This makes 6-7 major announcements in the past couple of months:


Ceridian Canada to Establish Centre of Excellence on Prince Edward Island
Ceridian Canada, a leading human resources services company, will
establish a centre of excellence on Prince Edward Island to meet its growing
customer requirements for talent acquisition, payroll and other human
resources services. The new centre will be established in Charlottetown in May
2007. Ceridian will hire 40 employees during its first year and ramp up to 100
people within its first three years of operation.

Kodak expands health IT operations in Summerside
Kodak Canada is expanding its health-care information technology operations in Summerside and plans to create about 20 software engineering positions at the facility. The increase follows increased customer demand for software products from Kodak’s health group, the company said in a release. Kodak’s operations in Summerside operations are focused on the development and support of its radiology information system, which enable hospital radiology departments to maintain electronic records on patient exams, scheduling and other information.

Finally, some common sense coming out of Alberta on the Atlantic Canada 'problem'.

Monctonlandlord asked for my ideas regarding municipalities and their efforts around economic development. This is something that would require some serious thinking but my initial thoughts are below (with special effects for your reading pleasure).

Picture the scene:

....Knuckles cracking, smoke coming out of ears....

Municipal economic development recommendations (widely applicable but need that grain of salt for flavouring):

1. Support your regional economic development agency (that's how it's done in New Brunswick and there's no reason to buck it - if you don't like what they are doing, have your say).

2. Spend at least 5% of your annual operating budget directly on economic development. Be careful of not duplicating efforts of either your Enterprise or the province.

3. Be Investor Ready. Have sites identified of all shapes and sizes. Have megasites available/identified even if they are outside your municipal limits. If the province/your Enterprise brings business to town - you must be ready. Have a SWAT team of professionals ready to serve the potential investor (Involve regional planning here). Have a wide variety of statistical/demographic information. Focus on the livability of your town/city as this is increasingly where the differentiation lies.

4. Lobby for much more emphasis at the province on economic development. Use your voice on this thing.

5. Make your city/town livable. Do whatever you can to make it a dynamic, vibrant can-do place. Identify and address gaps and have a plan - short/long to address them.

6. Carve out a niche or two. Saint John should be known for "xx", Moncton for "yy" and Tracadie for "zz". There's a lot of competition out there. You need to stand out in a crowd.

7. Stop saying "that's not my responsibility" or "that's not in our mandate". If it's an issue of importance to your community - it should be in your mandate. Environment, community health, transportation, infrastructure, attracting industry, attracting people, if these aren't in your 'mandate' - they should be.

8. Elect a dynamic Mayor. He/she doesn't have to be a metrosexual dynamo. But he/she should be passionate about the city/town and have a clear vision of where he/she wants to take it during their mandate. It's a bit weird, I know, but towns/cities seem to take on the character and personality of the mayor over time. A dynamic and passionate mayor, over time, will translate into a dynamic and passionate city. Think this one through. Think of your long standing mayors and ask yourself if they were aligned with the character of the city/town.

9. Build a vibrant downtown. I don't care how big or small your community is, "as goes the downtown, so goes the town". All communities need a heart. A centre. A place for coming together. And that should be your downtown.

10. Partner. With local municipalities. There is little need for 239 (or whatever) cities, towns, villages and local service districts in New Brunswick. We have a municipal unit per 3,000 people in New Brunswick. It's ridiculous. Push for amalgamation where appropriate. Do we really need a 'Moncton Parish' with 8,000 people living in it and no municipal governance? However, in the absence of real leadership on this issue, partner with any and all municipalities where it makes sense. You have more shared interests than differences. Get over petty local politics and do the right thing for citizens.


Any more than that, you will have pay :-)

I was given a copy of the City of Moncton's Vision 2010 Strategic Plan last week and as I flipped through it I started to chuckle.

It wasn't that long ago that municipalities did 'curb and gutter' kinds of things. You know, garbage removal, snow plowing, water/sewage. City stuff.

Not anymore.

The strategic plan is about 'active' living, arts & culture, green spaces, the environment, health, youth engagement, beautification, public art, bilingualism, urban forests - and yes, even economic development.

