Jan 09 2015
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Democracy, Politics

Are we becoming a nation of political quitters?

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It is entirely possible, if stunningly depressing, that mainstream politicians in Canada are finally listening to those they purport to represent: the disenfranchised us.

For years, the disenfranchised us have spoken from all points on the political spectrum about the fundamental corruption of ideas sacrificed at the altar of partisanship; about the seedy incompetence that infects all levels of elective office; about the unseemly horse-trading of democratic principles between ancient interests that masquerades as fair, just and equal representation.

For years, the disenfranchised us have voted with our voices and our feet: Loudly decrying the steady perversion of a system that no longer appears to be built for us and steadfastly withholding our mandates at the ballot boxes by refusing to participate in a process we consider rooked and ruined.

Now, many who have thrown their hats into the political arena in recent years are scooping up their dusty, battered head-toppers and loping home in rueful agreement with the great unwashed they all-too-often ignored.

Some quietly.

Some, not so much.

“Looking back, I, like so many people, got into politics thinking I knew a lot,” Graham Steele, Nova Scotia’s former NDP finance minister in the defeated Darrell Dexter government, told the Globe and Mail’s Jane Taber last fall.

“What I knew a fair bit about was public policy – and what it takes you a long time to learn is how public policy gets twisted and distorted and eventually you get taken over by the desire to win, to be re-elected.”

Taber’s interview coincided with the release of Steele’s memoir, What I Learned about Politics, and her excerpts from that work were as equally revealing as was her intrepid report of the man’s late-season remorse and regret:

“There was hardly any point to who sat in my chair or who was on which side of the House. None of us was dealing with the real issues. There was no fundamental difference between us. . .Like the sex drive among primates, the drive to be re-elected drives everything a politician does. . .Spend as little time as possible at the legislature. There are no voters there, so any time spent is wasted.”

What’s more, he writes, “Keep it simple. Policy debates are for losers. Focus on what is most likely to sink in with a distracted electorate: slogans, scandals, personalities, pictures, image. Find whatever works, then repeat it relentlessly. . .Fight hard to take credit, fight harder to avoid blame.”

Finally, “Deny that these are the Rules of the Game.”

The irony, of course, is that none of these tactics actually calibrate to enhance voter confidence in the political process or in public institutions. And, so, they amount to an elaborate shell game elected representatives kid themselves into believing is winnable. The electorate knows better, but without a valid alternative, it, too, plays along; the losing streak broadens and becomes structural.

After all, if everyone’s a sucker, isn’t everyone a winner?

Today, the political horizon is brimming not with losers or winners or even suckers; but with quitters.

A recent report from the Conference Board of Canada observes that “Canada scores a ‘C’ and ranks 14th out of 17 peer countries (in terms of voter turnout). Only 53.8 per cent of adult Canadians voted in the 2011 federal election – the second-lowest (showing) in history. The decline in voter turnout in Canada may be due to lower participation of young people.”

No kidding, Sherlock.

Meanwhile, the Board perseveres: “A. . .study for Elections Canada noted the decline in voter turnout in recent elections is mainly due to lower participation of young people, and that ‘it is part of a demographic trend that shows every sign of continuing well into the future.’ In 2011, only 38.8 per cent of the population aged 18 to 24 voted.”

Under these circumstances, should there be any great wonder that the negative feedback loop between electoral confidence and elected representation continues to spiral downwards?

There goes Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale. Farewell Wildrose Danielle Smith in Alberta. Who takes over from Prince Edward Island Premier Robert Ghiz? No one in his caucus; that’s for certain.

We, the disenfranchised us, finally salute you – for you have finally become us.

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Jan 08 2015
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Economy, Education

The A-B-Cs of solving poverty in our time

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New Brunswick’s Common Front for Social Justice is consistently well-meaning, invariably courageous and occasionally relevant.

So, why, then, in its recently released, roundly critical review of the David Alward and Brian Gallant governments (though, the latter’s has held the reins of office for all of four months), does the anti-poverty organization skirt any meaningful discussion of publicly subsidized, coordinated and integrated early childhood education as a crucial salve for the issues that concern it most?

The group states it wants minimum wage laws, employment insurance structures and pay-equity frameworks improved, enhanced and expanded. Fair enough.

