Category Archives: Politics

Feb 01 2016
Leave a comment
Economy, Employment, Energy, Government, Politics

The palaver over pipelines

DSC_0240

In fact, he does looks like the kind of fellow who could tell the nation’s provinces, leading mayors and other assorted high-profile camera moths to, in effect, knock it off – and even get away with it.

On his worst day, New Brunswick MP and Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc presents and comports himself like Hollywood’s latest incarnation of an emerging mafia Don – though, an uncharacteristically friendly version of the cinematic phenotype.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I quite like his latest declaration to the press about the most recent, and utterly mindless, fracas over pipelines in this increasingly God-forsaken land of ours.

In the aftermath of some 80 mayors from Quebec, and that province’s premier, declaring their opposition to the proposed Energy East pipeline traversing their respective territories en route to tidewater facilities in Saint John, Mr. LeBlanc had this to say to local newspaper reporters this week:

“We’re prepared to deal with the tough issues and recognize that the (federal) government has an important responsibility to help get natural resources to market. The whole country has benefitted from the Alberta resource economy, so I think it would be helpful that everybody lower the tone, allow the regulatory and review process to run its course and then the government will have to make a difficult decision.”

He’s not kidding.

Gosh, what shall we do with all that Alberta oil and gas? Truck it just so that poor roads and driver inattention may slam it into a government-built tourism kiosk somewhere outside of Thunder Bay? Rail it just so that poor tracks and conductor inattention conspire to blow up another small town in the middle of Great White North Country?

Or shall we finally recognize that as long as we need fossil fuels to power our domestic and export economies, the safest, cleanest delivery system is still the lowly pipeline – properly built, scrupulously regulated and strenuously monitored by officials of the Departments of Natural Resources and those of Environment Canada?

Still, even the logical choice is fraught with political peril. And Mr. LeBlanc knows this perhaps better than anyone outside the Prime Minister’s Office.

Any delay in the construction and activation of eastern and western pipelines automatically aggravates the Conservative west, whose political agents in Ottawa are prepared to make hay with their talking points about the hegemony of the Liberal east.

Conversely, anything other than rigorous, proof-providing research showing that pipelines are, indeed, the safest technologies currently available for transporting evidently toxic materials over long distances is sure to inflame the environmental lobby and their confederates at the municipal level of government.

Tough issues, indeed, with which the federal government seems determined to deal. Ultimately, Mr. LeBlanc says, it’s Ottawa’s choice to make. And that choice, he insists, “will be based on the information that comes from the robust independent review (underway). It won’t be based on someone’s news conference. I’ve always thought that the government decision should be based on evidence, on science, on environmental analysis, on expert opinion.”

Of course, I take one issue with this declaration: It already is.

According to a recent piece in the Financial Times, “Moving oil and gas by pipeline was 4.5 times safer than moving the same volume the same distance by rail in the decade ended in 2013 in Canada, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute public policy think-tank.”

By all means, Mr. LeBlanc, complete your analysis, ensure that it is correct and then let’s get this oil flowing in the safest, most economically expedient means possible.

Tagged
Feb 01 2016
Leave a comment
Economy, Politics

For whom the road tolls

DSC_0238

“Popular” is not exactly the word that leaps to mind when talking about toll roads and tax hikes, but if you’re contemplating steps to render both as facts of life for New Brunswickers, a little spin goes a long way.

So it was earlier this week when the provincial minister of the Gallant government’s strategic review, Victor Boudreau, and Finance Minister Roger Melanson, very nearly spilled the beans, observing that of all the options for eliminating the provincial deficit they’ve presented to the public, the most “popular” were tolling roads and raising the HST.

Of course, neither Liberal MLA spoke directly to either issue in advance of next week’s budget, preferring, instead, to issue vague assessments of the vox populi’s current mood on the twin subjects of spending cuts and revenue raising.