Now, don't get me wrong. All the old time curb and gutter stuff is there to. Cities still have to do city stuff. It's just that circa 2006 leading municipalities know what they need to do to be 'liveable' and attract people. Curb and gutter is table stakes. All the jazz is what differentiates.

However, in true New Brunswick style, the municipalities are still labouring under legislation that hasn't been changed in over 60 years. Maybe in another 60, someone up in Freddy Beach might figure this out.

I had a chance to breeze through the new 'City of Toronto' legislation a few days ago. Wow. Talk about your city-state. For me, this makes good sense. Of course, in New Brunswick, much more 'stuff' needs to be done at the provincial level. After all, the entire province of New Brunswick population could fit in Etobicoke and environs.

But there are still things that need to get done. If Moncton wants to syphon of methane gas from the dump for a green power source, it should have the authority. If it wants to charge a hospitality fee (like half the cities in this country) it should have the authority. If it wants to creatively support economic development, it should have the authority.

Interesting article yesterday about the growth of data centers.

Corporate demand for data centers is likely to remain strong for years to come, and cost issues will lead many companies to build new facilities in smaller markets in the center of the U.S., according to John Boyd, president of The Boyd Company of Princeton, N.J.

Data center projects are "the fastest growing field in corporate site location," according to Boyd, an expert in corporate site location who for 30 years has been helping America's best-known companies plan real estate expansions. Many of these companies will build their own facilities, Boyd said. "The inventory of available sites is extremely low," said Boyd. "We tell our clients to focus on the fundamental cost issues and not to key on existing facilities."

Those cost issues will spur data center development outside of the major Internet markets and "NFL cities" that have thus far been home to the lion's share of major data center projects. In recent months Boyd has released two studies on the cost of operating financial and healthcare data centers in U.S. markets.


What would it take to make New Brunswick the hub for data centres in Canada and for the northeast?

Okay, all you faithful bloggers. Time to get you engaged in the process of economic development research.

Here's your research question. How did New Brunswick's job growth compare to other Atlantic Canadian provinces and the national average from 2000 to 2005?

Don't worry. No need to plow through reams of data. Just click here, the work has been done for you.

Other research questions:

How did the growth of public administration jobs compare?

Check out Table 7c and Table 8a and Table 8c if you get a chance.

I came across these numbers in a recent study by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards in Ottawa. It's an interesting way to present the population challenge.

Essentially, back in the 1960s when there were all those attempts at regional development and specifically attempts to make Atl. Canada attractive for foreign investment, this region's population growth underperformed but not extremely the national average.

Even in the 1980s, we still were registering 0.5% per year annual populatoin growth. But from 1996 on, population growth turned into decline across the board while population growth Canada wide remained roughly at its historical levels.

So, in a nutshell, when the national government was aggressively promoting this region for foreign investment, we weren't doing to bad (at least based on one statistic called population growth) and now the Feds are all but out of the game of promoting foreign investment in Atl. Canada - and we are in population decline*.

Note: These #s are the average annual growth rate.



*PS - ACOA does have an Investment group - headed up by a very capably guy - Kevin Bulmer but the bulk of investment attraction work is handled at the provincial level.

The self-sufficiency commission wants people to provide input according to a column written by Francis McGuire in today's paper. I had heard they were going to have some form of forum or blog on the site but none yet. However, you can send them an email.

There are seven realities facing New Brunswick according to the commission They are, with my comments, in italics listed below:

1. We must increase our population and our labour force by increasing incomes.
Axiomatic 'our', nebulous 'by'. There's no evidence that you increase population/labour force by increasing incomes. It certainly makes sense as a theoretical construct but I have yet to hear an expert agree with this. I have read the revitalization stories of Ireland and others and income appreciation was an effect - not a cause - of population/labour force increase. We must increase our population by growing targeted industries and then aligning workforce development strategies (including attracting immigrants and in-migrants).

2. We must be prepared for sweeping changes of unprecedented magnitude.
Heady words. This province has gone through multiple recessions, one great depression and massive cuts of the early 1990s. If we are to see changes of 'unprecedented magnitude' we are about to witness heretofore never been seen politics in New Brunswick.

