It’s The Economy, Stupid

All’s Quiet On The Inner City Front
Bruce Cockburn
1981

Blue billboard on the roof next door
Makes a square of light on the kitchen floor
Smokes rises from a cigarette
There’s a dull glisten where the table’s wet
Soft breath rises from the bed
A thousand question marks over my head

Bell in the fire station tower
Rings out the measure of the racing hours
I slip through the door to the roof outside
To gaze at the sign hanging in the sky
That sailor on the billboard looks so self-possessed
Doesn’t have a thing to forgive or forget
All’s quiet on the inner city front.

I was listening to this classic Bruce Cockburn song while preparing a balsamic chicken.

And it hit me.

All’s quiet on the New Brunswick front.

It’s certainly not booming but it’s not busting either.

A slow burn.

Good enough for us.

I don’t know why I should but I feel content

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This is bad news for the NB Liberals.

I wouldn’t trust a Bristol poll as far as I could throw it, but CRA’s stuff is usually bang on.

Remember 2003.

Anyway, the CRA poll shows that almost 6 out of 10 New Brunswickers are satisfied with the Lord government.

With every poll that goes by, I am more and more convinced that New Brunswickers just want their government to be seen and not heard. To not do anything substantitive and certainly don’t rock the boat.

I said facetiously in an earlier blog that the Tories actually like out-migration because the the ones that leave tend to be the disgruntled ones. There might just be some truth to that.

People must truly live in the moment. If any rational person looked at the trends both economic and social - they would undoubtedly throw out the government every four years.

We are dead last in Canada for health measurements
We are second last in Canada in education measurements
We have had 14 straight years of net out-migration
Our overall population is in decline for the first time since the Great Depression
Over 70% of the cities, towns and villages in New Brunswick are losing population
Our bedrock industries are in decline
We are facing the largest workforce challenge in the province’s history
We have never been more dependent on Equalization and Federal transfers
An Industry Canada study in the late 1990s concluded that not only did the Atl. Provinces have the worst standard of living in Canada but among all 60 U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

And 6 out of 10 of us are ’satisfied’.

I may know a thing or two about economic development but it would seem I know jack when it comes to politics.

But it’s fun to watch, anyway.

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Premier Bernard Lord has announced a campaign promise to attract 2,500 former New Brunswickers back to the province.

Lord says the four-year repatriation plan would build on one his government put in place in 2003. He says the original goal was 300 people, but so far more than 800 have returned to New Brunswick.

Is there a statistic coming out of the government, just one, that isn’t hiding a less than rosy secret? Exports? Jobs? Public Finances?

Now, repatriation. Lord has brought over 800 people back to NB through this highly successful repatriation effort.

The result?

According to a government web page, last year saw largest net out-migration since 1998.

So, in a nutshell, you launch a repatriation program and more people leave.

Hmmm.

For a satirical view of the 2003 repatriation strategy, click here. It may be rude but the underlying reality holds.

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You must require a thick skin to be a CBC journalist. There are whole blogs dedicated to hammering the CBC and even in New Brunswick, there are a few bloggers who hammer away with no apparent reason.

So, one of these ingenious bloggers (I’m not posting any links here you and you can find it yourself) decides to mock the CBC’s policy of requiring names and valid email addresses to be assigned to posts on the election blog.

This person stole someone else’s identity to make a post.

Now, what’s the friggin’ point here?

Do they want to drive away all legitimate journalistic discussion from the blogosphere?

The traditional media are already hesitate to use the blogosphere because they fear this type of manipulation.

If the CBC pulls its blog because a few infantile anonymous bloggers are offended that they can’t spew forth under the veil of full anonymity, I think that will be a shame.

And another thing. I read three New Brunswick newspapers every day and the CBC web site in my day job and I can tell you that the CBC has ten times the journalistic integrity of the Times & Transcript.

The CBC is not perfect - far from it. They have their biases just like every other media outlet.

Instead of these, quite frankly, weird rebukes of the CBC, why not post real content as to what you think is wrong with the organization? Show patterns of bias. Show in clear terms what is supposed to be wrong with the CBC.

For the record, on my blog, I’m okay with anonymous posting. But I’m not the CBC.

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Remember that slick scene from Taxi Driver in 1976 with Robert De Niro?

You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the @#$! else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who do the #$%@ do you think you’re talking to? Oh, yeah? Ok.

