Nov 10 2014
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Government, Politics

Lessons on budgeting from across the Strait

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nov 07 2014
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Business, Economy, Education

Will work for nothing? You’re hired

Put this kid to work. . .for free

Put this kid to work. . .for free

It must be awfully nice up there in his big office, shuttered with gilded blinds that stop the stark light of reality from reaching impertinently to his leather chair. Perhaps that’s why Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz likes to cheerfully blurt the odd absurdity from time to time.

Like this one to reporters in Ottawa on Monday:

“When I bump into youths, they ask me, you know, ‘What an I supposed to do in a situation?’ I say, ‘look, having something unpaid on your CV is very worth it because that’s the one thing you can do  to counteract this scarring effect. Get some real-life experience even though you are discouraged, even if it’s for free.”

Oh sure, I can just imagine Mr. Poloz bumping into “youths”. Why, it happens all the time, don’t you know. In fact, he must be plum tuckered out, what with all the questions about their futures Canada’s young people pose to him each and every day.

Why wouldn’t the $400,000-a-year fat cat throw up his hands in mock exasperation and, in effect, say: “Let ‘em eat cake”?

Or, more accurately, this to the House of Commons Finance Committee on Tuesday:

“Volunteer to do something that is at least somewhat related to your experience set, so it’s clear that you are gaining some learning experience during that period.”

Or this to Liberal MP Scott Brison (who worried that unpaid internships might favour kids from wealthier families, who could afford to stake their progency):

“There are issues like the ones you’re raising. . .but I still think when there are those opportunities, one should grab them because it will reduce the scarring effect, all other things equal.”

And while we’re about parsing Mr. Poloz’s recent ruminations, what is this “scarring effect” to which he refers?

Is it the humiliation of having to live in your parent’s basement because no one will give you a job that pays well enough to cover the monthly let on a cold-water flat down by the docks?

Or is it that empty feeling in the pit of your stomach that refuses to go away because you cant afford anything more nourishing than a tin of peanuts every other day?

Whatever it is, Mr. Poloz is, at least, on the bandwagon. Unpaid internships are all the rage these days.

A couple of years ago, the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom reported, “Firms across the country are increasingly relying on unpaid interns in a bid to cut costs in a tough economic climate, according to a new study. Bosses in the design and digital industry expect more work for less money, leading to fewer permanent staff members and more unpaid interns, according to think tank the Institute for Public Policy

Research, which carried out a survey of 500 agency workers.”

More recently, Susan Adams, a staff writer at Forbes, observed, “As the ranks of the unemployed have swelled and the surplus of jobless college students and grads has grown, increasing numbers of people young and old have been signing on for unpaid internships, wanting to make contacts and accumulate résumé lines that can help them get paying work.”

And according to a CBC report last March, “Unpaid internships are on the rise in Canada, with some organizations estimating there’s as many as 300,000 people currently working for free at some of the country’s biggest, and wealthiest, corporations.

The ranks of unpaid interns swelled in the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession, said Sean Geobey, a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the author of a recent report entitled The Young and the Jobless.”

Still, a backlash does appear to be brewing. “This is not the sort of social contract that today’s kids saw their parents and grandparents grow up under,” Mr. Geobey said. “We’re starting to see Canadians – young people and their parents in particular – seriously question what exactly is going on here, and why are we apparently returning to 19th-century labour practices.”

I’ll make Mr. Poloz a deal. I’ll swap with him for a week. See how he likes it.

Mind you, my job’s not an unpaid internship.

Some days, it just feels that way.

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Nov 06 2014
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Education, Government, Politics

In Canada, all children are being left behind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, in fact, this model works in Canada.

Look to Quebec, for one.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s another:

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

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

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

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Nov 05 2014
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Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

How howling from the edges of sanity is good for New Brunswick

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As voices in the wilderness, we raise our rhetoric to match the long, lonely howls that issue from the pits of our guts. We see the future from our perches at the peripheries of Main Street, Freddy Beach, Parliament Hill and, yes, even Wall Street.

And, from that vantage, the future of this province is (trust me) utterly howl-worthy.

