Jul 23 2015
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Personal History, Travel

A summer trip down home

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To reach paradise, you drive from Moncton about four hours through some of the prettiest country the Maritimes offer.

You take the Trans-Canada past the village of Memramcook and the university town where my grandfather, dad and daughter once spent many happy and productive years. If you are peckish, you stop at the elegant and still exquisitely appointed Marshlands Inn in Sackville, New Brunswick, for a quick and supremely satisfying repast.

You rejoin the road at the Tantramar Marshes, where ancient Acadians once diked and dammed the land to eke out an existence from the brackish sea. You pass the glorious windmill farm near Amherst, where Don Quixote – if he were real and a long-haul trucker – might roll up to challenge the mighty blades spinning in the sun.

You move along with speed and alacrity until you reach Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, forge through until you are on Mount Thom, then descend into the vales of New Glasgow, Antigonish and Monastery, where the real deal describes itself this way: “Our Lady of Grace Monastery is home to the Contemplative Augustinian Nuns. Here, these religious sisters live out their lives consecrated to Our Lord where they pray for the Church and the whole world. The Monastery of Saint Lucy, which is the mother house is located in Rome.”

Still, on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia in the summertime, Rome seems far away. Paradise, on the other hand, is just around the corner.

You take the paved road through Lincolnville and arrive at the bustling outskirts of Bolyston, a town the Globe and Mail’s Kim Mackrael once described as “The pearl of the East.” In her 2011 piece, she enthused, “The tiny seaside village is perched on the northeast side of Nova Scotia, close to Cape Breton Island. Like many of its neighbours, Boylston suffered deeply following the collapse of the Atlantic fishing industry and the loss of thousands of jobs along the coast. These days, Boylston is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, one driven by people looking for a place to call home after they retire.”

Indeed, she reported, “Some of its residents have discovered the town only recently, while others are finding themselves drawn back home after a long absence. What they have in common is the sense of being instantly welcomed into the community. That’s why Marilyn McLean nominated Boylston as one of Canada’s great communities. She and her husband are. . .settling down after a life in the military.”

Said Marilyn: “Our neighbours are neighbourly; our darling doctor mends bones and brings hot casseroles until you can manage your crutches. You awaken after a monster snowfall to a freshly shovelled walkway. How can there be any better place on earth to live out one’s life?”

Added Ms. Mackrael: “On calm mornings in Boylston, the water by the wharf becomes as smooth as glass. Tourists driving through choose this spot to pull over and take photos of the boats as they bob gently beside the dock, casting colourful reflections across the water.”

That’s about right. I should know. My family settled these parts in the late 18th Century, fresh off the boat from Scotland. Our forbears and us have maintained “The Place” on the banks of Chedabucto Bay ever since. It’s a small, and yet somehow rambling, former farmhouse perched on 80 acres of prime rock-growing territory.

It really isn’t much, but it’s ours. And the view is, well. . .what you might expect from paradise.

As for me, I’m going for a long-missed drive down the road to down home.

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Jul 22 2015
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Economy, Employment

Don’t fear the “R-word”

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Economists tremble at the appellation’s very utterance. Politicians descend into denial at the term’s deployment in the mainstream media. And, when the “R-word” hovers into view, regular folks batten down the hatches and check the condition of their rainy day funds stored neatly under their mattresses.

But are recessions really all bad, after all?

Sure, they tend to increase the amount of joblessness in society. They devalue personal savings and investments. They dampen business opportunities, and they generate the sort of fear and loathing that a 100-year blizzard often engenders.

Now that Canada is in one (a recession, that is), despite protestations to the contrary of our fearless, federal leaders, we might properly expect a slow, agonizing grind in the months, or even years, ahead.

Still, it ain’t necessarily so.

According to an item on the investopedia website, posted by financial writer Chris Seabury, recessions enable economies to “clean out the excesses. During this process, inventories drop to more normal levels, allowing the economy to experience long-term growth as demand for products picks back up.”

What’s more, these cyclical downturns – typically identified after the gross domestic product shrinks in two consecutive months – have an almost refreshing, levelling effect. As Mr. Seabury writes, “Recessions. . .help keep economic growth balanced. If the economy grew unchecked at an expansionist rate for many years, this could lead to uncontrolled inflation. By having recessions. . .consumers are forced to cut back in response to falling wages. These falling wages force prices to drop, creating a situation in which the economy can grow at normal levels without having prices run away.”