It also demands that social assistance benefits rise; housing costs for the poor drop; the stock of public accommodations available to the economically disenfranchised enlarge; and that the controversial New Brunswick drug plan be reviewed for broad fairness and equitability. Again, well said.

As for “professional artists”, the Front states in its year-end report card, “The Alward government increased the budget for arts, culture and heritage. The Gallant government said it will put more money in its 2015 budget. The Alward government adopted a new cultural policy, put in place the Premier’s Task Force on the Status of the Artist and adopted a Linguistic and Cultural Development Policy for the French Schools.”

In fact, recognizing official support for professional artists is about the only cap this organization is willing to doff to either the former Tory or current Grit governments of New Brunswick. As to the rest, circumstances are, indeed, desperate:

“There is certainly a real deep financial cost to poverty,” the Front’s report writers acknowledge. “More importantly, there is a human cost that even if it is sometime(s) difficult to measure in dollars and cents is not less real.”

There is, for example, “the worry of parents who are not able to properly feed themselves and their children and have to rely on food banks in order not to go to bed hungry.” There is “the anguish of living in inadequate housing. . .the desperation of knowing that you are sick because you are poor. . .the hopelessness of teenagers knowing they have a lot less (sic) chance(s) of having a better life than their neighbour(s). . .the look of others because you are poor.”

Still, if any of this is true – and most of it is – why is there no concomitant mention, in this finely intentioned diatribe, of the exorbitant day-care costs most working Canadians face as they struggle to avoid poverty even as they slide inexorably into it?

A report, published late last year by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, makes a compelling point. To wit:

“While Canada spends less on early childhood education and care than most OECD countries, Canadian parents are among the most likely to be employed. As Canadian parents are working parents, child care fees can play a major role in decision-making and labour force participation, particularly for women.

“Torontonians pay the most for infant child care at $1,676 a month. Parents in St. Johns pay the second most at $1,394 a month. The lowest feesare found in the Quebec cities of Gatineau, Laval, Montreal, Longueuil and Quebec City, where infant care costs $152 a month thanks to Quebec’s $7-a-day child care policy (increased to $7.30-a-day in October 2014). The second-lowest infant fees are found in Winnipeg ($651 a month) where a provincial fee cap is also in place.

“There are roughly twice as many toddler spaces (1.5–3 years) as infant spaces and fees are lower. Toronto has the highest toddler fees at $1,324 a month. Vancouver, Burnaby, London, Brampton and Mississauga all have median toddler fees over $1,000 a month.”

And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the systemic inequity that two-income families with children endure every day. Those who do not qualify for subsidized spots in the sketchy day-care system across this country can pay anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 per kid, per month.

The circumstance is not only bizarrely unfair; it’s a recipe for economic perfidy; a calculus for ruining national prospects in an increasingly competitive, technologically treacherous world.

Give all kids an early start on the state’s dime and they will return that investment a thousand times over – in critical thinking, empathy, intellectual courage and great, learned humour.

Watch the evils of poverty dissolve before them.

That’s a common front we should all get behind.

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Jan 07 2015
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Economy, Oil and Gas

The economic pendulum swings again

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The grand expanse that is Canada guarantees that one of the iconic realities of our national character remains our ability and willingness, when necessary, to pull up stakes and head for wherever the pastures grow greenest.

Rarely, of course, has that been Atlantic Canada.

Most often – at least since Confederation made honest European invaders of some of us – the Elysian fields of our economy have been located in Ontario, the country’s traditional manufacturing hub. That’s where, as the late, great Stompin’ Tom Connors once famously wrote, “the Maritimers all go.” 

Or, they did.

Over the past decade, or so, the big employment draws have been the tar sands of Alberta and the surrounding support industries of the oil and gas sector in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. That’s where, lately, my friends and former neighbours sojourn – driving trucks, working back-office jobs and otherwise punching gilded time clocks.

Or, again, they did.

Now, the shift – as inevitable as the ebb and flow of an ocean tide – begins again, and one of Canada’s leading financial institutions, the Royal Bank, is sounding almost chipper.

“There has been considerable discussion about the negative impact of falling oil

prices on the Canadian economy,” Bank economists Paul Ferley, Nathan Janzen and Gerard Walsh write in a recent monograph. “This has been reinforced by anecdotal reports about oil-producing companies cutting back on investment spending particularly within the oil sands. However, as we have emphasized in earlier commentaries, there are offsetting positive outcomes from lower oil prices.”

