One of the ideas I have been pushing in recent years to help alleviate the growing workforce shortage in New Brunswick is by encouraging older folks to stay in the workforce longer. On their terms – part time, summer, ad…
Continue ReadingWe should still means test income support programs
When my wife and I had young children we were getting cheques from government right and left. HST rebate cheques, child tax credit cheques – multiple times a year. As we started earning more income those cheques dried up and,…
Continue ReadingYour community’s talent pipeline = growth potential
When I first started in economic development back in the early 1990s our sales pitch to local, national and international industries focused on the size of the available talent pool in New Brunswick. If you set up a manufacturing operation here you…
Continue ReadingDiane Francis needs to rethink her position on immigration
National Post columnist and normally business friendly Diane Francis wrote a fairly sharp piece in the Financial Post criticizing the Liberals’ “unsustainable immigration plan” concluding that 400,000 per year way to many, even calling it a ‘flood’. Francis likely knows…
Continue ReadingA golden era for Chambers and industry groups?
I have to say my first interactions with Chambers of Commerce and industry associations was not particularly positive. It was in the mid 1990s and I couldn’t really figure out what they were doing. At the time, ACOA was pumping…
Continue ReadingA lighthouse strategy for economic development
There was a ton of good output from Herb Emery’s JDI Roundtable on Manufacturing Competitiveness in New Brunswick. One idea put forward was the concept of an economic ‘lighthouse’. Lighthouse firms already have “robust export focus and highly developed domestic supply chains…
Continue ReadingProperty tax assessment windfall should lead to lower tax rates
I sympathize with municipal governments. They are almost totally reliant on property tax revenue and sometimes on transfers from the provincial government to fund services and invest in infrastructure but, in most cases, when there is a windfall increase in…
Continue ReadingJournalistic malfeasance when writing about statistics
I saw several stories on my social media about the “fastest growing occupations in the United States” over the next decade. The list was put together by the reputable US Bureau of Labor Statistics. In total, the BLS is expecting…
Continue ReadingThe Freedom 55 hangover continues…
In the 1990s I used to work with a colleague who had her retirement date circled on a calendar. The problem was that it was four years out – she had one of those multi-year calendars with tiny months –…
Continue ReadingData and statistics: Objectivity versus selling the soap
I break out in a wide grin at every new twist in the controversy over the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business survey. This report was started quite a while ago to assess how hard it was to start and…
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