Category Archives: Economy

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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Dec 29 2015
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Democracy, Economy, Politics, Society

The year of living gob-smacked

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I can think of only one other year when circumstances conspired to render “yours truly” utterly speechless.

1995 saw me accidentally sever all the tendons in my right hand, deliberately dismiss my business partner of four years, and unwittingly lose my wherewithal in a reversal inspired (if not actually engineered) by the Halifax-based cadre of one-per-centers for which I worked.

Still, all things properly considered, 2015 was also a tongue-numbing moment in time for most of us on the East Coast.

To begin with, no one imagined that a Christmas holiday in late December 2014, when the temperatures hovered around the 15-degree Celsius mark, would transform into this:

“If you’re feeling like this winter is one of the worst you can remember, you’re probably right,” a CTV report confirmed last February. “A ‘misery index’ released by U.S. National Weather Service meteorologists shows the winter of 2014-15 is one of the most miserable on record. The Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index puts the ‘badness’ or ‘goodness’ of winter in context by looking at daily temperature, snowfall, snow depth or precipitation records to show the season’s severity compared to other years.”

Then again, no one thought to check the science around climate change and how a new phenomenon, the “polar vortex”, might be related to trending warmer temperatures in the Arctic and lower ones in the south.

Oh well, we believe in our political leaders who seem to know exactly what we’re thinking until, of course, they don’t.

When former Prime Minister Stephen Harper told us all to relax and relish the fact that he would balance the federal budget, we assumed he was as good as his word. We assumed, in other words, that oil prices would persist and that most Canadians would, as a result, return him to his perch at 24 Sussex Drive. Most Canadians didn’t.

Now, a scion of political history, Justin Trudeau, is charged with restoring the nation’s international reputation for fairness, environmental responsibility, justice, law, and the rest well in time for his state visit to the White House on March 10, before the cherry blossoms open; before the price of a barrel of oil drops down below thirty bucks.

So, then, what do we do with this economic calculus in New Brunswick? 2015 showed us that a very young premier, only 33 years old, can move in the polls from 45 per cent approval, to 24, and back to 45 within the span of 15 months. He showed us that youth does not beggar age or wisdom.

But where now is that wisdom in a place that needs to reinvent itself in the Canadian context on its own terms?

New Brunswick’s past year has been nothing short of miraculous, if miracles are built on faith, alone. Life, unfortunately, is built on hard, cold reality. And this province has become a place where too many believe in the big, rock candy mountains of government and not enough in the granite and grit that originally made this province and this nation from coast to coast.

What was 2015?

It was the year of living astonished by the climate of our attitudes in New Brunswick; by the weather report that our economy would never improve; by the signs of storm clouds, blizzards and downpours that just never seem to disappear.

A $500-million annual deficit should curb our fat tongues; a $12-billion debt should render us utterly speechless.

Unless, of course, we decide to speak, and do, and make, and build, and create, and turn to conspire to succeed together.

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Dec 29 2015
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Demographics, Economy, Politics

A hand-out by any other name

Who says I'm not happy?

Premier Brian Gallant’s decision to ask the newly elected Liberal government of Justin Trudeau to pony up new money for seniors’ care in this province is a bold move. But it could also be a very bad one.

In his end-of-the-year interview with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Mr. Gallant welcomed an $80-million-plus increase to New Brunswick in federal transfers next year. “I am very happy to hear that we are going to have the transfer conversation,” he said, sounding almost dismissive.

Still, he continued, “I have always made it very clear that we need extra support from the federal government because of our aging population. . .New Brunswick is facing an aging population that is more significant than almost any other province in the country. Therefore, the federal government has an opportunity to test run what programs will work to overcome those challenges.”

This is the tried-and-true “canary in the coalmine” argument that one level of government, fiscally subservient to another, routinely makes when it can’t quite figure out how to address the economic and demographic realities it faces.

Newfoundland and Labrador now faces an annual deficit of $2-billion, which dwarfs New Brunswick’s by a factor of four. Canada’s western provinces, reeling under a spot price for oil that barely nudges the $36-per-barrel mark, are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Do these jurisdictions – whose populations are, by the way, also aging – deserve any less consideration from Ottawa than does New Brunswick?

Yet, Mr. Gallant, all of 33 years old, persists. This province, he says, could and should become a test lab for federal programs (read: handouts) over and above the Canada Health Transfer that will putatively teach legislators at all levels of government across this great, aging nation how to properly care for old folks in their senescence, in the sunset of their years.

It sounds great, but it feels wrong and for a variety of reasons.

Presently, even the smartest, most perspicacious New Brunswick bureaucrats can’t tell you exactly when, how or why the province’s aging population will compromise the ship of state in these harbours we call home. Some say, doom has already descended. Others insist we have several years before we notice a deleterious difference in our standards of living. Still others declare, optimistically, that septuagenarian baby boomers represent an untapped resource – a resource whose potential is yet to be fully plumbed.

What’s missing in all of this is real, credible research that would justify a broad, multi-million-dollar ask from the feds to address a problem New Brunswick hasn’t actually parsed with any degree of social-policy, let alone scientific, rigour. It feels panicky, precipitous and, in the end, disastrously misaligned.

There’s also something distressingly infantilizing about all of this.

Shall the rest of Canada care for the elderly in New Brunswick over and above the degree they already do simply because an actuarial table over at Statistics Canada shows that the population here is getting older?

Again, how many of these people live below the poverty line? How many live well above it? Answer these questions, and then, perhaps, have a useful, evidence-based chat with Ottawa.

Fundamentally, no government anywhere in this nation has money to burn. Our grown kids can’t find the sort of work we once hoped they would. They can’t locate affordable, high-quality childcare. They can no longer expect to be better off, more prosperous or happier than their parents.

Building the base for their futures seems, to me, a better use of public money than securing the dwindling years of people like me.

Trust me, I ain’t near rich enough to afford a government-backed handout to myself.

 

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Dec 02 2015
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Business, Economy, Government, Politics

Don’t fear the reaper

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Sooner or later, the horseman with the scythe was always coming to New Brunswick, brandishing his blade to cut down the high and low among us. Still, who knew he would materialize in the form of a 33-year-old lawyer-cum-politician from a Sleepy Hollow known as Shediac Bridge?

Premier Brian Gallant, and his operatives in government, are deadly serious about reducing the province’s annual spending load by $600 million, hoping, in turn, to replenish the public accounts and avoid structural bankruptcy before bond-holders on Wall and Bay Streets get wise to the fact that we haven’t known, for years, what we’ve been doing (economically and fiscally, at least) to Canada’s picture-perfect province.

We know now; and it boils down to this: With a $600-million deficit, a $12-billion debt, a population tipping 750,000 on a good day, and an out-migration rate that rivals historical exoduses in almost biblical terms, we simply can’t afford ourselves. Under these circumstances, who could?

Of course, we may know this, deep in our East Coast bones, but do we accept the consequences of our perennial profligacy? Do we actually “get” the fact that we are the authors of our own misfortune? After all, to paraphrase the inimitable Bob Dylan, the hour is late and all along the watchtower, princes keep the view. . .Outside in the distance a wildcat does growl. Two riders are approaching, and the wind begins to howl.

That’s winter for you in southeastern New Brunswick; but one of the riders who now visits us is an all-season, equal-opportunity reaper and nothing, it seems, will distract him from his appointed rounds.

Here’s the latest on the issue from the editorial desk of the CBC last week:

“The New Brunswick government is proposing a long list of cuts, measures to boost revenue and ways to overhaul the delivery of government services to eliminate the province’s $600-million structural deficit. Health Minister Victor Boudreau, the minister responsible for the strategic program review, announced the report at a news conference on Friday.”

Specifically, the minister said, “We want to provide for more opportunity for New Brunswickers to comment on the report. But it is not necessary (to conduct)another round of public consultation, like I did before.”

That’s code for: “Yeah, we’ve talked to New Brunswickers till we’ve gone blue in the face; so, dear citizens, deploy the public porto-potty of open opinion, or. . .well, vacate the pot forthwith.”