3. We must increase labour productivity by providing people with the right tools for the right jobs.
Touche.

4. We must strengthen the connections between urban and rural New Brunswick through large scale investments in infrastructure.
Ahem. I have said on numerous occasions on these pages that a four lane highway to the Acadian Peninsula will do more for economic development up there than all the EI you can throw at that region.

5. Export growth must drive overall economic growth.
No smoke and mirrors here, please. Be specific. Export growth of high value added manufacturing and services. Another Irving Refinery will double exports (and the LNG plant will massively increase exports) but their impact is limited and local (important, but not far reaching). The last thing we need is another Refinery and then the Premier riding the 'exports growth' shtick for the next seven years.

6. We must move quickly and aggressively to expand our existing corporate base.
Yes. We are far too reliant on either micro-businesses or massive conglomerates. We need more export-oriented multinationals, high growth technology firms, selected large scale manufacturing, more R&D, etc.

7. Leaders at all levels of New Brunswick society must step forward.
Easy to say, hard to do. Vested interests prevail. Who has New Brunswick's economic growth as its sole 'vested interest'? Only the government. Local entrepreneurs look at the world through their lense. Unions through theirs. Educational institutions through theirs. Associations through theirs. Civic groups through theirs. The media through theirs. Bloggers through theirs.

Leaders in government must step forward first. Elected officials, bureaucrats, heads of crown corporations. Then, bring along the private sector as needed.

I don't say this lightly. I have had senior bureaucrats say things like 'why should we attract multinationals? We need to support local businesses'. I heard a senior NB Power executive once say they weren't in the 'economic development' business. A former DM of the health department said in a meeting I was at that the health department wasn't in the business of 'economic development' (apparently the $2B in health spending has no economic impact). I have heard town officials say they 'don't want growth'. They like their 'small town feel'. I have heard regional planning commission staff make highly hostile comments towards economic development. I have chatted with education officials who don't really care that their community college graduates are leaving the province. In fact, I have heard of NB schools organizing job fairs for firms outside New Brunswick.

You see. The government has little control over the 'leaders' outside its walls. But inside government at all levels, efforts should be made to inculcate a growth mindset and growth agenda.

I had a macabre moment a couple of years ago (in an economic development sense). On the same day I heard a long and winding speech from former Premier Lord about how much prosperity he was heaping on New Brunswick, I got a call from a friend in the post-secondary education realm. He told me on that day that education department officials were going around to the universities warning them that demographics were going to lead to deep declines in their student populations and that would be paralleled with government funding retrenchment.

Let me end by being really clear:
NB Dept. of Finance officials need to be about growth - not about managing decline.
NB Dept. of Education officials need to be about growing the student base - not about managing the decline in students.
NB Dept. of Health officials need about about leveraging their massive budgets to support a growth agenda - not about turning the province in to a virtual rest home.
NB Dept. of BNB officials need to be about growth - real growth - not smoke and mirrors. If they don't have enough resources to get it done then say so but don't hide behind weird statistics like 'jobs maintained'. If you are 'maintaining' you aren't growing.
NB Power needs to be an economic development agency. It's that simple. New York Power company gave a massive power discount to HSBC to put a multi hundred million dollar data centre in the heart of rural New York. NB Power must be an economic development driver.

At least one of our frequent posters will like this.

Rural economic development is not dead yet.

HSBC North America Holdings has selected a farm field in the Town of Cambria as the site for its proposed new $139 million Niagara County data center, which will supplement its existing facility in Amherst.

The planned 275,000-square-foot center will be located on the northeast corner of Lockport and Comstock roads, on Cambria's southern border with Pendleton, according to an application for tax incentives HSBC Technology & Services filed with the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency. HSBC officials confirmed the location on Monday.

The bank is seeking $88.5 million in sales and other tax benefits for the previously announced project, which will ultimately require more than $1.5 billion in technology purchases by HSBC.