They can also “create massive buying opportunities in huge asset classes. As the economy runs its course, the markets will readjust to an expanding economy.”

Notably, perhaps, “economic hardship can create a change in the mindset of consumers. . .(who) stop trying to live above their means (but) within the income they have. This generally causes the national savings rate to rise and allows investments in the economy to increase once again.”

In fact, writes Stijn Claessens and M. Ayhan Kose in the International Monetary Fund’s research department, “There were 122 completed recessions in 21 advanced economies over the 1960–2007 period. Although this sounds like a lot, recessions do not happen frequently. Indeed, the proportion of time spent in recession – measured by the percentage of quarters a country was in recession over the full sample period – was typically about 10 per cent.”

So while recessions can clean out the pipes and tune up the engine of any economy, they don’t last forever, even if it only seems that way.

In my adult life, I’ve gamely weathered four downtowns – 1981-82; 1991-1993; 2000-2001; and 2008-2009. They didn’t kill me. In fact, I might even say, they made me stronger. Certainly, they made me smarter about debt, equity, and never taking anything for granted in the precarious, capricious world of money management and the revolving doors of the labour market.

None of which is to say that economic dislocation is preferable to long-term stability. Still, it’s worth noting that droves of Canadians endure near-permanent states of recession thanks to patently unfair, negligent policies of various governments at every level.

And, as this country appears to be heading into another one of its multi-month, economic head colds, only the mighty among us will truly fall.

In this company, of course, belong politicians who overpromise and underestimate their own power to affect the course of human affairs just in time for a general election.

They do, indeed, need fear the “R-word”.

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Jul 19 2015
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Culture, Employment, Society, Wealth

All hail a jobless future

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It is, perhaps, the paradox of our times: We are not happy when we work, and we are not happy when we don’t. Let’s just say we get used to both productivity and lassitude in equal measures.

We are, apparently, happiest (spoiler alert) when we do precisely as we please, which roughly breaks down as follows: Labouring a little bit, playing a little bit, goofing off a little bit, and sleeping. . .well, a lot.

Apparently, there’s actual research that backs me up and, in so doing, makes me feel far less guilty than I have for most of my adult life for the gazillion hours I have wasted in patently trivial pursuits.

Consider this month’s cover story in the Atlantic magazine (a certain tonic if anyone needed one at this time of the year, in this time of man and woman kind). In his piece, entitled, “A World Without Work”, writer Derek Thompson declares: “Futurists and science-fiction writers have at times looked forward to machines’ workplace takeover with a kind of giddy excitement, imagining the banishment of drudgery and its replacement by expansive leisure and almost limitless personal freedom.”

And, he says, “Make no mistake: if the capabilities of computers continue to multiply while the price of computing continues to decline, that will mean a great many of life’s necessities and luxuries will become ever cheaper, and it will mean great wealth – at least when aggregated up to the level of the national economy.”

But, then, of course, what do we mere humans do with ourselves? If we are, indeed, the demi-gods who invented machines to replace ourselves, to which plain of existence do we retire? Re-runs of “Happy Days?” Existentially, does this mean that God, itself, is officially dead?

Not necessarily. Says Mr. Thompson:

“One of the first things we might expect to see in a period of technological displacement is the diminishment of human labor as a driver of economic growth. In fact, signs that this is happening have been present for quite some time. The share of U.S. economic output that’s paid out in wages fell steadily in the 1980s, reversed some of its losses in the ’90s, and then continued falling after 2000, accelerating during the Great Recession. It now stands at its lowest level since the government started keeping track in the mid‑20th century.”

Moreover, he observes, “A number of theories have been advanced to explain this phenomenon, including globalization and its accompanying loss of bargaining power for some workers. But Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman, economists at the University of Chicago, have estimated that almost half of the decline is the result of businesses’ replacing workers with computers and software. In 1964, the nation’s most valuable company, AT&T, was worth $267 billion in today’s dollars and employed 758,611 people. Today’s telecommunications giant, Google, is worth $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees – less than a tenth the size of AT&T’s workforce in its heyday.”

