Jun 23 2013
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Economy, Government

Are happy days here again?

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Here, in the shadow of the western world’s setting sun, we are languishing in a near-permanent state of decay – both victims and authors of our decidedly unenlightened self-interest.

This, at least, has been the received and incontrovertible wisdom, and there’s no longer any point in trying to save ourselves.

First, came the financial crisis of 2008, which effectively wrecked private savings, public accounts, the manufacturing sector, and the housing market. Then came the government bailouts (“stimulus” spending, if you prefer), which saddled states, provinces and cities across North America with spiraling deficits and structural debts.

Finally, came the language of the resignedly defeated: No growth is the new normal; quit your jobs and plant your gardens, for the end of our global, capitalist hegemon draws nigh.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the economic abattoir. Suddenly, with no portents or premonitions, everything got just a little bit better. How? Why? Economists, bankers, politicians are still scratching their heads.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist of IHS Global Insight, told The New York Times recently. “There is more optimism about the U.S. and in particular about the second half of this year and 2014. Three months ago, we wouldn’t have come to that same conclusion.”

Three months ago, no one, it seems, was ruminating on the efficacious effects of certain economic outliers, such as advancing technology, growing energy independence and the resurgence of what can only be described as a sort of gritty self-determination.

Referring to the future, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen told The Times, “It’s better than it looked. Technological progress comes in batches and it’s just a little more rapid than it looked two years ago,” adding somewhat circumspectly: “The great stagnation will end for a lot of people but not everyone. I think there will be great breakthroughs but the distribution of those gains will go to owners of capital and intellectual property.”

Still, some economists predict the U.S. economy will outperform its average of two per cent per year growth rate by as much 1.5 percentage points over the next eight quarters, which would effectively close the doomsday chronicle of recent times.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in Canada. May was an astonishing month for employment in this country. The economy generated 95,000 new positions, most of which were full-time, private sector jobs. That was the single, largest monthly surge in more than a decade.

Again, in interviews with the Financial Post, the experts were gob-smacked. “Canada’s job gain. . .is simply stunning on the headline and most of the details,” said Derek Holt of Scotiabank Economics. It is equivalent to the U.S. adding over 1 million jobs in a single month.” Indeed, noted Douglas Porter of BMO Capital Markets, “Even outside of construction, which is definitely the eye-popping stat here. . . (May’s data) was still a mammoth number for employment.”

Naturally, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty prefers to take the long view. To the Post, he declared, “What’s more important is the positive long-trend when it comes to employment in Canada. . .We can’t be complainant. We are still facing a very volatile global economy. We recently saw European unemployment hit a record high. Canada is not immune to these challenges from beyond our border and we will be impacted.”

He is correct, of course. Canada is joined at the hip with the international community, and our national prosperity depends on the degree to which we diversify our goods and services and, crucially, our trading relationships.

And yet, the recent numbers suggest that rugged, defiant entrepreneurialism – inventiveness, creativity, opportunism – is not as easily squashed as the prophets of calamity (in whose company, I must admit, I have found myself) would have us think.

That’s worth remembering here, on the East Coast, as we gnash our teeth and wring our hands over the high cost of government, the seemingly endless string of failed economic development schemes and the hollowing out of our productive population.

The heart of true enterprise still beats. We can feel it if we try.

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Jun 23 2013
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Politics

The perils of pontificating for money

Not $20,000 in the penny plastic

Not $20,000 in the penny plastic

From time to time, I augment my absurdly meagre living by crafting speeches for famous people. It’s nice work, when I can get it. I have noticed that the more exalted the public figure, the less inclined he is to draft his own addresses.

Still, the real money is not in the writing, but in the yakking.

Sir Richard Branson of Virgin territory can command upwards of $250,000 per appearance. These days, he’s fond of making commencement speeches (I have no idea what, if anything, the billionaire charges for these). His recent post on the social networking site, LinkedIn, suggests that in such circumstances he prefers to forgo his customary fees and handle them personally, which means haphazardly:

“I have been offered to do graduation speeches over the years and did accept an honorary Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University. It was strange at the time, but now we have Virgin Galactic perhaps it’s not so strange! I was chuffed to receive it, having left school at 15. It was a hell of a lot easier than going through university to get it! If you are graduating, congratulations and good luck for your future. Every graduate – scratch that – every person has the chance to reach for the stars in their chosen field.”

