Tag Archives: Brian Gallant

Feb 05 2016
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Government, Politics

The deficit facts of life

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Balance the budget, certainly; but not just yet. In a nutshell, this was what New Brunswick Finance Minister Roger Melanson told assembled ladies and gentlemen of the press and other observers at Tuesday’s provincial budget announcement.

Still, though it seemed to take almost everyone off guard, the news that annual deficits – despite this year’s combination of tax hikes and spending cuts totaling nearly $600 million – would be facts in our lives until at least 2020-21 was not actually surprising.

In fact, a careful review of the budget measures reveals that some sort of pernicious shortfall was always in the cards.

On the revenue side, yes, the Gallant government raised the Harmonized Sales Tax to 15 per cent, from 13 per cent, effective July 1. And, yes, it also goosed the corporate income tax rate to 14 per cent, from 12 per cent; increased tobacco taxes by three bucks a cigarette; boosted the one-time property transfer tax; and hiked capital tax rates on banks.

On the other hand, the finance department decided against tolling any roads in the province, and even snuck through a modest decrease in the income tax rate the province’s top earners face.

On the spending side, yes, the government announced it was slashing 1,300 civil-service jobs over the next five years; 30 per cent of middle-manager positions were on the chopping block. And, yes, it also terminated the Gagetown ferry; amalgamated its 40 contact centres across the province into four; and froze operating grants to universities.

Again, though, it left both the departments of education and health virtually untouched – at least, in any significant way. Both Mr. Melanson and Health Minister Victor Boudreau recently confirmed that there’s very little appetite among the voting public for dramatic cuts to these, the province’s largest and most expensive program portfolios.

The results, then, are largely predictable: a deficit this year of $347 million; a deficit of $267 million in 2017-18; $167 million in 2018-19; $49 million in 2019-20; and a yet-to-be determined surplus in 2020-21.

Said Mr. Melanson about his “fun-with-figures” exercise over the past few weeks: “The decisions we are announcing today on expenditures and revenues will lead us to a balanced budget and meet our commitment to get our finances in order. This is very important because we currently spend more on serving our debt than we do on post-secondary education.”
Complicating matters, of course, is the economy, which isn’t broadcasting especially cheerful signals these days. “Economic activity is expected to be tempered by demographic realities, private-sector investment, fiscal measures, and the recently announced suspension operations at the Picadilly mine,” Mr. Melanson reported.

Naturally, what frustrates close political watchers in this province is the fact that a $300-million tax-revenue boost haul will have only a modest impact on New Brunswick’s bottom line.

The deficit is now running at approximately $466-million. If the Province’s projections prove to be accurate (and, be honest, when have they ever?), the next-year-over-this-year improvement in the annual shortfall will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$120 million.

That’s not bad, but it’s nothing to write home about. And it’s certainly not likely to quell the concerns of business lobbyists, who think taxes are the devil’s work, and fiscal hawks, who believe New Brunswick can find multiple savings in its health and education systems if its political leaders are willing to close surplus classroom, consolidate hospitals and clinics and take a meat cleaver to the associated labour force.

To be fair, though, who’s going to do that?

Our deficit, it seems, will be with us for a while.

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Feb 01 2016
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Economy, Politics

For whom the road tolls

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“Popular” is not exactly the word that leaps to mind when talking about toll roads and tax hikes, but if you’re contemplating steps to render both as facts of life for New Brunswickers, a little spin goes a long way.

So it was earlier this week when the provincial minister of the Gallant government’s strategic review, Victor Boudreau, and Finance Minister Roger Melanson, very nearly spilled the beans, observing that of all the options for eliminating the provincial deficit they’ve presented to the public, the most “popular” were tolling roads and raising the HST.

Of course, neither Liberal MLA spoke directly to either issue in advance of next week’s budget, preferring, instead, to issue vague assessments of the vox populi’s current mood on the twin subjects of spending cuts and revenue raising.

Mr. Boudreau: “There has been a lot of work being done over the last number of months. I do think you’re going to see something that is going to, at the end of the day, address the fiscal challenge we are facing as a province, but doing it while maintaining. . .balance.. . .New Brunswickers have made it clear they don’t want to see deep cuts to health care and education.”

He also allowed that the debate over toll roads has been the most interesting component of the consultations: “A lot of people want tolls, but very few people want to pay for them.”

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: This province’s existential problem in a nutshell. We New Brunswickers want to lasso the moon; we just don’t want to buy the rope.

