So what you were actually saying was that at the exact point of his election he was talking about transforming the way government is done?:)

Policies should be evidence-based. Mills in Canada have become less competitive for a number of reasons, not just the rise in the dollar. I have seen the Forbiiden Forest video; but the points made in the video don’t explain the mill closures, they simply point out how badly the forest is managed. That’s an issue separate from the mill closures.

“It wasn’t hindsight that was pointing out the rise in the canadian dollar, in fact that was part of the NAFTA agreement and it was well known that Paul Martin was implementing policies ”

No, it wouldn’t be hindsight - it would be just making stuff up. Do you have any evidence to support those claims, or was the data carried away by black helicopters?

“So while it IS the government’s ‘fault’, that doesn’t mean no other groups other than the 58 sitting members or the Premier are to blame.”

Thanks for agreeing with me.

The only public dialogue to date has been hostility to the idea, mainly on the basis that taxes for those now in LSDs (where we have no govt and no mechanism for advocating for our area) will go up. And they will go up. Trouble is, they are going to go up either way as GNB lacks the fiscal capacity to continue to subsidize rural NB to the extent it is now. People have little idea of what their taxes pay for, either on a provincial or federal level, and have little idea what these services actually cost. Seems to me we need to start with more information delivery; perhaps some fact-based dialogue would start after that.

There certainly is room in NB (especially now) for a few community forest pilot projects. There are over 50 such assns in BC, but many have been established in recent years and a decade or two will be needed to see how well they really operate. The recent growth of these assns in BC is a response to the collapse of the industry in BC; there is not much evidence yet that this approach will be a cure. Lots of potential, tho.

The focus right now here in NB is on disputes between woodlot owners and mills re price for product. If some of that crown allocation was transferred to community forest assns, how would the woodlot owners react? Would they see that as a threat, or an opportunity? This is another one of those areas where transparency and public debate is lacking in this province.

Dr Dennis Furlong has suggested that we all get health accounts into which GNB would allocate a certain amount of money; funds would then be withdrawn from the accounts to pay for routine healthcare services. The idea, I guess, is that we would watch the balance go down and adjust our use of the system accordingly. Seems to me, however, that this would be an administrative nightmare that would be hugely expensive. First, there would have to be steps taken to ensure that the charges all went to the right account, then there would have to be a delivery system that gave us access to the account. In addition, we would have to have access to an appeal system in case we felt that charges were wrongly assigned or incorrect. Not to mention what to do about costly or catestrophic illness.

A user fee system would also be administratively costly, especially if there was a fee waiver for low-income persons, students, etc. I’d rather avoid all that but I’m not sure cost containment can be achieved when health care is just a hot issue politically.

“Every natural gas user in New Brunswick ‘owns’ over $15,000 worth of Enbridge Gas NB deferral account exposure because that is the per customer amount sitting in that account - which, by definition, will be paid down through future revenue taken from said customers.”

I don’t understand this. When Enbridge Gas NB set up shop here did GNB provide them funds (which we “own”) that they pay back using future profits?

IT : what sectors? mobile? elearning? server hosting?
Aerospace : training? servicing? defense related?
Forestry : Hopefully value added niches
Agriculture : Potatoes, Aquaculture

What with the NBPower thing keeping the liberals name in the news, and this new charge about paying Robichaud’s widow illegally, I’m a little suspicious of that poll. It’s at least a hopeful sign, since the liberals were stepping in it so often that there was a real fear of a Mckenna repeat-and that would be bad for everybody. Although we really don’t know much, I’d suggest a lot of that 41% are not going to end up voting at all-particularly if there is only a choice of two in their riding.

Alward has tried to make energy a ‘defining issue’, but its such a broad category. Anyway, if you recall on the complaints about a focus on local roads, public insurance and toll highways, the LAST thing you want is ONE defining issue-a government has to do a lot of work in a lot of departments.

Don’t pander to me by saying I will get everything I want, no new taxes and the deficit/debt is ok.

I want more game changing ideas like the sale of NB Power, regardless of whether you agreed with it or not, it was a game changer. I think those sorts of ideas move the status quo, not pandering to this or that segment of the population, spending $1million here, a $1million there.

Don’t promise me 20,000 jobs, deliver them, “show me the money”.

Don’t spend time chasing old widow’s pensions. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Lead.

The blog is from the Common Front for Social Justice which provides a point by point glossary of why these changes are BAD for the poor. Academics, of course, completely ignore policies such as these for just describing statistics. Here is all the research all done up, and emailed directly to Lamrock so he can read it. Of course, when he was holding all these summits he could have brought it up then and had a discussion, but I talked to many at the meetings and as far as I can tell this change was never even brought up.

So social policy doesn’t need a new organization to connect to research, information comes right to an MLA’s doord. So again, I suspect its that this is the kind of ‘research’ that the government wants to see.

But of course there is the same old problem, when you have no power, what is the point of ‘engaging in conversation’. While its true there is tons of rubbish, Richard really doesn’t know what he’s talking about in reference to the NBPower debate because there was far more research on there than he suspects. Of course there was rubbish too, but I remember hearing the quote that ‘if you want to be indoctrinated, go to school, if you want to be educated, go to the library’. So what is ‘rubbish’ to one person may well be pertinent information to another. Of course there is the problem of BAD information, but again we have a perfect example in the NBPower debate, where it has turned out that virtually EVERYTHING the government stated as ‘fact’ has turned out to be lies. In fact, I was on facebook and I can tell you there were more lies from the government than on facebook-and almost even on a grander scale in some cases.