The first, and most obvious one, they note, is the concurrent boost to the U.S. economy, on which Canada depends for much of its export business (some $300-billion a year). “A stronger U.S. economy implies a growing market for Canadian exports. This is the case despite the recent expansion of oil production in that economy reflecting greater utilization of shale oil reserves. Though the U.S. oil and gas sector is likely to see reduced investment activity, its share of overall capital spending is relatively small.”

Secondly, falling oil prices depresses the value of the Canadian dollar relative to its American counterpart. Again, that’s good for domestic manufacturers and exporters, whose wares suddenly cost less to American buyers.

“The third key offset,” the economists report, “is that Canadian consumers will also be looking at lower gasoline prices that will provide an attendant boost to consumer spending domestically. It is of note that while business investment is a sizable 13 per cent of nominal GDP (including investment in intellectual property products), consumer spending is a massive 54.3 per cent. Thus, a small rise in consumer spending can go a long way to offsetting a marked drop in investment.”

All of which has Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne fairly salivating. And why not?

For years, that once-mighty, supremely confident, magisterially self-important province, has suffered the indignities that $100-per-barrel oil has wrought on its manufacturing-export economy, including an ignominious slump into have-not status in the federal equalization formula. Now that the price of benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil has settled below $53 a barrel, Ms. Wynne is doing her level best to appear generous.

“Ontario’s economy can be a buffer,” she told the Globe and Mail last week. “We have a diverse economy and it can be a buffer in a time like this, against some of that volatility. I don’t wish for low oil prices and a low dollar for Alberta. But at the same time, we want our manufacturing sector to rebound. So if that (low oil price) helps, then that’s a good thing.”

In reality, though, as long as Canada’s value to the world is predominantly measured by the oil and gas it extracts and the pipelines its builds – which has been the common hymn, soulfully trilled by the western caucus of the reigning Conservative Government in Ottawa – volatility, and all that this implies, is likely to be the national economy’s organizing principle for years, even decades, to come.

Shall we now expect a new wave of pink-slip-bearing, prodigal Maritimers returning to their roots down home, where the pastures are, if not exactly green, a little less brown than they seemed not so long ago?

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Jan 06 2015
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Climate, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

Juicing up the conversation about oil

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It may be a necessary evil with a preternatural tendency to warm the atmosphere, but it sure tanks at cocktail parties. Face it, after more than 100 years of reshaping the world in its own oily image, fossil fuel is, fundamentally, a crashing bore.

Almost no conversation about the stuff begins with, “Hey, here’s something I bet you didn’t know about oil and gas. . .” or “A funny thing happened on my way to the refinery the other day. . .”

Even those snippets about petroleum with the greatest potential to inspire mild surprise are rarely discussed in polite company, most likely because we know that, these days, such discussions lead to nowhere good and nothing ennobling.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the spin-meisters of Big Oil from doing their level best to remind consumers of the western world that without them, and the resource they plunder as a matter of quotidian purpose, we’d all come well and truly undone.

“Life without oil? Impossible!,” declares a web page from the corporate site of Wintershall, a subsidiary of the many-tentacled mega-squid from Germany, BASF. “Within our daily lives oil is used almost everywhere: Every year, 18 million tonnes of crude oil are processed into synthetic materials in Germany. Oil within our materials: 40 percent of all textiles contain oil; for functional clothing this may be as much as 100 percent. Oil within our leisure activities: 40 billion liters of oil a year are used to make CDs and DVDs. Oil helps us relax: A single sofa contains 60 liters of oil. Modern life is inconceivable without crude oil. . . the most important natural resource of industrialized nations. The world consumes almost 14 billion liters of oil each day. This affects us all.”

Yada yada. So does oxygen, but you don’t hear me go on about the stuff.

Besides, just because we use oil in, and for, everything, except maybe coffee creamer (and the jury’s still out on that), doesn’t mean we should or even must. I seem to recall a rather successful series of pre-oil civilizations – beginning with ancient Sumerian and ending with early Victorian – that did rather well for themselves without benefit of plastic water bottles and nylon thread.

Still, there might yet be a way to make fossil fuel more interesting and, therefore, less repugnant to the chattering classes.

How many products, for example, that contribute to a cleaner, greener world actually involve oil at some level?

Now that’s a question worthy of any late-night salon.