According to IDA documents, specific plans for Cambria call for a 200,000-square-foot building and a 75,000-square-foot equipment yard, to be built on 51 acres of a 77-acre farm field. HSBC plans to buy the 51 acres and obtain a right of refusal on the rest, and the project is designed to allow for future expansion to 350,000 square feet.

Cambria is a pretty remote place. It's about 60 miles from any real urban area.

$88.5 million. We don't exactly know the structure of the incentive package from the State of New York but suffice it to say it is considerable. We do know the state has already awarded HSBC 11 megawatts of low-cost power per year for the next 15 years, through the New York Power Authority.

It will create almost 200 direct and indirect jobs.

Another example of the challenges facing New Brunswick in the area of exports. Just came across this statistic in a Statistics Canada report called "Canada’s Merchandise Trade with the European Union: 1995 to 2004":

Exports from Ontario to the EU have increased at an annual rate of 6%, the highest of any province. However, this was not the largest growth, as the Northwest Territories, on the strength of the burgeoning diamond trade, saw their exports increase at an annual rate of 26%. At the opposite end of the spectrum is British Columbia, where exports to the EU fell by $650 million from 1995 to 2004 and were concentrated in wood pulp exports. In proportional terms, New Brunswick recorded the largest percentage decline, with an average annual decrease of 5%.


Sorry to harp on this issue but every time Lord, Volpe, MacDonald bragged about the record growth in exports - not one mentioned that it was only because of the Irving Refinery and that across a wide swath of export categories, they were actually down strongly.

You want a perfect example of why the Federal government has overtly politicized its role in economic development?

Here it is.

Here's the deal. The Federal and Quebec governments spend billions of dollars directly through large contracts and directly through incentives (over $250 million in just the past two years to Bell Helicopter, Pratt Whitney and Bombardier) alone) and this is the single biggest reason the aerospace industry has grown to the size it has in Quebec.

Then, because of the size of the industry, they demand at least that much in new federal government aerospace/defense work.

Quebec will use its big guns to win its fair share of the offset business Boeing Co. must place in Canada as a condition for winning a $3.4-billion contract for four C-17 Globemaster jumbo military transports, Sue Dabrowski, president of the 222-member Quebec Aerospace Association, said yesterday.

"Quebec, with its diversity of suppliers, has 55 to 60 per cent of Canada's total aerospace market, Ontario 30 to 35 per cent while the rest is split between the Atlantic region and the West," she said.

"We're shooting for the stars, but we won't settle for less than 55 to 60 per cent of the offsets. ... Boosting our technology and expanding our role in the international supply chain is critical for the industry's long-term future."


So, federal dough to grow the aerospace industry in Quebec and because of that investment the province now deserves 60% of all new government defense contracts.

Funny, huh?

My prediction? Despite the fact that the Federal government spends billions of dollars on defense contracts and hundreds of millions doling out incentive dollars to the aerospace sector it will never amount to much in New Brunswick. Globally, only agriculture gets more government incentives and has greater government involvment than the aerospace sector. It's the same in Canada. At some point in our recent past, the Feds nurtured a nascent aerospace/defense sector in Quebec will billions of dollars of public investment.

Now, when a place like New Brunswick needs it the most, it will get none.

Harper says Atlantic Canada might -just might - get 5%-10% of the multimillion dollar benefits. but with Nova Scotia and PEI having at least some infrastructure, it is likely they will get the lion's share of the crumbs sent this way.

So here's the question. Sort of a chicken/egg thing. If the Feds spent billions to prop up Bombardier, Pratt, Bell, et. al. in Greater Montreal. Why wouldn't they do the same in a place like New Brunswick? How about a $200 million contribution towards us attracting a large scale manufacturer?

Never going to happen. Not in my life time.

Ooops. I mean it's never going to happen in New Brunswick.

The UK government last year spent hundreds of millions to attract large scale aerospace manufacturing to Northern Ireland. I am sure that the well developed aerospace industry in England didn't like that very much but somebody over there is interested in fostering economic development in Northern Ireland.