The problem here is that New Brunswicks GDP can EASILY rise 3-5% without much environmental effect. We know that ‘industry’ has to be used to make those solar cells that were going to come from Miramichi, but thats a far different industry than an oil refinery.

As for energy use, there’s a reason why electronics has been one of the most active industries in reducing its ecological footprint-and thats that youth are making the environment one of their purchasing choices. If you find an old guy with a 30 year old television, he will use more electricity than all the gadgets most youth have combined. There are more solar chargers out there for small gadgets than you can shake a stick at. Yes, it takes energy to make them, but each new product brings the technology to a new stage. And also, industry itself is more energy effecient than it used to be.

So youth certainly don’t have to give up their gadgets, particularly if you consider that the microwave has pretty much taken over for the stove, which means the average youth uses FAR less energy than we did growing up. So I think the whole conservation/reduction thing is a bit of a red herring. Good for that girl for joining an organization, and sometimes good things can even come from bad information.

This from a government that wouldn’t even sign their own legislation to grant basic human rights to 30,000 people. Just take a look at the next blog-corporate taxes down 14% from already amongst the lowest in the country and you can see where their priorities are.

Research has never been easier, for poverty the liberals held their own ’summits’ where they got TONS of direct feedback directly from the poor themselves and poverty organizations. Senior organizations do even more lobbying and more research, and its all just a click away with a mouse. These guys are VERY well paid and have staffs, as well as one of the fewest days of actual sitting in the country, so there is simply no ‘excuse’ for it. They certainly don’t need yet another organization to make recommendations, what I suspect is that with Andy Scott they want somebody to talk to academics to get the kind of research that the government LIKES to hear.

Introduce a new tax on gasoline- 10 cents a litre, and buy insurance against future industrial accidents causing environmental nightmares.

Build small businesses to value add NB resources and increase the base for corporate tax. Start in the arts and culture sector.

It’s not just the Facebook generation that has this problem, we all do. If you confine yourself to NB’s economic situation for example, there is a huge knowledge gap out there that makes it very difficult to get much rational discussion from anyone. The social media being employed are irrelevant when most of the ‘information’ being distributed is crap. Our ability to distribute our thoughts has out-stripped our knowledge of the subject areas being discussed.

“Young people today are more aware of each other, their communities, and the world in which they live than we were in the 1980s”

1980s? Sheesh, some of us went thru that in the 60s. Nothing new here really, just the power to spread nonsense faster than ever before.

Without census data, as you suggest, businesses and organizations will be required to pay for demographic data. It is entirely consistent with Harper’s approach that such services ought to be provided by private enterprise, rather than government.

If the left-wing social policy activists are disadvantaged, that’s a bonus, but possibly not the core motivation for Harper.

We in New Brunswick have to get past the retention thing, and to begin seriously courting immigration. There is a world out there that wants to be a part of Canada. NB should be their gateway.

Straw-man stories about the ‘Facebook generation’ are not examples of that thinking.

BUT – your indictment of “the facebook generation” is given entirely without context. While every cohort does complain about the next generation, our generation is completely in the dark if we chose to cite examples such as the one you’ve given without looking at what is really happening in society. Can you really discount the efforts of this young lady (which seem to me to be considerable and don’t even mention moving the problem offshore) because of her geographical error? Could she have meant “Saint John” where she would have seen smokestacks in the area where ships were once built?

Don’t look only at how young people are consuming electronic gadgetry and social media – take a look at what they are producing with these tools. Our generation consumed media too, but what did we produce as teenagers, how did we contribute to the solutions?

Young people today are more aware of each other, their communities, and the world in which they live than we were in the 1980s. Young people are embracing service learning, they are collaborating across borders, they are organizing movements and they are pushing to be heard on the issues we all face. ( http://twitter.com/studentvote, http://www.freethechildren.com/, http://www.globalyouthvoices.org/ etc)

We need to find ways to bring all citizens, young and old, connected and not, into the conversation on what we need to give up. We need to start listening to the voices struggling to be heard because they ARE speaking.

This is the video of the UNB Energy Symposium held in June of this year. Some of your data are presented, David. Two depressing highlights: the appallingly superficial grasp of the issues held by a certain CBC reporter, and the questions from the audience (hilarious yet simultaneously depressing).

BIg Business can buy the information they want, and special interest groups are a drain to government resources. They eliminated government funding for legal challenges, and now this is another change that will make the work of social policy advocates more difficult, more expensive, or impossible to do.

We have an ideologically motivated Prime Minister. Why is anyone surprised?

Were Harper primarily a pragmatist leader rather than a cynical politician, this interpretation of their motivation could well be considered a conspiracy theory. In light of Harper’s displayed commitment to ideology and branding above functional necessity (climate change would be the best example), electing future Conservative majorities seems the only incentive worth all the trouble that this decision has caused.

Excellent phrase- I hope you don’t mind it if we employ this idea freely in talks with government to help induce regular support for development in the Arts and Culture sector.

Nobody is completely non partisan, and again, if there were some actual policies to come out of here, then at least there would be some discussion on whether any parties listen. Its not partisanship if you criticize EVERYONE. Its a weird kind of objectivity that says ‘I don’t want to be biased so I won’t talk about it at all’.

Keep in mind also that Atlantic Fine Yarns benefitted from BOTH parties, and both parties were deeply involved in the Caissie Populaire scandal. Again, the two political parties in NB are virtually identical in their effects, and often in their policies.