A link to a page of the Pembina Institute’s website (helpfully provided by a reader last week) begins the quest.

“Only a few tidal energy sites are in operation around the world,” the clean-energy think tank reports. “Larger sites include the White Sea in Russia and the Rance River in France (the largest site in the world). Smaller tidal power plant have been built in Canada, such as the site at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, and several in Norway. Together they have a total capacity of less than 250 MW. However, the potential for tidal energy is immense; potential global tidal power exceeds 450 terawatts, most of it in Asia and North America.”

Meanwhile, according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association’s web site, “wind energy is more cost-competitive than new sources of energy supplied by coal with carbon capture and storage, small hydro or nuclear power. The fuel that turns wind turbine blades is free and the price of electricity it produces is set for the entire life of the wind farm. Long-term cost certainty of wind farms have a stabilizing effect on electricity rates, providing important protection for consumers. Unlike other energy supply alternatives, the cost of building wind energy continues to decline, with dramatic drops over the past three years. Wind projects have very short construction periods and can be deployed quickly with many benefits delivered to local communities.”

What does any of this have to do with fossil fuel?

It is as Wintershall claims: Oil’s in just about everything, including the plastic components that comprise tidal generating arrays and wind turbines.

Now, if we could deploy our marvelous primate minds to the front lines of innovation for a change, and determine how best to limit fossil fuel’s uses solely to meritorious ends, we might actually start a conversation worth having.

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Jan 05 2015
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Business, Climate, Energy, Idiocracy

My big picture on world views

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In recent months, readers of this column have sometimes complained that my opinions about politics, the economy and life as we live it in this alternately blessed and benighted corner of the unpredictable planet are inconsistent, unreconcilable and, therefore, incoherent.

What, they have invariably demanded, is my world view?

I’d give them one, if I had one.

Frankly, the one unshakeable opinion to which I cleave is that world views, such as they are, are for dictators and salesmen.

One wants you to knuckle under; the other wants to rob you blind. In either case, you’re left with few choices, other than those your political or corporatist overlords prescribe.

Still, the complaints ring with such predictable complacency that they might as well be a popular gospel.

“Why do you hate the wonderful earth we cherish so much?” one scribe asked me in early August. “How can you support the shale gas industry in New Brunswick when, as an intelligent man, you must know how much harm it causes?”

Precisely three days later, another reader accused me of runaway tree-hugging: “It boggles my mind that you, as an intelligent man, slam the only industry that has any chance of rejuvenating the New Brunswick economy.”

Again, with the “intelligent man” stuff!

Yes, I have an IQ above room temperature, but I like to think that this fortunate happenstance engenders a predilection for at least a modicum of critical thinking.

For those of you out there who are similarly equipped, here’s a question: Is it not possible to walk and chew gum at the same time?

The shale gas industry in New Brunswick has operated without incident for more than 10 years. No spills, no poisoning of water tables, no soil decimation, no air pollution have ever been recorded, reported or, even, imagined.

These facts, alone, should prove that the industry, here, understands (at least, intuitively) its “social licence”. And if it doesn’t, provincial rules and regulations governing the locations of, and practices involved in, hydraulic fracturing (which are still on the books, despite the recent moratorium) evidently enjoins it to smarten up.

That said, other jurisdictions around the world have not demonstrated New Brunswick’s perspicacity on this socially volatile energy issue. North Dakota and parts of Appalachia have all but abandoned their side of the social-licence bargain, preferring, instead, to let the industry have its rapacious way with privately-held lots, paid for willingly with up-front buy-downs and long-term royalty agreements.

The result is exactly what New Brunswick opponents of shale-gas development fear: pollution, social dislocation and (let’s face it) death by fossil fuel.

But simply transplanting other provinces’ and states’ experiences and decisions here is a meaningless exercise in organized paranoia. It supplants the agency of our own minds with that of those who are determined to dictate or sell their own agendas, either quasi-corporatist or pseudo-environmentalist.

The middle of the road, negotiating the traffic to the left and right of us, is where we must live now if we have any hope of charting a sustainable, prosperous future.

Those who demand that the world’s petrol-economy can and must end today are either hypocritical or deranged.

At the same time, those who insist that fossil fuels still promise an eternity of risk-free, environmentally benign energy are either sadly delusional or deliberately prevaricating.

