I know I have posted the link to this organization at least 3-4 times in the past four years but it is well worth posting again for new readers of the blog. The BC Progress Board is an excellent example of a government funded but independent organization set up to report on the progress of the province against a predetermined set of benchmarks. It is non-partisan and the metrics don't change from year to year (although they do delve into specific topics every year). Click on
the link to have a look at their reporting. You will see that a number of the metrics include New Brunswick and that we are at or near the bottom of the list for virtually all of them.


New Brunswick ranks 60th in GDP per capita; 57th in Real Personal Disposable Income, per capita; 49th in R&D Expenditures, percent of GDP (2nd worst in Canada).

On the plus side:

5th for Personal and Property Crime Rate, per 100,000 population.


I have said repeatedly that New Brunswick needs this kind of independent outside annual review. When this is done internally, the temptation is overwhelming to politicize it. Consider old Jeannot Volpe's Report Card to New Brunswickers. This thing was send to 250000 households at a cost of what must have been at least a couple of million dollars and it was the biggest piece of propaganda since the case was made to invade Iraq. It was unbelieveable. Statistics were combed over and cherry picked and then sanitized to a fine political hue.

I have no problem when political parties issue such crap to defend their record but when it comes from the Department of Finance - it almost becomes unseemly. People expect accurate information coming out of official government sources - and that has become almost farcical in New Brunswick these days.

So, I hope that the provincial government ultimately will do this - set up a similar model in New Brunswick. Sure, initially, we will be at or near the bottom on almost all metrics but look at the bright side - there is nowhere to go but up.

And I'll end on a positive note. You will see that PEI tends to rank even lower than New Brunswick on a number of statistics but I saw in the report that in the last 10 years PEI has had the biggest improvement in the area of R&D spending. That is proof that a last place province can turn things around - it takes time folks - if it puts its mind to it.

Why would the Times & Transcript run an article about the latest migration numbers (and mistakenly call it population), then quote the Minister of BNB talking about the 'strong' population growth and never mention the significant net out-migration of people from NB during 2007?

First of all, they rammed together the quarterly population estimates for NB with the migration estimates for SJ and Moncton. Those are two different things.


Second, why would you have a story talking about annual 'migration' in and out of Saint John and Moncton and then have the Minister comment on the quarterly population numbers?


For your edification, here is the data you should have read about in the newspaper this morning:

Migration 2006/2007

As you can see, we have had another round of out-migration. I think this is the 15th straight year? Something like that.

Population, is another thing altogether. Migration is only one component of population growth/decline.

Population Estimates Q2 2008

New Brunswick's estimated population did increase by about 400 people - or the second worst growth rate in Canada but reading the T&T, you would think these are numbers to be proud of.

Secondly, the population estimates get adjusted eventually and these residuals tend to bias these numbers upwards. Also, the Minister is forgetting to mention the thousands of people who moved West to work but are showing up as living in NB (many of them at least).

This is a recurring theme for me and I just don't understand why the T&T doesn't want to put out in the public domain the data. They can spin it up or down or sideways but to just ignore the figures doesn't serve the public very well.

A couple of years ago I looked at the growing trend of medical tourism in Israel and other international locations (Americans travelling abroad for surgeries). I suggested here (and elsewhere) that New Brunswick should take a long hard look at this. Why not? We are in the backyard of the Boston-NYC corridor with direct flights into NYC. It is significantly cheaper to offer these services here and the health care industry in New Brunswick is, on average, among the highest paying.

I was basically either laughed off, scorned (how dare you) or ignored.

Ontario MDs to launch medical tourism firm
Ailing Americans will soon be able to buy surgery at bargain prices in Canadian hospitals through a new medical tourism company founded by two physicians. Markham-based anesthetist Shehbaz Butt says he can provide international patients quality choices through his company, Canadian Healthcare International Corp., at rates drastically lower than those in the United States.


As I have said before the genius of the call centre initiative was that NB was first in the game. An early adopter. Within five years of NB becoming the so-called call centre capital not only did you have every province in Canada with a 'call centre team' out trying to out-NB NB you had international locations such as India and the Philippines attracting this type of work (not directly influenced by NB I might add).

Why not medical tourism? At a theoretical level? Why would it pose any threat to Medicare to offer services to Americans? Sure, you would have to ramp up capacity but in my opinion that would give you more capacity and competencies to offer NB citizens.

But the most forceful response to my suggestion was outright ignoration. That's a stupid idea. Who would come here? This is New Brunswick, after all.

The exact same response when we talked about attracting these multinational call centres/back offices in the early 1990s.

I am not saying that medical tourism is sure thing. I am saying that we should have done a serious feasibility study 2-3 years ago when it came on the radar.

Watch the tiny totters inching up a hill
It may seems to you he's merely standing still
Though the steps he takes are infinitely small
They're a step in the right direction after all.
-from Bedknobs and Broomsticks

You will have to forgive me but my kids have a bunch of Disney CDs and they play them in the car all the time. This one keeps going through my mind - particularly as a expectation adjusted theme song for New Brunswick.

The latest quarterly population numbers are out and New Brunswick added 400 people - the second worst growth rate in Canada among the 10 provinces.

Although we could use Bruce Springsteen's "One step up and two steps back" because the migration data is also out for 2006-2007. New Brunswick lost another net 1,400 people last year to out-migration. That's about 2 people per 1,000 - slightly better than 2005-2006.

The problem here is how to match the data with the lofty rhetoric. Unless we start turning that migration inward - eventually who will be left?

I know a few Ontarioians read this blog so I have a reasonable question for you. I have not read much about the fiscal gap that Ontario has with Ottawa but I keep reading stories about how unfair it is to Ontario and the fact that Ontario is the poorest province in Canada because of this gap - no wait, I just made that last part up - Ontario is still the richest province in Canada if you measure it by per capita income/net worth (although Alberta must be sneaking up here I haven't looked recently).

But let's say majority rules and Ontario's fiscal gap gets erased. Where does the money come from? In virtually the press I have read on this the complaints are about Equalization, and unequal health transfers and unfair EI allocations - all Atlantic Canada and Quebec focused.

Why target the guns at the poorest parts of Canada? Why not talk about Ontario's 'share' of all that oil wealth in Alberta?

Serious question. Newfoundland notwithstanding, places like New Brunswick would be hit hard if you clawed back a few hundred million each year to fix the imbalance.

I am not an advocate of NB being a ward of the state so to speak but in the short term, our existence depends on it. I would like someone to tell me if Daulton McGuinty has an opinion on where all this money for the fiscal imbalance should come from?

Finally, I don't think there are too many New Brunswickers who wouldn't be ready to switch the imbalance in favour of Ontario - more EI, Equalization, etc. as along as the economic fortunes of each province were switched at the same time.

But to paraphrase old Mike Harris who once said Nova Scotia wanting its equalization and offshore oil royalties was "like the welfare bum who wins the lottery and wants to keep his welfare cheque", if Daulton wants to fix his imbalance by beating up on places like New Brunswick it would be like the millionaire wanting to cut the housekeeper's salary because he lost a killing speculating in the market.

My point is the reason why there is a fiscal imbalance is precisely because Ontario has been the strongest economy in Canada for decades. I don't think Ontario will solve its short term economic challenges by by trying to beat more money out of New Brunswick.

Ontario would be far better off showing strong support for a real self-sufficiency agenda in New Brunswick. That would lower our requirement for elevated transfers and presumably free up some of this money for Ontario.

But that's just my opinion.

I see the provincial government trotted out that statistic about New Brunswick having the third lowest net debt per capita in the country when it released the government financial statements on Friday.

This issue of debt is a bit of recurring theme here because I have a slightly different take on things but first, let's use Statistics Canada data for a little comparison.

New Brunswick has the highest debt charges per capita of any province in Canada. Scroll down to page 52 in this report to view. (By the way, this is an interesting comparative view of government spending in Canada)

Also, I believe that NB Power's $3 billion in debt is not included in the data. That would increase NB's net debt by over 40%. Now, of course not all of NB Power's $3 billion in debt is 'stranded' but a big chunk is and the NB taxpayer is on the hook for all of it.

But even if you agree with the assertion that we have low net debt relatively speaking, to me that translates into more wiggle room for investing in economic development.

Consider this analogy. If the roof on your house was collapsing and you had what the bank considered a good debt load and you had a credit line would you say "I am not fixing that roof because I like having a low debt load" or would you take on the debt to fix your house?

Or another. Would you not take student loans and forgo university just to stay out of debt?

The truth is that New Brunswick should be investing a lot more into economic development and I wouldn't worry an iota if the net debt increased or if we ran some short term deficits. This deficit fighting bogeyman is left over from the 1980s when governments ran deficits year after year with no spending control. If you are spending on the right things, a small deficit or increase in net debt is fine IMO.

Again, they just announced a onetime increase of $368 million to the net debt to pay for a highway. Why would it be so unconscionable to announce a one time increase in debt to build an Energy Park in Sussex or a Bay of Fundy cold water energy system to attract a data centre cluster to Saint John or a large scale wind turbine manufacturing and refurbishment facility in Belledune or an auto plant in Bathurst?

Because that, my friends, is outside our neatly constructed box and going there might entail some risk and might open someone up for scrutiny in the op/ed pages of the newspapers.

Like most things in this province, I think we need to look at debt through a slightly different lens. If you are piling on government spending because you have no discipline on expense control - that is one thing. But if you are increasing government spending in strategic investments that will pay dividends down the road, that is another.

Business New Brunswick has a new booklet - titled Tell The Story. This article talks about the Minister's trip to LA and this new booklet.

Anybody have a digital copy they can send me? I'd love to see the story. Hope it has more in it than energy.

I guess you can accuse me of having a one track mind but, oh well, everybody's got their own rice bowl.

I was reading an article in the Daily Gleaner that interviewed Andy Scott about his 15 (?) years in Ottawa. Andy reamed off a pile of things he was proud of from his work with the Aboriginals, to the same sex marriage file to his work on the Referendum. Not one mention of any economic development file in New Brunswick. I suppose he could point to some if he thought about it but it seems to me that for an NB politician - that should be at the top of the priorities.

During Andy Scott's time in Ottawa Canada went through the longest period of sustained economic growth in history - 14-15 years straight with no recession - something like 4 million in population growth - unprecedented economic success - and yes, the bulk of it was under the Liberal administration.

But all New Brunswick has to show for all that Canadian economic and population growth is a slight decline in population and an ever increasing need for federal transfers just to make the payroll. And not even a passing glance of this fact by Andy Scott as he reminisces about all his time in office.

I would think there would be a lot of regret among provincial and federal officials as to why New Brunswick couldn't join the growth wave that hit Canada in the early-mid 1990s and sustained up until today. I would think there would be a lot of retrospective thinking as to what went wrong. But nothing. Nada.

I just looked at the data today again. New Brunswick's population growth rate steadily increased in the 1950s and 1960s and then started to drop off into the 1980s around that recession and then kept slowing until it dropped into outright decline from 1996-2001 and then stayed the same through 2006.

Why? What, if any was the government's role? Certainly there was a large scale expansion of UI/EI in through the 1980s and beyond? What role did that play? What role did the federal government play, if any, in the allocation of FDI over those years and its total concentration in Ontario/Quebec (with the exception of oil in Alberta and Hong Kong investment in BC)? What role did regional development policy have on this decline?

If this stuff is not even on guys like Andy Scott's radar - how will we ever figure it out? And what about the next big recession in Canada? What will that do to New Brunswick now that we are so exposed with our cheese in the wind?

One track mind but it would be interesting to hear Andy expound on this.

Actually, check that. More babies means more out-migration to Alberta unless we get our economy going down here.

Stats Can just released its latest baby production data in Canada.

You would think with 100,000 season workers and among the lowest labour market participation rates in North America, that New Brunswickers would have more time to hanky panky. Then again, we are among the oldest populations in North America and age does matter in this area. Although Trudeau sired a child at something like 70 years old.


Births per 1,000 population (2006)

Awhile back someone on this blog put me on to the Council on Foreign Relations podcasts - and I have been listening to 4-5 of these every week since. If you want to talk about Ukraine and NATO or microfinance or currency stability in Argentina, giddy up!

Last night I listened to an interesting session with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the president of Argentina (think of her as a kind of Hillary Clinton as her husband was previously the president).

She gave a good speech but her most salient points were around the culture of gambling and risk that has pervaded the U.S. economy - particularly Wall Street. She said the U.S. must get back to what made it great - the creation of value through goods, services and knowledge - and not just gambling on the market.

I think we have got to find a way to limit gambling on stocks. I know that old Greenspan believes that 'liquidity' is the ultimate goal and the short selling of stocks and the other fast flipping of stocks to make quick profits is good for the market but I am increasingly coming into disagreement with the old coot.

It seems to me that we need to find a way to breed out the gambling and revert to stock price setting based on real underlying value.

But I'm not a expert on this stuff. Just a guy whose already small retirement savings has shrunk further in the past little while.

I know we have talked about this ad nauseum in this blog but there is another report out today from Statistics Canada that should once again raise the flag of caution about spending 95% of our economic development time trying to 'foster local entrepreneurship'.