We are the pundits of New Brunswick, whose opinions about such things as economic development, social sustainability, energy policy, and fiscal management are sometimes politely acknowledged, but more often violently rejected.

We’re used to it.

Our fellow citizens are, after all, entitled to the pabulum their elected representatives ritually spoon into their pie holes when said representatives promise that their gruel will, in the end, taste like filet mignon.

But when guys like David Campbell, writing for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, and scribes like Bill Belliveau and Norbert Cunningham, penning for the Moncton Times & Transcript, are routinely vilified for pointing out the patently obvious, and necessarily important, about this province’s. . .um. . .let’s just say “challenges”, I am risibly motivated to whip out my formidable arsenal of wordy invective to level the decidedly unlevel playing field that is the blogosphere.

Then again, what would be the point of that when we have Donald Savoie in our philosophical corner.

The “great prognosticator” issued another in a long line of epistles from his mount at the University of Moncton the other day.

In this one, he wrote, “Whether one likes it or not, the global economy is here and it is highly competitive. New Brunswick has to compete with what it has, not with what it wishes it had. I was surprised (during the recent provincial election campaign) to hear aspiring politicians and observers making the case. . .that we can say no to development opportunities in the natural resources sector and that all we need to do (is) create new economic activities to diversify our economy. How can we do this?”

Good question (though, it is rhetorical).

Allow me, pundit-wise, to take a crack at an answer (though it be unrhetorical).

Posit the following: Natural gas is far less damaging to the environment than any other form of fossil fuel; its extraction technologies for both orthodox and unorthodox plays are proven, safe and reliable; its delivery infrastructure is far less likely to fail and, therefore, pollute than those for crude and refined oil and coal.

Now, acknowledge the following: There is enough shale gas lying beneath the surface of this province to power local economies for decades through extraction, transportation and refining activities, alone. But that is only the outline of the big picture (if we had big-picture thinkers at our various seats of government, they might have paid attention decades ago).

The true, long-term potential of this resource, should we choose to embrace our own economic interests, is technological and innovative leverage.

Even the most committed environmentalists must surely realize by now that transitioning to a fully sustainable, renewable energy future will only succeed when we finally learn how to deploy the relatively cheap energy we harvest from the ground and the sea beds.

Almost every component of a wind turbine, a tidal array, a solar facility, a hybrid automobile, a bloody, backyard greenhouse is a product, directly or indirectly, of refined petroleum, cracked into shape for re-manufacture into the building blocks of plastic, pure and simple. That’s the foundational reality of our industrial economy; it has been for 100 years.

Saying we wish it weren’t so won’t make it go away.

What might, though, over time, is a coordinated, comprehensive public-private partnership to transform New Brunswick into a think tank, industrial test site and centre of excellence for repurposing the world’s excess plastic as the building blocks of sustainable, renewable energy technologies.

From here, the province – with its surfeit of institutes of advanced education relative to its population – could pioneer a global standard for delimiting the use of petroleum products to, in effect, manufacture only those technologies that produce sustainable, renewable, in-situ energy (lamentably, planes, trains and automobiles must be off the table for the time being).

Off course, mine is just one voice in the wilderness of ideas.

Let the vilification commence.

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Nov 04 2014
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Business, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

It’s time to get clear on natural gas

Welcome to the energy big leagues, Mr. Premier.

Wheels upon wheels, gears upon gears, the squeeze play against Brian Gallant’s determination to impose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New Brunswick – the preferred industry method for extracting natural gas, with water, sand and a proprietary soup of chemicals,  from sedimentary rock – has officially commenced.

Not that there’s anything especially surprising about Corridor Resources’ public insistence that 30 of its fracked gas wells supplies PotashCorp’s operations in the Sussex area of the province – to no ill effect on the water, soil and air – with a competitively priced, comparatively clean source of fuel with which to dry the fertilizer for market readiness.

Nor is their anything particularly shocking about PotashCorp’s addendum last week.

“Access to a secure, stable and sustainable gas supply is critical to our. . .longterm success,” New Brunswick General Manager Jean-Guy Leclair told the Telegraph-Journal. “While there are alternate fuel sources for our facility, they would have profound implications on our current and future operational costs.”