The bucket slung around the world’s neck is full of oil. Currently, there’s so much sloshing around in capital markets, literally no one knows how to prevent its pricing from decimating resource-producing economies (including Canada’s).

Still, let’s say that we – all of us in this province, at least – engage in a thought experiment. Let us suppose that oil and gas were not primary commodities, but rather seed capital for sustainable energy research, manufacturing and deployment.

Let us imagine that the engines and factories that burn fossil fuel are actually generating new ways to radically curtail its casual use.

Let us hope that the judicious, reasonable use of “black gold” produces a sea-change in attitudes about the way we treat the planet we share.

Finally, let us propose that partisan bickering about “world views” falls silently, gently, coherently to the good earth we vow to protect from (who else?) ourselves.

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Jan 03 2015
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Society

The more things change. . .

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No generation is immune from the hubris of exceptionalism; we imagine that the march of human progress is inevitable and forever upwards as we naturally strive to better ourselves and our societies.

Still, history is a cruel headmaster.

How far have we come in, say, 100 years, or 50? How much changed is the world of 2015 – the world of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Vladimir Putin’s virtual annexation of the Crimean Peninsula – from the one the late encyclopedist, James Trager, described in 1979?

The author of “The People’s Chronology” had no favorite years, preferring, instead, to view all of civilization’s pageant through a slightly warped lens. Indeed, 1915, was, in his estimation, remarkable only for its consistency.

“The Great War in Europe,” he wrote, affecting the diarist’s first-person narrative, “grows more intense. Casualty lists mount for both sides on the eastern and western fronts and a German U-boat blockade of Great Britain begins February 18.”

Later that year, an enemy sub would sink the English passenger liner S.S. Lusitania, sending nearly 2,000 passengers and crew (including 128 Americans) to their watery deaths in less than 18 minutes, provoking such outrage in the United States that public neutrality towards the European conflict would soon shift convincingly to widespread saber-rattling.

Meanwhile, as Trager noted, “British income taxes rise to an unprecedented 15 per cent as the Great War drains the nation’s financial resources.”

Yet, all was not exclusively mired in, or tainted by, battlefield follies:

“The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and research is founded by the University of Minnesota with a $2.5 million gift from C.H. and W.J. Mayo of the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minn. . .The disposable scalpel is patented by U.S. inventor Morgan Parker. . .Long-distance telephone service between New York and San Francisco begins. Alexander Graham Bell, now 68, repeats the words of 1876 (‘Mr. Watson, come here. . .’) to Thomas Watson in San Francisco. The call takes 23 minutes to go through and costs $20.70.”

From 1915, flash forward 50 years, and consider the actual substance of the advances: one great war had ended, only to lay the foundation for another. Europe at been destroyed and restored twice in the span of two generations. American power,  which had been rising steadily since the turn of the 20th century, was now ascendent.

In 1965, Trager wrote, “U.S. bombers pound North Vietnamese targets in retaliation for a National Liberation Front attack on U.S. ground forces in South Vietnam. Washington announces a general policy of bombing North Vietnam. . .Some 125,000 U.S. troops are in Vietname by July 28 and (U.S.) President (Lyndon) Johnson announces a doubling of draft calls.”

Meanwhile, the American president “asks the UN to help negotiate a peace, but U.S. troops take part in their first major battle as an independent force in mid-August and they destroy a Viet Cong stronghold near Van Tuong.”

Again, though, as in 1915, there were peaceable – sometimes even noble – distractions.

“President Johnson,” Trager reported, “outlines programs for a ‘Great Society’ that will eliminate poverty in America in his State of the Union message and he signs a $1.4 billion program of federal-state economic aid to Appalachia into law.”

The move was blessed, perhaps, by perfect timing. By 1965, the number of people on welfare in New York City had swelled to half-a-million. That number, wrote Trager, “will grow to 1.2 million in the next 10 years and by 1974, the city’s welfare agency will account for $3.4 billion of the city’s $12 billion budget.”

Today, we greet the dawning new year with strange mixture of trepidation and deja vu. We don’t exactly know where we are going, but we sure know from whence we came, and though the players and locations continue to change down through the generations, the game remains essentially the same.

We still fight our vainglorious wars and pay for them with money extracted and  diverted from our more tranquil, constructive obligations to each other.

In this, we are not unique.

