In a typical year, around 3,000 private sector employers go out of business. This means that every year around 12% of all businesses go under (and again these are employer businesses so they must have staff). Nearly 13% of restaurants…
Continue ReadingExports to the United States and Covid-19: New Brunswick edition
Like most other statistics, the most recent data we have starts to show the potential impact of Covid-19 but not the full picture. We have data through March 2020 but April will be more informative. We do know the value…
Continue ReadingRBC issues sobering NB deficit prediction
Robert Jones at the CBC has been doing some solid reporting on the data related to Covid-19 in recent weeks. His story this morning on the forecasted NB budget deficit is sobering. He is reporting the Bank of Nova Scotia…
Continue ReadingNew Brunswick’s IT sector: Profitability matters
Statistics Canada recently published its annual data on the IT sector for New Brunswick and the rest of the provinces. There is both good and bad news in the data. For the purposes of this data, IT includes software publishers…
Continue ReadingThe Maritimes’ Albert County Challenge
My wife and youngest daughter drove out into Albert County on Saturday just to get out of the house. We went for a walk around an old mine site in Albert Mines (pictured). I took the unsolicited opportunity to opine…
Continue ReadingOpening up the rest of the way: Learning from best practices
It looks like the consensus is that we will be facing Covid-19 protocols until a vaccine is ready and widely distributed: masks, 2 metre distancing, pervasive focus on sanitization, temperature testing before admittance, contact tracing, etc. But it looks like…
Continue ReadingLet’s deliberately create the New Brunswick/PEI bubble (and bring NS along when possible)
I have heard informally about efforts to promote local tourism this summer. I would double-down on this and push hard. I think all the regional DMOs in the two provinces and provincial tourism departments should formally get together and plan…
Continue ReadingThe rise of the hermitage economy
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…
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