Mr. Boudreau: “There has been a lot of work being done over the last number of months. I do think you’re going to see something that is going to, at the end of the day, address the fiscal challenge we are facing as a province, but doing it while maintaining. . .balance.. . .New Brunswickers have made it clear they don’t want to see deep cuts to health care and education.”

He also allowed that the debate over toll roads has been the most interesting component of the consultations: “A lot of people want tolls, but very few people want to pay for them.”

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: This province’s existential problem in a nutshell. We New Brunswickers want to lasso the moon; we just don’t want to buy the rope.

In this, of course, we’re no different than anyone else. Still, our unique set of economic circumstances insists that we adopt a colder-eyed approach to solving our shared problems than ever before.

When Mr. Gallant began his review of government spending months ago, he declared that everything was on the table – on both the expenditure and revenue side of the ledger.

If that’s true, then next week’s budget should reveal a dramatically reduced (in both size and cost) civil service, with those savings redirected into strategies and programs that are likely to grow the economy and create jobs and, in so doing, goose tax revenues to public coffers.

But let’s not kid ourselves. We are well past the point where even the most efficiently run government and bureaucracy can pull our fat from the fire. This is not an overnight proposition. It will take years of lean, mean management in the public sector to keep the ship of state of a steady keel.

In the meantime, emergency measures are urgently, if lamentably, necessary. And that means tolls and taxes, neither of which, incidentally, need be especially onerous.

Virtually every economist I’ve consulted over the years stipulates that taxes on consumption are eminently more efficient and fundamentally fairer than levies on income. What’s more, those who subsist below a certain standard of living ought to receive rebates equal to their HST outlays.

Indeed, if all provinces along the East Coast actually harmonized again their harmonized sales taxes into one 15 per cent regime for all, as Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil suggests they do, the unfair competitive pressures on the private sector would melt.

Tolls are somewhat more difficult to administer and collect than taxes without undermining the monetary value of the exercise, itself. But it can be done, and to great effect, as it is in other jurisdictions across North America.

Think of taxes and roadway fees as temporary measures that, nonetheless, toll for thee.

Tagged , , , ,
Jan 27 2016
Leave a comment
Politics

St. Andrews by the ‘red sea’

DSC_0238

There is nothing quite like an ancient hotel, full of political ghosts, creaking timbers and medieval-sized crackling fireplaces at which to stage a retreat for the reigning government of Canada in the middle of a Maritime winter.

Justin Trudeau’s cabinet may mouth “sunny ways” on cue.

I, on the other hand, prefer to invoke “The Shining”, if only as a mischievous branding exercise for those who would never consider themselves to be axe men and women, let alone psycho-killers, but who would, nonetheless, chop their courtiers in backs, fronts and necks if it suited their practical purposes.

After all, whose ideas will best suit the new “Emperor of Canada”? Whose will be dismissed and who will be admonished and vilified by the evolving sun king? Who will be pitched (at least, metaphorically) into the frigid Fundy?

The gabfest convened quickly earlier this this month, and ended just as precipitously, for Mr. Trudeau and his chief lieutenants at the only hotel worth mentioning in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Apart from their good company, the place was empty (golf season being months away).

I imagine each and all of them having slunk down the cavernous halls of that haunted establishment, preoccupied by the various obsessions of their own minds, muttering “red-rum” and “all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.”

Honey, they’re home. Watch them now wield their rhetorical hatchets.

The venue may change from year to year, from ruling party to party, but the objective remains the same from generation to generation: political retreats are places where the weak are culled from the herd just in time for the next big policy commitment – in this case, that would be the federal budget next month, where cuts and spending will either broadly expand or savagely curtail the territories of individual, elected nobles in this country.

Did I say that this exercise resembled “The Shining”? Allow me to switch up my metaphors: Henceforth, think fulsomely about “Game of Thrones.”

Already, and somewhat unexpectedly, our Maritime knights in armor appear ahead of the pack. Having delivered to Mr. Trudeau in the past federal election the best margins in at least three ridings of any in the entire nation, the boons for this performance appear ready to flow.

