Category Archives: Politics

Dec 10 2014
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Climate, Energy, Environment, Politics

Canada’s contribution to climate change: More hot air

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In the endlessly inelegant waltz Canada performs with the international community on the dance floor that is global warming, our federal government is again taking one baby-step forward and another giant leap backward.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq travelled to the UN climate-change confab in New York over the weekend to deliver the following message to delegates already bemused by her masters’ bewildering stance on environmental stewardship: The oils sands of Alberta are, in effect, off the table, but Canada will introduce strict, new standards on the chemicals that air conditioners produce.

That’s rich, coming from a cold country; but richer, still, coming from this nation’s environment minister, who must surely know that emissions from such manufactured products produced in China – and exported for sale in the Great White North – account for less than one per cent of our annual GHG load.

It’s a bit like saying that a Ford 150 is better for Planet Earth because it fits more people than does a Toyota Prius. But that is, in fact, the essence of the argument about climate change emanating — has always emanated — from Ottawa since before Stephan Harper grabbed the reins of a gigantic, gas-guzzling sleigh ride to 1950s-style complacence.

As the rest of the developed world has been doing its level best to heed the warnings of climate research, Canada has all but ignored them. Officialdom, in this country, has taken its position on what it deems to be science fiction: Let the nerds worry about the future; for now, which is the here and now, the economy begins and ends with fossil fuel.

Or, as Minister Aglukkaq opined for the Globe and Mail just prior to her cotillion in New York, “What I can say is that it is too early or give a date and target timelines (regarding Canada’s previously stated commitments to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions). It is important to remember that Canada’s commitments are national which means that the provinces and the territories will have to play a role in that.”

Meanwhile, she added, “Our government will continue to work constructively with our international partners to establish a fair and effective international agreement that includes all major emitters, and we remain committed to that”

The problem with this line of argument is two-fold: first, it’s spun from threads of propaganda and, therefore, utterly specious; second, the world’s two largest emitters have already come to such an agreement without Canada’s involvement, let alone concurrence.

And yet, as the Globe reported prior to last weekend’s Aglukkag appearance, “The environment minister is expected to highlight Canada’s action on hydrofluorocarbons, which have been used by the cooling and heating industry since they were forced to phase out ozone-depleting chloroflurocarbons several years ago.”

As Dale Marshall, a spokesman of the group, Environmental Defence, declared for the hungry press, “I would say they (the feds) are showing up with another meaningless announcement. What they need to be regulating is the oil and gas sector, which is the fastest-growing source of emissions in the country.”

Still, the good fellow is only half-right. Certainly, the minister of the environment has delivered another absurd proclamation. That is her purview, after all. But the fact remains that the developed world is hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels, and the only way out of this downward spiral is to cleave to another, less deleterious, dependency.

No state, provincial or local government in North America – which enjoys the fruits of technological innovation as no other in the world does – has properly reckoned that the petrochemical industry is a means to, not the end of, civilization’s next great advance.

What stops an enlightened politician from stipulating the patently sensible? Cheap, accessible, abundantly available oil and gas must be deployed to build even cheaper, even more accessible, even more available sources of environmentally neutral energy.

If, as geophysicists claim, the world contains 500 years worth of exploitable oil and gas reserves, then let it fuel the brainpower required to produce 1,000 years worth of commercially viable clean-energy and clean-manufacturing technology.

And let us begin now, not later – before the waltz we dance with the fate of the Earth becomes the walk we take around the pyre we lit to burn it down.

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Dec 09 2014
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Employment, Politics

Start singing a happy tune on jobs

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On the hit parade of promises political candidates make, number one with a bullet is always job creation. It’s also the first to fall off the charts once the aspirant to public office becomes the duly elected.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” contenders from all points on the partisan spectrum thunder righteously as if they, alone, know where the keys to the castle are buried. And, yet, when the expected employment fails to bloom, the mantra suddenly turns neo-conservative, like a tract plucked straight from the pages of an Ayn Rand manifesto: “Government doesn’t create jobs; the private sector creates jobs.”

Oh, so that’s how it works. Thanks for sharing. I’ve always wondered.

In fact, generations of politicians have relied on the sturdy “jobs and growth” agenda to get themselves elected for the single reason that it tends to generate happy results. At least, it produces better ones than almost any other platform, apart from the one candidates increasingly use to sling mud and rotten tomatoes at one another.