Read between the lines, Mr. Premier. That’s a palpable threat. By now, you must know this. What’s mystifying is why you apparently didn’t see it coming.

Or, perhaps, you did, and your hard line in the sand during the election campaign was merely a political gambit to win over some voters.

Maybe your strategists advised you to hold that line for as long as you could and then capitulate only when major industrial players left you no choice.

If I had been one of your back-room boys, I would not have counselled this: Stay true to your principles until such time as the oil and gas lobby intimates major job losses; then reverse course in the broader interests of economic development.

And, in the process, blame the big, bad bogey man of corporate Canada for forcing your hand. “The devil made me do it, folks,” you might plead. “What can I say?”

Whatever is the case, all of it has been poor politics, poorer public policy and a fundamentally bad start for a new government.

And it’s getting worse.

Cabinet solidarity is one of the rocks that grounds leadership in a parliamentary democracy. It tells the electorate that the men and women the premier has chosen has his or her back, and, in the process assures the great, voting unwashed that they haven’t made a colossal mistake at the ballot box.

So, under these circumstances, what are we to make of Mines and Energy Minister Donald Arseneault’s freelance, off-playbook commentary last week?

“I was the minister back in 2007 who struck the deal to attract that investment of $2.2 billion (PotashCorp’s expansion) to New Brunswick,” he told the Telegraph-Journal last week. “We do know that Corridor feeds gas to the potash mines, and for me that is a very important component. . .For me, PotashCorp is a major player in New Brunswick. . .The last thing we want to do is potentially put certain operations in jeopardy.”

Now, we cut to a Page 3 story in the same organ on the same day.

“No,” declared Premier Gallant, “for us, it is a hydraulic fracturing moratorium, and we’re certainly willing to meet with different operations, different businesses, all stakeholders and New Brunswickers to understand the best way to implement this moratorium.”

None of which actually clarifies anything, except that the young premier of this province understands practically nothing about energy politics and, far more troubling, he seems oblivious to the worries of at least one of his important lieutenants – the one in charge of, arguably, the most important economic portfolio.

What now shall we expect? Will a great muzzling commence?

There is a way, of course, to safely and responsibly frack for gas in New Brunswick. We’ve been doing it for years. As long as we adhere to the tightest regulations our democracy provides — with the most comprehensive environmental oversight common sense produces — we have an even chance to reduce our reliance on far dirtier forms of fossil fuel and maybe, just maybe, generate the economic incentive to fully transition into a renewable, sustainable society. There is nothing new in any of this.

What is new is that we, in this fine, elegant, innocent part of the world must face the fact that we need the hard, tough, clear leadership to get us where we need to be.

Welcome to the energy big leagues, New Brunswick.

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Nov 03 2014
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Humour, Politics

The Big Smoke is now under Bruce management (sort of)

I never really got to know my distant cousin John Tory. Though we share an antecedent (my great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Tory Bruce was his great-great-aunt. . .I think), he became a wildly successful lawyer, corporate executive and fundraiser for charitable, good works, whilst I, in contrast, became a curmudgeon.

Last week, Cousin John ascended on a wave of strategic voting to the position of Mayor of Canada’s largest metropolis.

Last week, I wrote five columns for the Moncton Times & Transcript, walked 28 miles, and wondered when Damon on “The Vampire Diaries” would finally push the veil between dimensional plains and re-enter the “real world”.

All of which is to say that Toronto, the city of my birth, got the better product of the Tory-Bruce issue to lead it.

Then again, that’s actually not saying a whole helluva lot.

John prevailed, with 40 per cent of the vote, in the municipal election last week; but that was just seven points ahead of Doug Ford, who ran on his brother Rob’s behalf.

Rob, we should never forget, is the man – four years the mayor – who appeared in public as “tired and emotional” as he explained why his incessant drinking led to his recreational fondness for crack cocaine, racial and sexist slurs, and bizarrely bad, almost ritualistically suicidal behaviour.