Sound familiar?

People who don’t see Lord up close on a regular basis may not realize that he can be thin-skinned. He doesn’t shy away from taking on his opponents and his critics, and he sometimes doesn’t know when to pull back.

Jacques Poitras’ comment on the CBC election blog

Donald Savoie found that out first hand this week when Premier Lord took aim at him as a partisan Liberal who ‘wrote books on Frank McKenna’ and plant LJR’s funeral.

The widown of LJR was outraged and her comments were published in the TJ this morning (no mention in the TT of course but you can expect a rigorous defence of the Premier tomorrow’s We Say).

All I can say is that no one is off limits. Jacques Poitras follows a legitimate story - in his capacity as the CBC’s legislature reporter - and gets directly attacked by the Premier - even having his wife dragged into it.

Now Donald Savoie. The Savoie that worked for Mulroney. The Savoie who wrote a less-than-rosy review of the McKenna years (yes, Premier Lord you should actually read the book - it is far from a Hogan-esque lovefest). But from the tone of Lord’s remarks, it’s clear he never even read it.

All I can say is this. I have only met Donald Savoie a couple of times and as I have said before he is one of the brightest minds in Canada on issues of regional development and the process of governance.

But on one of those occasions, just after reading one of his books, I asked him if he would be writing the book on Premier Lord after he left office.

He said to me without hesitation that “there’s nothing to write about“.

Premier Lord would be well advised to listen to some of the criticism out there about his leadership. Rather than attacking the former Premier LJR and offending his wife, maybe he should reflect on Savoie’s comments.

Savoie has been quoted numerous times in the TJ (very little in the TT) making very good points for the government to consider (well before any election campaign) but these ideas fell on deaf ears.

And now in the middle of an election he is now a ‘partisan Liberal’.

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And now we present the Great Lordini and the spectacular vanishing Prosperity Plan.

It will thrill you, and chill you like nothing you have ever seen.

Brought to you by:

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Yes, folks. Right before your eyes the Lord government has dropped the Prosperity Plan. I just searched the archives of the local newspapers going back three weeks and nary a mention. Nothing on the PC web site and nothing in Google News.

It’s like it just vanished.

This sacred document whose title was envoked every time the Premier or a Cabinet minister said more than three words, has just vanished - up in smoke.

I find this completely baffling.

You know in the bible, when they end prayers with ‘amen’. Anything out of government ended in ‘this is part of the Prosperity Plan’. We painted the new government trucks blue and ‘this is part of the Prosperity Plan’. We spent 90 bucks on a burger and ‘this is part of the Prosperity Plan’.

Of course, the beginning of the end of the PP came with the introduction of the 5 in 5. Oh not all at once and not in any flashy way to be sure but over time ‘this is part of the Prosperity Plan’ became “this is part of the 5 in 5″ and that’s where we stand today.

Of course, our old friend smelled a rat after the State of the Province address way back in February.

But some of us are more naive than others.

I can’t believe they scuttled the Prosperity Plan.

What’s the purpose of having a ‘plan’ and ‘targets’ if you just scrap them when it starts to become evident you will never hit them.

And now a final word from our sponsors:

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I know that I am starting to get old when the companies brought here under McKenna start closing their doors. There have been several high profile call centres shut down including Sun Life’s Moncton facility - going back five years or so.

But this one is a bit like a kick in the gut for me.

Missouri-based Ralcorp Holdings, Inc.
SEC Filing: 10-Q - August 2006

In addition, we recently began the process of closing our griddle products facility in Moncton, New Brunswick, and transferring production to other plants.

I remember like it was yesterday when they opened that plant. Waffles were to be shipped all up and down the eastern seaboard of the USA. It was touted as a great example of effective near market manufacturing. Then the Missouri company bought it and now they are shutting it down.

I know some of you will say “I told you so” those foreign companies come in, take taxpayer dollars and then leave.

But that’s not the case. I have personally analyzed this and locally owned firms are 10 times more likely to close down than foreign-owned ones.

It’s just frustrating to see things unraveling…..

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It’s now official.

My brother told me last week he has received a job offer in the US and he will be taking it. His family of six will be packing up and leaving for greener pastures.

This means they are all gone. My sister, my older brother and my younger brother. All highly educated. All highly skilled. All gone.