If, however, we finally determined to change the rules of the game we’ve been playing ever since we began to stand upright on an African savannah, that might just make this generation exceptional, after all.

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Jan 02 2015
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Economy, Energy, Politics

Shale gas greets new catchwords in 2015

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There is, as Ecclesiastics declares, nothing new under the sun; there is only the same, old trend, fashion or fad, freshly washed, dried, dressed, shod and shoved, once again, onto the super-highway of human history and told to survive if, indeed, it dares.

And, so, welcome to 2015 my dear “social licence to operate”. May we call you “social licence”? It’s shorter and that might be good for your image. Lord knows you’re going to need all the help you can get this year.

Actually, as shibboleths go, this is not a bad one. It’s not especially jargony. It seems reasonably comprehensible. In fact, New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant is confident enough in his own understanding of the term, he’s started to deploy it as invocation whenever he talks about the on-again, off-again shale gas industry in the province (which is now off again).

“There shall be no drilling,” he says (or in words to that effect) until the companies responsible for hydraulic fracturing obtain the appropriate amount of social licence to proceed.

To which Corridor Resources’ CEO Steve Moran recently shrugged: “Huh?”

His actual words to CBC News were: “Even the premier when he was asked didn’t really have an answer in terms of what that means.”

Tory Opposition Leader Bruce Fitch concurred, as Premier Gallant attempted to clarify his position, telling the CBC, “We’ll certainly do the best we can to get the pulse, and the sense of New Brunswickers on whether any of these operations. . .have a social license.”

In fact, though, there’s no great mystery around the meaning of “social licence”. The mining industry has plumbed the nuances of its definition for years, or so says the Fraser Institute, an economic and public policy think tank with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal:

“The  social licence to operate (SLO) refers to the level of acceptance or approval by local communities and stakeholders of mining companies and their operations. The concept has evolved fairly recently from the broader and more established notion of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ and is based on the idea that mining companies need not only government permission [or permits] but also ‘social permission’ to conduct their business.

Indeed, the Institute states, “Increasingly, having an SLO is an essential part of operating within democratic jurisdictions, as without sufficient popular support it is unlikely that agencies from elected governments will willingly grant operational permits or licences. However, the need for and ultimate success of achieving an SLO relies to a large extent on functioning government and sound institutions. . .Many mining companies now consider gaining an SLO as an appropriate business expense that ultimately adds to the bottom line.”

If all this seems broadly familiar – just another way to renovate good, old “corporate social responsibility” (or CSR) and slap a “priced-to-sell” sticker on the front door – experts in these matters beg to differ (naturally).

“CSR is often too peripheral to the core business model, too much of a side-show, too far from providing real ‘shared value’,” writes John Morrison, executive director of the Institute for human rights and business, in a recent issue of the Guardian online. “Even more fundamental are the false dichotomies that CSR has set up. There’s the voluntary versus mandatory debate, companies that are ‘good at CSR’ are valued regardless of the impact of their core operations.”

What’s more, Morrison insists, “Social licence can never be self-awarded, it requires that an activity enjoys sufficient trust and legitimacy, and has the consent of those affected. Business cannot determine how much prevention or mitigation it should engage in to meet environmental or social risk – stakeholders and rights-holders have to be involved for thresholds of due diligence to be legitimate (sometimes even if these are clearly determined in law).”

Herein, of course, lies the rub.

Like its predecessor and memetic forebear CSR, social license, as a concept, is not especially difficult to comprehend or articulate.

What challenges policy makers, politicians, community representatives and industrial players, themselves, is making it work well or long enough to produce sufficient benefits to satisfy all competing competing interests at the table.

This is rendered all the more complicated by the fundamentally revokable nature of social licences. A company that meets its obligations in one area on any given day may not be deemed to have done the same elsewhere at another time.

Then what?

Under such circumstances, Premier Gallant’s shale-gas moratorium may be the lesser of two evils facing the industry in New Brunswick.

Then again, what else is new?

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Dec 31 2014
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Climate, Politics, Society

The good, the bad and the merely okay of 2014

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To despise, revile and ridicule the year that was is a taunting temptation. So too, is the impulse to celebrate, rejoice and exult. Rarely, do we find, in repose, the clarity to declare that the past 12 months of our brief lives were. . .well, just fine, thank you very much.