On the other hand, he concludes with some reason, people stripped of their workaday drudgery will find more creative pursuits to fill their time and what remains of their bank accounts.

We shall, in due course, become artists and artisans, tradesmen and craftspeople. We might even dance around the May pole, whenever winter decides to relinquish its icy grip, and plant food in the empty parking garages and vacant spaces where people once congregated to build their fateful remnant of civilization.

We may not be entirely happy with our new lot.

But, given our track record, I’m pretty sure we’ll get used to it.

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Jul 16 2015
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Economy, Politics

Who let the dogs out?

New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant has sicced his political terriers on the federal Tory government for an array of alleged abuses he claims are ruining the province’s economy. The problem is, those dogs won’t hunt.

In an open letter earlier this week, the premier stipulated that, “provinces have been unduly burdened by the federal government’s approach to balancing the books. Provinces have been left between a rock and a hard place as they try to stretch every dollar to deliver the most important services Canadians rely on. The federal government has the capacity and the obligation to step up and play a greater role.”

He went on to state, “The upcoming federal election is an opportunity to discuss how the federal government can partner with us in creating jobs for New Brunswickers and focusing on supporting services and initiatives in education that will lead to long-term growth that will benefit all Canadians and this country’s economy.”

Specifically, Mr. Gallant wants, “equitable support on federal investments in energy and natural resource projects”, more investment in “infrastructure renewal in New Brunswick”, and more material help “fostering success for New Brunswick’s key industries”.

He also demands that the Feds review their tough stand on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and reverse their policies concerning the Employment Insurance program, which he claims puts seasonal workers in the province at an unfair disadvantage relative to unemployed people elsewhere in the country.

“We want to work with the federal government to prioritize and invest in initiatives that will create jobs and help families,” the premier wrote. “Our government’s focus is on creating the conditions for job growth and economic development. We look forward to discussing these items with party leaders, the candidates in New Brunswick, and with policy-makers from the respective parties.”

All of which drew New Brunswick Conservative MP John Williamson from the shadows, his six-guns blazing away.

“There is a fiscal imbalance,” he snorted. “It’s between provinces that develop their economies and those who choose not to. The federal government cannot force the provinces to develop their resources. I’m not going to sit here and let the premier blame others when we have the solution as New Brunswickers to fix our problems, to grow our economy, to keep and attract people here.”

Referring to Mr. Gallant directly, he said, “This is the beggar begging for more.”

As intemperate as Mr. Williamson’s characterization may be, he’s more right than wrong.

The New Brunswick government has within its grasp the tools to fix the provincial economy without barking for more money from Ottawa. It has, for example, an entire shale gas industry it refuses to develop, despite spending countless hours checking and re-checking the safety and efficacy of hydraulic fracturing.

We are, however, unaccustomed in this province with doing for ourselves; and its a condition we had better reverse without delay.

For, even if Mr. Gallant is correct about the putative “fiscal imbalance” between Freddy Beach and Fat City, no amount of baying and snarling will ever change Ottawa’s mind about what it does, or does not, owe in federal transfers to the provinces.

If anything, the Liberal premier’s deliberately public complaint about the big, bad feds and their parsimonious ways merely persuades a dubious electorate that Mr. Gallant is an ideological shill for Justin Trudeau and the national Grits. And those folks have dropped from 44 to 22 per cent in popular support in less than a year.

Maybe it’s time for Mr. Gallant to call off the dogs – if only for his own sake.

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Jul 16 2015
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Business, Economy, Politics

The perfect picture-panic province

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What a marvelous time to be the youngest premier in Canada, representing the oldest population in the nation. Could anything in Brian Gallant’s professional experience be less desirable than the thankless job he now faithfully executes?

The 32-year-old’s to-do list would give Hercules a panic attack.

First, there’s the little problem of a $12-billion long-term public debt, and a $500-million annual deficit that just won’t go away no matter what tweaks he executes to civil-service spending.

Second, there’s a litany of campaign promises that inveigh against any reasonable tool to manage the province’s fiscal crisis.

There will be no new revenue streams in the foreseeable future – not from onshore natural gas development, not from a putative pipeline from Alberta into Saint John, not from the high-tech or natural resources sectors, not from manufacturing, not even from community economic entrepreneurship. Nada. Zip. End of story. Period.