As Adam Huras wrote in a report for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, “The Federal Liberals may pay a larger chunk of new infrastructure pending projects in efforts to get shovels in the ground more quickly, the government realizing provinces may not have matching funds at the ready.” Said Mr. Trudeau: “A certain degree of flexibility (is) in order to make these things happen.”

Added Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi, “We want to have consultations with the provinces and territories and municipalities to see where there are capacity gaps, where are areas that we can improve – whether we continue to be one-third partners (with the provinces and municipalities) or whether we come up with increasing that (federal) support.”

Unsurprisingly, any change to national infrastructure share-funding agreements will benefit the Maritimes disproportionately, if only because this region has almost no money left to invest in its own roads, sewers, bridges, and waste disposal facilities (having spent the last largess-leveraged-Ottawa-vote-getting program on hockey rinks and home improvement grab-bags under the previous Stephen Harper administration).

Well done, Dominic LeBlanc, Government House Leader and New Brunswick’s man on Ottawa’s ground. You are certainly worth every vote your constituents gave you.

There is, indeed, nothing quite like an ancient hotel in the middle of winter to stage a true game of thrones.

Tagged , , ,
Jan 27 2016
Leave a comment
Politics

Just to be Frank

DSC_0058

The work of an ex-premier of New Brunswick invariably fades into history and, if he’s lucky, decorously memorable. In the case of Frank McKenna, who also happens to be a former Canadian ambassador to the United States and current Deputy Chairman of TD Bank, that’s unlikely if only because his work, and his mouth, has never stopped.

He’s been nearly 20 years out of provincial office and the man is still making pronouncements and consequent headlines concerning the here and now of the picture-perfect province that cradled his upbringing. Though he lives and works in Toronto – and has for several years – New Brunswick, it seems, remains Mr. McKenna’s passionate hobby.

Not too long ago, he had this to say about shale gas development in the province: “The way I look at it, the real win comes when we take our indigenous shale gas in the province and hook it into the Canaport liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Saint John. We have in situ now, calculated by Corridor Resources Inc., 67 trillion cubic feet of gas. That’s bigger than western Canada. It’s a huge deposit! If 10 per cent is exploitable, that’s enough to create a revenue source for New Brunswick for decades to come. All in, it would result in about $15-20 billion in investment and 150,000 person years of work. And for governments, it would result in between $7-9 billion worth of royalties and taxes.”

As for the proposed Energy East Pipeline, he opined, “What we need to understand is that just by the roll of the dice, we have landed in exactly the best position on the board at this moment in time. We have a Canaport facility with massive storage and with a jetty, getting right into deep water. We have a port that’s ice free and has the capacity to accommodate the biggest vessels in the world. The West Coast can’t do that.”

That was in 2013, and what a dog-day’s difference two years can make. Still, even if shale gas is as dry an economic well as any in this province and the chances of receiving Alberta bitumen for refining are dwindling faster than the price of a barrel of oil, I have to hand it to Mr. McKenna: He refuses to shut up about issues that are pertinent to this neck of the East Coast woods and personally important to him.

Lately, print, broadcast and social media have vilified him over an Op-Ed he scribbled for the Globe and Mail. In it, he somewhat immodestly suggested that immigrants to Canada should spend some quality time in Atlantic Canada as a condition of their tenure in this country.

In his recent Op-Ed, he declared, “The government’s decision to direct certain immigrants to certain parts of Canada allows us to dust off an old idea, that concept of a social contract, which is urgently needed, particularly in Atlantic Canada. It is not a coincidence that Atlantic Canada is especially enthusiastic about receiving Syrian immigrants. . . We need a new program dedicated to the needs of Atlantic Canada. . .We do not have to reinvent the wheel. As far back as 2002, the immigration minister, Denis Coderre, (proposed) the idea of a ‘social contract’ whereby immigrants would be required to live in a community specified by the government for a period of at least three years, as part of the conditions for citizenship.”