The irony, of course, is that job claims, vows, pledges or any other projection of the labour market’s condition are probably the least useful measure of a political candidate’s suitability for elected office.

No one individual controls the economic and commercial forces that usher cycles of recession and recovery. And unless a particular government is determined to spend a bunch of tax dollars hiring civil servants to push pencils and pile paper all day, publicly engineered job creation is a game of estimates, not certitudes.

This fact, alone, seems to have escaped the attention of both Liberal Premier Brian Gallant and interim Progressive Conservative Leader Bruce Fitch, who spent an inordinate amount of time last week hammering away at each other over the proper definition of job creation – specifically, whether the former has wasted no time breaking his first important campaign promise.

“I was very clear,” the premier told reporters outside the legislature on Thursday. “These are jobs that would be created through the mechanisms and the projects we would support. This isn’t talking about a net gain in jobs. There’s a big difference here.”

He was, of course, referring to the 5,000 jobs he had promised to generate in the first year of his mandate. Technically, he insisted, the province could still lose jobs, overall – just not the ones for which he is determined to be responsible.

For his part, Mr. Fitch wasn’t buying the distinction. “Absolutely, it’s a promise broken,” he said. “If it’s not a promise broken, it’s certainly a commitment that was made without the proper details, which is something the public should have been made aware of.”

Fiddle-faddle, Mr. Gallant rejoined: “I am surprised to see the questioning today, because the past government would use this argument all the time. They would say they were creating jobs and stand up in the legislature and say,’50 jobs were created there,’ but yet when it came to the economy, we’d have a net loss of jobs.”

Almost nothing is funnier to a fan of political blood sports than an utterly meaningless debate over an allegedly broken promise that was probably impossible to fulfill anyway.

Still, it’s exchanges like this – diversions and distractions – that lead people to conclude, not unjustifiably, that politicians actually enjoy wasting their time in public.

At least as important as the quantity of jobs the provincial economy produces is the quality of those positions. Are they full-time or part-time, seasonal? Are they salaried positions with benefits, or casual terms under contract? Do they require a high degree of skill and expertise to perform, or are they low-wage and disposable?

Rather than emphasize job numbers, government and opposition members might spend  their sojourn in Fredericton more productively by working together to build the economic capacity that breeds and keeps promising new start-ups, encourages existing, successful ventures to expand and export, and attracts investment for industrial and community economic development.

Given the apparently unfordable gulf between them on shale gas in this province, it is, perhaps, not too much to ask our elected representatives to, every so often, sing from the same song sheet.

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Dec 08 2014
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Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

The goofiness of New Brunswick’s very own Fraggle Rock

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It’s been a long time coming, but fracking has officially become not only the bugbear, the hoary thorn, the bothersome burr in the butt of New Brunswick’s body politic, but also its low, comic relief.

For this, we can thank former Tory Premier David Alward, who, while he was in office,  couldn’t stop yakking about the alleged 70-trillion cubic-feet of gas resting quietly beneath the shoes of all those who still refused, against all common sense, to move to Alberta, where considerations about air, soil and water quality are. . .let’s just say, petrochemically sanctified.

But kudos should also go to our new premier, Brian Gallant, who just can’t seem to make up his mind about a drilling technology that’s been deployed safely in this province for nearly two decades.

Mr. Gallant squeaked out a minor majority of seats for his Grits in last September’s election at the expense of Mr. Alward, largely by promising to put an end to hydraulic fracturing – the practice of blowing water and chemicals into tight plays of oil-and-gas-laden sedimentary rock. A moratorium is in order, he declared. (Except, of course, it wasn’t).

Now, he intends to deliver one – in a manner of speaking.

In an interview with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal last week, he stated, “We had a commitment of having a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. We will be presenting a mechanism on how we will accomplish that in the net few weeks. Now, whether it will be able to pass or not in the time frame that remains to be seen with how the opposition reacts to this.”

Oh, really, Mr. Gallant? The last time any of us checked, you actually held a majority of seats in the provincial assembly. Or, did you skip over the section in the Liberal party playbook, entitled, “Now that you are premier, here are a few guidelines to keep you from falling on your own sword; subsection 1.0, choking on your own words”?

To wit: Is the premier actually intimating that his moratorium on shale gas development in this province depends on how the provincial legislature’s minority opposition votes on the issue? Because if he is, I can save him the trouble of orchestrating an extensive, tedious debate. So, for that matter, can Bruce Fitch, Tory leader.