Third, the cost of health care in New Brunswick is rising alarmingly, given the tax base that remains to help pay for emergency rooms, walk-in clinics, family physicians, fully equipped hospitals.

This province “boasts” the highest per-capita spending on “interventional” medicine (as opposed to the preventative type) in the country. We are, as a populace, fatter, drunker, and more likely to cough our lungs out than any other region of Canada.

Fourth, we continue to endure the steady outmigration of our “best and brightest” to other parts of the nation, the continent and the world. And, even when other parts of the nation (Alberta), the continent (the Midwestern shale patch) and the world (the European Union) fail to retain promise, our ex-pats routinely choose places other than home in which to roost (Brazil, Venezuela).

And then, of course, there are the awful employment numbers, reported far and wide around this tiny province.

According to a piece by John Chilibeck in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, published last Saturday, “New Brunswick’s bleak jobless situation became even gloomier in June, with the unemployment rate shooting up into double digits again, to 10.8 per cent. . .Statistics Canada’s monthly labour force survey (reported that) employment in the province fell for the second consecutive month, down 3,500 in June.”

All of which must leave the impression, even in the minds of the most circumspect among us, that we are circling the drain. And that gives us the equipoise to blame the current office holders for their mismanagement, misalignment and even malfeasance.

Still, how much blame for what ails us can we properly assign to a new government, less than a year into its mandate, or even its one-term predecessor (party politics, notwithstanding)?

A friend of mine cornered me at a local grocery check-out recently and demanded to know why I haven’t been holding this young premier’s feet to the fire. “He’s obviously way over his head,” he declared as we surveyed the price of beef from Alberta. “So, what’s up with you? Have you gone soft, or something?”

To which I replied: “I was the first out of the gate telling the government to raise the HST by one percentage point. I was one of the first to tell this government to monetize shale gas, responsibly.”

My friend replied: “Well, I’m not for raising the HST, and as for shale gas, I’m for it as long it doesn’t affect me in any way possible.”

In other words, everything is better than the status quo, except for the status quo.

What a marvelous time, indeed, to be the youngest premier in Canada, representing the most calcified attitudes in the nation: The perfect picture-panic province.

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Jul 16 2015
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Economy, Municipal Affairs, Politics

On political acrobats and citizen arenas

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If, we once thought, a new downtown event centre in little, old Moncton would never support artistically inclined gymnasts, torturing their minds and bodies to make their daily bread, then fear not populace.

The acrobatics of acrimony and conciliation are, in equal measures, on display right now in the council chambers and parliaments of power. Though the players’ creaking bones and calcified ligaments might be past their prime, they are nonetheless fascinating for their late-game contortions.

Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe Member of Parliament Robert Goguen has devised an utterly splendid solution to the problem of funding a $107-million multi-purpose sports and entertainment facility in the Hub City’s downtown core.     As his federal Tory confederates say “no” to anything that smacks of hockey rink, Mr. Goguen, in his wisdom, has decided that all that money the feds owe to the tri-city area for regular road and sewer upgrades should be leveraged against a new downtown centre.

That is to say simply this: All the money we might have given you to upgrade your city’s urban core, we are now going to give you to expand your suburbs whose residents don’t give a fig about Main Street.

Take the municipal funds, Mr. Goguen sagely advises, that we would have otherwise invested in road repairs in the outskirts and pour it into an event centre, if, of course, we dare.

The problem with this “solution” is that it begs a problem.

It intimates that the feds have no real responsibility – notwithstanding a major build, such as an event centre – to upgrade the roads and sewers along routes in this city where people live and work. The Constitution declares otherwise.

It also suggests that a part of Moncton – the downtown core – simply does not contribute to the cultural and economic life of the greater urban area in ways and means that are sufficient to justify honest public investment. The evidence argues to the contrary.

Once again, I will trot out the fine work of my friend David Campbell, now New Brunswick’s senior economist. Three years ago he was on this file like a fly on honey. Here’s what he said:

“Like a successful shopping mall, a vibrant downtown will have economic anchors strategically located throughout the area. Moncton City Hall anchors a cluster of office buildings and services in the eastern part of the downtown and the Highfield Square Mall played this role in the western part of the downtown. “With the closure of that facility, it opens up the potential for another ‘anchor tenant’ that will drive economic activity and foot traffic in that area. There are not many large-scale opportunities that would apply on that site. The proposed Downtown Centre; however, is one such opportunity. It would be large enough to drive significant incremental economic activity into the downtown.