Here’s what’s heading towards the political abattoir over the next few months: The idea that drivers get to ride the roads in this province for free (some form of tolls for casual and industrial wheel-men and women are practically inevitable); the notion that smokers and drinkers will be saved from another hike in the cost of their so-called vices (of course, we’d quit, if we didn’t understand how valuable our shekels are to the provincial economy); and the long-standing, utterly absurd protest against a prudent hike in the Harmonized Sales Tax.

As for this last measure, a two per cent increase (from 13 to 15 per cent), accompanied by reasonable exemptions for low-income New Brunswickers, would generate an additional $250-million a year for this province.

Regardless, the horseman comes, brandishing the tools of his trade.

Now, it remains for us to duck his scythe by building the innovative, inventive, productive private sector that will prevent us from ever again laying down our heads on the chopping blocks of economic necessity. 

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Dec 01 2015
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Business, Democracy, Economy

The name game

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In principle, I do not object to the notion of selling the naming rights to public infrastructure in New Brunswick.

But Tory Opposition Leader Bruce Fitch makes a fair point when he says the scheme, proposed by the Gallant government to raise badly needed cash, risks ignoring citizens who simply don’t possess the wherewithal to ensure that their names live on in splendid glory, affixed to the side of a bridge in the middle of Hicksville, Nowhere County.

“There’s a lot of people that have contributed significantly to the province of New Brunswick,” he told the Telegraph-Journal last week, “yet they maybe aren’t of great means or haven’t been able to donate hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to a capital campaign.”

Hear, hear!

Why, I, myself, have spent an inordinate amount of time pitching and boosting a mixed-used, multi-purpose downtown events center for Moncton. Let’s call that my contribution to the moral and spiritual health of the locality and dub the facility appropriately: “The Brucesplex”.

Of course, there’s also the contiguous system of pot-hole-riddled roads that my wife and I have travelled faithfully from Moncton to the Confederation Bridge, across the Abegweit Passage of the Northumberland Strait, and into Charlottetown, to visit our grand-kids and their parents. Henceforth, let us know these byways and highways collectively as “The Bruceway”.

Still, paupers like myself (even, unlike myself, genuinely influential ones) do nothing for the provincial budget by having their names gratuitously slapped on the odd park bench. As Victor Boudreau, the provincial minister responsible for the government’s strategic program review, told reporters last week, “If we can generate a million or two that doesn’t have to come out of the pockets of New Brunswickers to help us address the fiscal challenge we’re facing in the province, then maybe it’s a option worth considering.”

Clearly, then, this particular name game is reserved for the playgrounds of the rich and influential, where participants don’t mind forking over sizeable sums in return for designated immortality etched into the edifices of the province’s public works. This, naturally, raises other concerns among the hoi polloi; chief among them is the danger of branding New Brunswick according to the increasingly narrow constraints of those in possession of real money.

Last month, Barrie Examiner ran a piece touching on a similar issue in its neck of the woods. “Councillors heard the pitch about a plan to sell naming rights of city facilities and sponsorship of programs, events and other community initiatives,” reporter Bob Bruton wrote. “It could generate a net income of almost $850,000 during its first five years, after staff, marketing and servicing costs are paid. ‘Barrie is like a lot of municipalities. They are looking for new and innovative ways to find revenue,’ said Bernie Colterman, Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing, who’s been in the business for 20 years. ‘The timing is right for sponsorship. You have to look at this as a positive thing.’”

On the other hand, Councillor Bonnie Ainsworth worried that the community’s Eastview Arena, for example, might suffer from an inappropriate proximity to filthy lucre. “We don’t want someone to look up and have it named Jimmy’s Tow Truck Arena,” she said.

All of this, however, could be moot. As Marvin Ryder, a marketing professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, recently told The National Post, the name game may not be as remunerative as government officials hope.

“The only place where this has worked well is in sports facilities,” he said.

Indeed, in New Brunswick, a highway or a bridge by any other name would still be as harrowing.

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Nov 29 2015
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Economy, Government

Let’s not race to the bottom

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How fare the whipping posts of the East Coast’s civil services? Just fine, thank you very much, if you happen to believe Finn Poschmann, the relatively new president and CEO of the venerable Atlantic Provinces Economic Council.