“We’re going to expose the gaps that we’ve seen in Premier Gallant’s initial foray into politics,” Mr. Fitch declared in the House last week. “Most premiers come in with 100 days of change. He’s had 100 days of chaos.”

The assessment is, of course, as harsh as it is inaccurate. The new premier has racked a couple of historic wins since assuming the mantle of office this past fall. One, surely, is his courageous decision to bring New Brunswick into the 21st Century on a woman’s right to choose how and when to continue, or terminate, her pregnancy.

Another innovative, though less dramatic, policy change is Mr. Gallant’s determination to open up his $900-billion infrastructure rebuild of the province to the private sector’s technology industries. That sort of thinking hasn’t been in evidence around these parts since former Premier Frank McKenna decided to transform 1990s New Brunswick into a Silicon Valley of the north.

All of which makes Premier Gallant’s position on shale gas development in this province perplexing, if not incomprehensible.

A man this evidently smart, engaged and studious – a man who suggests that a proven technology needs halting even though that same technology can and is safely deployed to keep a potash mine, for example, in operation – purely and simply boggles the mind.

Or, maybe, just maybe, that’s the big joke, the big kahuna of humour in all of this.

The Grits need an exit strategy from its ill-advised promise to the less than half of New Brunswickers who support a temporary ban on fracking. All the reigning Libs need do is appear consultative, inclusive, welcoming in a big-tent sort of way. Oh, dear Tories, won’t you please raise your hackles, sound your trumpets, and get us out of this mess we created.?

Indeed, Freddy Beach, won’t you please send in the clowns?

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Nov 27 2014
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Government, Politics

Taking off the gloves four years later

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Say what you will about Shawn Graham. But the man doesn’t back down from a fight, even when he’s almost certain to lose.

The former Liberal premier of New Brunswick was back in the news last week, and in a contemplative mood, sitting down for an interview with The Daily Gleaner’s Michael Staples.

Reflecting on the signature debacle of his one term in office – the failed bid to sell NB Power to Hydro-Quebec for a cool $4 billion in 2010 – he said: “That was one of my biggest regrets as premier that we weren’t able to get that deal done for the benefit of future generations.”

Does he still think it was the right thing to attempt, even though a goodly number of his fellow citizens did at one point want to roast him on a spit?

“We would not have tried as hard as we did and spent the political capital if we didn’t think it was the right direction for the province to move and the utility to move,” he said.

Does he blame the public for failing to appreciate the obvious benefits of such a move?

“You never want to to shock the public and, unfortunately, we didn’t have the benefit of time to educate the public on the significant challenges facing the utility,” he said. “People say it may have been the best possible deal but the communications was terrible. I recognized that, but there were challenges on how we could inform the public.”

In retrospect, though, I wonder if that’s strictly accurate.

Since Mr. Graham’s time away from public life, the province has welcomed into –and booted out of – office the Progressive Conservative government of David Alward, another one-term wonder.

The Tory regime was, for all appearances, dramatically different that its predecessor Grits in the way it handled the public.

Where the Graham government was perceived to be guarded, uncommunicative and even secretive, the Alward team was deliberately consultative, inclusive and even  chatty. And yet both suffered nearly identical fates at the hands of unmoved and unconvinced electorates.

Indeed, if we were to put Messrs. Alward and Graham in a room together, with no fear of being quoted before the great unwashed, and ask each of them to be completely honest, what are the chances that these two gentlemen might actually agree?

The single, biggest problem New Brunswick faces, they might say, is not the condition of its power company (which is actually pretty good these days).

It’s not the looming cost of rebuilding (or retiring) the Mactaquac dam.

It’s not public pensions overuns, illiteracy, innumeracy, childhood obesity, crime, mental illness,drug addiction, poverty, income inequality, or permanent, structural unemployment.

It’s not the $300-500-million annual deficit, nor is it the $12-billion long-term debt.

No, the biggest problem New Brunswick faces, the former premiers might concur in a moment of fearless candor, is that the province is rapidly becoming ungovernable.

Doing the unpopular thing (like attempting to sell the power company under cover of darkness) doesn’t seem to make any greater difference to the public’s generally low opinion of politicians and their games than doing the generally appealing thing (like refusing to raise the HST by a measly percentage point) – even though both moves, under the proper circumstances, could make eminent, good sense.