“The Sierra Planning and Management report reviewed for this brief estimated that the new Downtown Centre would cater to between 316,800 attendees (lower attendance scenario) and 396,000 attendees (moderate attendance scenario). These attendance estimates assume that 53 per cent of the traffic would come from regular season Wildcat home games. The lower attendance scenario is expected to result in over $12 million in new direct and offsite expenditures and the higher attendance scenario will bring in nearly $15 million in new expenditures to the downtown.”

In other words, a new downtown event centre does not need to be justified through political acrobatics. It justifies itself, and always has.

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Jul 09 2015
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Personal History

Summer Reverie (Part 2)

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Not a moment flies by, anymore, without some youngster tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, blogging and otherwise making a nuisance of himself in the permanently switched-on digital world to grumpy, old gramps.

As a member of grey-haired contingent, I have a word for this peculiarly annoying and highly contagious condition of cyber-connectivity: “Internetitis”. The the symptoms are as recognizable as the latest app.

Do you begin to sweat profusely if you go without checking your social-media feeds for longer than 30 minutes? Do you become anxious and fidgety when your inbox fails to notify you of unread mail? Does the thought of actually having to wait to check your voice messages make you physically ill?

If you answered “yes” to any of the aforementioned, chances are you suffer from acute “Internetitis”, the cure for which scientists are assiduously working to discover.

In the meantime, abstinence appears to be the only reliable treatment. In fact, going cold-turkey is becoming a verifiable thing these days. And it ain’t easy. Just ask Flora Carr who wrote a piece about her week without the slipstream of silliness for the Guardian last fall.

“I decided to . . see how I’d cope. Would my social life suffer? How would I keep up-to-date with news and trends? And did this mean I’d have to find my real-life calculator?”

Indeed, she noted, “I began to think of my week ‘unplugged’ as a kind of retreat. In a world saturated with images, we feel a need to document our every action; just recently I caught myself Instagramming my bowl of morning porridge.

“As the week progressed I found myself sleeping far better – simply because I wasn’t lying in bed for hours double-checking my newsfeed. . . And while the week may have provided me an escape from both hypothermia and Kim Kardashian taking 1,200 selfies on holiday, it also proved to be a period of self-imposed social exile.”

That is, of course, the point.

I grew up at a time when rotary dial telephones were actually considered intrusive by many of my parents’ generation. The thought of any single household owning more than one of these contraptions was patently absurd. When you rang someone up, there was an even chance your call would go unanswered. You’d just have to try later or even (gasp!) the following day.

Somehow, though, we managed to muddle through without compromising the integrity of our circles of friends and associates. We actually looked forward to receiving a bone fide letter in the mail.

Then again, if you’ve never lived this way, the sudden withdrawal from the plugged in world can be jarring. That’s what American technology writer Paul Miller discovered a couple of years ago when he decided tune out for an entire year. In an interview with CNN, upon his return to the online universe, he described his experience as,“Existential and introspective. I really learned a lot about myself. I did have a lot of free time, but a lot of it was loneliness and boredom in ways that I hadn’t really experienced before.”

On the other hand, he said, “There were times I would realize my mind was in really cool places, having thought processes that are hard to have when you’re on the Internet.”

Would he do it again?

Something tells me the 20-something would rather be caught naked on a busy overpass than to be one more minute without his smartphone.

After all, Luddite Town is a nice place to visit, but, really gramps, who would want to live there?

Jul 09 2015
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Personal History

Summer reverie (Part 1)

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I refuse to remember what I ate for supper last Thursday, but, as I drift off to sleep, certain in my bedroll, I do recall with perfect clarity the summer between my 11th and 12th birthdays.

There, on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in a subdivision called Pinedale Park, just minutes away from the pretty promontory known as Prospect, my younger sister and I would gambol along the shoreline for hours, picking periwinkles from seaweed, diving headlong into the surf, spearing rock eels with straightened, sharpened clothes hangars.