In his latest email missive he declares that the widening income gap between private sector workers and public ones is becoming economically structural. Specifically, he says, “One way to look at it is to compare wage growth across the board versus government health services and general provincial government services. Let’s go back 15 years and look at a two Nova Scotia neighbours. One is a mid-level manager in the private sector and the other works for the provincial government. Both make $60,000 including benefits.

“Over the past 15 years, using an average all-industry sector hourly compensation measure that includes employer-paid benefits, the manager would have seen his paycheck grow by 3.2 per cent annually. For the government worker, the annual salary bump would have been 4.5 per cent per year.

“Taken over 15 years, the hypothetical $60,000 goes to $97,000 for our manager – but his neighbour, the government worker, is now earning $116,000.  There are perfectly good reasons for differences in pay levels: age, experience, occupation, level of education. These factors go a long way toward explaining the public sector wage premium. Yet the growing wage gap covers the cost of a nice new car payment, permanently, and it only gets bigger.”

He adds: “The numbers are about the same for Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick (not so for Newfoundland and Labrador, where the private sector has done better). Someone has to pay for the difference, and that is a tough job when the population level is stagnant, and so is income growth.”

He concludes: “Holding the line on public sector compensation is one thing. . .Provinces will need to keep a very keen eye on spending – and on public sector headcounts.”

On the face of it, the argument makes sense. After all, why should one class of employees do better than another just because it’s lucky enough to occupy a sector that’s been largely protected from the depredations of market capitalism lo these many years?

The answer is, of course, buried in the question, itself.

Have public sector unions abused their power at the expense of public services? Indubitably, they have. Have various bargaining units thrown their own members under the bus in order to secure a more perfect negotiating position for their narrow objectives? Naturally; that’s only human gamesmanship at play.

The larger issue, though, is whether a good job in one sector of the economy is seamlessly comparable to one in another. If, for example, the private sector fails to produce income growth, does it follow that the public sector should track that descent in kind?

After all, we presume that we – all of us in all sectors of the economy – pay taxes to secure the best, smartest, most innovative people to public service. (Whether or not that particular strategy has been working out for us lately is arguable). What we need to realize is that demonizing one segment of working society is an utterly fruitless distraction from the broader purpose of building productivity, sustainable employment and, yes, happiness in our communities and homes – in our private enterprises.

Who cares whether civil servants in this region are better equipped to weather the storms of market capitalism than are the rest of us?

Let us all race to the top, and leave the whipping posts behind.

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Nov 29 2015
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Business, Culture, Economy, Society

How the jewel of the Gulf became a foodie’s paradise

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It was a flash of public relations brilliance, and a recipe for success among Prince Edward Island’s culinary contingent.

Take two of North America’s most-watched morning talk-show hosts, cook them slowly under a camera on low heat in front of Charlottetown Harbour, season them with local, gastronomic treats and watch the bread of international marketing rise naturally.

So it was in mid-July, 2010, when Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa planted their less-than-ample derrieres on chairs situated on a raised dais to sample everything from mussel hotdogs and oyster ice cream, to ham and clam sandwiches. Later, according to one report, “Kelly and family dined on lobster and she loved the homemade P.E.I. biscuits.”

As for the show’s spread, nearly 2.9 million viewers from Vancouver to New Orleans watched the hosts stuff their faces and, between bites, issue such reviews as, “magnificent”, unbelievable”, “superb” – all from the land of Anne of Green Gables.

“Yup,” says Jan Holmes, “We meant to do it that way. That was on purpose.”

Holmes, to be clear, is the Director of Food Tourism and Applied Research for the P.E.I. Culinary Alliance, an organization that only recently reinvented itself as the Food Island Partnership as a group that, according to its website, is “established to work closely with industry and government partners to support the growth of the P.E.I. food sector and position P.E.I. as Canada’s Food Island. The organization works in the following key areas to achieve its mandate: Supporting food company and product development; enabling applied research to support value chain integration; and leveraging and building the reputation of the Prince Edward Island food brand.”

All this is, of course, the bureaucratic bafflegab expected when a provincial government joins with a federal organization (in this case, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency) and private-industry operators.

Still, the bottom line is that Prince Edward Island, with all of 140,000 residents, is on an indisputable roll when it comes to food tourism. And it has been for years.