The king of all toastmasters, however, must be former U.S. President Bill Clinton who has, according to some estimates, raked in as much as $89 million pontificating before rapt crowds of establishmentarians since the end of his second term. An item in the New York Daily News, published earlier this month, notes that the “retired” Commander in Chief “has earned a whopping $500,000 speaking advance to deliver a 45 minute speech at the 90th birthday bash for Israeli President Shimon Peres – putting (his) price tag at roughly $11,100 per minute.”

On the other hand, “The Democrat won’t personally benefit from the sum, as it will reportedly be directed to the William J. Clinton Foundation. Clinton’s foundation did not respond to a request for comment. . .Initially, invited guests were asked to pay an $800 entrance fee but President Peres pulled the plug on the cover charge, saying he wouldn’t attend the party in his honor if it turned into a fundraiser.”

All of which brings us to the odd case of Canadian Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who has promised to reimburse New Brunswick’s Grace Foundation – whose mission is to support the “St. John & St. Stephen Home” for the elderly – $20,000 he charged for a speech he delivered last year, when he was just a lowly Member of Parliament.

The decision, he announced on CTV’s Question Period, was “the right thing to do.” What’s more, he vowed, he was prepared to work with any group he might have addressed in his official capacity as an elected representative “to try to fix it and make it right.” If news reports are correct, that’s a lot of fixing.

According to last week’s Globe and Mail, “Mr. Trudeau won’t necessarily reimburse every organization that paid for his services – including schools and non-profit organizations – saying he was ‘open to exploring all options with them.’ Doing so could cost him most of the $277,000 he earned for speeches since becoming an MP. Mr. Trudeau earned a reported total of $1.3-million during his entire public-speaking career before running for party leader last year.”

The question, of course, is: If the repayment is the right thing to do now, why wasn’t it the right thing to do in March when he initially rejected the Grace Foundation’s request for recompense? (Its fundraiser actually lost money thanks, in part, to Mr. Trudeau’s pricey stipend).

Do sitting politicians have an obligation to present themselves at charitable functions free of charge? Or do they only see the light when Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Mac Harb are on the hot seat over dicey expense accounts?

These are issues only Mr. Trudeau can resolve. Big bucks carry big responsibilities – the best reason, perhaps, for keeping one’s trap shut whenever at all possible.

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Jun 17 2013
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Society

The healing properties of a great walk

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Chained to a post, the bike languishes in the baby barn like a forgotten pony. It’s not its fault. It’s done nothing wrong to deserve its alienation from my increasingly fit company. It’s just that, gradually, over the past year or so, it’s been replaced in my affections by a sturdy pair of walking shoes.

Nowadays, they take me everywhere within a five-kilometer radius of my home in downtown Moncton: to the lake, the park, the grocery store, the cafe that serves the best coffee east of Montreal. They are admirably beat up, like a hobo’s boots.

I began my deliberate, quotidian, 45-minute marches for no other reason than to see if I, a man in his early 50s, could muster enough self-discipline to stick with something that had nothing to do with the usual mid-life preoccupation of making money. It was easy, at first. Then, it got hard. Walking every day without exception, I discovered, was as much a mental as physical game.

Still, in a recent broadcast of CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, host Michael Enright explored what appears to be a renaissance for the alternately graceful and rigorous pastime of perambulation. His guests included a psychologist, a biologist and an urban planner. The show’s promo put it this way: “It seems that walking has come back in vogue. Walkable neighbourhoods are a cornerstone of current urban planning and they help drive real estate values up. People are moving back to the downtown cores of cities, where they can walk to do their shopping or get to work.”

Our ancient history, of course, supports the walker. (Even though, over the past 100 years, we’ve done everything we can to render him extinct – from inventing the internal combustion engine to enshrining the American television sitcom).

Says the CBC blurb: “Humans and their forebears have spent five million years perfecting one of the talents that make us most unique as a species. . .the ability to walk upright. We evolved to walk on two legs. Our bodies are meant to walk, and our biology wants, even requires, us to walk.”