In this, of course, we’re no different than anyone else. Still, our unique set of economic circumstances insists that we adopt a colder-eyed approach to solving our shared problems than ever before.

When Mr. Gallant began his review of government spending months ago, he declared that everything was on the table – on both the expenditure and revenue side of the ledger.

If that’s true, then next week’s budget should reveal a dramatically reduced (in both size and cost) civil service, with those savings redirected into strategies and programs that are likely to grow the economy and create jobs and, in so doing, goose tax revenues to public coffers.

But let’s not kid ourselves. We are well past the point where even the most efficiently run government and bureaucracy can pull our fat from the fire. This is not an overnight proposition. It will take years of lean, mean management in the public sector to keep the ship of state of a steady keel.

In the meantime, emergency measures are urgently, if lamentably, necessary. And that means tolls and taxes, neither of which, incidentally, need be especially onerous.

Virtually every economist I’ve consulted over the years stipulates that taxes on consumption are eminently more efficient and fundamentally fairer than levies on income. What’s more, those who subsist below a certain standard of living ought to receive rebates equal to their HST outlays.

Indeed, if all provinces along the East Coast actually harmonized again their harmonized sales taxes into one 15 per cent regime for all, as Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil suggests they do, the unfair competitive pressures on the private sector would melt.

Tolls are somewhat more difficult to administer and collect than taxes without undermining the monetary value of the exercise, itself. But it can be done, and to great effect, as it is in other jurisdictions across North America.

Think of taxes and roadway fees as temporary measures that, nonetheless, toll for thee.

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Dec 30 2015
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Politics

And the winning N.B. newsmaker is. . .

 

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He’s young in spirit, photogenic, energetic, and the premier of New Brunswick. He’s also old of heart, camera-shy, fundamentally calculating, and the heir to at least 50 years of Liberal Party politics in this province.

Grit Leader Brian Gallant earns his position as provincial newsmaker of the year as much for what he has refused to do over the past 12 months as for what he did.

Faced with a $500-million annual deficit and a $12.5-billion debt, he promised to revamp the public accounts, cutting and slashing, burning and burying, as he went. He did the opposite in 2015 – preferring, instead, to consult and research and “recalibrate” the work his civil servants do in order to “understand”. . .well. . .exactly what his civil servants do on any given day.

Faced with a systemic unemployment rate of between 8.7 and 15 per cent in this province (depending on which region of New Brunswick he was reviewing), Mr. Gallant chose to blame the previous, federal Tory government for local labour-market woes even as he courted the current Liberal administration in Ottawa for financial redress – something he said he would never do should the political winds blow his way.

They did, and now he wants more money from Fat City to help balance the books he once said should be settled through homegrown innovation, competitiveness and entrepreneurship.

At the same time, the youngest premier in Canada (all of 33 years old) has managed to both enrage and engage the oldest voting population in the country. In 2015, he raised taxes on the wealthy and threatened to impose an asset-based means test for seniors care. On the flip side, he asked Ottawa to turn the province into a national “test lab” for geriatric care and conditioning.

As he said the other day, “I have always made it very clear that we need extra support from the federal government because of our aging population. The federal government has an opportunity to test run what programs will work to overcome those challenges.”

Indeed, the subject of dichotomies remained close to Mr. Gallant’s chest in 2015. Somehow, a pipeline, brimming with Alberta oil was an economically and environmentally sound proposition, despite that it would transport some of the dirtiest hydrocarbons in the world into all of our metaphorical backyards. Conversely, New Brunswick’s premier took umbrage at the shale-gas industry’s determination to defend its eminently clean record of development in the province over the past ten years.

On the pipeline, Mr. Gallant had this to say in October: “If we as a country are going to develop our natural resources and energy projects, we need to have a brand and credibility with Canadians and the international community.”

On shale gas development in New Brunswick, the premier had only this to add earlier this week: “I think New Brunswickers on all sides of this issue – people with diverging opinions – would like this subject to be dealt with. Once we see the recommendations (from a three-member, government-appointed panel) we will study and analyze them, take them into consideration and make our decisions.”

Finally, late in 2015, Mr. Gallant sent missionaries to test the waters for a “new approach” to economic development in New Brunswick.

As plans go, theirs’ wasn’t bad – young in spirit, old of heart, camera-shy and fundamentally calculating. The message from the premier was unmistakably familiar: maybe we’ll listen to you, maybe we won’t.

It was just, I dare say, the sort of news making machinery we in New Brunswick appreciate.