Don’t know where the Churchill thing comes from, but Churchill was never a ‘fan’ of Stalin, and was by no means a supporter. He did cave in at Yalta, even though he wasn’t quite as gullible as Roosevelt, who was as numb as they come. However, Churchill was just as ‘totalitarian’, and his greatest fear was the support the russians might give India in its quest for independance. Again, Churchill wanted to ruthlessly crush the rebellion in a country that had helped them win the war and keep it as a colony. He asked both the US and Canada for aid, Canada’s Mackenzie King told him to take a flying leap. The totalitarianism in Great Britain was quite different from the soviet union, but it was still totalitarianism. When George Orwell wrote 1984 he quite specifically said he was referring to Great Britain, NOT the soviet union (the former had spies rooting out dissention, Stalin just took whole groups and killed them). There’s no doubt which is worse, but that doesn’t make one of them ‘good’.

There is nothing in the Equalization Program about economic development because that is not the focus of this program.

But on the question of regional economic development, there is the role of the federal government to ensure that all regions benefit from Confederation. If we embrace the “Grand Bargain” concept, the creation of a federal state has to yield benefits for all participants. If Ontario and Quebec benefit from major investments like the St. Laurence Seaway or the creation of crown corporations, then the other provinces have an expectation for similar levels of investment to bolster economic growth and prosperity (i.e. railways).

However, I think I am starting to stray from my main point, which is that the Equalization Program is doing what it is intended to do. If we want a new approach to regional economic development, we can do it through other means.

And if anyone thinks that NB is benefitting from “Cadillac Schools” while Calgary is doing without knows nothing about schools in either NB or Calgary.

Chris Baker
Fredericton

It will be hard, for example, to argue that we need more doctors per capita because we lack certain facilities. That argument really makes no sense. You could argue that we need more doctors because more of us are more obese and smoke more than Albertans, but that won’t engender much sympathy.

That means that there will be support from the more populous and richer provinces for changes that ratchet down the amount of transfer. ON will feel that it is hard-pressed itself and can’t afford to send dollars to NB; AB will ignore the fact that its wealth is resource-based and say the NBers just do not work hard enough or smart emough.

Changing the formula to keep transfers at a certain level for a 5-yr period might be a way to encourage development efforts, but I think we need to have some agreement as to the form the development will have and what the focii will be. You would have to get the NBers to buy in first. That means some more transparency and honesty from politicians, a media that helps develop discussion, and a willingness by the NB population to look at some hard realities. I do not see much hope of any of those things happening soon, so I suspect we are in for a decade of slow decline as transfers are reduced. We will be a bit like the frogs in the cooking pot - we won’t notice that the water is getting hotter and hotter until it is too late.

And there’s a point to be made about the nature of equalization payments. Sure, there’s no argument a priori to be made against them being used to support economic development (provided ‘economic development’, an annoyingly vague term, does not simply mean ‘payments to companies’). But the purpose of transfer payments is to equalize wealth distribution.

No amount of economic development in New Brunswick is going to produce the wealth of Alberta’s pools of oil. Just as it was luck, not economic development, that allowed Alberta to move off the recipients’ list. That’s what transfer payments equalize. They are an explicit recognition that the wealth of Canada is shared by all Canadians, not some privileged subset of them.

So while there is room to support economic development with transfer payments, the two should not be linked, and it is false that they offset. And that, in turn, provides a good argument for the contention, widely held, that transfer payments ought to contribute to equity of social services across Canada.

What we ought to be doing is responding to the propaganda (”stories of how places like New Brunswick have Cadillac schools and more doctors per capita”) being used to undercut equity. New Brunswick has nothing resembling the health and education powerhouses in Alberta. If New Brunswick has more doctors, it is because it needs more, not being able to afford the modern facilities and equipment found at Foothills and the U of A Hospital (to name only two of many).

What does appear to be true is that, because of deficit spending, there will be increased pressure on social services funding in general over the next few years. This (not the equalization argument) supports the contention that there needs to be economic development spending now, that it cannot be deferred. But here, again, as always, we need some sense that it will be successful. If we’re simply going to hand out money, better to hand it out to citizens, who will spend it and develop something, rather than to business, who are just as likely to hoard it.

It would be interesting to have a link here to actual statistics and not have to take either side’s word for this.

THAT is not criticism, and its as unfair as the numerous commentors who post here and claim the blog is simply a tool of multinational firms because it says the province needs more investment. As soon as you say “people like this will say…” then you are getting out of criticism and into rhetoric or propaganda. Bad form.

Next, its beyond criticism when you go beyond what a person says and ‘assume’ you know what he means. Can you honestly say that bribery never brings an ‘international call centre’ to New Brunswick?? What, exactly, do you think brings them to NB? Is Exxon Mobil saying “wow, what a great find, I can’t believe everybody else doesn’t have call centres in NB, the people there are superhuman!”

I can’t believe anybody is that naive. In the end, it comes down to what numerous commentors have claimed before-make GOOD investments with good companies that have a track record and even a guarantee. Do that, and I doubt you will see that many complaints.

Now, if you want to hear REAL populist rhetoric, take a gander at Sean Graham making claims of how many thousands of jobs he plans on creating ‘IF’ he’s elected.

The people available for work in Northern New Brunswick, where I am, are service type employees with low levels of education. The skilled workers (and the hard workers) are all working, either here in good jobs (I think people would be amazed at the amount of small manufacturing that takes place up here) or in the far North and West.

If you are trying to attract skilled people to work here, an important factor in their decision is the education their children will receive. When your education system has a less than stellar performance history, then your ability to attract or even retain a labour force that is in demand becomes more difficult.

If I were Premier I would cut all direct investment in business, and move to a regime of tax credits. Reevaluate how we educate our children, and invite hi tech companies come and participate, and lay the groundwork for the next generation to be more successful than we have been.