Event the Internet is now telling us to walk. Here are some words of advice from About.com’s Wendy Bumgardner: “Walkers live longer. The Honolulu Heart Study of 8,000 men found that walking just two miles a day cut the risk of death almost in half. The walkers’ risk of death was especially lower from cancer.”

Not only that, she says, walkers are smarter: “A study of people over 60 funded by the National Council on Aging, published in the July 29, 1999, issue of ‘Nature’, found that walking 45 minutes a day at a 16-minute mile pace increased the thinking skills of those over 60. The participants started at 15 minutes of walking and built up their time and speed. The result was that the same people were mentally sharper after taking up this walking program.

They’re more emotionally stable: “Walking. . .leads to the release of the body’s natural happy drugs – endorphins. Most people notice an improvement in mood. A November 9, 1999 study published in the ‘Annals of Behavioral Medicine’ showed that university students who walked. . .regularly had lower stress levels than couch potatoes or those who exercised strenuously.”

Not inconsequentially, walkers are also more successful than couch potatoes in one other important arena of human interaction: “What better reason for men to take a brisk two mile walk each day – a reduced risk of impotence from mid-life onward.”

For all these reasons and more, I shall remain an ardent walker. My wife and I are spending Christmas week, this year, in Manhattan (a strolling man’s paradise). Someday, when we’re fit enough, we plan to tackle the Appalachian Trail (at least, a chunk of it). Who knows, we may even find ourselves, one fine year, trudging along the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain, en route to the holy shrine of the apostle St. James.

In an hour, maybe two, I’ll get out my bike. But first, a good walk beckons.

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Jun 14 2013
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Education

Focus on educating the very young

He's better off wondering how balloons rise than how fortunes fall

As New Brunswick’s chief, honourary pedagogue, Jody Carr, shops around his draft blueprint to improve the educational denouement of this province, he must realize that his best weapon against creeping academic morbidity rests not with trundling grade-schoolers, but with toddling infants.

Mr. Carr’s title gives him away. He is not only the Minister of Education; he is also the minister responsible for Early Childhood Development. As such, he clearly appreciates what every field researcher has been telling public officials with near nauseating regularity over the past several years: The best, and most cost-effective, way to ensure a child does well in later grades is to invest in his or her education as early and as often as possible.

Indeed, as Mr. Carr acknowledges in his own government’s plan on the subject, titled “Putting Children First: Positioning Early Childhood for the Future,” the experts are definitive: “Their research clearly shows the correlation between the quality of a child’s experience in the early years and his or her success in school – even throughout life. “Eventually, the broader impact of healthy development for our children is stronger families and communities and a stronger, more vibrant province.The foundation of (our) plan is the integration of early childhood development services and

education for children from birth to eight years of age.

“The quality, affordability and accessibility of childcare and other services are built into the plan. We will also focus on ensuring services and education are inclusive – that all children have the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.”

In fact, he’s so convinced of the efficacy of this approach that he has authorized $38 million of the government’s vanishing resources to “create new early learning and childcare spaces, bringing the total increase to 10,000,” subsidize the salaries of childcare workers, increase the number of support staff, and broaden the system’s accessibility, among other measures.

Still, politics insist that elected representatives must know both how to walk and chew gum. And so, Mr. Carr now spends a good deal of his time putting the finishing touches on a new educational plan for elementary and secondary school systems that, according to news reports, sets specific performance standards for pupils.

According to a recent Telegraph-Journal story, “The department wants 90 per cent of elementary students achieving the expected level of language arts, math and science proficiency on provincial assessments, and 85 per cent of middle school and and high school students attaining the expected levels for their grades.”

This well-intentioned effort is laudable. It may even be necessary. But I can’t help feeling that the emphasis on “outcomes” pegged to rigid performance standards in public schools merely transforms teachers and administrators into mechanics who spend their days fixing broken cars. Ideally, their professional exertions should flow, and receive succour, from a structured, integrated, evidence-based system of pre-school – one that nurtures abilities and identifies problems among kids at the earliest possible stages of their development.