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Dec 29 2015
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Demographics, Economy, Politics

A hand-out by any other name

Who says I'm not happy?

Premier Brian Gallant’s decision to ask the newly elected Liberal government of Justin Trudeau to pony up new money for seniors’ care in this province is a bold move. But it could also be a very bad one.

In his end-of-the-year interview with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Mr. Gallant welcomed an $80-million-plus increase to New Brunswick in federal transfers next year. “I am very happy to hear that we are going to have the transfer conversation,” he said, sounding almost dismissive.

Still, he continued, “I have always made it very clear that we need extra support from the federal government because of our aging population. . .New Brunswick is facing an aging population that is more significant than almost any other province in the country. Therefore, the federal government has an opportunity to test run what programs will work to overcome those challenges.”

This is the tried-and-true “canary in the coalmine” argument that one level of government, fiscally subservient to another, routinely makes when it can’t quite figure out how to address the economic and demographic realities it faces.

Newfoundland and Labrador now faces an annual deficit of $2-billion, which dwarfs New Brunswick’s by a factor of four. Canada’s western provinces, reeling under a spot price for oil that barely nudges the $36-per-barrel mark, are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Do these jurisdictions – whose populations are, by the way, also aging – deserve any less consideration from Ottawa than does New Brunswick?

Yet, Mr. Gallant, all of 33 years old, persists. This province, he says, could and should become a test lab for federal programs (read: handouts) over and above the Canada Health Transfer that will putatively teach legislators at all levels of government across this great, aging nation how to properly care for old folks in their senescence, in the sunset of their years.

It sounds great, but it feels wrong and for a variety of reasons.

Presently, even the smartest, most perspicacious New Brunswick bureaucrats can’t tell you exactly when, how or why the province’s aging population will compromise the ship of state in these harbours we call home. Some say, doom has already descended. Others insist we have several years before we notice a deleterious difference in our standards of living. Still others declare, optimistically, that septuagenarian baby boomers represent an untapped resource – a resource whose potential is yet to be fully plumbed.

What’s missing in all of this is real, credible research that would justify a broad, multi-million-dollar ask from the feds to address a problem New Brunswick hasn’t actually parsed with any degree of social-policy, let alone scientific, rigour. It feels panicky, precipitous and, in the end, disastrously misaligned.

There’s also something distressingly infantilizing about all of this.

Shall the rest of Canada care for the elderly in New Brunswick over and above the degree they already do simply because an actuarial table over at Statistics Canada shows that the population here is getting older?

Again, how many of these people live below the poverty line? How many live well above it? Answer these questions, and then, perhaps, have a useful, evidence-based chat with Ottawa.

Fundamentally, no government anywhere in this nation has money to burn. Our grown kids can’t find the sort of work we once hoped they would. They can’t locate affordable, high-quality childcare. They can no longer expect to be better off, more prosperous or happier than their parents.

Building the base for their futures seems, to me, a better use of public money than securing the dwindling years of people like me.

Trust me, I ain’t near rich enough to afford a government-backed handout to myself.

 

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Dec 02 2015
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Business, Economy, Government, Politics

Don’t fear the reaper

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Sooner or later, the horseman with the scythe was always coming to New Brunswick, brandishing his blade to cut down the high and low among us. Still, who knew he would materialize in the form of a 33-year-old lawyer-cum-politician from a Sleepy Hollow known as Shediac Bridge?

Premier Brian Gallant, and his operatives in government, are deadly serious about reducing the province’s annual spending load by $600 million, hoping, in turn, to replenish the public accounts and avoid structural bankruptcy before bond-holders on Wall and Bay Streets get wise to the fact that we haven’t known, for years, what we’ve been doing (economically and fiscally, at least) to Canada’s picture-perfect province.

We know now; and it boils down to this: With a $600-million deficit, a $12-billion debt, a population tipping 750,000 on a good day, and an out-migration rate that rivals historical exoduses in almost biblical terms, we simply can’t afford ourselves. Under these circumstances, who could?

Of course, we may know this, deep in our East Coast bones, but do we accept the consequences of our perennial profligacy? Do we actually “get” the fact that we are the authors of our own misfortune? After all, to paraphrase the inimitable Bob Dylan, the hour is late and all along the watchtower, princes keep the view. . .Outside in the distance a wildcat does growl. Two riders are approaching, and the wind begins to howl.

That’s winter for you in southeastern New Brunswick; but one of the riders who now visits us is an all-season, equal-opportunity reaper and nothing, it seems, will distract him from his appointed rounds.