As for populism, it is hardly a NB phenomenon. Populism drives American Politics. Political parties, and special interest groups have always and will always use it to gain a political advantage. That’ll never change. It’s part of democracy.

To understand why their is a populist anti big business feeling in New Brunswick, simply read the social history of New Brunswick. Business did a pretty good job of exploiting people, and that is only a generation or so ago.

Once bitten twice shy. That’s common sense from that era.

Has there actually been a rise in populism in recent years? Remember Charles Van Horne? I think there has been a strong populist vein in NB politics for many years. Issues like NB Power may bring it to the fore, certainly, but its always been there, bubbling below the surface, ready for exploitation by the political class.

I wonder if there is a correlation between strong populist feelings in a region and poor historical economic growth in that region? Along the same vein, I wonder if there is a correlation between poor historical levels economic growth in a region and the use of economic development funds in that region to buy votes with short-term low-wage projects, as opposed to using those funds to develop high-wage stable jobs? If you examine development spending in NB, a great deal of it is being used to support low-wage jobs.

In closing, I find it quite amusing that the PCs are trying to play the populist card wrt NB Power. It was the PCs who gave the Lepreau refit contracts to AECL without opening up the bidding process; it was the PCs who negotiated a replacement power contract that made NB responsible for purchasing most of the replacement power (not AECL); it was the PCs who then proceeded to hide the resulting mess from public view by breaking up NB Power into a series of corps, thereby hiding the Lepreau deferral acct from the public and keeping the PUB at bay. In short, they did everything to help big outfits ‘from away’ and hide the facts from the public. And these guys are now claiming to be populists? Sheesh.

- I think I can say pretty confidently that there are more than 15 people involved in economic development are working on attracting investment.

- And I am also positive that ACOA funds amounts larger than $500K.

So there’s a bit of overstating of the case in this post.

Also, even if it were true that there are only 15 people in the province focused on attracting investment from outside the province, it doesn’t follow that it is false that “the economic development efforts in New Brunswick are all focused on either big foreign national companies or a few large NB companies.”

So there’s a bit of loose logic in this post.

That doesn’t mean I disagree with the main thrust of the post. I agree that the populism isn’t helpful. But the argument that got you there misleads.

People are not opposed to supporting business *if* a good case can be made. But if it’s *just* a matter of giving them the money or giving us the money, with no difference in economic development, why not give us the money?

It needs to be shown not only that business isn’t the enemy (which is in fact a pretty irrelevant red herring) it needs to be shown that *particular* businesses that we choose to support are (a) honest, (b) not going to rip us off and exploit New Brunswickers, and (c) a *better* investment than spending on education, health care, roads or energy.

There are reasons why people rail against big business. There are (especially) reasons why people rail against local big business. To address economic development, we have to address those reasons.

Posting a column with factual errors and questionable logic isn’t doing it.

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

The Graham government can take a whole bunch of credit for the rise in populism in NB. Just the combined effect of the proposed NB Power sale giving Big Business the 30% rate decrease, immediately followed by the Atcon failure defined an “us vs them” scenario that’s going to be hard to shake. Other information that has come out because of these events add fuel to the fire - how many millions in government loans to big business aren’t paid back? How many are years behind on their taxes?

Would the average NBer get away with this? No way. Do we pick up “their” tab? Absolutely.

I’ve learned a lot about ED following this blog over the past nine months and I understand the need to attract and support business with the proper incentives. Admittedly, I don’t know much about the “best” way to go about it. Neither does government apparently.

We know the current FPTP electoral system isn’t working anymore. It shouldn’t be a surprise that New Brunswickers are looking for an alternative. Proportional Representation would be a good first step.

There are still significant silos in New Brunswick economic development efforts.

As to the coordinating/streaming of ED orgs; good idea, but it will require a lot of work and focus by someone to get that done. The ’single service desk’ approach makes sense but can the various orgs involved work together well-enough to make that happen?

Wonder if there is a correlation between private and/or public sector R&D investments (in medical sciences, especially) in a given state and the size of those industries in that state? Wisconsin, for example, (one of the top ten states) has a lot of uni spin-off biotech outfits that are mainly focused on supplying the health industry with products. Most of the top ten states have large R&D universities with excellent track records (although I suppose California’s unis will see a decline as the financial crisis there takes a bite out of spending).

The report also notes that, in the most productive states, there are 3 non-MTI jobs created for every MTI job.

The manufacturer of a Class II, III or IV medical device must obtain a device license before the product may be sold on the Canadian market. The requirements for obtaining such a license vary according to the risk classification of the device. Class II device license applications are fairly straight forward and require only basic information. Class III and IV applications are more involved and require the submission of substantial information to support the claims that safety and effectiveness requirements are met.

Besides, every state was doing well, even Alaska. Probably more to do with some kind of freedoms or business appreciation. The “you can do it” is a fundamentalist feely good. I know many who can do it, and they are doing it, IN Alberta.

Please read this fast, as it is set to be destroyed in 38 seconds! The standard length of honesty in the East.

That brings us back to the ‘medical tourism’ topic, and I suspect the administration of health, with two regional administrators,doesn’t help NB much. I’ve been pretty involved in the health field and here in ontario individual hospitals are pretty much standalone with direct competition with other hospitals. While there is still massive bureaucracy, theres a bit of a difference when both Cambridge and Guelph are asking for donations and your ’service’. It’s not at the point where they are advertising abroad, certainly, but they certainly are now very business oriented-for good and bad.

$60 million for 150 persons is $400,000 per person.

Now if the government gave me $400,000 I could almost live off the interest. Assuming I could find a good investment counsellor, I could quit my job.

This would have two effects. First, it would free up a good job position for someone. Ergo, one job created.

Second, it would allow me to do something creative with my time. I’m a smart guy; with my $40K per year cushion (plus or minus) I could probably bring in that much again as income. I could even start a business (but I don’t want to promise that).

The funny thing is - the net effect of giving *me* $400K is *exactly* the same as giving the money to Daewoo, yet we’ve been so conditioned over the years that we think the former is horrible and the latter is good business.

So conditioned, in fact, that we read articles where the author is afraid to *not* give the money to some corporation, lest we “disarm” ourselves.

There’s something very wrong with a logic that makes a government afraid to invest in its own people, and afraid not to give that same money to some outside investor.

The CBC had a good report (finally) on what most critics suspected (it was the same under Clinton in the US), in that while ontario has some ‘new’ jobs, they are not GOOD jobs. Bailing out the auto sector has of course helped get SOME of those jobs back.

Just some perspective, Waterloo is considered the ‘technology’ powerhouse of the east, maybe the country. Apart from RIM and those small companies at the new ‘accelerator centre’ there has been little new growth. The colleges, which used to advertise tool and die and machining training, now advertise carpetry and construction training. Of three new buildings going up, two were ’self storage’ businesses. The lazy boy factory that closed years ago is finally being torn down, the ‘for lease’ sign doesn’t seem to have done much, as half of the building space will be a new police station-and this is prime commercial land.

Rural areas typically have low tax rates, particularly today. They also have low housing, and often even special government subsidies. In other words, like an Ireland or California, or ontario, the ‘policies’ are there, but having good policies is no guarantee of success. Again, if there were a magic guarantee, there would be no slowdowns, and so ‘having faith’ is about as precarious in ED as living your life with the ‘faith’ that avoiding vice in this life will have you partying it up in heaven for eternity later.

And to also remind, we had this debate at mid peak when Ireland was the ‘tiger’. I thought it was strange because there was a whole new ex pat irish community here in ontario and I wondered why people would LEAVE a place with a booming economy. A lot of people look at the boom numbers and think that’s all there is to an economy, but by that thinking Saudi Arabia has a culture that we all should emulate. Ireland had the highest poverty rate in the OECD and the highest rate of child poverty in the EU. In economic development, if all that is happening is that you bring in new people who get rich, and the local rich people get richer, then what is point if the current inhabitants are no better off? Particularly when housing and other costs are about to skyrocket.

In a new age when labour and investment in europe is completely mobile, I don’t think I’d bet the farm on ANY ‘country’. Particularly since labour and investment agreements are making the whole notion of ED within ‘countries’ increasingly irrelevant. It’s a pretty bleak future when places like Greece will only be ‘booming’ once the people there become poorer. ED shouldn’t be about making SOME numbers look better-if it is, well, I’d hazard a guess as to why ED policies don’t get the emphasis some people want. The construction jobs are now gone, so the LNG terminal provides only a dozen jobs, but LOTS of cash for Irving. Is that REALLY ED?

That isn’t correct, as you can see from the EUB website. This has nothing to do with auditing, it has to do with the regulatory power of the EUB. Only Disco has to present its financial data to the EUB; the other corps, including the Financial Corp, do not. Thus debt servicing and the Lepreau deferral account are not accounted for. When included, NB Power is running a deficit. See the EUB meeting transcripts for examples.

In fact, if you go back to the 2000/2001 transcripts, you can see how embarrased NB Power brass became under the perceptive questioning of those who attended the hearings. Remember that was before NB Power was broken up. One of the rationales for the break up NB Power into several separate corps was that was supposedly a prelude to Lord selling off some of the units. But I think that Nb Power was in such a mess by then that the NB Power brass were afraid to go before the EUB. So when Lord proposed the breakup, the NB Power brass said ‘great idea, but how about we restrict the EUB to examining Disco’s books?’. That has resulted in 6 more years of bamboozlement and data-hiding.

This is not about opinion, its about data. Only part of the data is released to the public; that allows Hay and Thomas to make misleading statements. And it permits faux-journalists like the CBC’s Robert Jones to make bizarre claims. I wonder where he thinks the 4+ billion dollar debt comes from. Thin air at the CBC, perhaps? You can’t have a reasonable debate when most of the data are absent from public view, especially when the data that are available are twisted and misinterpreted by ‘professional’ journalists. You can critique the Irving press on many fronts, but they presented more data and more points of view on this issue than did CBC/NB.

” this debt will be paid off over the life of the nuclear plant”

Of course it will be paid off; all debts have to be paid off. But that forecast does not take the deferral account into the picture. In fact, NB Power rarely admits that the deferral account represents debt! The issue is how much power rates will have to rise to pay off that debt. The longer we pretend the problems are not there, the higher those rates will be.

But if you believe that the data is ALREADY so good and cheap and available, then why not make it more available? Businesses essentially write it off as a business expense which reduces their taxation, so its money that is gone anyway. If its ‘free’ then everybody pays, and when everybody pays, it could get that much better.

With regards to NBPower, they are admitting that they didn’t need a rate increase THIS year. And they know full well about Lepreau’s debt, although debt servicing costs were and are included.

The justification for Lepreau is that this debt will be paid off over the life of the nuclear plant, much in the same way as debt on building a new dam would be paid off over the life of the dam, but still results in a substancial ‘profit’.

So thats just a different interpretation of the data-at least as far as we know. In fact a recent CBC report stated that one of the entities that DON”T release their books is in even better shape than the ones that do. People can take from that what they want.

The NBPower debate DOES highlight the problems that Richard mentions, but he won’t admit that he may be the same as everybody else in getting biased data (everybody likes to think THEIR opinion is ‘unbiased’).

The problem is pretty deep in Canada. We have governments that are increasingly resorting to secrecy and the same sort of financial reporting that corporations admit to, and which makes getting good financial information almost impossible.

The problem at the next level is with the obvious media bias, apparant at CBC, and even worse at Irving. They are not only quite lazy, but usually biased-although the lazy may be even worse. This leaves those private organizations and people like Mr. Campbell to bring up the level, and their audience is limited. Even worse of course is that the entire population largely couldn’t care less.

Once again, I would advise readers interested in this topic to visit the EUB website and peruse the meeting transcripts. Its clear that when Hay and then Thomas made their ‘profit’ predictions they were not being straight-up with NBers. They were omitting the fact that their numbers did not include debt service costs or the Lepreau deferral account. When those numbers are included the ‘profit’ turns into a debt; adding to the over 4 billion dollar debt that ratepayers are stuck with.

This confusion could have been prevented had the EUB been given the regulatory authority to compell all the companies under the NB Power umbrella to disclose their financial documents. That lack of transparency has resulted in nonsence being repeated time and time again. That’s a good example of what happens when we have poor and insufficient data sets available for analysis.

“My point is that if you are looking for specific, detailed information that helps your business or gives you a competitive advantage, you should NOT be expecting StatsCan to do this work for free.” (I capped to highlight the typo, not beacuse I’m shouting.)

Chris

Like you (or at least I think I’m like you), I support paying my share to make our country a better place, even if I don’t directly benefit from these programs. That’s not my point.

My point is that if you are looking for specific, detailed information that helps your business or gives you a competitive advantage, you should be expecting StatsCan to do this work for free.

Basic and comprehensive information is already provided for free through the StatsCan website, even if it can be a grind trying to find things at times (believe me, I know). Stats on homelessness by province and municipal areas are available if you are looking to do some spadework - and staff at StatsCan have been known to guide you to the right spot.

The point that I am trying to make is that there is now way that StatsCan should be expected to do the work that others can pay for (and do charge their clients for) without compensation. Frankly, since StatsCan does not receive a subsidy or any direct funding from the Government of Canada, this is the only way that they can continue to provide the comprehensive free information they already provide. (Whether or not StatsCan should be funded as a Government Department rather than having to earn its way as a commerial crown is another debate entirely.)

To reiterate, I think we agree on the point of funding universal social programs. We may still disagree on whether or not it is appropriate for StatsCan to charge for custom data analysis.

Chris Baker

According to various news reports, Clements and Flaherty both wrote to Harper asking that the mandatory long form be kept. Clements ‘reasons’ for scrapping the long form are thin in part because Clements does not really know why Harper took the position he did.

This really has nothing to do with privacy concerns, IMHO. Neocons and libertarians don’t like high-quality data because such data almost always contradicts their points-of-view. Get rid of good data collection and we are left with uninformed opinions. That is the objective here; to reduce the role of data analysis in the making of public policy.

I’m none of those, yet there have often been serious issues that have arisen and the only way to find out the information was, you guessed it, to pay Statscan for it. Canada is already NOT the ‘envy of the world’ when it comes to transparancy and media vigilance-they may run a fairly tight ship and no doubt many a country’s leadership are envious of the way that the canadian government can keep such a tight noose over canadians without having to expend much effort. However, as far as government secrecy and media monopolies go, Canada is a joke even to americans.

I think the point is arguing about funding statscan, and personally I would MUCH rather pay to have good information available to the public for free rather than spending billions more on a few fighter jets and ships to guard an area of the country that few canadians have even seen. Thats just my opinion, as opposed to chris’.

Of course, you can go to the StatsCan website and enjoy the copious amounts of data that is provided for free. However, StatsCan is a commercial crown corporation. As such, it does not get any money from the Federal Budget - it has to earn its keep every day. Therefore, those who want to have more expert use of the data, such as David’s clients, have to pay. And do you know what? It’s good value for money. (Really.)

Further, why should I, as a taxpayer, subsidize the data usage needs of other organizations, whether they are advocacy groups, private sector organizations or other governments? I shouldn’t.

Here is an example of the best of both worlds. The public - you and I - have access to copious amounts of aggregated data about our communities, our provinces and our country AT NO CHARGE. If I want StatsCan to produce a custom data set, their fees are reasonable.

However, if the Conservatives decide to abandon the mandatory long form, data quality will suffer and that is something we should not be ready to sacrifice. As well, it strikes at the heart of a fair and equitable business model that makes Canada the envy of every other country in the World as fair as data capture, data quality and citizen confidentiality is concerns.

Chris Baker
Fredericton

When you look at the prevailing attitudes and available funding for contracting out government services and products in the NB of the late 1980s and early 1990’s versus today, you’ll see a big difference. There are still some great folks in GIS/Geomatics working here in New Brunswick outside of Caris. We still have consultants recognized nation-wide and who work internationally. However, some of those consultants are nearing retirement age. The manufacturing side of the that business never took off beyond Caris for a variety of reasons, and much of the day-to-day creative activity is now found within municipal and provincial government sectors without the funds to contract out.

This is addressable, but we need to look at how we support and business here. You’re right — it IS all about entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurs respond to opportunities. Unless people have a serious personal stake in the business, talent in private service companies usually lasts only as long as a market exists here. When that demand dries up, those people either move elsewhere OR into new areas where the opportunities exist.