The implications for society extend far beyond the education system.

In a recent syllabus on the broad effects of early years instruction, TD Bank Group’s senior vice president and chief economist Craig Alexander had this to say: “There is a great deal of evidence showing overwhelming benefits of high-quality, early childhood education. For parents, access to quality and affordable programming can help to foster greater labour force participation. But more importantly, for children, greater essential skills development makes it more likely that children will complete high school, go on to post‐secondary education and succeed at that education. This raises employment prospects and reduces duration of unemployment if it occurs.”

In fact, according to his research, for every public dollar invested in early childhood development, the return ranges from roughly $1.5 to almost $3, with the benefit ratio for disadvantaged children being in the double digits.”

When it comes to caring for the youngest in our midst – who will secure the most durable achievements for the province in the future – Mr. Carr’s government is already on the right track. Let it stay there.

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Jun 12 2013
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Business, Municipal Affairs

No more detours for Moncton events centre

Resurgo is action in latin. And that's a dead language. Get 'er done boys and girls

Resurgo is action in latin. And that’s a dead language. Get ‘er done boys and girls

Asking development consultant David Campbell and university economist Pierre-Marcel Desjardins to assess the likely commercial impact of a downtown events centre in Moncton was a tactically masterful maneuver. For City Council, it was also a courageous, even risky, one.

No one, it’s fair to say, knows more about how this municipality ticks than either of these two Hub City residents, who spend their days taking the pulse of the province and of its variously successful, variously struggling, communities. When they speak, as the tagline goes, people listen.

So, had Messrs. Campbell and Desjardins concluded, after careful examination, that a centre would not be worth the $100-million price to build, that would have been the end of it. That they have, in fact, found just the opposite suggests that city mothers and fathers no longer have any credible reason to pump the brakes on a project that would, almost certainly, resuscitate the urban core.

Not that many of them need much convincing. As Mayor George LeBlanc makes plain in a 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.”

How much development now seems clear.

According to Mr. Campbell’s presentation to Council this week, 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 important point, which Mr. Campbell argues 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% of the city’s land area – generates nearly 10% of the total assessed tax base and over 14.4% 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 laments. “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% in 2011 to an estimated 13.5% in 2013. Residential population in the core declined by 9.1% between 2006 and 2011. Including the expanded downtown, the population dropped by 3.3%. (This) compared to a robust 7.7% rise across the city.”

Given the fundamental importance of the downtown district to the city’s overall economic condition – and its evidently lackluster performance in recent years – a new centre, deliberately designed to breath life into the area, seems both right and logical.

Naturally, some will continue to argue that the virtues of such a project are merely ornamental. Certainly, City Council has employed a go-slow approach in deference, perhaps, to these voices and sometimes to its own bemusement (a graphic on the municipal website depicts its “step-by-step decision points” beneath images of waddling turtles and the headline, “Downtown Centre: Not a Done Deal”).

Still, with this new research in hand, surely the time has come to quicken the pace and proceed as this city has done so many times in the past: with cheerful assertiveness, if not abandon.

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Jun 11 2013
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Humour, Politics, Security

Spying minds really want to know

Is what lies beneath enough?

Who’s got the dirt on you?

Good morning, pipsqueak. This is your big brother calling. How are you doing? Feeling good and rested, ready to take on the world? Sure you are. You’re going to seize the day, follow your bliss, as they say – just as soon as you gulp down that happy pill your doctor prescribed for you last month.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you junior? Remember that afternoon three weeks ago, when the paramedics had to scrape you off the pavement outside the grocery store, following your 19th nervous breakdown?

Didn’t think I’d find out about that, did you? Never mind. I know a lot of things about you and just about everybody else in this ridiculous country of fools and sleepwalkers who believe that just because I scrapped the long-form census, I give a fig about your personal privacy. What a joke, which is, at it happens, entirely on you.

How’s that new car working out for you? You know. . .the one you bought with four credit cards because your wife wouldn’t let you raid the kids’ college fund. I bet she was mighty cheesed off when you rolled up in that baby. In fact, I know she was because that’s what she told some guy named Hank, with whom she’s having an online relationship. Oops, have I said too much? Listen, pal, a word to the wise. . .what’s good for the gander is good for the goose. Just saying, is all.