Here’s the latest on the issue from the editorial desk of the CBC last week:

“The New Brunswick government is proposing a long list of cuts, measures to boost revenue and ways to overhaul the delivery of government services to eliminate the province’s $600-million structural deficit. Health Minister Victor Boudreau, the minister responsible for the strategic program review, announced the report at a news conference on Friday.”

Specifically, the minister said, “We want to provide for more opportunity for New Brunswickers to comment on the report. But it is not necessary (to conduct)another round of public consultation, like I did before.”

That’s code for: “Yeah, we’ve talked to New Brunswickers till we’ve gone blue in the face; so, dear citizens, deploy the public porto-potty of open opinion, or. . .well, vacate the pot forthwith.”

Here’s what’s heading towards the political abattoir over the next few months: The idea that drivers get to ride the roads in this province for free (some form of tolls for casual and industrial wheel-men and women are practically inevitable); the notion that smokers and drinkers will be saved from another hike in the cost of their so-called vices (of course, we’d quit, if we didn’t understand how valuable our shekels are to the provincial economy); and the long-standing, utterly absurd protest against a prudent hike in the Harmonized Sales Tax.

As for this last measure, a two per cent increase (from 13 to 15 per cent), accompanied by reasonable exemptions for low-income New Brunswickers, would generate an additional $250-million a year for this province.

Regardless, the horseman comes, brandishing the tools of his trade.

Now, it remains for us to duck his scythe by building the innovative, inventive, productive private sector that will prevent us from ever again laying down our heads on the chopping blocks of economic necessity. 

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Oct 17 2015
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Business, Economy, Politics

Brian Gallant’s big break?

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With his approval rating dropping into the political dumpster, the premier of New Brunswick needed a convincing win, one year into his mandate. He got it with BMM Testlabs’ announcement that, with the province’s help, the company will create 1,000 good jobs in Moncton, though not all at once.

Now, can Brian Gallant maintain the momentum the province evidently needs?

In a commentary the premier penned for this newspaper organization last month, he declared how pleased he was to have participated in the “biggest job announcement ever sponsored by government in New Brunswick’s history.”

The fact to which he referred was that the province had put real skin into the game – ultimately in the form of taxpayers’ dollars – not only to keep a satellite office of an international company in the environs around Moncton, but to help expand it: 200 well-paid positions each year over the next five.

To be clear, BMM Testlabs is an Aussie operation that makes its bones by making sure that gaming companies don’t run afoul of their particular jurisdictions’ rules and regulations. It maintains outposts in its home country, the U.S., South Africa, and, of course, Canada, among many others.

In other words, as a player in a government-regulated industry it needs and gets all the public-sector support it can handle. In fact, that is its global, strategic imperative. But, really, in this marketplace, whose isn’t?

Private companies and corporations troll the world for “business-friendly” jurisdictions – those that provide tax incentives, skills-development initiatives and various “move-in/move-up” allowances.

In fact, former Liberal Premier Frank McKenna made an unapologetic career out of the tactic in the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s – even going so far as to set up an international 1-800 line that connected directly to him. I actually dialed the number once in 1990 just to see if it worked. It did.

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: “Uh. . .Hullo, Mr. Premier. I was just phoning to determine whether this thing of yours was, well, real.”

McKenna: “It is. What can I help you with?”

Me: “Uuumm…do you have pop in a bottle?”

McKenna: “Why, in fact, in Sussex, I do.

Me: “Then you better let him out as mum wants him home for dinner.”

Click, and the dead-phone hum ensued.

I assume that when BMM and Opportunities New Brunswick got together, a childish prank like this was declared verboten. After all, says Mr. Gallant in his column, “Good government policy opens the door for job creation.”

Somehow, that goes to this: “We are supporting responsible resource development projects. We are excited about the thousands of jobs that could be created from major projects, such as the Energy East Pipeline, the LNG terminal in Saint John and the Sisson Mine. All of these projects have moved closer to reality under this government and we will continue to work to make them happen. If these projects go forward, nearly 10,000 jobs will be created at their peak.”

Before we, of course, descend to the infantile humor that such a claim requires (something about unicorns farting rainbows), let us just pause, for a moment, and consider the implications of Mr. Gallant’s broader claims.

BMM’s announcement is great news. But its determination to create jobs is not, necessarily, deterministic. Anything can happen (and often does) with domestic and offshore companies.

