increasingly marginalized cohort of shale gas’s die-hard fans from praying for a comeback in New Brunswick. Says Colleen Mitchell, president of the Atlantica Centre for Energy: “Since the (provincial) commission released its report, we haven’t seen any action taken towards lifting the (government) moratorium.”

Nor shall we, I warrant. Still, Ms. Mitchell persists, “We want to get a number of groups together, stakeholders, to indicate that there is strong support for lifting the economic situation (in New Brunswick) and having the (shale-gas) companies still interested in exploring for natural gas onshore continue.”

Still, who are those companies? SWN and Corridor Resources? Where, exactly, is the “strong support” for this industry in New Brunswick? For four years or more, we’ve had a chance to weigh the pros and cons at the expense – in time, money and distraction – of considering other, durable means of rebuilding the provincial economy consensually. During this time, we have failed to make any significant progress beyond occasionally mitigating the toothache of useless ideological debate.

Fracking in New Brunswick had its pale moment in the sun. The sun has now set. It’s time to move on and consider all the other options for economic development. Dear fracking, RIP.

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Apr 05 2016
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Democracy, Government, Politics

Whistling a nasty tune

Few issues loom larger in New Brunswick than the condition of the provincial economy. But one that’s gaining traction is the increasingly spiteful tenor of public debate.

I’m not talking about placard-waving protesters or media-savvy talking heads. They’re playing a fair game in front of the cameras, greasing the wheels of democratic action.

I’m talking about actual politicians who would rather shoot from the hip than focus their sights on real targets.

None of this is especially new. Neither is it restricted to one party or another. Our system of government is deliberately adversarial. It should be. That’s one way we hold elected officials to account.

Still, human nature insists that at some point we almost always approach the line that signifies we have gone too far – in this case, the place where vigorous debate becomes needlessly acrimonious and, therefore, utterly useless as an instrument of change.

We’ve not quite reached this particular boundary in New Brunswick. We cannot, for example, hope to compare our political arena with the cage matches now underway in the U.S. election.

Would a New Brunswick politician utter the following Donald Trumpism just to sway a few nutbars? “You talk about George Bush, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was president, the World Trade Center came down during his reign.”

Would a New Brunswick politician talk about immigration in this province the way Mr. Trump “discusses” the issue in his neck of the North American woods? To wit: “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Would a New Brunswick politician get cringingly personal the way Mr. Trump did about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during last year’s televised debate? “I know where she went,” the real estate mogul and reality-show star told a crowd of his fans. “It’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it. No, it’s too disgusting.”

Clearly, we don’t sink to these levels. Yet, we can detect a rising churlishness in New Brunswick’s political discourse. Indeed, it’s been rising for years.

When the Liberals were in opposition, they routinely, even reflexively, hammered away at the Tory government’s dismal track record on job creation, even though most reasonable opinion concluded that playing that particular card was a mug’s game. After all, despite their campaign rhetoric, governments don’t, in fact, create jobs.

Now that the Conservatives are out of office, they’re returning the favour. Said Opposition Leader Bruce Fitch the other day: “There are a number of crises the premier needs to address. (He) disappeared, came back and did his tour delivering a couple of job announcements. They are fine in themselves but there is a bigger question to be answered here. In the last 18 months, there has been a dismal failure in job creation under the Gallant leadership. He promised 5,000 jobs, we are down 6,000 jobs, so that is 11,000 less than promised.”

Mr. Fitch is not wrong about the state of the provincial economy. But the argument about the condition of his rival’s leadership actually goes nowhere if we still expect a government that hasn’t created jobs to suddenly become an employment-generating factory.

Now might be a good time to retire the lashing tongues, and explore ways to target the reasons for New Brunswick’s economic maladies together.

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Apr 05 2016
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Education, Society

Are our universities failing?

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In the seven years I spent at Dalhousie University, fairly sailing through my class load, I took my share of ‘bird courses’, never thinking about a job.

I spent some time examining the effect of Beatles’ music on popular culture. I worked on an essay about the geography of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’ and how this represented the Bible’s ‘End Times’.

No one in my cohort of students in the 1970s shall ever forget the ‘nature versus nurture’ arguments that dominated the lecture halls of academe.

Now, a University of Prince Edward Island professor of religious studies posits some fascinatingly angry points about the condition of his craft, his institution and his passion.

Says Ron Srigley in a recent edition of The Walrus: “I teach mostly bored youth who find themselves doing something they neither value nor desire . . . in order to achieve an outcome they are repeatedly warned is essential to their survival. What a dreadful trap. Rather than learning freely and excelling, they’ve become shrewd managers of their own careers and are forced to compromise what is best in themselves – their honesty or character – in order to ‘make it’ in the world we’ve created for them.”

The good professor worries that kids, insuffienctly equipped to embrace the arduous task of actually learning something worthwhile, will become the new vanguard of blunt, meaningless mediocrity in society. Worse, we parents, educators, university administrators are grinding down the edges of their intellects with every utterance we make about “relevance” in higher education.