Speaking of birds of a feather, you know that chum three cubicles over from you at work? He’s the one with whom you’ve been collaborating for months on that big presentation to your company’s brass. Don’t trust him. He’s planning to stab you in the back, take credit for your ideas and sell you down the river as a lazy no-nothing. Fact is, all he does all day is play computer solitaire when he’s not following Lindsay Lohan on Twitter. Hope that’s useful to you. Your welcome.

Truth is, I care about you bro’. I care about the fact that you lied on your resume where you claimed to have a degree from the University of Toronto whereas you actually have a diploma from the Community College of Tofino. I care about the fact that you list your hobbies as golf, marathon running and skydiving instead of tap dancing, gardening and ventriloquism. You really should be more circumspect.

Not that I plan to do anything with such information. In the scheme of things, you’re just not that interesting, let alone important. I’ve got enough work scrutinizing the “metadata” stemming from the Internet comings and goings and phone calls of millions of other citizens through the Communications Security Establishment Canada. Technically, I’m not “allowed” to listen in on actual conversations or surveil specific emails and text messages. But, well. . .you know. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat.

As my buddy Ronald Deibert might say: “Don’t kid yourself.” In fact, the U of T political science professor and expert on global security did sort of say that in a commentary he penned for the Globe and Mail on Tuesday, to wit: “What is metadata? Take my mobile phone. Even when I’m not using it, when it’s just sitting in my pocket or on my desk, it emits an electronic pulse every few seconds to the nearest wifi router or cellphone tower that includes a kind of digital biometric tag.”

So what, you might say. So, don’t be so stupid. Or, as Mr. Deibert notes, “Think metadata is trivial compared to content? Think again. MIT researchers who studied 15 months of anonymized cellphone metadata of 1.5 million people found four ‘data points’ were all they needed to figure out a person’s identity 95 per cent of the time. In 2010, German Green Party politician Malte Spitz and Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper requested all of the metadata from Mr. Spitz’s phone carrier, Deutsch Telekom. The company sent back a CD containing 35,830 lines of code.”

Anyway, goofball, try to take better care of yourself this summer. I notice you’ve been hitting Amazon.com of late for some reading material. Might I suggest you start with Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and end with George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Either or both are excellent field guides for the shape of things to come.

That’s it for now.

We’ll talk again soon.

That’s a promise, pipsqueak.

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Jun 11 2013
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Business, Economy, Environment, Politics

New Brunswick’s biggest natural resource is fury

Seeing the forest for the trees in hydraulic fracturing

Seeing the forest for the trees in hydraulic fracturing

Those who believe that New Brunswickers are apathetic about their futures need only survey the province for visible signs of outrage, which are everywhere. Apparently, we are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

The question is: What is the “it” we refuse to “take”?

Once upon a time, it was the sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec. The contretemps over that issue brought down a government already reeling from the outcry over its proposals to establish a network of polytechnics in the province and reform French language instruction for Anglophones.

These days, it’s cuts to the public service, education and health care that have ignited the pyres of dissent from Sackville to Edmundston.

No issue, however, is as incendiary as hydraulic fracturing, with its dark promise to pollute and sunder communities wherever the shale gas industry sinks its wells.

Last week, the RCMP arrested three people – about 120 kilometers north of Moncton – who were protesting SWN Resources seismic testing (advance work in the exploration of tight petroleum plays). The cops said the trio refused to make way for trucks. Other observers at the scene said the authorities overreacted.

For his part, Brad Walters a professor of environmental studies professor at Mount A, called it a sign of the times, to which we should grow accustomed. He told  CTV it reflects “a combination of things coming together here. . .There is this network of over 30 groups across the province who are talking to each other and are very strongly opposed to shale gas development.”

Call it the immoveable object that meets an unstoppable force, but opposition to shale gas in this province has become a permanent feature of the landscape. No careful ministrations by the provincial government, promising to enforce the “toughest” regulations in North America – no vows by industry representatives to adhere to only the highest standards of environmental stewardship – are likely to placate the critics.