The idea is to keep every possibility in play, and never allow one big jobs announcement triumph over the long-term objective of building economic vigor and diversity – or, in truth, goose one particular premier’s poll numbers.

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Sep 23 2015
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Democracy, Politics

The crowns of our careers

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When I was 33, I was schlepping phone books, on temporary assignment in the back end of Halifax’s Fairview neighbourhood.

When Brian Gallant was 33, he was ending the first year of his inaugural term as premier of New Brunswick.

Who, I wonder, had the better deal?

In my case, all I had to do was forget the fact that the publisher of the magazine that had employed my wife and me as editors and production managers had gone bankrupt, concentrate on the then and now, and pick up enough loose change to fill the gas tank and deliver the yellow pages to gulags of apartment complexes.

In Mr. Gallant’s circumstances, all he had to do was reconcile a provincial budget that ran hundreds-of-millions of dollars into the red with the fulsome expectation of a jurisdiction, hosting 750,000 people, which would clamor, loudly, for its regular, reliable entitlements – including, perhaps, why it was no longer getting free phone books every April 1.

This is one of the reasons why, when I have been asked by various political parties over the years to run as a candidate on their tickets, I have politely, but firmly, stated: “I would rather be road kill on the Trans-Canada, stuck in the grill of a RAM ProMaster van, than live to answer questions from people like me, over and over again.”

This is, of course, why Brian Gallant is a better citizen of this province than I. So are David Alward, Shawn Graham, Bernard Lord, Camille Theriault, and even Frank McKenna, who doesn’t even live here anymore.

Each of them chose to run for, and succeed to, public office, knowing the costs to their personal lives and well being, knowing how fully ridiculed and hated they would become. Each of them, in their own ways, made peace with that inevitability.

This is not to say that those who aren’t inclined to throw their hats into the political ring should let those who are off the hook. This is, after all, our remnant of democracy.

So, to Mr. Gallant, on the anniversary of his first year as premier of New Brunswick, I say: Good start.

You’ve managed to get just about every constituency angry: Seniors, public servants, educators, health-care professionals, and ambulance drivers.

In fact, that’s what a first-term premier is supposed to do – level the playing field, shake out the winter carpets, prepare for political springtime. People don’t pay attention to the condition of their own lives until they are well peeved.

The corollary to this is, of course, to generate one, truly magnificent idea around which to rally a disaffected and disengaged public – not three, not two, just one good, durable notion that will catalyze a productive, prosperous society.

You might begin this way:

Talk more, in the next year, about giving back to New Brunswick not the trinkets and baubles the federal government sometimes allows, but the power and capital local communities require to collaborate and thrive together.

Build a true consensus across county and municipal lines for common social and economic needs in our hospitals, clinics and schools.

Ensure that every kid in this province learns to read, write and speak both English and French to an international standard. Deliberately remodel New Brunswick as a center of excellence in math, science and literature.

Finally, lay the foundation for civil discourse in this province; make facts rule the public conversation.

You, Mr. Gallant, are only 33. Your whole life is ahead of you. And, from my perspective, at age 55, you have the better deal.

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Sep 20 2015
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Climate, Economy, Energy

Whither our energy future?

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When New England’s state governors and Atlantic Canada’s provincial premiers gather, as they are inclined to do every so often at a suitably picturesque venue along the northeastern seaboard of this continent – where they may gaze into each other’s eyes, which mirror their own – they most often talk of stronger trade ties, better cross-border relations and, of course, energy agreements, always energy agreements.

So it was earlier this month in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where the usual suspects assembled to conduct their usual business for their usual day. The evidence that these meetings produce anything truly tangible or productive is scant, but they do tend to generate good headlines.

Here, for instance, New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant’s assertion that the province must push ahead on an export-oriented LNG terminal to handle all that natural gas in the ground he’s not pulling up around here (because, don’t you know, it could be perilous to his political health) ran above the fold in provincial newspapers.

What didn’t is a piece which postulates that New Brunswick is ideally suited to chart an entirely different course for its energy future and, possibly, for the entire northeast and rest of Canada.

So, then, here is that piece:

Almost nowhere in Canada does the wind blow more constantly and hard than it does along New Brunswick’s coasts. In fact, a wind map produced in 2007 by scientists at the University of Moncton definitively proved that steady breezes could support nearly all of this province’s in situ energy demands, and then some. Wind is, obviously, a zero greenhouse-gas-emission option. More than that, the research required to commercialize it would rejuvenate the high-tech manufacturing sector here, providing good-paying, year-round jobs to (at least) complement seasonal employment in traditional resources industries.