I was speaking with a colleague yesterday about my growing frustration with the vast majority of 'right wing' think tanks. Use that term 'right wing' lightly - I basically just mean the ones that don't have Maude Barlow attached. You know them. Fraser. CD Howe. Ontario Centre for Competitiveness and Prosperity. AIMS. Maybe throw in the Conference Board.

I have read most of the publications put out by these organizations (the free ones anyway) for well over a decade. And I can't remember one that offered up any tangible and concrete solutions to Atlantic Canada's economic slide. In fact, the reports that mention Atl. Canada at all (except maybe AIMS) tend to view it in terms of a drag on the Canadian economy and tend to either 'talk tough' or warn ominously about how this region is 'threatening' Ontario's competitiveness. Cheeky.

Some may choose to dismiss these think tanks as ideologically driven, non-main stream groups that don't have much impact on public policy.

I beg to differ. It was these groups that called for deficit elimination at all costs. It was these groups that called for more and more tax cuts (and even more this week Fraser). It was these groups that, for the most part, continuously pounded the drum - business good - government bad to the point that now maybe most of us agree in some form of ingrained way.

And of course, they offered up their own version of hypocrisy. Fraser demanding less handouts for Atl. Canada while begging for tax breaks for oil sands development. The Ontario Centre for C & P demanding the government cut taxes and invest more in Ontario R&D. AIMS applauding the Nova Scotia government for putting all the money from Paul Martin's side deal on the public debt. Reduce debt at all cost. Never mind there will be no one left to pay the remainder of the debt.

But, I ask, who is looking out for New Brunswick? Who is serving up credible, media absorbable statistics, stories and recommendations for us?

AIMS? Not a chance. APEC? Maybe a bit - on a regional level but their stuff tends to be overarching and not monotonous chanting of a specific ideological view (like Fraser, CD, OCCP, etc.). We need monotous chanting. Credible monotonous chanting. Coming from New Brunswick with national media exposure.

We need our own think tank. The New Brunswick Centre for Competitiveness and Prosperity. The McKenna Institute. The Conference Board of New Brunswick.

We need an institute that will serve up multiple reports per year on the themes of economic self-sufficiency, countering depopulation, building sustainable communities in a post-natural resources driven economy.

We need an institute that will serve up insightful and razer sharp commentary to local media. Not the usual pablum of the province's academia.

If we want to turn this province around. We will have to awake from a deep sleep. The most impassioned rhetoric I have ever heard about the need for change in New Brunswick was Frank McKenna in the late 1980s - before the Internet. Before the technology boom. Before the onset of chronic out-migration.

Fast forward 20 years and most of what was predicted back then has come true (we didn't adapt, we didn't do the bootstrap thing, we didn't become more self-sufficient and we didn't take advantage of new industries to offset declines in the old).

And there is disinterest at the level of the public.

John Ibbitson said this week that 'the environment' was the 'new health care' in Canada.

How do we go from 70% of people in polls saying health care is the #1 issue to 59% of people saying the enviroment is the #1 issue?

By relentlessly getting it out in the public square. By Al Gore. By the Green Party. By everyone (except Al Hogan) becoming a virtual environmentalist.

How do we get every NBer and as many Canadians as possible to become interested in reviving this region's economy?

We need an Al Gore. A Green Party. We need to get the discourse into the public square. On public TV. Around poker tables. In church basements.

A think tank might be a good place to start.

There's an op-ed piece in the TJ today that dared to suggest the unthinkable (I have been saying this for years).

That running small deficits to achieve your vision is not a bad idea.

In the late 80s and early 90s we got so scared of deficits that now they are absolutely fobidden. Cursed is the politician that would suggest this.

But the reality is that running short term deficits - for a good cause - is no different than using your credit line on a short term basis to pay to fix your car or roof.

In New Brunswick, we seem to prefer more Equalization and ignorance of the systemic challenges facing our province. I, for one, would fully support running small scale deficits if that money was used to make key investments in our future.

Thanks to a tipster for reminding me to read the TJ editorials today.

It would seem that Alec Bruce has evolved from the tabloid to the TJ but don't expect him to kiss anyone's rump.

No, in fact, his editorial today spanks all three of NB's southern cities and their Irving pubs.

Thanks to the miracle of blogs, you can read Bruce's foaming at the mouth here.

After another round of urban-rural, urban-urban, inter-urban, intra-urban para-urban, supra-urban bickering, it's nice to see someone cut through with a little clarity.

Here's my addition to clarity. We will need Ireland levels of investment and economic growth over the next 20 years if we are to even come close to Premier Graham's goal of self sufficiency. So, there is little time for bickering.

And, on a similar note, to the story about the 'cities going it alone' and finding private sector partners for their convention centres, I say giddy up. There is a culture in New Brunswick that everything must wait for government funding. I am not trying to be cavalier here but at some point, I would like to see a municipality stand up and say "this is part of our growth strategy and we are going ahead with our without you."

This, of course, is easy to say from the confines of a small office and out of touch with reality, but I still think there is some merit in saying it.

The debate rages on. Outrage in the north. 'Plain' talk in the south. This corner still thinks there must be a better way.

So let me talk to my fellow Canadians that live outside these borders for a moment (the handful that read this thing).

At a time of unprecedented prosperity in Canada, a time of rapid population growth nationally, a time of record levels of tax dollars into government coffers:

Do we want to be the generation of Canadians that stands idly by why Atlantic Canada burns?

In this country's early days, we spent what would be now billions of eastern Canadian tax dollars opening up the West for development by building railways, roadways and investing in building new communities.

We spent what would be now billions of taxpayer dollars building the St. Lawrence Seaway and effectively cutting of Atl. Canada as a trade route to central Canada.

Throughout history, the national government has made massive investments in an effort to connect this great country - rail, road, telecommunications, ports, etc.

Now, at our time of greatest prosperity, we seem content to let Atl. Canada drift into economic oblivion.

Population decline is the norm. Major industries that have been the bedrock of the economy for generations are in decline. Western Canadian governments are spending significant money to attract Atl. Canadians out west for work.

Atlantic Canada doesn't need a few more Equalization dollars to be spent providing health care for a rapdily aging population.

What we need is a new partnership, a new deal, with the Federal government focusing on revitalizing the region's economy.

Every one loves to quote this part of the Charter:

Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."

But how many of us know this part of the Charter:

furthering the economic development to reduce disparity in opportunities;

I have said it before and I'll say it again. Atl. Canada should be viewed as the frontier. As we invested billions to build the West many years ago, we need to rethink our approach in the East.

Do we really want to be the generation that stands by and watches as communities that have existed for 200 years or more just slowly wither away and die?

How's that for a legacy?

For the Fraser Institute and all the other Western Canadian (and some Atl.) think tanks, this is a natural extension of changing economies. They would say that EI and other support programs have just delayed the obvious and led to inefficient economic outcomes.

But I wonder if their tune would change if it were Hinton, or Canmore or Lethbridge that were imploding. I wonder if Alberta's population were in decline and Equalization payments were increasing rapidly if Fraser would be saying 'good riddance'.

My hunch would be that Fraser would be demanding federal government support and investment. That Canada's economic well being is on the line.

It's not Alberta, folks. But it is New Brunswick. And Newfoundland. And Nova Scotia.

These changes don't happen over night. New Brunswick is not some remote mining town that just shuts down when the work is gone.

But slowly, over 30-40 years, the economic life is sapping out of this region. First it will be the rural areas but the urban ones are next. Possibly Halifax and a few other economic hubs will survive but the Alantic Provinces of 2050 will look dramatically different than 2007 - without considerable courage and commitment to this region.

When was the last time the federal government made a large scale (i.e like Bell Helicopter, Bombardier, Toyota, etc.) investment in Atl. Canada?

Just when it's needed most, the Feds have all but disappeared. I am on the mailing list for Canada's New Government and there are 3-4 major funding announcements per week involving direct support for companies - mostly in Quebec and Ontario - and literally none in New Brunswick.

It's seems I'm not the only one curious about the 'new government' label:

How long before ‘New Government’ gets old?
Tories hang on to fresh label
National Post
Jan 25

No matter how old it gets, Canada’s New Government — always capitalized — seems to be everywhere. It is the government’s ubiquitous slogan in Conservative press releases, on the lips of Cabinet ministers , even on the coun t r y ’s supposedly non-partisan official Web site.