“A couple of years ago, I dimmed the lights in order to show a clip of an interview,” Professor Srigley relates. “I was trying to make a point about the limits of human aspiration, a theme discussed in one of our readings, and I’d found an interview with Woody Allen in which he urged that we recognize the ultimate futility of all endeavours. The moment the lights went down, dozens and dozens of bluish, iPhone-illumined faces emerged from the darkness. That’s when I understood that there were several entertainment options available to students in the modern university classroom, and that lectures rank well below Twitter, Tumblr, or Snapchat.”

Frankly, nothing in this 5,000-word piece is unfamiliar to me. This stuff was happening with nauseating frequency when I was an undergraduate 35 years ago. What’s troubling, if we are to believe Mr. Srigley, is that conditions in academe have deteriorated to the extent that young ‘scholars’, their parents and university administrators now regard faculty members with advanced degrees as nothing more than handmaidens to the callow, vapid career aspirations of those who hold enough coin to buy a piece of commencement paper.

If Mr. Srigley overstates his case, it’s not by much.

The last time I suggested, in writing, that this region’s university presidents (read: CEOs) were more interested in the condition of their institutions’ bottom lines than they were in the state of their students’ capacity for critical thinking, I was called on the plush, red carpet of the Association of Atlantic Universities (The Inquisition’s bureaucratic arm, perhaps?)

In the seven years I spent at Dalhousie University working to understand Socrates, Aristotle, Hobbes, Mill, Hume, Bloom, Faulkner (and not Tolkien or C.S. Lewis), I learned how to think and, in my own way, how to teach.

I also learned how to tell the truth to myself and to my children about the way the world – sometimes corrupted, always promising ­– works.

So has, in his own life, Professor Ron Srigley.

Time will tell, of course, if he still has a job.

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Apr 05 2016
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Business, Climate, Energy

Towards a “carbon-lite” future?

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As the government of New Brunswick’s Brian Gallant earnestly attempts to deliver the spirit, if not yet the reality, of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate-sensitive, clean-technology economy, the obvious question is: How will the former make nice with the latter without dismantling what remains of the provincial economy?

Certainly, the speculation mills now grind. According to a Brunswick News Inc. report earlier this week, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters is now questioning the motives of the provincial government concerning gas taxes. “I think a lot of people were wondering,” said the organization’s New Brunswick vice-president Joel Richardson.

“A gas tax wasn’t even part of the (provincial budget) conversation. . .I think it was off the table because the provincial government was in collusion with the federal government to wait until (the) Paris (climate) talks happened and Vancouver happened and then gas taxes are going up.”

All of which points to a public policy framework that is likely to become every bit as fraught with controversy as was the recent tussle over hydraulic fracturing. Then again, how could it be otherwise?

Transitioning traditional economies to a “carbon-lite” future is extraordinarily tricky business. On the other hand, it can be done. Consider, for example, Finland, which the CleanTech Finland website states, “tops the  that ranks the greenest countries in the world. Finland is followed by Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia.

“EPI ranks the performance of 180 countries on high-priority environmental issues in two areas: protection of human health and protection of ecosystems. The index is created by Yale and Columbia universities along with the World Economic Forum. EPI is constructed through the calculation and aggregation of nine categories that include more than 20 indicators: agriculture, air quality, biodiversity and habitat, climate and energy, fisheries, forests, health impacts, water and sanitation, and water resources.”

The 2016 report says that “Finland’s top ranking is mostly based on country’s societal commitment to achieve carbon-neutral society that does not exceed nature’s carrying capacity by 2050. The report indicates that Finland has actionable goals and measurable indicators of sustainable development. Finland performed well especially in the areas of health, water categories, air quality, and climate and energy. In the forests category, measuring tree cover loss, Finland has its lowest ranking.”

Finland’s experience suggests that only a concerted effort to coordinate and impose specific measures on the New Brunswick economy will effectively align the province with Ottawa’s climate-change targets and policies. Is one of these measures a gas tax or some other clutch of responses?

Mr. Richardson has a point when he notes that the best way to change people’s behaviour is offer them incentives for doing so.

Still, whatever approach eventually surfaces, a new type of logic must begin to take root here. If we can’t quit fossil fuels altogether, and we soon won’t be able to live with them as we do today we should stop thinking about them as commodities to burn and begin to appreciate them as strategic assets to employ in the effort to build a largely clean, broadly renewable future?

In other words, if we train ourselves to use them as inputs for new manufacturing technologies that more effectively capture and distribute in-situ wind, solar and tidal sources of energy, we might just start the long, arduous process of diversifying the economy.

Use them to power research into cleaner forms of short- and long-range transportation systems. Use them to, in effect, evolve away from them as anything but the necessary evils they are for advanced research and development and clean-technology commercialization.

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