Similarly, almost nowhere in this country do the tides ebb and flow with greater power and regularity than they do in the Bay of Fundy. For decades, the western world has owned the ingenuity (if not always the technology or the will to develop it) to produce thousands of megawatts of clean, emissions-free power.

Scotland is, arguably the market leader. Last year, Edinburgh-based Atlantis Resources Limited announced that its “MeyGen, the world’s largest tidal stream development, has agreed terms for a funding package to finance the construction of the first phase of its ground-breaking 398MW tidal array project in the Pentland Firth, Scotland. When fully completed, the MeyGen project will have the potential to provide clean, sustainable, predictable power for 175,000 homes in Scotland, support more than 100 jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and deliver significant, long-term supply chain benefits for UK economy.”

Of course, if we don’t believe in Scotland, what shall we then say about Sweden? According to recent piece in The New Yorker by staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, “In some parts of Europe, what has been called ‘conscious uncoupling’ (between gross domestic product and greenhouse gas emissions) is already well along. Sweden, one of the few countries that tax carbon, has reduced its emissions by about 23% in the past 25 years. During that same period, its economy has grown by more than 55 per cent.”

Oddly enough, the steam engine found its first industrial purchase in New Brunswick where in the early 18th Century it was modified to produce the timber that built the British navy.

Innovation was good enough for us then, when our political leaders didn’t simply gaze placidly into each other’s eyes; when they took a main chance and changed the world for the better at that time.

Now that we know better, will they change it again?

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Aug 31 2015
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Business

Give sober review to trade laws

It would take something like beer to upend the Constitutional status quo of this country – if, of course, it ever does.

Consider the strange case of Gerard Comeau who was caught crossing the border from Quebec into New Brunswick with 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor in 2012. According to an antiquated Prohibition-era law, that’s a big no-no.

Mr. Comeau is now on trial for violating the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act, which states that individuals are allowed to bring one bottle of wine or liquor or 12 pints of beer into the province at any given time.

According to a CBC analysis of the historical context underlying the case, “The Canadian law regarding the shipping of alcohol was meant to thwart bootleggers, and led to a gradual devolution of federal responsibility to the provinces in matters relating to liquor. Each province established an agency that oversees the distribution, sale and consumption of wine, beer and spirits.”

The CBC piece quoted Mark Hicken, a Vancouver attorney who specializes in interpreting Canada’s quirky interprovincial trade regulations, thusly: “A lawyer down in California once said to me, ‘You can’t understand any North American liquor laws unless you trace them back to Prohibition.’ You look at any regulatory structure in North America and if it was examined in a global perspective, you’d look at it in stunned disbelief, like ‘What is going on here?’ It really does go back to the Prohibition mentality of control.”

Added Mr. Hicken: “The shipping laws were brought in to stop the inter-provincial bootlegging traffic following the repeal of Prohibition at different times and in different provinces. Today, the major reason for the continuation of those laws is money – the liquor boards want to maintain absolute control over all liquor in their jurisdiction so they can levy a liquor board mark-up on it.”

Bingo, and that, sadly, is the lay of the land for so many other brands of goods and services in Canada.

Without commenting on the merits, or demerits, of the specific case against Mr. Comeau, I will say that this nation’s arcane, out-dated and just, plain bizarre interprovincial trade rules are stunning incongruities at a time when federal officials are successfully negotiating, or renegotiating, sweeping commercial agreements with the United States, European Union and the Asia-Pacific. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“As we approach the 150th anniversary of Canada’s founding in 2017, we still have some unfinished business to deal with,” University of Prince Edward Island political scientist Peter McKenna has recently written. “It comes in the form of pernicious and persistent internal trade barriers between provinces.

“There is no disputing that the founding partners of Confederation had in mind unfettered trade and commerce between them. In fact, section 121 of the Canadian Constitution states: ‘All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.’”

Now, we face the very real prospect of welcoming European cheese into our local marketplace where Canadian-made craft beer and wine from outside our resident province are outlawed.

Does this make any sense to consumers or producers? The answer is as obvious as its corollary: interprovincial trade barriers benefit, most reliably, cash-strapped provincial governments.

But even when they don’t, the sheer inertia of the status quo virtually guarantees that nothing changes, despite the well-meaning noises various premiers make about finally getting things done.

Will the Comeau case make a difference?

I’d cheer that efficacious outcome.

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Jul 16 2015
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Economy, Politics

Who let the dogs out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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