That his older brother Doug should have come within single digits of electoral success, without any platform for change or progress – indeed, without any ideas at all – is all anyone needs to know about politics in The Big Smoke.

Call it Tammany Hall, Canadian-style.

I covered that city’s politics when Mayor Art Eggleton was in power. At the time, in the 1980s, the late, great Jack Layton was a progressive member of council. He would routinely fomate against the “power” of the “man”, not noticing that, somewhere, back in the far green belts of northern Etobicoke, Scarborough and Mississauga, the power of the “common man” was quietly forging “Ford Nation” from an unlikely consortium of disaffected white folks, and transplanted Jamaicans, Indians and eastern Europeans.

This is the city that Cousin John inherits.

And yet, he says this in his giddy acceptance speech: “Tonight, we we begin the work of building one Toronto – a prosperous, fair, respected and caring Toronto. Together, like never before, we begin building Toronto the Great.”

Meanwhile, Rob Ford still manages to nail it from his political hospice: “If you know anything about the Ford family, we never, ever, ever give up. . .I guarantee, in four more years, your going to see another example of the Ford family never, ever, ever giving up.”

I believe him. Does my Cousin John?

The ill-mannered, the crazy, the utter buffoons have always been able to purchase our attention (and our votes) cheaply. In the grips of their handlers, they become not the maniacal outliers of our society, but the mainstream managers of our democracy. They become, inexorably, the normative value to which we lend our faith, our hope, our dreams.

Toronto, the city of my beginnings, where I was raised for the first, formative years of my life – where I learned to read, calculate, think, emote, dress myself, tie my own shoes, eat my own supper, make my own friends, avoid bad guys, embrace good guys, know the difference between the dark and the light – give this cousin of mine a chance.

I can almost guarantee that this 60-year-old man will not list here and there, speaking poor West Indian patois, whilst sucking from a water-bong. I can almost guarantee that “cuz” will be as diligent and boring as the largest city in this great nation now needs in its leader.

But Canada, also know this: The Ford empire is far from done. It may be temporarily disenfranchised in The Big Smoke, but its ideological tendrils extend everywhere – to the big cities and small towns of the shield, plains, prairies and coasts of this nation.

It’s the small mind writ large by ambition and cynical determination.

Good luck, oh cousin of mine.

You’re going to need some.

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Nov 01 2014
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Energy, Environment, Oil and Gas

What’s the fracking story, already?

On the endlessly controversial subject of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in this province, New Brunswick’s Liberal leadership has, in the span of just one month, gone from reliably hard-headed to unpredictably incoherent.

Here’s Premier-designate Brian Gallant talking to the CBC, following his election win last month: “There will be a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and those businesses (oil and gas explorers), I’m sure, are not surprised. This has been talked about, discussed and debated as a province for months if not years now. . .I think we have jurisdictions around us where I think we’ll be able to pull some of their experiences, how exactly this should be instituted, what’s the best way to go about it and what are the next steps.”

He even speculated almost sanguinely about the possibility that one or more of the drilling operations might sue the province as a result of his determination to the toe the environmentally expedient line: “(A legal action) is certainly something that could become a reality. We recognize that. We will certainly meet with (shale gas companies) and we will explain why our position is what it is.”

Now, here’s newly appointed Minister of Energy and Mines Donald Arseneault explaining to the Telegraph-Journal this week that he is well aware of the relationship between Corridor Resources and PotashCorp – in which the former supplies the latter with fracked, New Brunswick gas and has for years.

“The last thing we want to do is potentially put certain operations in jeopardy. For me, PotashCorp is a major player in New Brunswick. It’s a concern for me. It doesn’t mean that it gives everybody a green light, but it’s definitely in the back of my mind that I’ve got to be conscious and responsible going forward.”

To which the averagely informed, casually interested follower of the public-policy follies that constitute a permanent entertainment event in Fredericton (regardless of the party in power) might react thusly: Huh?

Does this mean the Grits are backtracking on their promise to temporarily forbid fracking? Or is their position merely, as the spin doctors like to say, “evolving”?

