I have never figured out why New Brunswick doesn't do more to leverage its language skills for economic development. Take the translation industry. A fairly good paying industry. We have a good translation program at UdeM. You would think that a few people would see that as an interesting career opportunity and you would further think there would be economic development opportunities.



It is true that every few years some level of government throws a few bucks at the sector. But really, this is an industry that has had pitiful success in New Brunswick. We are supposed to be the only officially bilingual province in Canada.

From the 2001 to 2006 Census, we had a decline in the number of persons employed as Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters.

Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters

You know the old economics term: opportunity cost? It's a helpful tool when looking at economic development. Wikipedia's definition is not quite perfect but it works:

Opportunity cost is the theoretical cost of passing up the next best choice in making a decision in a perfect world.

Basically, in economic development terms, opportunity cost means being rigorous and very thoughtfull with how you are spending taxpayer dollars. For example, one might say that $4 million to attract Van Halen for a concert on PEI is a good expense. Some creative consultant armed with a set of input-output tables might even show a $4.1 million payback on that government investment (economic effect on the local economy).

However, even if you buy the $4.1 million argument (and I say beware of that), you still need to do an opportunity cost assessment and compare that $4 million investment in Eddie Van Halen's rehab to spending $4 million on training 200 people on the skills to work in the animation industry or $4 million on expanding Slemon park or $4 million to set up an investment/trade office in India for the next 6-8 years.

Opportunity cost.

Our friend Alec Bruce as a nice puff piece in Area Development magazine this month. His writing there still has the wit but not the biting satire of the stuff he puts in the local paper. Maybe this is a good example of tailoring the message to the audience. If I was writing in Area Development magazine about Atlantic Canada, I would also keep the tone positive but if I am writing to an internal audience that needs to change things, I would be more challenging.

I have an ongoing theme on this blog about the ideology of Progressive Conservatives in New Brunswick. As you know, I lean small c conservative in my politics and my views on the interaction between government and the people. But, mostly based on my experience, I tend to give ideology a wide berth on many issues because of the insanity of hard and fast positions on a lot of it.

But I never - in 20 years - could figure out what it meant to be a PC in New Brnswick. Never. Richard Hatfield was anything but a Tory in the classic sense. Bernard Lord said he was a fiscal conservative and then rung up government spending at over twice the rate of economic growth in the province during his time in office.

Now I have been reading Jeannot Volpe's response to the proposed tax reform in New Brunswick and am amazed at his hard left stance - talking about how it will favour big corporations and hurt the little guy. Slamming the notion of a flat tax which is universally considered a 'conservative' idea.

To listen to Volpe, a conservative is about "lookin' out for the little guy" and protecting them from the evil corporation.

But isn't that ideological ground already a crowded space in Canada?

Here is the podcast for this week. I look at immigration, airports, and the need to give a hard look at how major, systemic changes to government are accomplished in the province. Have a good week!

In like a lion, out like a lamb. Remember the outcry when the first round of the post secondary reform was rolled out? Now, the report is released and the 7-8 stories I have read on this have been about the most benign you could imagine. No significant change but more dough. Isn't that what the universities wanted to begin with?

It can be tough to be a politician. If you make bold changes (the Premier said the first model would be the envy of North America) you get nuclear blowback. If you make incremental, tepid changes you just slide your way through.

I don't thing there is an easy answer.

Just got back from that information session on the proposed changes to the French Immersion system. I have fairly strong feelings on this but I know my judgement is clouded by my personal situation (three kids in the system).

But I will say this. I think we need to rethink how very large scale public policy decisions are made in this province. This decision on French Immersion represents a huge change with wide ranging impacts (for example, apparently already some 50 French Immersion teachers have left Region 2 to go to Region 1). And now I hear that some well placed Tories are saying that if the system is changed, they will run on a platform to change it back in 2010.

Our kids shouldn't be political ping pong balls. Major decisions like this should require a 2/3 majority in the Legislature or some form of public plebiscite. It shouldn't be easy to make large scale public policy decisions that will have far ranging implications.

I'm not even commenting directly on this issue. I am saying that there must be decisions that must rise above the fray and once they are made it would take a serious effort to unmake them. Throwing the whole english language education system in turmoil only to have it flipped back 18 months later is crazy.

There must be a better way.

Second time over here in the past few weeks. Good town. Fantastic people. Drizzly and 9 degrees this morning.

I see that Stephen Lund from NSBI made the list of Atlantic Canada's Top 50 CEOs this year. It's a well deserved accolade. The guy is good at what he does. I think the last economic developer to win that was Moncton's Ron Gaudet - athough come to think of it Steve Demsey from the GHP may have won it as well.

There are some good names on that list but you have to wonder about David Hay at NB Power. The few people that I know that interact with Hay say he is a top shelf guy but NB Power hasn't been an stellar economic success in recent years.

It's a bit strange that out of 50 companies, there is only one technology CEO on the list (Bulletproof) unless you count Aliant. It seems to me that if the future is technology based business, you'd like to see more of these guys making this list.

That title is a little play on John Candy's words in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Just to pick up on the immigration theme that I am spending more time on lately.

It is my sense that there is a small group of people out there that are ideal targets for immigration to New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada. There are folks that want to be in a less populated area, feel really safe walking down the street at night, drive 5 minutes to work, buy a house for a reasonable cost, live beside relatively friendly people. In my consultations with immigrations so far, the winter wasn't even that much of a concern.

But they need the economic opportunity which falls into several areas: 1. Good job (job that represents at least an equivalent to their old country); 2. Spousal opportunities; 3. Career path options (if the current job doesn't work out) and 4. A relatively good cost of living (compared to thier old country).

If you match the economic opportunity with the profile of the person who would like to live here you will get long term, successful immigrants that add fully to the fabric of society.

If one or the other of those are mis-aligned (lifestyle expectations or economic opportunity) you will get out-migration and/or bitter immigrants that are anything but a testimonial for living here.

For example, if an immigrant came to Moncton for a job without assessing the lifestyle and would have much preferred a large urban centre, they will not be happy. Conversely, if they love Moncton but their job is below expectation or their spouse can't find work, they will not be happy.

There are no easy answers to this but ultimately the closer we can align these two issues the better chance of success.

If you can read this, it's my latest column designed to annoy just about everyone. I am calling for the consolidation of NB's air services into one single airport for the province. Ouch. But don't judge me until you read the figures.

I am sitting in a session with 12 immigrants (blogging in real time). They love it here but the key is the job. Spouses can't find jobs. Others are underemployed. But they all say that if there were good career jobs here (and companies would hire them), they would stay and love it.

They like just about everything about Atlantic Canada - except the lack of job opportunities.

Don't put the cart in front of the horse on immigration. If you build it (i.e good companies with good jobs) and they will come. Don't sell smoke and mirrors. And if you need workers in lower wage service industries, don't attract skilled people to work low paying jobs. Attract people for whom those jobs would be a step up.

There's Israelis, a Hungarian, Brits, an Indian, a Peruvian and a couple of Americans.

Fun stuff.

Here is the podcast for this week. I look at occupational wages, comment on Richard Florida, weigh in on the upcoming Tory leadership race and tell you where I am vacationing in early July.

Some of you prefer less pontificating and more hard data so here is some for you to chew on. It is a few occupational categories and the median earnings for full time, full year workers from the 2001 and 2006 Censuses. You will be happy to know (although Brad Green is still cranky about it) that while the median earnings for all full time, full year workers went up by 2% of the five year period, health occupation wages went up 21%. And to rub salt in old Brad's wounds,
Senior Government Managers & Officials median earnings went up 22% (or ten times the average joe) and they still booted Green out on his arse.

Maybe meaningful work and a sense of direction for most public sector workers is just as important as wage increases. That would be my sense from working with public sector workers in the ED area.

Take a look at my chart and then play around with the raw data here.

Someone, I think it was Mikel, put me on to TVO's The Agenda. This is a good podcast. I just listened to At home in a globalizing world: minister of Economic Development and Trade Sandra Pupatello on Ontario's efforts to promote itself abroad.

It's well worth a listen - particularly for economic dev. professionals. Ontario is the benchmark that the rest of the provinces need to pivot on. She talks about auto, animation, international offices, etc.

I don't blame the media but when you read about "sources" indicate that person x or person y is considering a run at the Tory leadership, it is likely the actual person him or herself. This is now standard fare in New Brunswick. You are your own deep throat.

Phone rings. A deep gravelly voice on the other end says "I hear that Bernard Lord is considering a second run at the Tory Leadership" cough cough. "Is that you Bernard?" is the reply. A hasty hang up.

Yes. We read again today that Bernard Lord himself is considering another kick at the can. Maybe after seven years of dithering and a 38% rise in government spending (over double the rate of the economy as a whole), he has learned a few things.

