Before the age of air conditioning, those living in hot places like New York City with means would spend much of the summer in a cooler locations such as the Poconos or, yes, New Brunswick. Many of the lovely old…
Continue ReadingA public discussion on economic development
I appreciated the opportunity to be on a panel discussion with Terry Seguin for a full hour today along with the indefatigable Larry Shaw from Ignite Fredericton and Stephen Lund from ONB. Because they are using the podcast format now…
Continue ReadingSMR development: When in bed with an elephant, sleep with one eye open
A couple of folks have reached out already this morning about comments in a CBC article about SMR development. If you read the article you will see that I fully agree with Ontario being part of a formal effort with…
Continue ReadingIs institutional memory holding back New Brunswick’s growth potential?
One of the challenges of the modern time is the lack of long term planning. It was not uncommon in the 1950s and 1960s for businesses and governments to have multi-decade plans. Some capital intensive industries (e.g. power generation) would…
Continue ReadingCan you imagine? In the near future boats could be made from wood!
There is a great article in the Economist this week about giant 3D printers. In Maine researchers printed a fishing boat in 72 hours. But what was really interesting is that they are looking in the future to print the…
Continue ReadingSetting government targets? To paraphrase Meghan Trainor, its all about the base (line)
I received several calls and emails this week about Saskatchewan’s new 10-year growth plan. In case you didn’t see it, as described by the CBC the growth plan “includes goals of increasing the population by 226,000 and creating 100,000 more…
Continue ReadingThe Brunswick Smelter closure: An absolute tragedy
The closure of the Brunswick Smelter announced today is a tragedy. For those of you who say good riddance, don’t kid yourself. The smelting will be done elsewhere – possibly in jurisdictions with less environmental standards than New Brunswick. All…
Continue ReadingIs New Brunswick’s IT trade deficit limiting GDP potential?
Herb Emery offers another insightful column today questioning why we haven’t seen much growth in ICT (information and communications technology) GDP despite all the hype. He contrasts New Brunswick with Nova Scotia and PEI and doesn’t find a favourable trend.…
Continue ReadingSour Grapes: Did we miss an opportunity?
Canada’s Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan, got this one right. On Saturday, Canada’s grumpy coach/commentator Don Cherry, lamented the lack of people wearing poppies and went on to make a snarky comment about immigrants. Of course this led to the now…
Continue ReadingThe reasons people leave their jobs: You might be surprised
In preparation for the big workforce summit next week I have been crunching a ton of labour force data. If you haven’t registered for the summit, I think it is closed but you might try to find a way as…
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