This worries people like Susan Holt, president and CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council, which commissioned a report, released recently, on the economic potential of shale gas in the province. “Some of the opposition is a little bit disconcerting to industry because it appears to be general industry opposition rather than specific,” she told the Telegraph-Journal’s Chris Morris. “When New Brunswickers resist general industrial activity, that is more nerve-racking for our folks because it begs the question, how do we develop our economy?”

How, indeed?

Legitimate concerns about water and soil degradation and principled stands against fossil fuels warming the planetary orb only partially explain the current antagonism. At the heart of the hostility to shale gas is a position against which there is no defence: People simply detest the idea of it. Onshore petroleum development somehow cuts against the weave of the province’s social fabric.

The identical mental dynamic was at work when potash was first developed. It was in even planer view when wind turbines began dotting the countryside. Lest we forget uranium?

Logic is a blunt instrument of persuasion when passions are running high, as they tend to do when statements from the provincial Department of Energy and Mine declare that “Nine companies hold a Crown license to search and/or lease within New Brunswick. These include a total of 71 rights agreements, covering over 1.4 million hectares, for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas.”

In fact, the Province has spent a good deal of time touting New Brunswick as the undisputed nexus of the emerging tight oil and gas industry in Atlantic Canada. Estimates, it likes to say, peg the volume of natural gas trapped between layers of sedimentary rock hundreds, or even thousands, of meters beneath the soil’s surface at close to 77 trillion cubic feet.

What it – and industry, itself – hasn’t spent much effort doing is reminding New Brunswickers that no one yet knows whether the resource is even commercially viable. Nor have they attempted to explain (until very recently) the safeguards that must attend its extraction and development.

Now, it may be too late to expect a sea change of attitude.

It’s a shame we can’t harness the energy from all the outrage we generate.

If we could, we’d never again worry about the future of our province.

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Jun 07 2013
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Economy, Politics

Stop depending on the kindness of strangers

Pennies from Ottawa? It just cancelled the currency, Atlantic Canada

Pennies from Ottawa? It just cancelled the currency, Atlantic Canada

Once, when he was not yet a serious contender for federal office, Prime Minister Stephen Harper opined that Atlantic Canada’s “culture of defeat will be hard to overcome” as long as the region “physically” trails behind the rest of the country.

That stinging characterization, in 2002, of the birthplace of Confederation played well out west among his base of prairie farmers and Calgary oil men. So well, in fact, that he took another crack at ringing the defeatist bell a few days later for The Ottawa Citizen, which quoted him in more generally ruminative terms: “I think there is a dangerous rise in defeatist sentiment in this country. I have said that repeatedly, and I mean it and I believe it.”

Back here, among the lobster pots and pogey checks, his remarks lit a fire of indignation. We fumed and fussed. We wrote letters to the editor and posted angry comments to websites. We demanded that our premiers speed to our defence, as if we were so many jilted brides.

We missed the point, of course. But that’s only because Mr. Harper deployed the the wrong word. It wasn’t “defeat” that gripped us; it was “dependence”. And that culture of dependence – on Ottawa, on the richer provinces of Canada – shrouds us today, like a swaddling blanket.

In his illuminating series of commentaries about New Brunswick and its  challenges (now running in this and the province’s other major newspapers), public policy expert Donald Savoie observes, “There is a growing reluctance on the part of the have-provinces to continue to finance transfer payments to have-less provinces at current levels.”

That’s a polite way of describing the situation. Another was Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s vituperative critique last year. The current system of equalization, he declared in an opinion piece, generates “distortions, often of a significant scale, that impair the national economy and discourage people from moving to places of economic opportunity.” The system, he insisted, discourages “labour mobility in a way that hurts the national economy and ultimately individual Canadians.”

There was a certain amount of bald-faced nonsense in this claim. Federal transfers haven’t stopped thousands of Maritimers and Newfoundlanders from leaving their ancestral homes for more lucrative economic opportunities out west. But the larger point has to do with the way we, on the East Coast, routinely meet such criticisms: defensively, even peevishly.