Thus, Mr. McKenna floats another trial balloon on behalf of New Brunswick. And why not? At least he’s working, and not just his mouth.

Tagged
Jan 27 2016
1 Comment
Business, Democracy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

Running on empty in New Brunswick

DSC_0027

We become what we think we are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are we timorous or bold and forthcoming?

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

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

Tagged , , ,
Jan 26 2016
Leave a comment
Culture, Democracy, Politics

Our poor overlords

DSC_0070

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tagged , ,
Jan 26 2016
Leave a comment
Business, Economy, Government, Politics

Debt does not become us

DSC_0052

Is New Brunswick officially a black hole?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ouch, indeed!

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

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

Tagged ,
Jan 26 2016
Leave a comment
Democracy, Politics

New Brunswick’s chance for change

DSC_0238

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did Machiavelli say about dividing and conquering?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tagged , ,
Dec 30 2015
Leave a comment
Politics

And the winning N.B. newsmaker is. . .

 

IMG-20120908-00198

He’s young in spirit, photogenic, energetic, and the premier of New Brunswick. He’s also old of heart, camera-shy, fundamentally calculating, and the heir to at least 50 years of Liberal Party politics in this province.

Grit Leader Brian Gallant earns his position as provincial newsmaker of the year as much for what he has refused to do over the past 12 months as for what he did.

Faced with a $500-million annual deficit and a $12.5-billion debt, he promised to revamp the public accounts, cutting and slashing, burning and burying, as he went. He did the opposite in 2015 – preferring, instead, to consult and research and “recalibrate” the work his civil servants do in order to “understand”. . .well. . .exactly what his civil servants do on any given day.

Faced with a systemic unemployment rate of between 8.7 and 15 per cent in this province (depending on which region of New Brunswick he was reviewing), Mr. Gallant chose to blame the previous, federal Tory government for local labour-market woes even as he courted the current Liberal administration in Ottawa for financial redress – something he said he would never do should the political winds blow his way.

They did, and now he wants more money from Fat City to help balance the books he once said should be settled through homegrown innovation, competitiveness and entrepreneurship.

At the same time, the youngest premier in Canada (all of 33 years old) has managed to both enrage and engage the oldest voting population in the country. In 2015, he raised taxes on the wealthy and threatened to impose an asset-based means test for seniors care. On the flip side, he asked Ottawa to turn the province into a national “test lab” for geriatric care and conditioning.

As he said the other day, “I have always made it very clear that we need extra support from the federal government because of our aging population. The federal government has an opportunity to test run what programs will work to overcome those challenges.”

Indeed, the subject of dichotomies remained close to Mr. Gallant’s chest in 2015. Somehow, a pipeline, brimming with Alberta oil was an economically and environmentally sound proposition, despite that it would transport some of the dirtiest hydrocarbons in the world into all of our metaphorical backyards. Conversely, New Brunswick’s premier took umbrage at the shale-gas industry’s determination to defend its eminently clean record of development in the province over the past ten years.

On the pipeline, Mr. Gallant had this to say in October: “If we as a country are going to develop our natural resources and energy projects, we need to have a brand and credibility with Canadians and the international community.”

On shale gas development in New Brunswick, the premier had only this to add earlier this week: “I think New Brunswickers on all sides of this issue – people with diverging opinions – would like this subject to be dealt with. Once we see the recommendations (from a three-member, government-appointed panel) we will study and analyze them, take them into consideration and make our decisions.”

Finally, late in 2015, Mr. Gallant sent missionaries to test the waters for a “new approach” to economic development in New Brunswick.

As plans go, theirs’ wasn’t bad – young in spirit, old of heart, camera-shy and fundamentally calculating. The message from the premier was unmistakably familiar: maybe we’ll listen to you, maybe we won’t.

It was just, I dare say, the sort of news making machinery we in New Brunswick appreciate.

Tagged ,
Dec 29 2015
Leave a comment
Democracy, Economy, Politics, Society

The year of living gob-smacked

DSC_0045

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.

Tagged , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →