May 21 2015
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Energy, Environment

Tidal power’s moment in the sun

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Somewhere between crashing oil and gas prices, luffing devotion to wind power and darkening enthusiasm for solar farms (thanks, no doubt, to the hardest, overcast winter since the Great Depression), tidal power in Atlantic Canada is enjoying. . .ahem, surging interest in Atlantic Canada.

And, why not?

The Bay of Fundy boasts the highest and lowest tides in the world, or so says bayoffundytourism.com: “Each day 160 billion tonnes of seawater flows in and out of the (bay) during one tide cycle ­– more than the combined flow of the world’s freshwater rivers.”

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

“The quest for world tidal dominance has led to a rivalry between the Minas Basin in the Bay of Fundy and the Leaf Basin in Ungava Bay, over which body of water lays claim to the highest tides in the world, with supporters in each region claiming the record.

“The Canadian Hydrographic Service finally declared it a statistical tie, with measurements of a 16.8-metre tidal range in Leaf Basin for Ungava Bay and 17 at Burntcoat Head for the Bay of Fundy. The highest water level ever recorded in the Bay of Fundy system occurred at the head of the Minas Basin on the night of October 4-5, 1869 during a tropical cyclone named the “Saxby Gale”.

To me, it all seems a natural “greenfield” for sustainable energy and associated economic development to me. But, until recently, the line on tidal power, propagated by the world’s industrial polluters whose vested interests include wringing oil and gas out of western sand, is that it’s pie in the sky: Too expensive to consider, too technologically challenging to contemplate.

Funny that. Not too many years ago, that’s exactly what traditional petroleum producers, attached to their land-locked derricks and offshore oil rigs said about fracking.

My, how the tight plays across North America have come home to roost.

A recent Globe and Mail piece articulated the point quite well:

“The oil sands have lost ground as new technologies uncork a flood of cheaper shale oil in the United States. . .‘The fundamental issue is the competitive environment has changed drastically over the last five years,’ said Samir Kayande, analyst at ITG Investment Research in Calgary. ‘The analogy that I think is appropriate is basically like tech’.”

Mr. Kayande elaborated: “In the last few years, a new technology has emerged, and so the incumbents who have made good money in the past doing things the old way are the ones who are threatened. And it’s really the upstarts who have the potential for being the large, significant players in the future.”

Sound familiar?

As it happens, a new technology has emerged in the Bay of Fundy, on the Nova Scotia side, of late. The Irish consortium, OpenHydro, is now ready to install two gargantuan turbines at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, just off the coast of Parrsboro. After years of effort and experimentation and, yes (gasp!), true innovation, these puppies might just feed 20 megawatts of clean, reliable power to the provincial energy grid.

That’s not a lot, compared with the 500 MG in place through wind turbines in New Brunswick, but it’s a valiant start. Just as important, perhaps, is what the initiative says about the future of high-tech, clean-energy manufacturing.

If the Maritimes wants to wean itself from energy politics-as-usual and build the economic capacity necessary to prepare its future for true prosperity, it could do worse than pulling its head out of the western tar sands and look to the east, were the tide is rising.

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May 20 2015
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Culture, Democracy, Politics

A lost cause worth fighting

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It was a fine and noble attempt to protect their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, even a Cri de Coeur. But as almost all heartfelt outcries fail to achieve the objectives of their champions, so, too, is this one doomed to fall on deaf ears in the nation’s increasingly belligerent capital.

According a report in the Globe and Mail, “public-service unions are asking the federal government for the first time to enshrine scientific integrity language into their collective agreements. The language is intended to ensure that researchers employed by the federal government can speak openly about their work, publish results without fear of censorship and collaborate with peers.”

Federal scientists – those on the payroll of the public service of Canada – have long admonished their bureaucratic bosses and political masters for what they see, not unreasonably, as a coordinated program to muzzle them in the media. For years, they have decried the current government’s determination to vet their public comments through communications officers (even, on occasion, the Prime Minister’s Office).

Indeed, their confederates in the world’s scientific community, dutifully shocked and appalled at the treatment Canadian researchers have received in the bland, dusty halls of Ottawa officialdom, have come to man the ramparts on their behalf and in the interest of scientific enquiry everywhere.

And the issue has, in recent times, caught fire in some of the stalwarts of the international press.

“Over the last few years, the government of has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists,” former New York Times editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg opined in 2013. “There was trouble of this kind here (the United States) in the George W. Bush years, when scientists were asked to toe the party line on climate policy and endangered species. But nothing came close to what is being done in Canada.”

Mr. Klinkenborg further observed: “It is also designed to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the northern resource rush – the feverish effort to mine the earth and the ocean with little regard for environmental consequences. The policy seems designed to make sure that the tar sands project proceeds quietly. . .To all the other kinds of pollution the tar sands will yield, we must now add another: the degradation of vital streams of research and information.”

Yes, we might.

Still, despite Mr. Klinkenbord’s principled objection to official Canadian government policy – and, in fact, this new, bold effort by this nation’s public-service unions to “enshrine” the rights of scientists in their collective agreements – nothing meaningful is likely to happen; certainly, nothing significant in an election year.

That’s because, though most adult Canadians who are polled about such matters express a “sincere” desire for freedom of expression, especially among the educated, informed and well-intentioned, when push comes to shove, they still prefer the strong arm of this cabinet’s patriarchal approach to governance. They still believe that imminent peril lurks behind every street corner and that, in the end, loose lips sink ships.

Consider, as evidence, the latest public opinion surveys, which show the current Conservative government enjoying a fairly healthy lead over both the national NDP and Liberal parties. The reason: people in this country tend to fall into the gravity well of an incumbent who has not totally screwed up the economy or abandoned the largely apocryphal, though resonant, storyboard of threats to domestic security.

We may yet hope that freedom of speech, even for government employees, is a Cri de Coeur that will be heard.

More likely, though, it will remain a heartbreak nursed only in silence.

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May 19 2015
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Politics

Et tu Brute?

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When the knives, unsheathed, flash in the political moonlight they somehow sink deeper than those that plunge in the noonday sun.

And so it was last week that two, lifelong New Brunswick Liberals – Bernard Richard and Michael Murphy – sharpened their shivs and stuck them into the current, Grit provincial government over its decision to locate a youth treatment centre in Campbellton, rather than Moncton.

According to a CBC report last week, “Former child and youth advocate Bernard Richard says the decision to build a youth mental health facility in Campbellton is ‘the worst public policy decision’ he’s witnessed in a long time.

The new $12.6-million facility will be built in the same area as the Campbellton Regional Hospital, the province announced on Saturday. It will have 15 beds and offer outreach treatment to other areas in the province.

“Richard has wanted to see a youth mental health facility established for close to a decade and was excited last year when the government announced it would build one. But after learning the location would be in Campbellton, Richard says he was distraught because of its close proximity to Restigouche Hospital Centre, which is a psychiatric hospital.

“’After the youth detention centre in Miramichi, it’s probably the worst place due to the issues of stigmatization and institutionalization,’” says Richard. “In January, Richard and a colleague canvassed mental health professionals to see what they wanted for a new facility. They made recommendations to the government to build the facility in Moncton where access to two hospitals, in both languages would be available.”

Again, for the CBC, erstwhile Liberal MLA and once-contender to the provincial crown, Michael Murphy added: “As a former minister of health I can tell you how hard it is to get specialists to go to our urban centres versus Toronto – let alone Campbellton,” (he) wrote in one of a series of tweets that suggested the Gallant government was putting ‘politics first, kids second’ with the decision.”

Of course, both men are absolutely correct.

As politically convenient as this profoundly wrong-headed decision is, most people in this province don’t live and work in the north; they ply their trades, professions and economic opportunities in the south – in Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton.

What’s more, decades of deliberate government policy designed to build so-called “centres of private-sector excellence”, academic research institutes, and incubators of culture (for both French and English) in the southeast and southwest of this province have produced predictable results: a compelling influx of educated Francphones from the north into Dieppe; an equally persuasive wave of skilled Anglophones from the north into Moncton, Riverview, Saint John and even Fredericton.

Like it or not, southern New Brunswick is where it’s all happening (if “happening” is the correct word in a province that still nurses a debt-to-equity ratio that rivals Greece’s).

Now, more than ever before, we must build on what we’ve done right and locate critical, public, social services in those communities where most people reside.

Greater Moncton’s civic population now tops out at 138,000 people. That’s nearly as many who live in Prince Edward Island. That’s more than three times as many who reside in Edmundston, Bathurst and Campbellton, N.B., combined.

Forcing “youths at risk” to travel from their southern homes to their northern treatment centre, several times a week, as much as five hours per trip, to receive an hour or two of succour, seems to me cruel an unusual.

At the very least, it’s poor public policy, weakened even more by political gamesmanship.

This is, of course, what Messrs. Richard and Murphy are driving at.

Their knives may be sharp.

Still, their points are true.

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May 18 2015
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Politics

No more Mr. Nice Guys

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In a hotel room in downtown Moncton, I interviewed former Progressive Conservative Premier of New Brunswick David Alward, mid-way through his mandate, and found him to be genuinely interested, engaged and, more importantly, authentically decent.

He was as he appeared in video captures on the nightly news: an “everyman” of a certain middle age who was a little paunchy, a little red in the cheeks, a tad prone to wipe his brow when he noticed that the tie he was wearing was doing a workmanlike job of restricting the supply of oxygen to his lungs.

Naturally, as premier of a province that he had sworn to save from the so-called predations of his Liberal predecessors, he would never think to loosen that tie (not for a moment). No, he would endure the slings and arrows of outrageous haberdashery just to get his point across.

And his point, specifically, was this: “Let’s look at where we are right at the moment. We were left with a billion-dollar-plus projected deficit by the previous government. Initially, we came forward with a projected deficit of under $450 million. Now, after the second quarter (2011), we are over by somewhere around $100 million. A significant chunk of that was thanks to revenue reductions. We were also dealing with higher expenditures. . .in pensions, but also in social development and health programs.

“It is clear we need to get our house in order. And, just staying on taxes for a moment, when they are needed we raise them through (levies) on gasoline and diesel, and also on tobacco and liquor.”

He continued: “But the real point is we need to go and understand what services we need to provide. . .We need to know what our core values are, what our core services are and focus on those services. We need to find ways to deliver them more efficiently. . .It’s about how we can reorganize government. . . .In the last four years there has been a growth in the public service of 8,000 (positions). We have to look at the long term.”

How predictably appropriate it is that Mr. Alward’s Tory end game in 2012 so closely resembles current Grit premier Brian Gallant’s in 2015. How do you measure a political transformation when nothing actually changes, when nothing important happened today?

The awful and trite phrase “going forward” substitutes in all recent governments for bold policy. Its shameful connotation is the language of the dejected and fearful in public office: We’ll try, sort of, but don’t count on us to get anything worthwhile or meaningful accomplished.

And so, the differences between the Alward and Gallant governments on fiscal policy are perishingly small. Neither had, or has, the stomach to raise the HST on items the actual buying public chooses to afford, because to do so (political expediency dictates) would signal the end of the world as we know it.

Meanwhile, the long-term debt in this province remains just about where it was when Mr. Alward left office ($12 billion and holding). The cost of health care delivery and public education, though nominally static this fiscal year, will inevitably rise in the next three. And the possibility of raising real revenues from natural resources for public coffers is as remote now as it was when Mr. Alward confidently predicted a boon for New Brunswick back in 2012.

I have had friendly email exchanges with Premier Gallant and I have found him to be, like his predecessor, genuinely interested, engaged and authentically decent.

Still, I’m thinking, maybe it’s time for a barracuda at the end of my smart phone, for a good, long change.

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May 18 2015
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Culture, Politics, Science

Battle lines in the war on science

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The scientific community and the rest of us enjoy, let’s just say, a complicated relationship.

The rest us of understand, at some basic level, that outside of nature virtually nothing we see, smell, hear, taste or touch has been unaffected by the ingenuity of the human mind. Still, according to a National Science Foundation survey last year, nearly 25 per cent of Americans believe that Copernicus was a dunderhead, or worse.

“To the question ‘Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth,’ 26 per cent of those surveyed answered incorrectly,” a report for National Public Radio in the United States revealed.

Incidentally, “in the same survey, just 39 per cent answered correctly (true) that ‘The universe began with a huge explosion’ and only 48 per cent said ‘Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.’ Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses”. (They kill bacteria).

It’s one thing to admit that fantasy is more alluring than fact; it’s quite another to insist that the fantastical is, indeed, factual.

The Flat Earth Society describes itself as “a place for free thinkers and the intellectual exchange of ideas.” Meanwhile, millions apparently still believe that the world, have missed its date with the Apocalypse back in 2012, still has it coming in the not too-distant future.

Yet, talk to many of them about the devastating effects of empirically proven climate change on this orb, and they’re likely to call you barking mad, a gullible fool, or a willing conspirator of the international-scientific-complex, determined to separate poor citizens from their tax dollars to fatten already swollen research banks.

It is, perhaps, not a moment too soon, then, that some scientists in Canada are hitting back with the only weapon they can reliably trust: the truth about what they do for a living.

According to a Globe and Mail piece early last week, Molly Shoichet, a biomedical engineer at the University of Toronto, “is set to officially launch Research2Reality, a $400,000 social-media campaign she is spearheading that is designed to shine a spotlight on the work of academic researchers across the country. It is one of the most ambitious outreach efforts of its kind in Canada to date and it comes at a time when research advocates worldwide are trying to persuade governments of the importance of basic, curiosity-driven research.”

As she says, “We’re not a lobby group. Our focus is on capturing the imagination and the curiosity of the public.”

In fact, government dogma – especially in Canada over the past decade of Conservative rule – has been an even peskier problem than the sure-footed intransigence of the blissfully ignorant John Q. Public.

It is not science that some bureaucrats and their elected masters mistrust, but scientists – particularly those that can’t seem to get it through their eggheads that the work they do must evince some practical applications before their fellow citizens are willing to fund it.

This, of course, misses the point as most false dichotomies do. As Lauren Reinerman-Jones and Stephanie Lackey of Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida noted in 2011, “If no distinct difference or opposition of basic and applied research exists, then it should be assumed that all research conducted has practical application with a theoretical foundation.”

Unfortunately, that proposition makes too much sense to find much purchase outside the halls of academe.

We may hope, however, that Dr. Shoichet will have better luck for the sake of both the scientific community and, of course, the rest of us

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May 18 2015
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Business, Idiocracy, Municipal Affairs

A voice from the wilderness

Permanent winter for a Moncton events centre?

Permanent winter for a Moncton events centre?

Was it only a stitch in time, a hiccup in history, a diaphanous dream, or did Greater Moncton once actually believe that its downtown was worth preserving, protecting, even pampering?

Or were we always determined to be Fargo, North Dakota, where the ribbon developments and strip malls make Detroit look like heaven on Earth?

A couple of years ago, Moncton economic development consultant David Campbell (now chief economist of the Province of New Brunswick) and university economist Pierre-Marcel Desjardins put numbers to the proposition of rejuvenating Moncton’s urban core.

According to Mr. Campbell, in a report to City Council, a new centre would annually “attract between 317,000 and 396,000 people. . .generating between $12 and $15 million in spending.” In the process, it would “support retail, food service, accommodation and other services in the downtown,” where it “should also support residential growth.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Desjardins estimated that the construction phase, alone, would generate $340 million worth of “economic impacts” for New Brunswick and other parts of the country, as well as nearly $17 million in taxes for the provincial and federal governments.

But the crucial point, which Mr. Campbell argued rigorously and cogently, is that a new centre is not – as some have proposed – a luxury; it is quite nearly a necessity.

“Downtown – only 1.5 per cent of the city’s land area – generates nearly 10 per cent of the total assessed tax base and over 14.4 per cent of property tax revenues,” he noted in his report to City Council. In fact, the urban core “generates nearly 11.5 times as much property tax revenue, compared to the rest of Moncton, on a per hectare basis.”

Yet – though it plays host to 800 business, 3,000 bars, restaurants and cafes 18,000 workers, and anywhere from 1,200 to 5,700 residents (depending on how one fixes downtown “borders”) – the area is in a state of disrepair.

“The economic engine is showing signs of weakness,” Mr. Campbell lamented. “There is currently over 350,000 square feet of vacant office space in the downtown. Office space vacancies across Greater Moncton have risen from 6.6 per cent in 2011 to an estimated 13.5 per cent in 2013. Residential population in the core declined by 9.1 per cent between 2006 and 2011. Including the expanded downtown, the population dropped by 3.3 per cent. (This) compared to a robust 7.7 per cent rise across the city.”

A new centre that hosts a wide variety of events, with enough seats to compete for top shows, will incontestably revitalize the downtown area.

The real question is whether that’s still a priority here.

It’s a question that Adam Conter appears to ask daily. At a Moncton City Council meeting a couple of weeks ago, the former Haligonian – a transplanted real-estate professional – testified that such a centre is “good for the province. . .the conversation over the past couple of weeks has been that this centre seems to be the divining rod. . .We are going to run a $479-million deficit (in this province), of which (the centre costs the province) $24 million. (That) represents 0.5 per cent (of the budget). If we were to have a rounding error, we could build the centre for that money.”

Of course, he is entirely correct and in preaching to Moncton Council he is, against few notable exceptions, preaching to the choir.

But this thing of ours will only get done when we finally decide whether or not we want a downtown area to nurture our diverse cultures, our economic potential.

Otherwise, the ribbons and highway malls of Fargo beckon.

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May 07 2015
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Democracy, Government

Biting the hand that hits

 

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Government watchdogs are constitutionally bred to be independent, objective, honest, and, of course, funded. How else can they protect the people’s business from the occasional, sometimes unwitting, predations of their political caretakers?

But, every so often, when its collar is fixed too tightly and its leash is tugged too quickly, even the best-behaved terrier of truth will snarl, spit and promptly defecate on the shoes of its hapless walker.

And so, we witness New Brunswick Auditor-General Kim MacPherson playing “bad dog” in Premier Brian Gallant’s four-year obedience class.

To be sure, Ms. MacPherson insists that her province-wide road show explaining what she does for living, why it’s important, and how it helps democracy from slipping into the black hole of ambivalence has nothing to do with politics.

Forget the fact that her budget’s been frozen at $2 million a year, that she needs staff to finish the work she’s legally obligated to complete, and that her cries to obtain these resources might as well be dog whistles falling on the ears of deaf ministers.

No, no, she says, her new “outreach program” has everything to do with –for lack of better words – proactivity and positivity. (Lord knows, children, we need more of that in the spin-cities of Canadian governance).

Let me make myself perfectly clear, she told Saint John Telegraph-Journal legislative scribe Chris Morris, this week, “It (the speaking tour) stems from the fact that in the past year we have a new strategic plan, and one of the strategic objectives is to increase public awareness of the role of the auditor general and the reports. It is to make people more aware of our work.”

Funny, that. Back in March before the snow melted and the dog parks opened, Ms. MacPherson had this to say: “I feel that out office is under-resourced. We’re barely scratching the surface. There is much more that we could and should be doing.”

Now, she tells Ms. Morris, “I am conscious of the fact that these are difficult fiscal times, and it is difficult to come up with new money to add to anyone’s budget.”

Still, the A-G is angling to become a particular animal that no sitting government of any political stripe ever wants to see: a political watchdog that’s determined to issue regular, scheduled reports throughout a given year rather than one, annual omnibus piece that’s doomed to obscurity. In this she’s counting on the media to wag her tail (your welcome, auditor).

As Ms. Morris quotes Ms. MacPherson as saying, “It is too much content all at once – about 1,000 pages in one day. We have decided to stagger the content. We are now working on a report to be tabled in mid-June.”

Can’t you just hear the factotums in the Premier’s Office now grind their canines at night? Oh wonderful, they are chomping, how exquisite. How, on earth, did we get ourselves into this particular kennel?

For her part, the A-G has found her freedom by digging under the cage that trapped her. She’s in the wind, happily barking and yipping, paroling the boundaries between official, government bafflegab and the numbers that tell at least some version of the truth about public spending.

According to Ms. Morris: “MacPherson said that when she is in St. Stephen (her first public appearance on her provincial tour), she will talk about the fiscal situation of the province, and some of her office’s recent performance reviews, including the report on the now-defunct Atcon group of companies.”

Bark! Bark!

Bad dog!

Ouch!

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May 06 2015
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Government, Politics

In praise of laziness

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Cathy Rogers, MLA for Moncton and the province’s social development minister, is exactly right when she says, in so many words, that hiking the provincial portion of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) is the easy way out of New Brunswick’s fiscal fiasco and economic swamp.

So what’s wrong with that?

Why must we endlessly review our options through the nearly Calvinist lens of public sacrifice (do better, be better, go forth and die in penury and virtue), rather than embrace the rather obvious, less dramatic proposition that a two-percentage point hike in the HST – boring though it may be – would, in four years, help balance the budget and send our international creditors into a well-deserved, deep and abiding slumber.

Ms. Rogers, by contrast, would rather we first figure out how to run ourselves as a proper citizenry than pay the bills. As for the HST, she says, “it’s like asking for a bigger allowance without first learning how to manage our allowance better.” Calling it a “quick fix” and a “lazy way to find a solution”, the minister would rather we put our shoulders to the wheel just as the wheels fall off the semi-tractor trailer that is the rusting, heaving, wheezing truck of state.

Of course, she’s not the only one in this Liberal cabinet who’s willing to stand in the middle of the road, proclaiming loudly, only then to skirt to the curb, squeaking quietly.

There’s also Donald Arseneault, Minister of Energy and Mines, who thinks that a year-long examination into things we already know about shale-gas development in the province is a profoundly responsible use of public money and time, (though he has allowed in his quieter moments that just such an exercise might actually hurt New Brunswick’s economic prospects).

Ms. Rogers’ conundrum is, however, particularly perplexing. On the one hand, she declares that she is opposed to raising the HST today, but is willing to consider the prospect a year from now. Meanwhile, so-called “wealthy seniors” should be prepared to pay more for their nursing home costs to. . .you know. . .help balance the books before the government musters the political courage to do the smart thing: boost consumption taxes for everyone on discretionary items (not food, not fuel oil, not shelter, not kids’ clothing or daycare).

Still, who are these “wealthy seniors” of whom she speaks?

“We know that based on income 87 per cent of seniors cannot afford the daily cap (of $113 a day),” the Saint John Telegraph-Journal quoted her saying last week. “We can take something from this, but not everything. It is an indicator. We have to wait until we get more data to get more details on liquid assets.”

And while we wait for “more data”, New Brunswick’s new, wholly invented, politically contrived demographic – the wealthy senior – lives in fear of a government that has not yet determined who or how best to bilk him.

Nice work, if you can get it.

Always trust Government of every ideological stripe to render the straightforward, complicated; the clear, obfuscated; the fair, inequitable.

It’s called spin and it stinks.

More than this, it depends, for its effectiveness, on enormous amounts of energy, busy work and low cunning. In other words, it’s the opposite of “lazy”.

Somehow, in this universe, the sin of lassitude means telling the evident truth, doing the obviously right thing without breaking a sweat, and smiling easily without ever worrying about night terrors.

If these are my choices, I’ll take lazy man’s way out every day of the political week.

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May 05 2015
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Democracy, Politics

What’s in a Tory name?

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Dear youth caucus of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party: I heartily endorse your proposal to drop the word, “Progressive” from your title.

Henceforth, you and your fellow travellers ought to be known properly by those principles you truly espouse. As one of your own explained to the CBC recently, the time has come for change and history is a slave driver.

“A group of young Tories are looking to remove the word ‘Progressive’ from the party’s name at the upcoming annual general meeting,” Mother Corp. reports. “Adam Pottle, a youth executive member of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick, says the name change is long overdue.

“Pottle said dropping ‘Progressive’ would better reflect reality. ‘The PCs are a bit more to the right end of the spectrum than every other party in New Brunswick and we just felt the word progressive no longer really matched our party,’ he said. Members of the Progressive Conservative Party will vote on the idea on May 23 at the annual general meeting that is being held in Fredericton.”

What’s more, “Pottle said the name change will connect the party to its past. ‘Honestly, we’ve been thinking about it for a while, a few of us. We wanted to bring the party more in line with history – before the early ‘30s, it was just known as the Conservative Party – and also to bring us more in line with our federal counterparts,’ Pottle said.”

As the CBC piece explained, “The federal Conservative Party was formed in 2003 when the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance. The term ‘progressive’ was not added to the new party’s name.”

Heaven only knows what might have transpired had it been retained.

We might, for one thing, employ a civil service that’s not afraid of its own shadow, not looking for enemies and spooks behind every corner of its ever-shrinking cubicles.