One thing is for sure. If Bernie runs again, there will lots of fodder for discussion on this blog. As you may have noticed, I am far more critical of dithering and inaction than I am of action that may not achieve the desired result. Better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, the old saying goes.

It was frustrating for me to sit back and watch the early 2000s unfold. Across Canada, the country was achieving record levels of population growth. Own source government revenues were up across the board. The economy was, for the most part, very strong.

Meanwhile, in New Brunswick, stagnant population actually slipped into population decline as we ran up a 15 year streak of net-out migration. Our economy underperformed the national economy five of the seven years Bernard was in power. And, most annoyingly, almost all of the 'big' leadership issues of the day (economic development, post-secondary education, French Immersion, forestry management/development, energy, etc.) were left to simmer on the backburner - some were studied to death. Some were given 'strategies' and 'targets' that were ridiculous (like worst to third in Canada for education test scores and worst to third in Canada for R&D spending) others were just ignored.

This left the opposition chomping at the bit and they came in guns ablazin'. Post-secondary, bang. Energy, bang. French Immersion, bang. Health, bang. We will wait and see if a) any/all of it actually happens and b) what the political fall out could be.

I now hear Tories telling people not to worry. They will reverse French Immersion, put the brakes on post-secondary reform, find a new health model. And forget about uranium mining (a dark horse problem for the Liberals).

But cajoling various aggrieved special interest groups is not leadership. The Tories exploited similar wounds in 1999 (remember Toll Busters?). It may get you into power by cobbling together a room full of angry men and women but it won't lead you to good government.

So, I think whomever emerges as the Tory leader needs to forget the temptation to ride the Toll Busters wave and craft his/her own vision for how to move New Brunswick forward. Seriously. The silliness that we have witnessed has been staggering.

Just finished Richard Florida's book, Who's Your City. When I saw the title, it sounded familiar to me. Early in the book Florida gushes over his appearance on the Stephen Colbert show. It just clicked that Who's Your City is a loose parady of Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!). Now we are getting our economic development direction from comedians. Who's going to get the last laugh?

Anyway, while Florida's book lacks in rigorous substance, it does provide some interesting areas for consideration. His assertion that physical place matters (clustering) makes some intuitive sense but his rejection of technology as a means to achieve this (the linking of less physically close areas) lacks creativity.

Take my wife for example. She Skypes her parents in Brazil 2-3 times a week and talks for at least 30 minutes. Normally, she will go to Brazil for 4-6 weeks most years and her parents and other family members will come here for a month. In short, she has way more face time with her family that most people do when their family is located in the same city.

We need to be more deliberate about this in our economic development efforts. FaceBook, Skype, etc. should be commonplace but more important we should be more deliberate about linking up to other markets where it makes sense.

Take sister city relationships. Moncton will twin with Galway, Ireland for example and the mayor's will shake hands and exchange keys. And that will be it. How about a FaceBook group? How about a large scale student exchange program? How about a business incubator here for businesses from there and vice versa? How about being far more deliberate about business linkages (chamber of commerce activities, etc.)? How about a direct flight from Galway to Moncton? How about a section in the local newspaper on each side about the other? Of course, these efforts would need to be tied to economic and social goals but places like New Brunswick should be leaders in finding innovative ways to overcome this very real need for physical, social interaction.

David Shipley in the TJ has a story entitled "Fearing for FatKat's future" in which the company's CEO says New Brunswick's tax incentives are not competitive with other provinces. But there is another line in the piece that caught my eye:

"From what I hear, they're trying to lure big studios to the province," he said. "But we have a studio here that's bringing in millions of dollars."

Gene Fowler shouldn't fall into the trap fell into by a pile of other technology firms in New Brunswick. A lot of eLearning firms complained that the province was trying to bring in the big guys as well.

New Brunswick needs to get some critical mass in the animation biz and that will take a mix of big studios and local firms. Orphaned animation studios in the Miramichi is not a recipe for economic development success.

Fowler should be arguing that a more competitive tax credit program would be advantageous for both local and national/international firms. He should be out helping sell the province. That "rising tide rises all boats" thing.

Cloistering away in the 'Chi and hoping for the best is not an effective way to promote economic development.

The province needs to decide if we are to have an animation cluster or not. If so, it needs to align its investment attraction, trade development, entrepreneurial development, training/education, R&D and related service development activity.

That's our biggest problem. We have way too many onesy and twosy industries. A chocolates plant here, an animation studio there, a cancer research organization here, an eLearning firm over there. We need to get some clustering happening.

I have talked with a number of firms that have candidly told me they don't want the province attracting competitors. They intuitively understand the importance of clustering but they worry about employee raiding and upward pressure on wages. I understand this and don't want to be to judgemental. But at the same time, all of the evidence shows that FatKat would have far more chance of success - long term - in the middle of a well formed animation cluster than an orphan on the periphery.

I am almost done Richard Florida's new book "Who's Your City" and I have to say that it - like his last book - leaves me a little disappointed. I find he develops very interesting data but then makes giant leaps as to causality.

I had a similar feeling when I read Naomi Klein's No Logo a few years ago.

It seems to me that Klein began with a rigorous assessment of the rise and dominance of global brands then moved to a less than rigorous assessment of the negative impact of those global brands and almost no rigor at all to her "what is to be done" assessment.

I get the same feeling from the two books I read by Florida. He makes a rigorous assessment of (in this latest book) the rise of the mega-region, the correlation between creativity and other factors and economic growth, etc. Then he makes a less than rigorous assessment of causality and finaly makes an absolutely tepid commentary about what is to be done.

And yet all the public policy is based on his commentary about what is to be done. I don't find that Florida proves that investing in museums and cultural facilities will stimulate economic growth. He proves there is a correlation between the two but is it chicken and egg? Does a community focus on attracting Google, generating high wage incomes, eventually leading to spin off companies that sell for millions and the owners build museums with their newfound money? Or should a company build a museum, hope it attracts creative types which will catch the eye of Google and convince them to move in?

Same with gays and bohemians. Florida thinks communities should encourage gays and bohemians to move in because his analysis shows that communities with higher percentages of gays and bohemians have better economic outcomes.

But is it the opposite? Do successful communities over time attract more gays and bohemians which in turn leads to statistics showing successful communities have gays and bohemians. Who knows? But Florida doesn't really make the case.

And then, of course, there is application of theory. Thomas Friedman (who is roundly slammed by Florida) says the world is flat and economic growth and technological innovation can happen anywhere. This is a message that resonates with the 50% of the world that doesn't live in Florida's mega-regions.

Florida writes a whole book essentially dooming places like Atlantic Canada to economic failure and then jets in and says we need to invest in creativity and attracting gays and bohemians. Essentially, as most one trick ponies, he is trying to impose his model that he sees working in Austin, Toronto and San Francisco on little places like Saint John when his own analysis doesn't account at all for smaller urban regions that aren't part of these mega clusters.

I think we need need a Richard Florida for the mid sized city. For all of the areas across the industrialized world that aren't in the magnetic pull of Toronto or Vancouver or New York.

Maybe a John Manitoba.

Maybe a little less strong observation and weak causality and maybe a little more creativity (the very thing Florida has based his career on) when it comes to looking at solutions for small urban and even rural regions.

Maybe FaceBook can help a bunch of smaller urbans act more like clusters. Maybe governments can stop the petty turf protection and do far more to link up their communities. Florida banks the farm (excuse the metaphor) on place and the physical agglomeration of people, maybe places like New Brunswick should do far more to focus on virtual place. Maybe the next generation of Florida (or Manitoba if you will) will be the virtual cluster. The life sciences cluster that pulled in biomedical resources from Moncton, and clinical trials expertise from Saint John and nutraceutical expertise from Charlottetown and medical school research facilities in Halifax.

Otherwise, just reading Florida, you would get the sense that we are doomed in the longer term.

But I lean more towards Friedman than Florida. Or maybe Manitoba.

"I hope you got fat
I hope you got really fat
Cause if you got really really fat
You just might want to see me come back
I hope you got fat"
-Violent Femmes

Maybe New Brunswick should become a haven for portly people. Portly people that don't exercise.

Hey. It's all about strategic differentiation.

Peter MacKay making the case for the Atl. Gateway in Toronto this week. Here is a quote from the article (in India):

Indian business and political leaders were very receptive when he outlined "our vision for the Atlantic Gateway - and the economic potential it represents for both our countries", said MacKay, who is also minister for Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Indian High Commissioner R.L. Narayan said India was "bullish" on its relations with Canada.

The two countries have signed accords on science and technology cooperation and investment protection, and were working on concluding a free trade agreement. They have also agreed to set up a bio-nano institute for cooperating on developing the technology of the future, he said. Narayan added that Indian companies have made significant investment in Canada.

The problem is that most of those investments are not in Atl. Canada (with the notable exception of AV Nackawic and the Minacs purchase).