Defending equalization against attacks by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Premier David Alward told the Telegraph-Journal’s Chris Morris on Wednesday, “It is part of our Constitution and part of who we are as Canadians. It allows provinces that do not have the fiscal capacity to provide comparable levels of service at comparable levels of taxation. It’s not a fat cat program.”

In other words, we “depend” on it. And in depending on it, we have, at some basic level, come to think of it as a program to which we are entitled – a part of the province’s 40 per cent, annual revenue take from “Fat City”, the capital.

Perhaps, this is only natural. Everyone perceives reality through the filter of his or her experiences. And if those experiences involve relying on a massive infusion of money from jurisdictional underwriters in other parts of the country to pay for schools and hospitals, then we perceive our reality – though fundamentally tethered to the generosity of stranger, it may be – as fixed in time. The status quo of equalization is, or should be, immutable. Shouldn’t it?

Equalization may be a right. But if we are serious about forging a more economically sustainable future, we should stop looking upon it as a permanent virtue and begin regarding it for what it is: a temporary evil, one from which we should work hard to wean ourselves. At the very least, the language our elected representatives choose to use in their public pronouncements should reflect this long-term purpose.

The horizon for this decidedly bowed, yet not defeated, part of the country instantly clears the moment we embrace the notion that the only ones on whom we should depend are ourselves.

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Jun 05 2013
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Government, Politics

Seeking sanity on Senate shenanigans

As the ranks of auditors scurrying up and down Parliament Hill continue to swell, the Senate expense debacle is beginning to resemble a poorly written episode of a prime-time police procedural. Call it: CSI Ottawa.

First, there was the review board of the Upper Chamber’s internal economy committee. Then came the Senate Ethics Office, followed by the country’s Ethics Commissioner, followed by the RCMP.

Now, the Conservative Leader of the appointed body, Marjory LeBreton, wants Auditor General Michael Ferguson to conduct what she calls a “comprehensive” investigation of all expenses she and her compatriots have incurred and claimed over the past few months, possibly years.

Good idea, says Senate Opposition Leader James Cowan (a Liberal from Halifax), but why stop there? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, if the gander happens to be the perpetually honking House of Commons.

Or, as he told CBC News last week, “Is this just another attempt to change the channel here? The problem isn’t the rules and policies. The problem is in the people who want to scam the system.”

Mounting evidence suggests that a sizable chunk of his fellow citizens concurs.

A CTV News Ipsos Reid poll, conducted late last month, found the personal accountability – not byzantine or antiquated regulations – is the real issue among the great unwashed of this country. That’s bad news for Sen. Mike Duffy, who used a personal gift of $90,000 from the PMO’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to bay back what he owed. And it’s bad news for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, himself.

According to the survey, only 13 per cent of citizens firmly believed Mr. Harper’s contention that he did not know about the donation at the time it was made. Forty-two per cent were certain he was in the loop. Forty-four per cent weren’t sure.

The poll also found most Canadians clamoring for an independent investigation led by either the RCMP or a jurist (shades of the Gomery Inquiry, which sealed the fate of the once-mighty Liberal hegemony begin to haunt).

If such an inquiry should uncover expense gerrymandering, either deliberate or unintentional, 77 per cent thought those involved should relinquish their Senatorial offices forthwith.

As for the fate of the Red Chamber, itself, a convincing 88 per cent were, more or less, evenly divided: 45 per cent said it should be reformed; 43 per cent said it should be abolished. A marginal 13 per cent voted for the status quo.

There’s no reason to question the validity of these findings, which is why there is every reason to, as Ms. LeBreton suggests, enlist the unimpeachable authority of the Auditor-General’s office (and no others) to get to the bottom of this, and more.

Open wide all the books. Shed a torchlight into every nook and cranny of this increasingly dubious institution. Then, when done, cast a critical eye at the Commons. How are Canada’s elected representatives handling their responsibilities to taxpayers? Shouldn’t “reform” be an equal opportunity exigency in the nation’s public realm?

Before there can be true accountability, there must be clarity. When Canadians know the dimensions of the problems that afflict their most important democratic instruments, they will be equipped to demand the changes that are necessary to safeguard their trust in the political system.