We might, for another, enjoy a political culture that encourages open and honest debate, instead of one that shuts doors and windows as soon as the aroma of principled dissent subsumes that of microwaved popcorn at high noon.

We might also remember, if not always revere, the actions of men like Robert Stanfield, Brian Mulroney and Richard Hatfield, of women like Pat Carney, Flora MacDonald and Barbara McDougall. In their own progressive ways, these “PCs” changed the country without letting the country turn them into simulacra of Liberal presumption and entitlement.

But, sure, youngsters, go ahead. Reinvent yourselves. Recuse yourselves. Be all that you can be. Just don’t kid yourselves about the influence your re-branding efforts exert.

The Conservative Party you seek to emulate – seek to join – gives less than a nanosecond of time to anyone outside the inner circle of Canadian politics. (Frankly, they way things are going, neither do the federal Grits).

In any case, yours is not the Reform party; yours is the Establishment party. And it really doesn’t like party crashers from the youth wing stumbling into its dessert bars and piano soirees long past their bedtime.

A Wiki entry stipulates that Progressive-Conservatism in Canada had a bonafide lifespan. “The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (1942–2003) was a Canadian federal political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues,” it says.

Now comes your better times in this fair province, if you can trump your elders. On this score, be as bold as youth demands.

Call yourselves the “Regressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick”.

Dudes, you can hardly go wrong.

True that.

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May 04 2015
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Economy, Energy, Government, Idiocracy

As the fracking follies continue. . .

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It’s always heartening to realize that those we elect to high, public office hold each other to the same standard of comportment as do the rest of us. After all, if we can’t count on the statesmen among us, we can surely depend on the ready, nearly endless, supply of clowns.

And so it was last week when New Brunswick’s Tory energy critic, Jake Stewart, had this to say in the House about the Liberal government’s decision to extend a partial, four-year payroll refund, reportedly worth $150,000, to internationally based Clean Harbors’ Saint John operation:

“I am sure that the minister of Energy and Mines and the premier are very excited to have this company, one of the leading suppliers of hydraulic fracturing waste treatment and disposal services in the Bakken, Marcellus, and Utica shale formations, established in New Brunswick. . .It is interesting to learn that this government is providing taxpayer-funded assistance for existing staff to a company that has such a high level of expertise in the treatment and disposal of hydraulic fracturing waste when the same government, just months ago, implemented policies that actually prohibit this industry in which Clean Harbors is a leading service provider.

To which Premier Brian Gallant gamely responded, “I understand his (Mr. Stewart’s) frustration. I understand why he is so confused. The members opposite are so fixated on fracking that they cannot fathom that we can create jobs, even though there is a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. The member cannot fathom. . .that a business like Clean Harbors can create jobs in the province, even though there is a moratorium.”

With which, in turn, Gary Kelly, vice-president of business sales for Clean Harbors, naturally agreed (of sorts). He told the Saint John Telegraph-Journal: “We felt that there was a need here. A few years ago one of the competitors closed up shop, so we felt there was an opportunity.”

Added Economic Development Minister Rick Doucet: “The company is tied in very well with the industrial sector in Saint John – with the pulp and paper industry and with the oil industry. . .Any company, especially a world-class operation such as this, located in 50 places around the world and with 13,000 people working for it, that stands and wants to open up shop in New Brunswick and wants to represent New Brunswick is a bonus for us.

“Clean Harbors has a very broad range of services that it offers in the sectors – the cleaning services and products, the recycling of oil into base, the blending of lubricating oils, the high-pressure and chemical cleaning, and the disposal of hazardous waste.”

In other words, for a polluting province, such as New Brunswick, Clean Harbor is an economic, jobs-generating boon. Its record is apparently sterling; its knowledge about these matters, exquisite.

So, then, the path seems clear: Ask this company what it would do to meet one or more of the provincial government’s requirements for lifting the ban on hydraulic fracturing. It couldn’t hurt, and it might even work to ease this absurd toothache that is the shale-gas debate.

It might, at least, serve to bring Conservative and Liberal interests in Fredericton closer together on what must surely be their joint interest, which is nothing more or less important than the economic and social integrity of the province both groups profess to love and cherish.

Or, perhaps, I am finally, fatally naïve, after all.

Maybe all we in the peanut gallery terminally expect of our so-called democracy are the clowns masquerading as statesmen.

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