Thats the key sentence and where the interpretation is wrong. I’ve been reading this blog practically since day one and while Mr. Campbell (it’s ‘David’ when I disagree with him and ‘Mr. Campbell’ when I don’t) is no Chavez, the hard right line isn’t one I’ve seen him cross except in warning.

There’s no doubt that NB’s social spending has increased-but thats been thanks to federal money. To ‘balance’ those figures the province, in his opinion, needs more tax money from corporate dollars. Thats why his main theme is getting more international investment to the province. If you get more corporate tax, you get more money to spend on social services, simple as that.

I’ve never seen him look at the current budget and say “lets stop spending money on hospitals and put it into ED spending on X”. If he DID then your ‘assumption’ would be correct, but he doesn’t, so its not. But of course remember what they say happens when you ‘assume’ anything.

Hmm…..not sure they ‘endorsed’ them for that.

Francis Maude, minister responsible for the census, said the once-a-decade count of everyone in the country is expensive and inaccurate.

Britain is examining cheaper ways to count people more frequently, using existing public and private databases, including credit-reference agencies.

He said Britain needed a new way to keep track of the population because the Census is often inaccurate and out of date. About 1.5 million households failed to fill in forms in 2001.

The information from the 2011 census will not be published until the middle of 2012 and by that time, many of the people whom the Census had counted would have moved or died.

Maude said it may be possible to more accurately count the population every five years, using cross-referencing databases held by credit check firms, Royal Mail, municipal councils and the government.

“There is a load of data out there in loads of different places,” he said.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Britain+expensive+inaccurate+census+after+years/3260166/story.html#ixzz0uDekuEuY

The first half is a bit of an inference, and as for the second half, I have never heard “more balance” used to describe an *increase* in social services.

That’s a good point; StatsCan’s data should be free; its a public good and we should be able to access it without paying an arm and a leg. This is a trend right across many fed and prov govts; hiding information from the people who are paying for it. As noted, the US, for all its faults, provides much more info free to the public.

I’m not sure that is correct. At least it does not seem to be correct for formerly weak economies that now have average or above-average rates of growth. Established robust economies attract outside investors and businesses that see growth advantages to investments there, without having to offer much in the way of incentives.

The concept that you can simply attract large numbers of the ‘right’ people in the absence of economic opportunities to pull them here makes no sense to me. Most of the opportunities in NB right now are in the local service sector; what we need are more opportunities for people that are in high-wage export sectors. Attracting anchor-type industries that can mesh with universities and local companies would provide opportunities for high-wage seekers as well as entrepeneurs. Further, it would attract capital for those small entrepeneurs. We’ve seen examples of technology clusters in PEI; we need more of that here.

Statistics Canada acts as a benchmark against the entire private polling industry because, at least in theory, it has no vested interest or bias. If an industry does a survey that shows the workers in that industry earn an average of $75,000 per year, that is fine but it would have to stand up to the Statistics Canada survey showing employment income by industry. There is bound to be some variance but not on an order of magnitude. Without the Stats Canada data, we are going to get more wonky and weird survey findings and we won’t be able to benchmark it against anything.

The other point was his assertion that voluntary responses were as good as polls, which apparantly are completely reliable. Volunteering, he claimed, was every bit as good and reliable and there’s no way that any political organization could possibly use it for their own ends. Why it was interesting was that after this tirade about the wonderfulness of volunteerism, he then went on to emphasize that the main eight questions were STILL going to mandatory. So for some reason there are certain questions that are a gross invasion of your privacy, but some questions are just fine and aren’t.

However, I should point out that although in the end nobody went to jail, there were several people prosecuted for not filling out the mandatory form. As I said I was part of a political movement that objected to sub contracting out to a weapons manufacturer to gather our data. And there WERE several people who were then prosecuted and fined. In the end the government dropped most of the cases, but there was some heavy handedness involved.

And again, revenue canada employees were caught sifting through gathered data, so these are not insignificant issues. It’s no surprise that when the tories talk about all the complaints they got, they are careful to omit discussion of Lockheed-Martin, the company paid millions. This was a MASS political movement to object to this company’s involvement, in comparison to probably a very few people who may have complained about doing the census in general. It’s not like the information was of a deeply personal nature, nobody wanted to know people’s favourite sexual position or even favourite type of cereal. They were pretty innocuous questions, and fortunately there has been more ‘anger’ at this move by the tories than there ever was against the census.
And I also have a pet peeve about the increasing commercialization of statscan data. Is there any organization that represents the ED industry? Perhaps we should start a lobby. The US has REEMS of info available on virtually every aspect of its population’s lives.

Populist rhetoric is exactly that, and it has no bearing on actual policy. The liberals used it, the tories use it, and immediately after elections they both start sucking up to banks, Irvings, McCains, etc. And except in rare cases NBers rarely make a fuss about that. I’d argue the opposite, virtually EVERY policy is rated along the lines of economy and jobs.

Just try to get a protest going on an environmental issue. In Fredericton they are endangering their water supply simply for the construction of one plaza. They are even breaking provincial law to do it, yet there is barely a handful of people who even care.

Political parties know that businesses don’t vote. Thats why the populist rhetoric-however, businesses DO donate, and just look at the liberal war chest to know just how ‘anti business’ they are ever going to be.

In NB though, as mentioned, the province has very clearly been run by a few multinationals. Mr. Downes AND Mr. Campbell both make good points, but the reality is that economic development MAY come from anywhere-there is simply no knowing. It may grow from within, but it can also gain by new companies moving in. If there were a set recipe, then every place would be doing it.