I’m the only Campbell of this clan who was able to find employment that would keep me and my family here.

For me and thousands of New Brunswickers, the issue of out-migration is intensely personal.

No more overnight sleepovers in January at 30 below out the Renous highway.

No more fishing trips to the Sevogle. Or the Dungarven or the Cains.

No more crazy four-wheeling in my brother’s pickup on dirt roads to the middle of nowhere.

No more Christmas dinners with 15+ people running around.

It’s interesting to hear politicians talk when you have this as the backdrop.

It only emboldens my resentment at a government that would boldly brag about spending almost every new penny on health care and ignoring the fact that more and more of our family members are throwing up their hands and leaving.

I will vote - only one I realize - for any politician to state that they will stop the madness. They will increase health care spending but at a reasonable and rational rate.

But the politician that says they will not sacrifice another generation of New Brunswickers on the alter of health care, will get my support wholeheartedly.

It won’t help my Virginia-based sister or my soon-to-be Nevada-based brother but maybe my kids will have more options.

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The so-called ‘brain drain’ seems to be on everybody’s mind these days - most likely because there’s an election coming.

In 2003, the Tories promised to review the post-secondary education system in New Brunswick. That has not happened - although I believe it is set to start in early 2007.

In my opinion, we have been so obsessed with health care that everything else has been backburnered. Now, we have to play catch up and that is much harder.

Imagine waiting four years for something so simple as a review of the post-secondary education system.

But the same thing can be said for immigration. Many other provinces have had a plan in place for years. Not New Brunswick.

Somebody in the university system told me that it seems that things in New Brunswick are just grinding along. Nothing is a priority. There is no sense of urgency to much of anything these days.

New Brunswick is in the middle of a profound structural change - in its economy, in its workforce and in its population in general. The significant infusion of Federal cash has acted as a short term buffer - but you could argue that the lack of ‘urgency’ has just exacerbated the problems.

What is needed in 2006 and for the next 10-15 years is serious leadership. Leadership on the issue of the changing economy. We need to focus on a few key sectors that will lead the private sector economy over the next decade. We need the leadership required to invest in infrastructure, workforce development and industry attraction.

We need to tackle the workforce issue head on. The call of the West will only increase and the more we try and keep our kids here the higher the incentives will become to attract them out there. Alberta would prefer to attract Maritimers than international immigrants. This is a major structural challenge.

The irony here is that when McKenna was seen to be poaching ‘jobs’ in the 1990s, the BC Premier freaked out and threatened to take legal action.

When Alberta (and BC) spends public dollars to attract our people, there is almost no reaction.

But that’s the nature of the beast. We’ve all been going down the road so long it’s just second nature.

So, I would urge voters not to be taken in by all the election promises. The Tories and the Liberals are promising cash to virtually every special interest group in the province.

But which one can lead us in this time of serious economic and societal change?

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I posted a blog last week on the employment by occupation data from Statistics Canada. I looked at the last five years of Lord versus the last five years of the Liberal administration. The reason for this was simple. McKenna had to fight through a serious recession in the early 1990s. In fact, during the middle and late 1990s, the Liberals were still forced to constrain costs while Lord has served under an unprecedented level of Equalization and Federal Transfers growth.

Today, I looked at Employment by Industry and the data even surprised me.

Click here to view the chart.

As with the occupation data last week, this data confirms that there were 7,000 more jobs created under the Libs than the Tories but that’s not what is surprising.

What was surprising was that when you back out public sector jobs, the job creation under the Libs was more than double the current Tory regime.

But even more surprising to me (as I guy who worked to attract call centres), when you back out the growth in that sector (business services), the net job creation rate under the Tories is only 2,200 net new employment over five years compared to 19,300 under the Libs.

Now I backed out that sector because most of us that know the sector realize that it is peaking in its employment levels - there may be a thousand or so jobs to go but then it will peak and maybe decline.

So when the call centres run out, can we expect only 2,200 new jobs every five years?

Don’t forget that the government is spending $2 billion more now than in 1999. That should have generated thousands of private sector jobs.

But I can’t find them.

Construction jobs grew under the Libs, fell under the Tories.
Manufacturing jobs grew under the Libs, fell under Tories

And my personal favour, the Information, Culture and Recreation sector - the heart of the new economy - up 13.2% under the Libs - 1% under the Tories.

Jobs, oh jobs, where art thou?

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