Even this week, with the oneyear anniversary of his election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper read out a grocery list of accomplishments that made it sound as if his party had been in power for eons — all the while referring to the Conservatives as Canada’s New Government.
For anyone who thought being in power for a year might convince them to shelve their slogan, all the evidence is to the contrary.

I am not going to write a long post on this issue of emptying northern New Brunswick. It's all over the papers, radio and even a few blogs. My position on the need for strong regions in New Brunswick is well known if you read this blog.

What I will do is remind you of something.

The comments about emptying central and northern New Brunswick were met, I am sure, with great surprise and support by many people in urban New Brunswick. The logic is that there has been too much money spent over the years propping up rural NB at the expense of urban NB.

There is some truth to this. For political or other reasons, historically in New Brunswick there has been this need (again realize that almost 60% of New Brunswickers do not live in Greater Moncton, Greater SJ or Freddy Beach) to have an airport, a major hospital, regional government offices, a high school, good highways, a port (where applicable), multiple bridges (where there's water) - in every single community in New Brunswick. Tack on to this, again a political need, to provide income support (EI) so that people without year round employment could stick around and at least make a subsistance wage.

So, in a nutshell, it's true that it costs more of the public purse for Caraquet or Bathurst to exist than Moncton or Saint John. That's true.

But my point is this.

Governments exist to redistribute. That's their primary function. Take from one area of society and give to another. Take from rich, give to poor. Take from healthy and give to sick. Take from young and give to old. Take from the person with no kids to pay for the education of someone with kids. Take from urban and give to rural. Take from rich suburb and give to poor inner city. Take from Ontario give to New Brunswick. Take from Moncton give to northern NB. Take from one neighbour and give to another.

But, I would add, this, in my opinion, and in large part, is what makes our society great. We do not create these massive disparities in income, place, education, etc. as are found in other societies.

However, Francis McGuire's underlying point is quite valid. I just differ on solutions.

Consider an apt analogy. Northern NB gets far more Equalization and EI per capita than southern NB. Therefore, there are three solutions (or a combination of all three): 1. Reduce the costs across a similar population base, 2. Empty the population (and reduce the costs) or 3. Make an effort to fix the structural economic problems that created this disparity to begin with.

I prefer a combination approach. I think we need a 'new deal' with the communities in New Brunswick. In this deal all communities in New Brunswick would not take as their inalienable right things such as hospitals, airports, high schools, regional government offices, fourlane highways, ports, etc. They would agree - collectively - that this type of infrastructure needs to be based on population and catchment. For example, studies have shown that people will drive up to two hours to get to a good airport (consider Pearson as an example) without feeling considerable hardship. Above two hours, then it becomes a little more problematic. So, for New Brunswick, we need to ensure that the vast majority of NBers are within two hours of an airport. Similar benchmarks could be set up for hospitals, schools, ports, four lane highways, regional government offices, etc.

That's the communities' bit.

On the other hand, the province would commit to work hard and diligently on solving the structural, regional economic problems and commit to make every effort to ensure that these communities actually survive and thrive economically (read 94 previous blogs on this subject).

That's the province's bit.

No more complaining that community x gets everything. No more bitter battles over the location of infrastructure. No more complaints. All of these decisions would be made by an apolitical board of infrastructure based on logical and well published criteria.

Then Miramichi, Tracadie, Caraquet, Campbellton, Bathurst, Edmundston, Woodstock, Sussex, Sackville, Shediac and all other other towns in between could get on with the business of growing the province and doing so with an efficient public cost structure.

Fundamentally, the bargain would come down to this. People outside the urban centres would have to get used to driving 30 minutes to an hour for government services and heck, maybe even for a job. In return, they get a commitment from government do work hard on helping their community's survive.

As I have said before, people will drive 2 hours to save 35 cents on toilet paper at the Costco but they won't drive 20 minutes for a job*. That has to change.


*I did an analysis a few years ago that should that unemployment in communities surround