Says Holmes: “The Culinary Alliance, as a public-private consortium was formally founded in 2009, but long before that, various tourism interests on the Island were concentrating on the province’s food as a means to build tourism traffic. Overall, we’ve been quite successful.”

In fact, that’s an understatement. Flaring off from the Regis and Kelly weeklong event, tourism numbers on P.E.I. have spiked every year since 2011. The most recent statistics from the provincial government indicate that visitor traffic to the Island in the summer of 2015 was 37 per cent higher than the previous year. That followed tourism hikes in the high double-digits in 2014, 2013 and 2012.

What these results have to do with Island food, exactly, is an open question. Although P.E.I.’s government doesn’t publish visitor stats based on general draws from beaches, restaurants or heritage sites, it has credited food tourism with providing the biggest, reliable boost to the provincial economy during the hardest times of the last recession.

Indeed, at least one celebrity chef from Toronto believes that Prince Edward Island’s deliberate effort to remake itself as a foodie paradise is working, economically, for the province. “P.E.I. is like this fairy tale island,” says Toronto-based Mark McEwan. “The people there are easy and very relaxed. They are very passionate about the food business, the restaurant scene and the whole culture around food.”

McEwan knows something about this. He owns and operates a suite of restaurants and catering businesses in The Big Smoke. “It’s a combination of factors,” he says about P.E.I. “I think the (provincial) government looked at everything and they had a very good reaction to the food scene. I believe they focussed on it. Also, you now have a lot of expats living in P.E.I. – people from other cities, people who have brought a little bit of (their own tastes) down here. Then add to this the local charm, plus the national conversation about food. It comes at you from different angles. But, it all works. That’s what’s great on the Island. That’s a great focus.”

Naturally, Jan Holmes agrees. The biggest food-tourism event of the year on P.E.I. is Fall Flavours – a month-long extravaganza between early September and early October, involving chefs like McEwan, Michael Smith, Lynn Crawford, Susur Lee, Chuck Hughes, Anna Olson, and Vikram Vij – which typically generates more than $600,000 in direct tourism revenue, and more like $1.4 million in multiplier and indirect boons, for the province. “Yes,” she says, “this has been our biggest annual effort,” at least since Regis and Kelly left the Island playground some years ago.

Still, since the New York cameras and photogs departed, there’s been more to attract food tourists to P.E.I. There have been beef and pork festivals, lobster and shellfish celebrations, vegan and vegetarian extravaganzas – all carefully orchestrated and staged to delight and astonish visitors who assume that this part of Canada merely hauls fish for a living.

Thanks to an assiduous public relations campaign, perhaps, others now know better. Or, at least, so said a media report in 2012: “Who doesn’t love spuds and fresh lobster? Prince Edward Island’s food has been crowned the second best in the world by restaurant surveyor Zagat,” reported the Toronto Sun. Said Greg Donald, general manager of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board at that time, “we are thrilled that Prince Edward Island joins the ranks of other amazing culinary capitals. Having Zagat appreciate our island’s local fare is a huge honour.”

Jan Holmes laughs when she hears, again, about the “shocking” genius of food producers on the jewel of the Gulf. After all, they’ve always been here, and they always will.

The trick has only been to get the world to stop making assumptions about a small island in the middle of nowhere, to pay attention, and to bring itself to accept the plausible chance that a ham and clam sandwich, in the hands of a brilliant chef, might actually whet one’s appetite.

Naturally, just before the morning talk show begins.

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Nov 29 2015
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Culture, Economy, Society

Our four solitudes must come together

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When the rest of Canada reflects on its eastern shores (as it actually does, if only from time to time), it conjures the Atlantic Provinces as a tightly knit region of folksy, friendly people wise in the ways of the sea, perpetually determined to give the shirts off our backs, fiercely independent to a fault yet broadly willing to throw down a kitchen party.

The truth is more complicated and, frankly, disappointing.

This small collection of principalities – hosting all of 2.5 million souls at last count – remains one of the most economically divided, socially backward and culturally anxious of any in a nation that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and up to the Arctic Circle.