A more urgent question concerns the fate of PotashCorp’s new Picadilly mine without ready supplies of fracked natural gas. “That’s a valid point,” Mr. Arseneault told the T-J. “And those are the questions we are going to be asking the company. If we didn’t impose a moratorium, what is the activity they have planned for the next couple of years? Having a moratorium, how will it impact their operation? Will it impact potash? We haven’t settled on a specific menu other than we know there will be a moratorium.”

Again: Huh?

Dear reader, now to recap:

There will be a moratorium on fracking at some point in the near, to mid-term, to distant, future. But whether or not it will be a comprehensive, province-wide ban or a series of selective prohibitions depends entirely on whether or not the injunction injures the fortunes of one of the province’s largest industries.

In this instance, concern for the water table – the moral justification of the moratorium in the first place – takes a back seat to the more pragmatic realities of economic development.

Then again, the mere fact that Corridor has been operating in New Brunswick without incident for 10 years at least raises the possibility that drilling for tight shale gas – either hydraulically or with propane – can, in fact, be done both safely and responsibly. And, so, the purpose of a moratorium becomes what, exactly?

Mr. Arseneault appears to suggest it’s partly about election-campaign promise fulfillment – the Grit’s analogue to the previous Tory government’s refusal to consider raising the HST even a little just because, while running for office, they said they wouldn’t.

“At the end of the day,” the minister said, “our principals don’t change – we are going to implement a moratorium. I didn’t lie about it (to industry). I made that very clear. But we just need to determine now with the information that we gathered from them and other stakeholders as well as what kind of moratorium we want to implement.”

In other words, just as soon as this new government gets its story straight.

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Nov 01 2014
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Culture

Oh, puh-leeze do go on. . .

We have come to a phase in the culture of man where we regularly swing, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, from secrecy, subterfuge and prevarication to full, unadulterated, cringe-worthy disclosure.

Nowadays, it seems, there is no efficacious in-between, no pause at the bottom of gravity’s well to consider what we should hide from prying eyes or gleefully reveal about ourselves to the vast, voyeuristic social and mainstream medias.

And so, we learn about, in the one extreme, various lockdowns on simple knowledge, such as those imposed by the current federal government on “official” science – the ones in which publicly funded researchers are told to keep their trap shuts about everything unless duly authorized to gab.

These draconian injunctions invariably draw fire from the world community of eggheads, as was the case as recently as last week.

“Canadian federal government scientists are facing excessive and growing restrictions on their ability to publish and publicly communicate government scientific research,” the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, declared in an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “At the same time, dramatic defunding of many government science programs has made it considerably more difficult for these scientists to attend conferences and collaborate with scientists abroad.”

The screed continue: “With large cuts to federal science departments and agencies planned until at least 2016, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government need to hear about the negative repercussions of such communication policies and funding cuts on international research and collaboration. The challenges are similar to those faced by U.S. government scientists in recent years – but support from scientists has led to scientific integrity reform within the U.S. government.”

Meanwhile, of course, shady reports from determined provocateurs, including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and former NSA “desk-spook” Edward Snowdon, faithfully assure us that what John Q. Public doesn’t know about domestic government spying on average folks would fill several CIA safe houses around the world (and, apparently, often does).

“The federal government’s secretive electronic intelligence agency is not disclosing how long it can hold onto Canadians’ communications – even though its leaders have said that ‘firm’ time limits are in place to protect privacy,” the Globe and Mail reported in August.

“The strictures surrounding Communications Security Establishment Canada’s data-retention periods – including those affecting recognized ‘private communications’ and also ‘metadata’ – are blacked out from an operational document obtained by (the Globe).”

In the other extreme, we face a constant deluge of happy teenagers – and, now, their parents and even grandparents – blogging and texting and face-booking and twittering every minute detail of their private lives for the edification and enlightenment of the expanding ranks of the “who-gives-a-crap?” audience.

Honestly, who actually does give a crap about. . .”My 10-year old cat, Whiskas, died today. I am in mourning. . .He was such a fine animal. . .Actually, he was more than this. . .I believe we had a psychic bond. . .I always knew when it was time to feed him.”?

And now (drum roll please) there’s Jian Gomeshi, the alternately prickly and unctuous host of CBC One’s popular morning radio program “Q.”

Well, actually, he was. Now he’s just a recently muted blabbermouth in the wilderness.

The CBC fired his fine derriere when they caught wind of the fact that certain, ahem, sexual proclivities of their flagship host (whose yapping image has appeared, like a bloody brand statement, on every online platform Mother Corp. still has room in its winnowing budget to afford) seemed destined to go public.

According to a long tweet the other day, Gomeshi said he outed himself to CBC brass, saying, in effect, an ex-girlfriend and a fiendishly opportunistic freelancer had ganged up to embarrass him about his bedroom preferences.

The public broadcaster initially stated that the good fellow would be taking, what amounts to be, a leave of absence. Then, following Gomeshi’s yucky social-media explanation (which, naturally, went viral within seconds) and news that he would be suing his former employer to the tune of $50 million for, presumably, wrongful dismissal, the CBC changed its tune):

“The CBC is saddened to announce its relationship with Jian Ghomeshi has come to an end,” the statement read. “This decision was not made without serious deliberation and careful consideration. Jian has made an immense contribution to the CBC and we wish him well.”

Uh-huh. . .sure you do.

Since then, of course, things have gone from bad to worse in this oddly creepy saga. Nine women have come forward to offer what can only be Canada’s unofficial description of the mating habits of its very (if alleged) Marquis de Sade.

As in all such things nowadays, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle (except, of course, when it’s not) even if you really don’t want to hear it any of it.

Oct 29 2014
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

New Brunswick: Last stop on the trolly to the great hereafter

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And now for something completely obvious.

News flash: New Brunswick (Nova Scotia, too) is in the grip of its very own, made-in-the-Maritimes “death spiral”. The question, of course, is: what does the afterlife look like?

Former Premier and current Deputy Chairman of TD Bank in Toronto didn’t actually pronounce the time of this province’s passing – under the weight of its own inertia and all that sand that’s piled up around the hole into which its head has been stuck lo these many years – at a ballyhooed energy conference in Saint John last Friday. But he came darn close to pulling out the heart panels.

“Clear. . .zap. . .clear. . .again. . .clear. . .zap. . .clear.

In fact, Mr. McKenna said this: “Our regional economy is flatlining. We are depopulating. Our population is not just leaving; it’s getting older. It’s aging at twice the rate of Alberta’s. (Well, naturally it is, as that’s where capital markets and the current federal government encourage every mentally healthy, able-bodied young person in this country to go and become reliable, God-fearing taxpayers).

Here’s another snippet from Mr. McKenna’s all-too-familiar tirade against complacency:

“We are in an endless cycle of high deficits, declining population, higher interest rates and payments, a aging population, higher cost of services, less equalization, less personal income, higher taxes and consumption taxes. It’s a death spiral that we’re in if we don’t do something about it.”

Ah. . .and therein – as the Bard might have said, watching the surfer dudes ride the Pettitcodiac’s mighty tidal bore – lies the rub. What, indeed, is to be done?

We could eschew the costly histrionics surrounding shale gas development, based on a largely discredited “docu-drama” some years back, which featured (among other provocative absurdities) a guy lighting his tap water on fire (Reality check: the water table in upper Pennsylvania had been laced with trace amounts of methane long before fracking technology was the apple in the drilling industry’s eye).

We could concentrate on building the safest means – pipelines – of transporting crude oil from Alberta to Saint John and, in the process, create thousands of short-term, and hundreds of long-term, jobs for New Brunswick.

We might even work to leverage these energy opportunities to lure much-needed venture capital to the province for. . .oh, I don’t know. . .economic diversification away from natural resources and into educational centres of excellence that would pioneer commercially viable, sustainable, renewable, and exportable manufactures in the fields of wind, tidal and solar.

Or, we could go the other way.

We could put the province and all its lands and buildings up for sale to all those national and international bidders who boast the biggest coin in their pockets.

Dear China, the ad would read, “We, in New Brunswick, know how polluted your mega-cities are. Come on over to New Brunswick. We’ll treat you right fine. We’ll sell you our property, and we won’t even charge you minimum wage for the privilege of cleaning your kitchens and bathrooms – you know, the ones that used to be ours.”