In the spring of 1971, my father took me to the boat show in Halifax, just 45 minutes up the road. He was thinking about a sailing ship for himself. Not finding one that suited him, he set his sites on a double-hulled skiff, equipped with a tiller, rudder, centerboard and something that actually looked like a mainsail and mast.

He presented it to me as a gift even as the ice flows clogged the moorings in the bay; I took to it like a fish does to water. I was a better sailor then than I am now, having spent a good deal of time, since age three, tacking about in Toronto Harbour with my mother’s brother and, of course, dear, old Dad.

For two months in the summer of 1971, I would drive that skiff into the swells off the coast where the grumbling of the pounding water would tell me where to make landfall and where not to afford an attempt. I would take my tiny girlfriends right across the bay to the far shore, where, God knows, anything could happen away from prying, adult eyes – even a bubble-gum kiss or three.

Once, when my craft was docked, I jumped into an open-bodied ketch of nearly 20 feet, from stem to stern, that my father had finally managed to procure from a broker in England. We sailed into the North Atlantic, under mariner’s skies. I manned the jib. Dad handled the tiller and mainsail. We tacked and jibed until the sun told us that it was time to head into Prospect.

As we ran with the wind, my father began to fiddle with the centerboard’s main line, which held the heavy, lead cleaver that served as the boat’s moveable keel. When the bloody thing slammed down, it took half of the middle finger on his right hand with it.

It occurs to me now that had we been equipped with GPS and cell-phone technology, we might have been able to rescue ourselves from certain perdition. As it was, with no tech available in the early 1970s, five miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, it was clear we were on our own. Dad, his wrecked finger dangling from his mouth, somehow started the outboard engine. I grabbed the tiller and cruised that craft to port.

I don’t remember what I ate for supper that night. I do remember the bandage my father sported after his return from the Halifax Infirmary. And I remember something else.

I remember my 38-year-old pater, hail and hardy, standing on the stoop of our Pinedale Park ranch-style bungalow, waving to me with his good hand. “That was something,” he said through the pain and the painkillers. “You know, of course, you helped me.”

The next day, my sister and I headed down to the shore to hunt for periwinkles and eels.

Just in that fragile tissue of life, lived in a moment of summertime, when the days are longer than anyone deserves, we knew we could do anything.

Jul 07 2015
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Business, Municipal Affairs, Politics

Imagine Moncton’s future

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If a small city can host a big world-beating sporting event, divine what Moncton can do with a hole in the ground, where once stood a shopping complex.

We walk past that vast 11-acre wasteland in snow and in heat, casting our eyes dolefully to its future. We wonder what will become of that empty space. Will it succumb to a series of poorly planned private condominiums, a sequence of public scrublands, a tract of parking spaces?

Or will it rise again as proof of life, a canvas for beginnings and the finer things in our municipal imagination?

Sometimes, it takes a tourist to tell us what we already know about ourselves. Sometimes, it takes Louise Taylor of the U.K.-based Guardian to plump our pillows and kiss our cheek and call us “charming” on the morning after we helped host the FIFA world women’s football extravaganza.

“Vancouver was more beautiful, Montreal more chic, Ottawa more interesting and Edmonton – well Edmonton had more tall buildings – but Moncton in New Brunswick was the most charming venue of Canada 2015,” the British journalist recently opined. “Virtually everyone, everywhere, was friendly but in Moncton people are super friendly. If drivers see you hesitating on the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) and think you might want to cross the road, they stop for you. It also had by far the best newspaper of any read at breakfast in the five cities I visited – so hats off to the Times & Transcript.”

Hats off, indeed.

Still, some day soon, I imagine crossing the road, from that cinder-block of an edifice that employs me from a distance, to greet a great entertainment complex – replete with sports arenas, mobile stages for local, national and international theatre companies, and hot and cold cafes providing, to smiling patrons, everything from real espresso to local Panini.

I envision spending my time in Moncton’s rejuvenated downtown meeting friends, drinking coffee, debating the issues of the day, the week and the year, and then, when the time is right, pulling away with a happy roar.

“See you next time,” I might say. “I have tickets.”

“So, to what?” my friends might ask.

“To bloody everything,” I would respond.

Bring on the hockey, the Phantom of the Opera, the Atlantic Ballet Theatre, and the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir.