Frankly, far too many of us in this province find it impossible to conceive of a day when the economic engines and commercial levers freeze for good. It;s never happened before, We’ve always managed to pull through, demanding and pretty much getting everything we’ve asked our politicians to deliver.

And on those occasions when we don’t get what we want, we through the bums on the street, a move, if repeated often enough, tends to produce a political class schooled in the twin arts of supplication and pandering.

Neither, I hasten to add, are Messrs. Graham’s and Alward’s particular failures as politicians.

Still, it would useful to our long-term prospects if we could learn how to keep our leaders around long enough that they might do the right thing in the right way for change – even if the right thing isn’t immediately or especially popular.

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Nov 19 2014
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Energy, Environment, Politics

Canada’s climate chickens now come home to roost

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For months, even years, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has insisted that he is as environmentally friendly as the next guy, and so is his government.

In fact, with the leader of Canada’s largest trading partner, he has played a high-stakes game of truth or dare. Just as soon as U.S. President Barack Obama announces a convincing program to dramatically reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, he has said, so will he.

Now that the former has done just, to the surprise of the developed and developing world, alike, it remains to the latter to answer the only question that matters on an inexorably warming planet: Now what, Captain Canada?

Indeed, the policy change south of the border, announced last week, is not merely surprising; it’s stunning. The new U.S.-China joint agreement would see the Yanks cut GHG output 26 per cent from 2005 quantities by 2025. The previous commitment had been a reduction of 17 per cent by 2020, a target the Americans are, in any case, quite likely to hit.

The Chinese, meanwhile, have thrown themselves into a multi-billon-dollar build-out of renewable energy technologies and production facilities (including, it should be noted, nuclear) – an initiative that should help them fulfill their new pledge to cap the production of GHGs to levels comparable with the United States by 2030.

Why this accord, and why now?

As different as are their respective political conventions, economic institutions and societies, the U.S. and China still share one embarrassing habit in the arena of energy production: their relatively heavy use of coal, a fossil fuel that makes oil and particularly natural gas seem, by comparison, pristine.

According to the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions, “In the United States, coal is the third-largest primary energy source, accounting for 18 per cent of all energy consumed in 2012 with the electric power sector accounting for 91 per cent of U.S. coal consumption.

“With the highest carbon content of all the fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion represented 24.5 per cent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. . .Globally, coal is one of the most widely distributed energy resources with recoverable reserves in nearly 70 countries. The U.S., China, and India are the top producers and consumers of coal. Worldwide, coal supplies 29.7 per cent of energy use and is responsible for 44 per cent of global CO2 emissions.”

Of course, given the most recent news from the front lines of the global-warming wars, some sort of U.S.-China compact on the issue was not entirely unexpected.

Earlier this month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fifth word on the subject in as many years. It makes for chilling reading.

Reported the Guardian: “The new overarching IPCC report builds on previous reports on the science, impacts and solutions for climate change. It concludes that global warming is ‘unequivocal’, that humanity’s role in causing it is ‘clear’ and that many effects will last for hundreds to thousands of years even if the planet’s rising temperature is halted.”

Added Bill McKibben, a climate crusader of the first and most popular order, in the piece: “For scientists, conservative by nature, to use ‘serious, pervasive, and irreversible’ to describe the effects of climate falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola. . .Thanks to the IPCC, no one will ever be able to say they weren’t warned.”

No, they won’t, Mr. Harper. So, again, what say you?

The federal government’s reduction target, even before the new agreement between its two biggest export markets, was doomed from the outset. Only the rosiest prognosticators suggested that a 17 per cent cut in GHGs from 2005 in this country had a hope in Hades of materializing by 2020. The reason is simple.

This government’s political and ideological capital is invested entirely in the success of the western tar sands. That’s where it wants derelict Canucks from the East and the Centre to work. That’s where it wants to find its tax revenues and corporate royalties.

It cares very little about anything else that might have been considered, at some point in the elegiac past, authentically Canadian.

The Tories’ current conundrum is that the world, through the U.S. and China, is beginning to turn a corner (late, perhaps) that might well leave their atavistic thinking behind, along with their government.

They just might be thinking about using the fuel in the ground to build the infrastructure necessary to, one day, abandon it forever, except as seed for renewable manufactures.

Then what, Captain Canada?

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Nov 17 2014
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Education, Politics

And now for something completely different: Good news from New Brunswick

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A reader writes, and I paraphrase: “While I agree with you about New Brunswick’s economic troubles and fiscal morass, why don’t you write something inspirational that offers some solutions? Why do you have to be such a jerk?”

I get love notes along those lines from time to time. I’m used to them, like this one from a few years back: “You disgusting, pompous prig! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

Which only serves notice that you should never forget your bartender’s birthday.

Still, I am not such an unreconstructed curmudgeon that I can’t recognize good news in this province when it becomes evident.

Consider, for example, a new report out of the Atkinson Centre, a research pod at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. It says that this fine province has managed to improve its grade for the environment and services it provides to early childhood educators by a factor of two since 2011.

Specifically, it says: “In New Brunswick, the mandate for early childhood services merged under a new Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in April 2011. A new action plan, Putting Children First, details initiatives through to 2015 and builds on Be Ready for Success: A 10 year Early Childhood Strategy for New Brunswick (2008).”

At that time, “commitments included strengthening the capacity of communities to support families and young children through the integration of early childhood and family support services. In partnership with the Margaret and Wallace McCain Foundation, the Government of New Brunswick piloted Early Childhood Development Centres to inform program practice and help guide policy-makers in the building of an inclusive and accessible, family-centred child care and education system.”

Then, earlier this year, “the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development released The Linguistic and Cultural Development Policy: A Societal Project for the French Education System. This report was the result of a broad consultation to support the Acadian and Francophone community in meeting the challenges of the linguistic minority context.”

Fundamentally, though, “considerable attention is paid to the early years (birth to age 8) when the foundations for language and learning are established. The plan commits to ensuring equal access to services in French, including a single entry point in both urban and rural areas; the creation of a single file for each child, whatever the number and type of services received; and enhanced linguistic support to the professionals working in the francophone community.”

Overall, the 2014 survey gives New Brunswick a score of 8, compared with 4.5 three years ago, for its performance on the early childhood education front. That puts this least fiscally promising province in Canada, if not at the head of pack, at least in the crowd of first finishers. Or, as Atkinson Centre spokesperson Emis Akbari told the Telegraph-Journal last week, “It is not just about how much money is invested. It is about governance, funding, access, the learning environment that kids are exposed to and accountability. New Brunswick has moved ahead in quite a few areas.”

And that’s just great. I’m seriously happy about this happenstance, so don’t get me wrong when I say: Now what?

It seems to almost everyone in this business that the provinces are doing all the heavy lifting – all the weight-training the federal government decided to reject in 2006.

How long, then, can “have-not” jurisdictions, such as New Brunswick, be expected to cover the cost of providing, in its own region, what should be a national, publicly subsidized, universally accessible system of early childhood education?

Instead, this country’s parents are, just now, promised enriched monthly child benefits without the infrastructure, care, expertise and consistency that such investments would otherwise lever in a more sensibly arranged society.

The longterm social and economic advantages of a structured, comprehensive system of early childhood education, integrated into every public school system in Canada are so patently obvious, the fact that we’re not rushing to introduce one is just one of many patent absurdities that lace our evidence-hating proclivities in this erstwhile great nation.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be a jerk about this.

After all, too many federal, public officials already evince this personality trait far better than I ever could.

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Nov 14 2014
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Economy, Government, Politics

A financial tale of 14 solitudes

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Predicting years of fiscal health for the Canadian economy is like forecasting a warm winter for the customarily Great White North.

In some places across this vast country, conditions will be delightfully luscious; in others, downright lugubrious.

That said, according to news reports, the federal government is set to announce a trifecta, and maybe more, of solid annual surpluses totalling about $15 billion. If it manages to pull off such a feat, Harpertown will likely go down as one of the nation’s most prudent, careful administrators of other people’s money in modern times. And, indeed, bully for it.

“Strong job growth and tight spending will allow Finance Minister Joe Oliver to confirm Ottawa is poised for years of budget surpluses,” the Globe and Mail declared this week. “That scenario – which is the result of near historic lows in both government spending and revenues as a percentage of the economy – fits with Conservative pledges of low taxes and smaller government. It also presents a clear challenge for the opposition New Democrats and Liberals, both of whom have promised to increase spending in big-ticket areas.”

Still, the slow-and-steady expenditure strategy of the Tories, coupled with tax-rate moderation, are not without their perils.

For one thing, they depend on continued economic recovery over the period of promised surpluses. With a national unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent (substantially better than the predicted 6.6 percent for the last half of 2014), the Feds are happily confident that they’ve called labour market trends correctly.

But this assumes that the participation rate (the number of people actively looking for work) will remain robust overall. In some places, like Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, it will. In others, like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, the story is dramatically different, especially among young people – a cohort that is, increasingly, discovering that gainful work is harder to find than to actually perform.

Then there’s the hoary problem, once again looming on the horizon, of global economic uncertainty and weakening commodity prices for some of Canada’s most important resources – namely oil and gas. For about a year, this country’s petroleum producers have enjoyed a rare respite from OPEC pricing, thanks to steady demand from the United States and a low currency valuation, relative to the U.S. dollar.

Again, though, that could change if the Harper government’s recent trade deals with the European Union and, particularly, China, eliminate the advantageous export implications of the loonie’s float in world currency markets.

Apart from any of this macroeconomic mumbo-jumbo, though, there is the socio-economic stratification of Canada’s domestic economy to consider. Call it our 14 solitudes, one for each province, territory and, of course, Ottawa, itself.

It’s one thing for the Centre to judge itself well and fully solvent. It’s quite another to extend that merry conclusion to the circumstances that frame the provincial and territorial partners in Confederation.

The federal government’s success has come, in large part, due to its determination to hold the line on Constitutionally mandated spending on public health care, education and Employment Insurance. The burden of this approach on rich provinces has been negligible. The same can’t be said for those whose populations of ready, skilled workers are shrinking, even as their ranks of aging retirees are swelling.

As ever, the numbers tell the tale.

While Ottawa amasses enough lucre to predict three or five years of $2-5-billion annual surpluses, New Brunswick is facing, in all likelihood, three or five years of mounting annual deficits nearing $400-500-million in each fiscal period. Each pernicious term merely expands the provincial government’s already bloated $12-billion long-term debt, effectively crippling any meaningful, government-supported economic development (investments in innovation, higher education, even early childhood education).

The same pattern repeats in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and even, astonishingly, in oil and gas-rich Newfoundland and Labrador, which will lose its dubiously valuable “have” status  soon if it’s not careful.

So, yes, bully for Ottawa. It has managed to balance its books to the benefit of every Canadian.

It remains to be seen, however, which Canadians will benefit most from such probity – who will enjoy the warmth, and who will be left out in the cold.

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Nov 12 2014
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Economy, Government, Politics

In New Brunswick, all roads are leading to nowhere

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When we reach the end of our ropes, I wonder if we’ll ever look back and reckon the moments when we might have done something but, defiantly, didn’t.

Of course, looking back is what we do peerlessly well in this province.

If a sense of entitlement, broad anger, bold arrogance, and a slavish devotion to dead leaders is any indication, then sentimentality and nostalgia are our greatest market capitalizations – the ones we offer to the world.

The problem is, simply, that the world isn’t buying any of it.

In fact, the world is beginning to laugh its collective butt off at the spectacle of New Brunswick’s quasi-serious posturing to become anything but a welfare state in, paradoxically, one of the richest, most economically accomplished nations on Earth.

Here, in one corner, is a series of single-term governments vowing to balance their budgets and retire their long-term debts over periods in which they have no mandates.

They choose to do this by keeping one of the nation’s largest civil service rolls, relative to the general population, largely intact, and nibble around the edges of gold-plated public pensions, for fear of inspiring any more court challenges to their electoral credibility.

Here, in another corner, is the current Liberal government inveighing against a proven, effective, efficient and reliably responsible form of gas extraction in New Brunswick, even as it welcomes, arms open, the construction of a pipeline, carrying some of the dirtiest crude oil on the planet, from Alberta’s tar sands (yes, folks, not oil sands) to an East Coast refinery in Saint John. Throughout, the distinction fails to make any difference to public policy.

Look there, in another corner, and you’ll find one local burgermeister battling another for scraps from the federal government’s now-ancient Economic Action Plan.

One wants a hockey rink and will do anything to persuade Ottawa, and the provincial government, that he has the best interests of his community’s fat, bloated, Internet-addicted youngsters in mind (even as the federalistas do their level-best to keep the next generation of voters firmly planted in their cushy chairs with appeals to low-cost providers of full-spectrum, online infotainment).

The other wants a soccer pitch and will bend over backwards to convince Harpertown, and Freddy Beach, that his motives are pure, even though his ulterior angles have more to do with boosting his electoral prospects, year after year after unchanging year, than they do with true, durable, sustainable community development.

Meanwhile, the old people keep dying; and the young ones keep leaving.

Away, the youth cry, away. Maybe, they allow, they’ll come back when things get better, when life improves.

When, I wonder, will that great regeneration occur?

Now, we are reliably informed, New Brunswick’s unemployment rate has dropped for the first time in a very long while. That should be good news. But statistics can also be cruel mistresses. Read between her lines and you understand that fewer people in this part of the country are actually looking for work, so impoverished are the opportunities for gainful employment here.

Now, according to economic think tanks, this province’s major capital projects are in limbo, because if we can’t guarantee that we’ll capitalize on what is literally in our own backyard, we are unlikely to persuade anyone else to invest there.

Or, as Atlantic Provinces Economic Council President Elizabeth Beale said last week in Saint John, “The investment activity coming into (Newfoundland and Labrador) to develop the large oil and gas fields. . .has completely revolutionized their economy and it has driven up very strong wages. Consumer spending there is very high. Employment income has grown. Young families are moving into the province because there are jobs now where there weren’t in the past, so, obviously, if you don’t have that kind of investment, you are going to see things proceed on a much slower path. . .It doesn’t mean nothing is going to happen. . .Good things can still go on here (in New Brunswick), but it does mean you have lowered your horizon in terms of your expected growth in the province.”

And, in the process, we have lowered the horizon on our province’s future.

On that, too, we might someday look back in jaw-dropping wonder.

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Nov 10 2014
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Government, Politics

Lessons on budgeting from across the Strait

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What could little Prince Edward Island teach only slightly larger New Brunswick about managing public public finances?

Don’t ask Wes Sheridan, P.E.I.’s garrulous finance minister, who actually hails from Moncton. These days, he likes to keep his discourse civil and stick close to his political happy place.

And why not? With a track record like his, the belly laughs just keep coming.

If all goes as expected, Canada’s smallest member of Confederation (population, 145,000; geographic area, the size of two Swiss cantons), will be deficit-free, possibly in surplus, sometime in the next fiscal year (2015-2016),

Compare this with the recent, annual fiscal performances of the other Atlantic provinces, and you might appreciate the dimension of Mr. Sheridan’s merriment.

Nova Scotia’s 2014-2015 deficit forecast is $274.5 million; New Brunswick’s is $387 million; and Newfoundland and Labrador’s is $538 million.

P.E.I., on the other hand, is looking at $3.6-million worth of black ink next fiscal year. That’s after running shortfalls of $56 million and $40 million, respectively, over the past two years.

According to Mr. Sheridan, it all comes down to sound planning and winsome leadership. “You have to have full buy-in,” he told me recently. “You have to have a premier who is willing to do this. You have to have ministers who are playing along. We’ve also had greet buy-in from our deputy (minister) group here. It has been a very positive experience.”

Moreover, he said, “From the beginning, we had a plan. We had balanced (budgets) in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. As the economic downturn hit, all jurisdictions, including the federal government, went into deficit in order to try to stimulate their economies. And it worked.”

In fact, he added, “It worked in spades here on the Island. We didn’t actually suffer a recession on Prince Edward Island. Through the stimulation that we applied mostly through our capital budget and a number of different program measures, we were actually able to increase the number of jobs by about 4,500. We were able to keep our province above the recession. We were the only jurisdiction in North America to do that. But the plan also called on us to get back to a balanced budget, and that’s what we’re up to.”

Of course, not everyone is a true believer. People like Don Desserud, professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island, and those at the helm of the Greater Charlottetown Chamber of Commerce, are justifiably worried about the province’s long-term debt, which has, according to some calculations, jumped from $1.3-billion to $2.1-billion, an increase of 61 per cent, over the past seven years.

Annual deficits during this period, expressed as percentages of the increase in net debt, have risen from 11.4 per cent in 2008 to 49 per cent today. And, as the province’s gross domestic product has grown (in line with Mr. Sheridan’s claims) from $4.6 billion in 2007 to $5.5 billion, the net debt as a percentage of GDP has risen from 28.4 per cent in 2007 to the current 33.4 per cent.

Said Mr. Dessurd in an interview recently: “I am not suggesting that they (government members) are insincere. But as far as the public is concerned, every government for the past 30 years has been promising that they are going to balance the budget. It’s a claim that’s already devoid of meaning. This is simply a matter of whether they are going to bring in more money than they spend on a yearly basis. But the real point is that the debt is not getting smaller, it’s getting larger. The problem is looming so large, people almost greet it with a shrug. This is not an issue that makes or breaks governments.”

If any province understands the truth of this assertion, it should be New Brunswick. Here, we don’t even dream of surpluses, which seem almost absurdly remote.

Still, even if P.E.I.’s fiscal health be only fleeting, it stands as a welcome inspiration to the rest of us in this region who might one day dare to imagine that government solvency is a lesson that can actually be taught.

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Nov 06 2014
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Education, Government, Politics

In Canada, all children are being left behind

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On almost every issue of significance to Canadian society, the federal Conservatives and NDP could not stand further apart. But on child care, in at least one important respect, they march in lockstep together: Both parties dramatically miss the point.

Early childhood education should, first and foremost, be about children – their welfare, their development, their opportunities to become happy, engaged, enthusiastic learners, thinkers and, eventually citizens.

So what, pray tell, does the Harper government’s determination to line parental pockets with a few more ducats every year under its Universal Child Care Benefit have to do kid-centred early childhood education?

On the other side of the ideological coin, what does the New Democrats’ proposal to subsidize as many as a million new daycare spaces across the country have to do with preparing the next generation of leaders, educators, professionals and skilled workers?

Granted, the NDP scheme at least attempts to acknowledge that, nowadays, families need two working spouses to make ends meet.

In contrast, the Tory concept seems tethered to weirdly antiquated notions about motherhood; its new $160-per-month, per-child under six, program is an undiluted attempt to resurrect the conviction that women with kids do actually belong in their homes until such time as they can make their great escapes back into the working world (yeah, after 10 or 12 years, good luck with that, ladies).

Still, each model, in its own way, utterly ignores the compelling bang for the billions of bucks each purports to spend, simply because neither focuses on kids, but rather on the adult parents, whose votes will fuel the next great democratic lottery come the autumn of 2015.

To this audience, Mr. Harper likes to say things like: “We have always been clear that money and support to help families raise children should not go into more bureaucracy. It should go to the real experts on child care. That’s mom and dad, and that is what we are doing.”

Well, no, actually, mom and dad are not always, or even usually, the “real experts on child care”. (My wife and I certainly weren’t when we had our two kids in the early 1980s).

Then again, neither are, necessarily, the legions of lightly trained, underpaid, overburdened daycare workers slogging away in frequently poor conditions from coast to glimmering coast in this country.

The real experts are those who have studied the science, research, policy and practice of early childhood development.

They are those who apply all of this where it matters – in the classroom, where kids benefit from structured play, early and often, where kids benefit from the certainty that what they learn in pre-school will carry them seamlessly into primary education systems.

And, in fact, this model works in Canada.

Look to Quebec, for one.

Just one decade after that province introduced a universal early childhood education system, integrated into higher grades, it went from the bottom to the top on many social indicators.

From having Canada’s lowest female labour participation rate, it now has the highest. Where Quebec women were once less likely to attend post-secondary education than their counterparts in the rest of Canada, today they dominate. Meanwhile, student scores on standardized tests have gone from below the Canadian average to above.

The research also shows that Quebec fathers are more involved in child-raising than ever before. Now, 82 per cent of fathers in that province take paid leave after the births of their kids, compared to just 12 per cent in the rest of Canada.

Moreover, childhood programs that allow mothers to work have slashed Quebec’s child poverty rates by 50 per cent.

I have lifted all of this, shamelessly and almost verbatim from the Early Years Study 3, published in 2011, because it is the gold standard of research on this subject in this country.

Here’s another:

“Based on earlier studies, we estimate that in 2008 universal access to low-fee childcare in Quebec induced nearly 70,000 more mothers to hold jobs than if no such program had existed – and increase of 3.8 per cent in women employment,” Montreal economist Pierre Fortin wrote in 2012. “By our calculation, Quebec’s domestic income was higher by about 1.7 per cent, or $5 billion, as a result.”

All of which should persuade any thinking person that public policy on child care should be about the child – not the venal, cynical intentions of political operatives looking to the next election, the next opportunity to lock in votes at the expense of real socio-economic progress.

In this respect, the lockstep march of the federal Conservatives and NDP is one step forward and one step backwards – which is to say standing still and, therefore, nowhere.

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