Although we are the putative birthplace of Confederation, we consistently maintain the worst track record in the country for interprovincial free trade. In fact 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.

Sometimes, we litigate those who challenge the status quo, even if they had no intention of doing so.

Consider the shameful case against one Gerard Comeau who – not realizing he was on the wrong end of the judicial system – was caught crossing the border from Quebec into New Brunswick with 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor in 2012. According to an antiquated Prohibition-era law, that’s still a criminal offense, punishable by fines and jail time.

This summer, Mr. Comeau was on trial for violating the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act, which states that individuals are permitted to bring one bottle of wine or liquor or 12 pints of beer into the province at any given time.

According to a CBC analysis of the historical context underlying the case, “The Canadian law regarding the shipping of alcohol was meant to thwart bootleggers, and led to a gradual devolution of federal responsibility to the provinces in matters relating to liquor. Each province established an agency that oversees the distribution, sale and consumption of wine, beer and spirits.”

According to more than one legal expert, the regulation is both anachronistic and absurd. Declared Mark Hicken, a Vancouver attorney who specializes in interpreting Canada’s quirky interprovincial trade regulations: “A lawyer down in California once said to me, ‘You can’t understand any North American liquor laws unless you trace them back to Prohibition.’ You look at any regulatory structure in North America and if it was examined in a global perspective, you’d look at it in stunned disbelief, like ‘What is going on here?’ It really does go back to the Prohibition mentality of control.”

This mentality of control extends far beyond regulated substances in Atlantic Canada. It has to do with energy agreements, food, real estate and river rights. In fact, it has to do with how we live and work each and every day in a region where ancient, restrictive provincial laws concerning commerce and labour mobility no longer apply but are still rigorously and ludicrously enforced.

Unless we break these structures down to the ground, we will always be, in this region of Canada, our own worst enemies.

We will never be able to be winners in our own backyards. We will never be able to sell to one another, to support our friends and neighbours with jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, to become the fiercely independent, yet the friendly, folksy and integrated Atlantic Canadian community, we have managed to persuade the rest of the country that we are today.

Our four provincial solitudes must finally come together in common cause. We need each other’s passions, energies and ideas, if only to tightly knit the best of our reputations with the truth of them.

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Oct 17 2015
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Business, Economy, Politics

Between a rock and the hard place

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Only at election time does the rhetoric about the Maritimes’ proud and noble traditions – and its resilient and inventive people – soar above the Parliament buildings like so much papal smoke.

If we are to believe the campaign propaganda issuing from the mouths of all party leaders, we East Coasters are a sturdy and discerning bunch – willing to strip the shirts from our backs for those in need, sure, but equally suspicious of political carpet-baggers and snake-oil salesmen, fresh off the plane from the Centre of the Universe, asking that we buy what they’re merchandising.

Good for us, they say, rightly so: Handle us with care.

Of course, at any time other than an election cycle, they call us defeatists, welfare bums, worthless leeches sucking the life-blood from the national economy thanks to our alleged addiction to seasonal employment disorder and the requisite tankers of money Employment Insurance generously supplies.

The truth is, as always, somewhat more nuanced. Perhaps that’s one reason why we Maritimers are having a hard time making up our minds about who should own the keys to the castle in Ottawa later this month.

Shall it be the current prime minister, whom the decidedly non-conservative Toronto Star political columnist, Heather Mallick, castigated (rather brutally, if funnily) in a recent issue of the broadly left-wing American journal, Harper’s Magazine?

“What a long, strange slide it has been for Canada since 2006, when Stephen Harper became prime minister,” she wrote. “You thought you saw the last of Richard Nixon when he helicoptered off the White House’s South Lawn. Wrong: the man had a clone. And that clone must have been watching a lot of Sarah Palin speeches. Harper is Nixon without the charm, he’s Nixon without the progressive social and environmental programs. If he wins re-election in October, Americans might want to consider a northern wall.”

Nixon without the charm? Come on Ms. Mallick. I was 13 years old in 1973, when the world learned of the egregious crimes engineered by his bunch of thugs and supplicants determined to upend the U.S. democracy. President Nixon was famous for being entirely charmless. If anything, Stephen Harper is “Tricky Dick” on a good day.