And we’ve even seen Mr. Campbell argue fairly often for investment in education and all the things APART from taxation that may bring in new investment. So none of these ideologies are set in stone. It does come to policy, and that can’t be judged by populist rhetoric. I agree that parties should be challenged more, however, the reality is that very few NBers actually bother to challenge the parties AT ALL. Any party once elected will quickly find out that an unemployed populace will quickly tear the province apart, THAT is the reality. So rhetoric is just that. If you want to challenge them, NOW is the time to do it.

People are anti-business because business routinely gives them reasons to be anti-business. I won’t fill your comments with examples like Enron and BP - suffice to say I could.

And it’s fallacious to say there are no alternative ideas. I have discussed some of those ideas in these comments, and also on my own website.

There’s a lot we could do that does not involve lowering taxes and cutting social services (which is how I read what you propose here). Things that actually invest in people, rather than those already wealthy enough to buy politicians.

From where I sit, it seems that New Brunswick has been trying the pro-business approach for decades. It has some of the worst public services and the lowest wages in the country. Businesses meanwhile operate almost tax-free and receive wheelbarrows full of subsidies. At some point you have to ask, how is it working out? How’s the pro-business economy doing?

Having said all of that, I still think there’s plenty of room to support business in New Brunswick. Such support will have to depend on their being good corporate citizens. There should be a bottom-line implication to anti-social acts, because this is the only language business understands.

Businesses that obey the law, are environmentally friendly, have employment equity and human rights policies in place and enforced, are safe places to work, that operate openly and transparently, that pay executives reasonably but not excessively, that contribute to the community through public works and support - these are the businesses deserving of support and assistance.

And it should be understood that this support is contingent on there being an ample degree of support for individuals, not only for their social infrastructure needs such as housing, health care and education, but also their aspirations and ambitions. We should be diligent about supporting new enterprise - even though they may not have influential friends and cannot write funding applications very well.

Because, generally, economies don’t develop by luring investment from abroad. Generally, economies develop from within - the right factors are in place for people to be able to grow new companies and to want to stay. Look at the major industries around here - the Irvings and McCains, for example. They developed here!

I could say more (and usually do) but that’s the main point.

This has not simply been a trend of the last 5 years, but of the past 300 years. The accelerated pace and scale of economic globalization and the emergence of quasi-sovereign global corporate giants increases the likelihood that pressures will continue to mount, especially as competition stiffens and the regulatory unknowns of a multi-polar economic world begins to take form.

Business will continue to come under sharp scrutiny. It is incumbent upon business to come to grips with the hard fact that the economic nationalism that provided the ideological foundation of economic activity has been superseded by a new global model for which a new social contract will be necessary. In the interim, business leaders and spokespeople will need to develop communications conduits to argue for the net benefits of business and the contributions that business makes to social welfare. They will need to rediscover the importance of trust and its elusiveness. This may require adjustments to earnings expectations, but historically this does not set a precedent. In the U.S., similar adjustments were necessary in the mid 19th century in the aftermath of the American civil war, in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, and again in the 1960s during the civil rights period. There are similar timeframes in Canadian terms.

On the other end of the scale, the public is now much more informed, albeit incompletely, about the economy, politics and business activity. But one of the profound arguments posed to elites is that their knowledge is similarly incomplete. A new economic universe is unfolding, the likes of which we have never seen.

I’m not sure what you are talking about here. I am not proposing to subsidize all export-oriented jobs until the end of time. Furthermore, that subsidy should not be the only inducement; NBs environment has its attractions and we do have natural resources that can be utilized to produce high-end products - not everyone has those.

” The relative low cost of these subsidies”

In my experience, ag subsidies are significantly large and never-ending.

“And if I may; the provision of plentiful organic produce, from a secure (read: diverse) supply, does create a competitive advantage for the province from a residential point of view”

Perhaps, but I do not think that this is likely to be the case. NB is on a poor position relative to ON and QC to be successful as an organic ag exporter to any significant extent - they have larger markets close by and scale advantages.

Insofar as attracting people with organic produce, I think you have it backwards. Get the higb-wage earners here by providing economic opportunities and they will create a market for organic produced. A good example of this is the Boyce Market - organic providers have developed to meet the demand there for organic produce.

“But there is a minority of the population in the world for whom low wages are perfectly acceptable, so long as they have independence, and the freedom to innovate.”

Perhaps, but low wages do not generate much tax revenue, and its tax revenue that NB needs to get out of debt and pay for basic services. We sure aren’t doing that now.

What environmental group has EVER questioned a companies ‘right to exist’? The conservation council’s position on natural gas has been to question the safety of HOW the gas is removed, namely the use of ‘fracking’. You can see the new film “Gasland” to see WHY they are saying that, and why they have good reason to be.

Ironically it is YOU who have most consistently ‘questioned their right to exist’ far more than the CCNB (and good for you). I can’t count the number of times you’ve stated that the natural gas should be used within NB and not simply shipped out. Now, unless you are stating that the NB government should pay a higher rate to the company as an inducement, then that means there needs to be some kind of legal mechanism to prohibit that company from selling to the states or that the province needs to set up an equity position in the gas field (which I agree with but means some companies ‘right to exist’ goes out the window).

All the CCNB has been concerned about is the use of fracking to remove the gas, something well known to have often disastrous effects. They even praise the northeastern states which have policies to encourage natural gas’ use in cars. They even list natural gas at their ‘all things efficient’ website. As has often been the case on the environment, you are seeing through prejudiced eyes. But it really shows how convoluted the political economy is when the economic developer guy is questioning the structure of the natural gas market more than the environmentalists, all while chastising the environmentalists for not ’sitting at the table’!