A few years ago Bruce Willis starred in a movie where no one ever leaves their home as they have robot surrogates that do everything for them and they experience everything the robot experiences. Why leave the couch? That technology…
Continue ReadingLeBrun and Alston: Treat economic recovery like pandemic recovery
Some people have a knack for boiling things down to their essence. MG and I spoke with David Alston and Marcel LeBrun this weekend for the Growing Pains with David Campbell podcast and they did not beat around the bush.…
Continue ReadingCould Ontario’s optimism be infectious?
It’s been nearly 15 years since I started doing consulting work in Ontario and you have to tip your hat to the optimism – particularly among the urban centres in the Kingston-Toronto-Windsor Corridor but also extending to Ottawa. I had…
Continue ReadingSorry to be the one to tell you but the world is grey
I get it that it is hard to get outraged on social media over the fuzzy middle ground. It’s easier to stake out a position on the edge and plumb the depths of indignation. But that’s not the world we…
Continue ReadingThe passing of an entrepreneurial icon: Bernard Imbeault R.I.P.
Since arriving back in New Brunswick to start my career in the early 1990s, I have had the opportunity to meet and have conversations with many of the top business leaders across the province. This is why I cringe when…
Continue ReadingLearning the wrong lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic
There have been a couple stories this week outlining why New Brunswick didn’t get hit as bad by the Covid-19 pandemic. The reasons stated include because we don’t have an international airport, we have less immigration and international students, we…
Continue ReadingDoes having a dominant urban hub matter?
We have talked a lot on these pages about the importance of scale. The top 10 urban centres in Canada are home to nearly 80% of all net population growth across Canada. Talking to Rory Francis from the PEI BioAlliance…
Continue ReadingDo you know the way to Cap-Pelé?
Burt Bacharach wrote the famous and catchy tune “Do you know the way to San Jose?” (Millennials google it). This summer we should push for our own version here in New Brunswick: Do you know the way to Cap-Pelé? The…
Continue ReadingThe Great Cape Breton Experiment: If they come, will you be able to build it?
I know long time readers will be getting tired of my variations on the “if you build it, they will come” theme from the great baseball movie Field of Dreams but I still think this concept underlies a lot of…
Continue ReadingGrowing Pains podcast: Don Mills edition
I first heard Don Mills discussing public opinion in Atlantic Canada in the very early 1990s. His firm, from which he kind of retired in 2018, Corporate Research Associates, was a constant surveyor of public opinion in the region for…
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