Hey Alberta, we might exclaim, “We know you have our children in a ‘death-spiral’ of expanding expectations and blossoming debt. Someday, you know that bubble is going to burst. And when it does, you might like a safe haven to park your aging human capital.

“Consider New Brunswick as Canada’s preeminent retirement village. After all, as we never risked a damned thing on anything, including natural resources, our minds and hearts are clean. We are your last, best hope for a comfortable, easy death. . .Just bring your cheque books, because our B&Bs and private hospices are going to bruise those babies American-style.”

Indeed, given New Brunswick’s appalling fiscal condition, it’s dreadful demographic decline, its moribund economy, its listless and fearful political classes, it’s astonishing that this province has anything to offer the world or even its own people.

Of course, it is our own people – our entrepreneurs, in every shape, size, colour and stripe – who will (who must) save us from our collective inertia.

That, too, remains completely obvious.

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Oct 28 2014
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Energy, Environment, Oil and Gas

Drilling for common sense in the energy debate

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If all politics is the art of the possible, then the genre that inhabits New Brunswick is surely the craft of the calculating.

During the recent election campaign in the province, former Liberal Premier and current Deputy Chairman of T-D Bank Frank McKenna reportedly worked hard behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of them) to help the party’s fair-haired boy, Brian Gallant, comport himself well enough to hold on to the lead right into office.

Of course, that’s what political elders do: they mentor.

Still, given Mr. Gallant’s stand against shale gas development in the province, the pairing did seem odd.

In an interview, two years ago, Mr. McKenna told me in certain and enthusiastic terms, “We have in situ now, calculated by Corridor Resources Inc., 67 trillion cubic feet of gas. That’s bigger than western Canada. It’s a huge deposit! If 10 per cent is exploitable, that’s enough to create a revenue source for New Brunswick for decades to come. All in, it would result in about $15-20 billion in investment and 150,000 person years of work. And for governments, it would result in between $7-9 billion worth of royalties and taxes. . .The way I look at it, the real win comes when we take our indigenous shale gas in the province and hook it into the Canaport liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Saint John.”

In other words, he said, New Brunswick’s shale reserves could change the conversation about the province’s anemic economy forever. They could transform the region into a jurisdiction whose wealth rivals that of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Pennsylvania or North Dakota.

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

The former premier was similarly straightforward about the province’s overall condition: “This isn’t just a problem of leadership in government. It’s also a problem of followership. Our citizens have to understand the full depth and breadth of the dilemma that we are facing, and they have to be prepared to face up to some inconvenient truths. It means that they have to become less reliant on government and more entrepreneurial. It means that they have to take responsibility for their own futures.”

Still, if Messrs. McKenna and Gallant stand far apart from each other on tight onshore gas (though they remain generally linked by shared political purpose), the division is not likely to last long.

By vigorously arguing for a pipeline – perhaps, two – to transport Alberta bitumen into Saint John, the current premier is actually, though unwittingly, eroding the rhetorical wall he has erected around the shale gas industry.

That’s because it’s getting increasingly difficult for the unaligned majority in this province to appreciate the logic of Mr. Gallant’s position on fossil fuels.

For reasons that resist trenchant examination, we are told that pipelines transporting crude into New Brunswick are safer, more environmentally responsible energy developments than is drilling for natural gas using only proven, contemporary technology under a regulatory regime that’s reported to be the toughest in the world.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to do as Frank McKenna has suggested: Permit both undertakings to proceed carefully, yet expeditiously?

In the alternative, if the issue is less about safety than global warming, shouldn’t we take a page out of New Brunswick Green Leader David Coon’s playbook: Stop both projects from happening?

Banning one, and not the other assumes expectations of harm and safety that may be mismatched. After all, pipelines have been known to leak. If we are being asked to assume that risk, however small, maybe we should take another look at the safety record of the shale gas industry before we eject it from the field of possibility.

It’s a tricky calculation, but it’s one we may well be forced to make make sooner than we once thought.

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