Before I state the specifics, let me reiterate my position. Small local businesses play a vital role in the local community (I now own one - my little consulting practice). They fill in holes that are not covered by larger firms and they offer services that are needed in communities. But the vast vast majority of them never break out of the local community and if your goal is economic development or growth you need to have businesses that are export-oriented. If you have 10 small carpenters in a community and they service the local market and you add one more carpenter - the economic activity just gets split over 11 carpenters - no net new growth.

This report the Workplace and Employee Survey Compendium looks at wages and benefits in Canada against a variety of metrics including benefits offered. Only 8% of businesses under 19 employees offer any kind of pension program - compared to 72.5% of businesses with over 500 employees. Only six percent of the large firms offer no non-wage benefits compared to 54% among the small businesses. Take it from me - non-wage benefits matter in a person's overall compensation.

There are other interesting facts in this report like the fact that of the surveyed companies in Atlantic Canada 90% of their business is only in the local market. Only 1.6% of the firms' collective slaes are to the United States - and the percentage is down since 1995.

Again, I am not slamming small biz. It has its place but I get very annoyed when economic development types say things like "80% of growth is from within" or "we need to focus on our local entrepreneurs rather than try and attract industry".

That doesn't make sense. You attract a pulp mill and that creates the economic activity for 100 small businesses. You don't create 100 small businesses (hair dressers, consultants, plumbers, etc.) and that leads to a new pulp mill.

Economic development is fundamentally about new business investment and good paying jobs. It's about expanding the pie. It's about migrating from old industries to new industries. And, again fundamentally, it's about determining a proper role for government and the local community in this effort. We can't engineer business investment but we can engineer some of the community-level factors that lead to the community becoming a good place for business investment.

Don't romanticize the small business. Understand the role they play in the local economy. Also understand the role that large, anchor businesses play in setting the bar on wage rates, offering non-wage benefits and anchoring overall economic development.

NDP candidate Rob Moir has at least two things going for him: 1) he is blogging and 2) he has some interesting ideas. The following is a response he made to my criticism of his distributed emails as not proffering solutions. Here is is in its entirety with my comments below. Thanks, Rob.


Hi David;This is Rob Moir who is proud to run as a New Democrat in Fundy Royal.First, I will ask two questions of you. (1) Which of the other candidate has you on his mailing list? Which of the other candidates really talks about the economy other than through their "leader"?(2) Which of the other candidates is in fairly regular contact with Enterprise Fundy - not just as election campaigns start, but in between elections?

I don't know of the answer to (1), but the answer to (2) is none.I agree with providing solutions - it is a mantra I tell the entire group of people who support me. Go back to the last election campaign - there was only one candidate that had a credible solution for local jobs. We promoted and promoted and promoted the Sussex Energy Park. Unfortunately, provincial newspapers did not see fit to mention that part of my campaign. After the campaign, our current MP, Mr. Moore, did absolutely nothing about it.

Let me address each of your points in turn, and then provide solutions that work for working people.(1) Refineries: I don't like them but I agree they create jobs. A new refinery will export 100% of product to the US (the existing one already ships out over 50% of product). So, we get much needed jobs, but we also get pollution and we send product to the US (which earns profits for the Irvings). As I recall, I have asked repeatedly for a full federal panel review of the environmental impacts of the entire operations (I have not said shut down the project - we don't have all the facts to draw that conclusion). As far as I can tell, there is a legal federal requirement for a full assessment because some of the emissions are on Environment Canada's priority substance list number 1 (PSL1) - listing toxins and carcinogens. What, does Federal Law not apply in NB? Now suppose we get the assessment and as a result we are required to build a refinery with the world's best emissions controls and carbon offsetting projects - is that a bad thing?

(2) Nuclear power: I have good friends that work in the industry and see the importance of it as part of a system. Why does NB need another plant if just to export to the US? The "green-ness" of nuclear power is much-touted, but the provincial government has never once said we'd use Lepreau 2 to replace our fossil-fuel plants. What exactly is our storage solution for spent fuel? Who pays (given we own NB power) for heightened security post 9/11? [The taxpayers by the way!] And here's an interesting tidbit - why did Liberals and Conservatives in the last Parliament vote to cap liability from a nuclear event at $680 million [Bill C-5, check out http://www.howdtheyvote.ca]. Even the Three Mile Incident, which wasn't a full melt-down, cost well into the billion dollar range. Moreover, every homeowner’s insurance has a clause nullifying the contract in the even of a nuclear incident.