“When I say a comprehensive audit of all Senate expenses, I mean just that,” Ms. LeBreton insisted on CTV’s Power Play earlier this week. “Every tax payer dollar that’s spent to the functioning of the Senate all of it. . .The public saw the Senate as a closed club, investigating itself. I came to realize that we really had to respect what the public was saying and turn it over to a body that is absolutely, without question, has a lot integrity and a lot credibility and actually assure the public that we are serious about tax payer dollars.”

It’s time the Senate’s Keystone Kops make room for CSI’s Horatio Caine.

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Jun 05 2013
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Business, Energy

What are true benefits of an eastern pipeline?

As New Brunswick Premier David Alward fluffs the pillows and hoovers the welcome mat for his oil-rich, Alberta counterpart, who arrives for a chin-wag in Fredericton later this week, hope – with just a hint of desperation – is in the air.

Almost nothing, it is safe to say, has so animated this government’s aspirations for long-term prosperity than the promise of a west-east pipeline terminating at Saint John, where the mighty petroleum empire of Irving Oil holds sway over the Fundy basin. Indeed, Mr. Alward has designated the endeavour – still only a happy preoccupation – the crown jewel of his economic portfolio.

Some months ago, in an interview, he told me, “We’re investing significant energy in this. We’re meeting with leaders right across the country to see if there is a business case. We believe this could be as important to this century as the railroad was in the past.”

Naturally, then, Premier Alison Redford’s visit is about as propitious as it gets. According to news reports, she will tour Irving Oil’s refinery, address the Saint John Board of Trade and say a few words to the legislative assembly. Presumably, the VIP treatment will extend to the moment she boards a plane for her return trip home.

All of which is an entirely understandable, even reasonable, way for New Brunswick’s political elite to behave. After all, steering the provincial economy to even the semblance of a safe haven is proving tougher than fracking gas from a tight play (the other illusory gem in the diadem).

Still, it’s not the 6,000 or even 10,000 jobs a pipeline would immediately generate  during the construction phase that principally matter. It‘s the degree to which the enterprise – should it come to fruition – manages to change the economic culture of the province – from one that is, too often, underachieving, unimaginative and impassive, to one that is assertive, innovative and responsive.

Historically, Atlantic Canada has measured its economic well-being by the number of mega-projects it undertakes. The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council (APEC) – arguably, the region’s leading, independent think tank on such matters – leads the news whenever it releases its annual compendium of major industrial initiatives. This week is no exception.

“It (APEC) says the 388 projects in Atlantic Canada account for a record $115 billion worth of investment, an increase of 15 per cent over 2012,” The Canadian Press reported yesterday. “In Newfoundland and Labrador, investment in major projects is up 12 per cent over the previous year, with 113 developments totalling $54 billion. Nova Scotia trails behind in investment with 156 projects worth $40 billion, an increase of 23 per cent over last year mostly due to a proposed $5-billion liquefied natural gas export facility at Goldboro. The council says the potential for a west-east oil pipeline in New Brunswick and new housing projects in P.E.I. have also contributed to the increase.

It says current-year spending on major projects in Atlantic Canada has grown by five per cent to a record $14.3 billion.”

The news source quoted APEC’s major projects director Patrick Brannon, who said in an interview, “It’s catching national attention. Certainly people are looking now to Atlantic Canada for opportunities. There’s a growing investment from foreign companies in Atlantic Canada. They see the opportunities of our commodities and our resources as a future growth area for them, and they’re focusing their funding in this region now.”

Well, yes and no. Only a few months go, APEC painted an entirely different picture of the region’s economic condition, calling it “weak” and blaming it for the persistent and pernicious deficits and debts that plague the provinces. “New Brunswick had the largest deterioration in fiscal performance in the Maritime provinces in 2012/2013 with its deficit more than doubling to $411 million,” it said in a news release. “The government is examining a number of revenue measures, such as raising its Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), introducing a health care premium or retracting previous income tax reductions in an effort to return to balance.”

This is the economic dialectic of our region: booming and busting; cycling up and cycling down; hoping and despairing.

An west-east pipeline is an enormous opportunity for New Brunswick, but only if we learn how to sustain its immediate impact durably; in a culture of novelty and innovation.

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