It’s The Economy, Stupid

Love your article and read it every week. First time I have responded because I am so dissappointed in what is happening in NB.
I stay here and have tried to scratch out a living for only two reasons, one to raise my daughters in a safe place and two, I love nature.
My creditials range from a buyer at JCPenny,Bloomingdales, and the flag ship store of Simpsons in Toronto in the 80’s, an international model when at 16 years of age I was making more then my high school teachers part - time, I could go on and on but what I cannot seem to understand here in NB is the following:
No benchmarking to look around to see how the best does it in business?
The slowness to respond.
The dumber then dumb capability and know how to seize a deal and to make sure it has a ROI for all concerned. Love to hear the business model from the textile industry. What planet were they on?
To no IT Minister in place. RIM wants to come here not because we are bright but because they can take advantage of us and our bright people who slog away at making a living. MASLOS LAW.
I am so fead up, moving could be an option and soon.
We need more of you who get it.

Kim

Got it David, and appreciate Kim’s comments above. The whole point of the commercial relevancy nature of the LocalintheKnow network with our portals in each community is to bring latest in communications technology applications to the discussion supported by a sustainable advertising model. We need this discussion and on a platform that can be supported by general revenues that have no alternative agenda other than building out a better community development strategy.

So beginning in April, we will add a discussion board application to the network, so ongoing discussions can continue beyond the blogs posts and link back and forth as the topics develop. With a discussion board we get a thread that can continue and aggregate ideas over a longer and more reflective period of time. We will send you the details for the log in and moderator control and with KnowNewBrunswick.com up to 5,000 visitors per month, we have now a Province wide discussion potential. Great topics and thoughtful commentary.

We need to hold on to the Kim Cookson’s of this world in New Brunswick, if we are ever to grow our way even moderately, let alone to self sufficiency.

David,

I found your blog - not using Google, but on a blogroll of another site. This is the first blog that I have come across written by a NB author whose posts make a lot of sense; and promotes NB as a business destination.

On your note on ideas; having ideas are not merely enough. Following ideas through to execution is the difficult part. There’s often a slip between idea generation and execution. I have always believed ideas are dime a dozen, but to turn it into reality needs special skills. Not everyone can do it. And those who can must be offered incentives to stay back and help turn an idea into reality.

Your column in today’s Telegraph Journal is bang on - couldn’t have said it better myself. Anybody who has ever worked or lived outside of New Brunswick has to realize how far behind we are in a lot of ways. Where are these discontented leaders when we need them??

I am a University student who recently came across your blog. Do you have any opinion on the idea of Atlantic unification under one province?

To MH:

The discontented leaders, the “A Team”, packed their bags and left for real opportunities. The “B Team” was left behind and this is what you end up with.

your article titled change the conversation in the north makes some good points but continues to miss the main problem. We talk about investment and training and other factors but we never discuss attitude. The so called north is full of attitutudes and many of them hurt the area. One attitude that is lacking is cooperation. French compete with english and protestants compete with catholics and communities fight for the crumbs and individuals often are jealous about their neighbors sucess.Petit Roche and Belledune are good examples. This is an attitude that is to common. Sports fishers in the province are more interested in protecting their spot than growing the resource hence the decline in sportsfishing assisted by increasing liscense fees. Politicians as well as others like this because it allows them to ignore a divided public. tom hickie fredericton

Greetings-
I read your column regularly. I believe that we both spoke at a PC party meeting a year or so ago at the Legion hall in West Saint John.
I was away for several days and am now catch up with my reading, which is why I am just writing now WRT a minor item in the June 19 T-J: “…..part of it is related to climate change and global warming.” I would just like to bring to your attention that virtually all the hue and cry about these topics stands on a very weak base of dodgy temperature readings and incomplete computer programs. I would be safe offering money to anyone who could point to any climate condition anywhere in the world and show that the conditions could not be explained by normal variations. The world’s weather and climate are the most complex system known, and the present game of blaming carbon dioxide will be found to be virtually groundless.
I write to urge you not to get caught in the trap of believing the AGW story. I have taken the time to read the “behind” story and am confident that Man is not causing a future climate disaster. And why this is important is because many governments are setting policy based on the fallacy that something must be done to reduce our CO2 emissions. I read with horror the “Climate Change Action Plan” of NB and similar documents for NS and PEI. Those are only our closest neighbors. Other provinces and states have similar misguided policies. I am doing my best to make facts known, but the MSM are continually putting out pro-AGW propaganda and censoring anything that runs contrary to it.
Feel free to contact me for further information, references, etc.

Best regards.

Ian L. McQueen
Climate Truth Initiative
Glenwood
tel 506-468-9000

Little things matter. For instance, while trying to book a car rental from the Moncton Airport in September, not one of the rental agencies gives unlimited kilometers. All of them give 200 free km and charge 15 cents there after. Not a good way to welcome people to invest and do business if it is going to cost them more to drive to those places! Wake up GMAA!

‘Liked your article in the TJ today re: the GIS/geomatics industry in NB. I do think you should have mentioned that at least one company - CARIS in Fredericton - DID leverage the substantial provincial and federal government government support (received through contracts & sales to line departments rather than grants or loans), and now has well over 100 employees in offices here, the USA and overseas. It would be good for you to talk with company founder Dr. Sam Masry about Caris’ success in a niche market, and why they stayed independent and NB-based despite attractive approaches from several interested potential buyers over the years.

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.