I would, in this universe, own passes to see Sid Crosby downtown, followed by Bruce Springsteen around the corner, and the last vestiges of the Grateful Dead, eating somebody else’s lunch on Robinson Court.

Picture, again, what Moncton can do with a hole in the ground. (Back-filling other people’s mistakes is, after all, one of the things this community does best; think CN, think Sears, think Hudson’s Bay, think Target).

Now think what’s in store.

Elected officials voted wisely earlier this week. According to a report from Kayla Byrne in the Moncton Times & Transcript, “After nearly three hours of debate, Moncton council agreed to apply to the Municipal Capital Borrowing Board for $95.4 million.”

What, exactly, constitutes the “Municipal Capital Borrowing Board” is a subject of conjecture; but that this council, with exceptions, feels confident about the future of that vast, empty acreage – which begs daily for redevelopment – is the kind of good news that should make residents and visitors, alike, imagine.

Imagine the next, great resurgence of entrepreneurial verve in the downtown core. Imagine the buzz and business. Imagine the play and the playfulness.

Now, imagine you being there, as the Guardian’s Louise Taylor was, just the other day.

What does this tourist know about us that we have already forgotten?

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Jul 07 2015
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Democracy, Politics

Race to the bottom

Who says I'm not happy?

Who says I’m not happy?

In his forthcoming book, What is Government Good At?, the University of Moncton’s Donald Savoie – one of New Brunswick’s leading public intellectuals – properly laments the erosion in Canada’s public services.

“Government is now a big whale that can’t swim, that can’t keep up with the fast-changing global economy,” he writes in a recent commentary for the Globe and Mail. “It has too many management layers, too many oversight bodies and too many public servants generating performance reports that feed a fabricated bottom line that has no footing.”

Dr. Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Government at UdeM, adds, “government is now also home to too many conflicting goals and has piled on too many activities on top of one another. In the process, it has lost sight of its core responsibilities, including managing effectively a regulatory regime that not only is able to set standards, but also to make sure that they are respected, as Lac-Mégantic so clearly demonstrated. Notwithstanding high-profile program reviews, the government still relies on across-the-board cuts to control spending.”

Apart from this, and probably more troubling, “When it comes to managing operations, the Canadian government has lost ground. Contrary to the private sector and given the centralization of power around the Prime Minister, government managers have learned the art of delegating up rather than down. Too many decisions, including purely management ones, end up with the Prime Minister and his courtiers.”

None of which is especially new to veteran watchers of the politics-as-crowd-control shenanigans on Parliament Hillywood in recent years. But Dr. Savoie raises points that need to be screamed, repeatedly, from the rooftops of every outpost of democracy that can be located in the Canadian hinterland.

On the other hand, observing what the federal government – indeed, most, if not all, governments – are good at these days might serve the thesis just as well.

If, for example, they are becoming less-than-skilled managers of their own policies and programs, they remain extraordinarily competent manipulators of their public image, especially in years when an election looms.

“Canada’s Economic Action Plan (EAP) is working,” the government web site blares. “Since the recession, over 1.2 million net new jobs have been created. EAP 15 builds on this record of achievement with positive measures to create jobs, growth and long-term prosperity.”

What’s more, “EAP 2015 continues the Government’s focus on lowering taxes for Canadian families. New measures in EAP 2015 will help Canadians save more, make it easier for seniors to preserve more of their retirement savings, and give families greater peace of mind. . .(It) will lower taxes for businesses even further and encourage job-creating investment in Canada by encouraging investment in manufacturing. . .and supporting business innovation in key sectors.”

Never mind that associating job recovery with a specific government program is the oldest trick in the political playbook. Never mind that slapping a brand on what amounts to standard nuts-and-bolts economic planning is spin-doctoring at its least artful.

The only important question is whether Canadians are more or less satisfied with the government they last elected. According to the polling firm, Ipsos Reid last week, “If the election were held tomorrow, the NDP under Thomas Mulcair would receive 35 per cent of the decided vote, up 5 points since last month, largely on gains made in Ontario and in the west. In contrast, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals (29 per cent, down 2 points) and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives (28 per cent, down 3 points) are losing ground.”

Perhaps, lately, we’ve been reading a bit too much of Donald Savoie.

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