Still, mistrusting democratically elected boosters of the so-called status quo has become our. . .well, status quo.

Shall our next federal leader be Liberal Justin Trudeau, about whom his political opponents say is untried, untested, elitist, infantile, unschooled, irresponsible, and, maybe worst of all, a true believer in the national Grit track record in this country?

Shall it be the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair, who is losing his base in Quebec as I write – the victim of his own hubris and arrogance?

Shall it be Elizabeth May, whose Green Party does a magnificent job of criticizing the mainstream parties in its sights, but seems to fail repeatedly in transforming popular opinion into votes?

Whatever the reasons are for our general, political lassitude in this part of country, we must shake ourselves awake, become who we must be: the heroes of our own lives.

It’s all very well to talk about New Brunswick’s emerging industrial clusters, technology centres of excellence, and innovative economic sectors, but none of it means much when the crucial resource needed to power these initiatives is vanishing.

As absurdly simple as it sounds, people, not governments, build long-term economic capacity. They launch businesses, invent new products and services, and employ relatives, friends, and strangers. They inspire others to become entrepreneurs, exporters, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and builders.

That’s not only at election time. It’s all the time

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Oct 17 2015
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Business, Economy, Politics

Brian Gallant’s big break?

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With his approval rating dropping into the political dumpster, the premier of New Brunswick needed a convincing win, one year into his mandate. He got it with BMM Testlabs’ announcement that, with the province’s help, the company will create 1,000 good jobs in Moncton, though not all at once.

Now, can Brian Gallant maintain the momentum the province evidently needs?

In a commentary the premier penned for this newspaper organization last month, he declared how pleased he was to have participated in the “biggest job announcement ever sponsored by government in New Brunswick’s history.”

The fact to which he referred was that the province had put real skin into the game – ultimately in the form of taxpayers’ dollars – not only to keep a satellite office of an international company in the environs around Moncton, but to help expand it: 200 well-paid positions each year over the next five.

To be clear, BMM Testlabs is an Aussie operation that makes its bones by making sure that gaming companies don’t run afoul of their particular jurisdictions’ rules and regulations. It maintains outposts in its home country, the U.S., South Africa, and, of course, Canada, among many others.

In other words, as a player in a government-regulated industry it needs and gets all the public-sector support it can handle. In fact, that is its global, strategic imperative. But, really, in this marketplace, whose isn’t?

Private companies and corporations troll the world for “business-friendly” jurisdictions – those that provide tax incentives, skills-development initiatives and various “move-in/move-up” allowances.

In fact, former Liberal Premier Frank McKenna made an unapologetic career out of the tactic in the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s – even going so far as to set up an international 1-800 line that connected directly to him. I actually dialed the number once in 1990 just to see if it worked. It did.

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: “Uh. . .Hullo, Mr. Premier. I was just phoning to determine whether this thing of yours was, well, real.”

McKenna: “It is. What can I help you with?”

Me: “Uuumm…do you have pop in a bottle?”

McKenna: “Why, in fact, in Sussex, I do.

Me: “Then you better let him out as mum wants him home for dinner.”

Click, and the dead-phone hum ensued.

I assume that when BMM and Opportunities New Brunswick got together, a childish prank like this was declared verboten. After all, says Mr. Gallant in his column, “Good government policy opens the door for job creation.”

Somehow, that goes to this: “We are supporting responsible resource development projects. We are excited about the thousands of jobs that could be created from major projects, such as the Energy East Pipeline, the LNG terminal in Saint John and the Sisson Mine. All of these projects have moved closer to reality under this government and we will continue to work to make them happen. If these projects go forward, nearly 10,000 jobs will be created at their peak.”

Before we, of course, descend to the infantile humor that such a claim requires (something about unicorns farting rainbows), let us just pause, for a moment, and consider the implications of Mr. Gallant’s broader claims.

BMM’s announcement is great news. But its determination to create jobs is not, necessarily, deterministic. Anything can happen (and often does) with domestic and offshore companies.

The idea is to keep every possibility in play, and never allow one big jobs announcement triumph over the long-term objective of building economic vigor and diversity – or, in truth, goose one particular premier’s poll numbers.

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