They weren’t spectacular; but neither were they calamitous. They weren’t elegiac; but neither were they prosaic. They produced (if we were lucky and studious) just enough to help us keep calm and, as the saying goes, carry on.

In fact, in New Brunswick, there was much to mark merrily in 2014, starting with the orderly transfer of democratic power (a miracle, by every standard, on this vicious orb).

The young and energetic Liberal Leader, Brian Gallant, replaced the slightly older, but equally energetic, David Alward as premier of the province. The latter receded gracefully into the background of politics, after one term in office, as the former rode the crest of a wave of support appropriately reserved for honeymooners.

Premier Gallant promised in his campaign to restore the legal apparatus for a woman’s right to choose her own reproductive options. Within a month of assuming office, he did just that. According to a CBC report in late November, “The premier promised in the election campaign to review Regulation 84-20, which requires women seeking a hospital abortion to have two doctors certify it as medically necessary. The review identified barriers to abortion services, according to Gallant.

“It also requires the procedure to be done only by a specialist, whereas other provinces allow family doctors to perform abortions. The so-called two-doctor rule has been in place for two decades, supported by previous Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments.

“Identifying those barriers was an important step towards eliminating them,” Mr. Gallant stated, adding that the new rules will no longer insist that two doctors guarantee that the surgery is medically warranted. As the CBC reported, “This will put reproductive health procedures in the same category as any insured medical procedure, according to the government.”

Indeed, the premier noted, “We have identified the barriers and are proceeding to eliminate them in order to respect our legal obligations under the Supreme Court of Canada ruling and the Canada Health Act regarding a woman’s right to choose.”

Lamentably, that’s where the innovation ended.

As for natural resources, the new premier has been equally faithful to his campaign promises (much to the surprise of every scribbling pundit in the province, including Yours Truly). He will not, he says, sanction any form of fracking as long as he remains unconvinced about the technology’s safety and environmental soundness. And, for now, he remains unconvinced.

This decision could cost New Brunswick tens-of-millions of dollars a year from a mature industry that has never polluted the air, spoiled the soil or poisoned the water table. It might even inspire a wholesale exodus of oil and gas industries from this province at a time when the budgetary deficit clings perilously close to $400 million and the long-term debt hovers around $12 billion.

Still, Mr. Gallant is adamant. And, for that, at least, he should be respected. As an elected representative, he is sticking to his guns. How he intends to pay for his multimillion-dollar infrastructure build over the next four years remains an open question – and, for now, a question for another time.

In the end, as New Brunswick’s social contract appears progressive, its economic future looks very much like its present and recent past: unspectacular, uninspired and fundamentally unproductive.

For all the good this province’s new government purports to arrange for its citizens, all who might pay for such noble intentions find cold comfort at the curb to which they’ve been kicked.

For all the bad this province’s new government hopes to avoid, all who might benefit from such principled injunctions obtain higher costs at local fuel depots fed by foreign oil and gas.

As for the rest of us, the merely okay with the status quo, we’ll just keep calm and carry on, hope for the best and imagine that at this point in our brief lives we are, indeed, just fine.

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Dec 30 2014
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Business, Government, Oil and Gas, Politics, Science

Oh, a-fracking we will not go. . .

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You have to hand it to him. If nothing else, New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant is a man of his word.

He galloped into office with a promise that, he believed, resonated with most voters: No more fracking, of any kind, until proof emerges that the process can be rendered safe and harmless to the environment (by which standard, we might all be wise to follow our children west to Alberta, where fantasies do, indeed, come true).

Then, a week before Christmas, he brought down the hammer.

“We have been clear from Day One that we will impose a moratorium until risks to the environment, health and water are understood,” Mr. Gallant told reporters in Fredericton, after he announced new amendments to the province’s oil and natural gas act that prohibit both water and propane-based fracking in the search for commercially exploitable shale gas.

The premier also made it clear that companies may continue to explore for resources. It’s just that they can no longer frack in their efforts to assess the potential of some 77-trillion cubic feet of onshore shale gas that is estimated to lie beneath the surface – which is a little like telling someone that he may own a car, just not the engine.

Still, Mr. Gallant allowed, “We’ll certainly always listen to businesses that may have concerns and try to mitigate some of the impacts if they (believe) them to be negative on their operations.”

Not surprisingly, the CEO of Corridor Resources had a few choice words to share. “We have always maintained that a moratorium is not necessary for an industry that has operated responsibly and safely in this province,” Steve Moran told the Saint John Telegraph-Journal on December 18. “Here is an industry that wants to create more jobs and they just basically shut it down. . .We expect that the government of New Brunswick should want to fully understand the potential rewards of allowing the industry to proceed, while ensuring the risks are manageable and acceptable.”

What’s more, he said, “The only certainty is that nobody will ever know the economic potential, should hydraulic fracturing no longer be permitted. To not allow the work to continue, would amount to a refusal by the government of New Brunswick to ask the question  of what the reward of pushing this resource might be. We would consider that a wasted opportunity for the people of New Brunswick.”

And, not incidentally, for Corridor, itself, which has over the past several years invested upwards of $500 million on the industry in this province.

Still, it’s not as if Mr. Gallant had left many options for himself. Breaking so fundamental a campaign promise in these early days of his term might have been politically suicidal (though, a strategist might argue that this is precisely when one wants throw one’s pledges under the bus; the public’s memory grows mighty short when economic development flowers from a broken word or two).

Mr. Gallant’s predecessor, Tory Premier David Alward faced a similar Faustian decision: raise the provincial portion of the HST, as every mainstream economist advised, or keep his campaign promise to maintain the status quo (note, of course, how well that worked out for him in the end).

Politics aside, it’s not clear, in any of this, what will constitute “safe” and environmentally benign fracking procedures. According to the premier, “Any decision on hydraulic fracturing will be based on peer-reviewed scientific evidence and follow recommendation of the Chief Medical Officer of Health.”

If the approach now involves reviewing the evidence of natural degradation from fracking in jurisdictions other than New Brunswick, how relevant is one state’s or province’s experiences to our own?

According to a New York Times investigation, published last month, in North Dakota “as the boom (in shale gas) really exploded, the number of reported spills, leaks, fires and blowouts has soared with an increase in spillage that outpaces the increase in oil production,” partly because “forgiveness remains embedded in the (state’s) Industrial Commission’s approach to an industry that has given North Dakota the fastest-growing economy and lowest jobless rate in the country.”

Four our part, the tolerances of New Brunswick’s own regulatory regime are not something we’re likely to test any time soon.

On that, we have Mr. Gallant’s word; and, so far, his word is good.

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Dec 29 2014
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Business, Municipal Affairs

Will this be the year of the ‘centre’?

As 2014 rounds the bend and dashes straight for the finish line, Moncton remains that one indisputably bright beacon of economic hope for New Brunswick.

Far less certain, however, is the role the Hub City’s urban core will play in providing cultural and commercial coherence for the broader municipal area.

A vacant lot now yawns where Highfield Square once stood – the future home, presumably, of a mixed-use entertainment and sports facility.

Public opinion surveys over the past couple of years have suggested that most residents both want and expect a new events centre to tie together the loose ends of Moncton’s downtown.

And yet, whenever I broach the subject either in conversation or print, I’m just as likely to evoke bitter opposition as I am support for such a project. (In fact, I am growing quite fond of the hardy cohort of outraged readers who insist that my endorsement only proves that I have sold my God-given talents to corporate demons who just want public dollars to build them another hockey rink).

Indeed, the city’s collective mind seems torn between dueling conceptions of civic life: forced development and revitalization or market-driven urban sprawl.

Still, a city without a vibrant downtown is, simply, no city at all; and there is very little doubt that a new centre (hockey rink and much more) will go a long way towards consolidating the urban core.

As Mayor George LeBlanc once declared in a promotional video posted to the city’s website, “Pursuing a new downtown, multipurpose sport and entertainment centre has been one of my key priorities for Moncton. . .It will make the downtown more vibrant and prosperous. It will be a catalyst for. . .development.”

Not long ago, Moncton economic development consultant David Campbell and university economist Pierre-Marcel Desjardins put numbers to the boast.

According to the former, in a report to City Council, a new centre will annually “attract between 317,000 and 396,000 people. . .generating between $12 and $15 million in spending.” In the process, it will “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. Moreover, he indicated, sales from ongoing operations could easily reach $9.5 million in 2015 (assuming, of course, the centre is open for business by then).

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 notes. 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.” What’s more, “the cost to service the downtown is much lower compared to many other neighbourhoods and commercial areas around the city.”

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 in the little city that could.

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