(3) Forestry: Anyone who owns a woodlot, as do I, knows we are in dire straits. One corporation in the province runs virtually everything in the forestry sector. ECON 101 and Adam Smith warn us that this leads to problems. Let's get to solutions. Federally, work to limit raw-log exports; Canadian wood is in high demand, why aren't we adding value? Provincially, reinstate the "buy from private owners first" rule instead of selling off our crown wood at cut-rate (and lower) prices. Promote wood heat in the province. The cost of installing high efficiency wood-burning units in the 150,000 residences heated by electricity in NB is about $450 million - a far cry from the $8+ billion for Lepreau 2. $450 million is likely much smaller than the provincial liability on loans and incentive packages for Lepreau 2. Better yet, with wood heat we put people back to work in the forests. [By the way, I sent this idea to the Telegraph Journal over 4 months ago as part of an Opinion Piece, but they chose not to publish it - it isn't that we don't have solutions, we just aren't allowed to publicize them in the traditional way]. We can look at compressed wood fuel (briquettes/pellets). We can look at wood as potential for non-food cellulosic bio-fuel. The Dutch, I believe, have worked out a way to refine bio-fuel from wood using existing in-place oil refineries. I've been chatting about these ideas for years in my Economics classes - the problem is it is very difficult to publish them in our newspapers.

Do I have a 5-point plan? Not exactly (these are limiting and generally feel-good jargon - see "Self-Sufficiency" for example).

Elsewhere in one of your columns, you listed 10 questions (I have been working out answers to all of them). Instead I have a few (these are not all) ideas, and then a 3-pillared platform (which will finish my reply).

(1) We have another pocket of stranded natural gas. Luckily for us, it is off of most people's radar. Once again, I will promote an energy park.

(2) I see the growing importance of rail as worthy of investment. Rail is a cheaper as a method of shipping, and, with the right federal-provincial cooperation, can be a very viable alternative for commuter traffic. I would like to see some form of passenger service (e.g. light rail) from Moncton to Saint John, hubbing near Sussex, with the option of a new spur up to Fredericton if it is feasible. I could easily see the area outside of Sussex as a travel hub in the future given its proximity to the 3 major urban centres. Of course, I would work with people in Sussex to see if this is a plan they like.

(3) I would like to work on a federal government project that sees New Brunswick become a testing ground for energy production alternatives. We have many of the traditional sources (refining, fossil-fuel generation, nuclear, hydro). We could look to expand some semi-traditional sources (wood heat, natural gas, and perhaps oil shale). We could invest in alternatives (wood bio-fuel, cellulosic (non-food crop) bio-fuel, solar-bio hydrogen, wind, tidal, HVDC transmission, geo-thermal, etc.). Finally, we should find money to invest in Efficiency NB (McKinsey Global Institute points out that this form of energy investment has the highest rate of return). A federal investment package of this type would increase employment, put NB at the forefront of energy technology and R&D, and potentially build an export industry. We are likely the only province in which we could run all these comparisons at the same time, thus ensuring a degree of scientific validity.One can never tell what specific issues will arise during a session of parliament. As such, I think it is important to put together a vision that shows people how I will adapt to new information and new issues.

That said, my 3-pillared platform:

(1) As an MP, I will work COOPERATIVELY to get good things done for Fundy Royal, New Brunswick, and Canada. I am sick of party flag waving and "opposing because we're in Opposition."

(2) I will actively promote investment in COMMUNITY - investment of time on issues that matter to people, and work on local investment that promotes sustainable community economic development. We need to invest in hardworking families, small businesses, farmers, fishermen, and foresters.

(3) I am sick of accountability - it hasn't really pulled us ahead. It is time for HONESTY, and the honesty I expect from myself I will expect from others, no matter the political stripe.

David - I have replied to your blog entry in detail. I most certainly am not just an activist - I am a pro-active activist with ideas and workable plans. I see a province and a riding worth investing in - and I have invested a lot of my time working on projects that will help us all.

The question is where do you stand? I've seen nothing from the other candidates, indeed from most federal politicians across the province (with perhaps the exception of Yvon Godin), that gets to the nuts and bolts of building a sustainable economy that works for us all. Believe me, I have been looking.

This province needs positive change with a solid environmental economics focus. I have a huge challenge ahead because of voting tradition. I have a huge challenge ahead because the simple rules of the benefits of competition identified in ECON 101 pit me against some powerful business interests.

Can you help? Will you help? Please let me know if you'd like to be off of the mailing list. We can do it, but I would like to think of you as a valuable ally and source of constructive criticism.

Cheers, Rob

*****************
First, thanks for not being acrimonious. The natural human instinct when someone feels they have been aggrieved is to lash out. Your response is measured in tone and substantive.

I will reiterate that I didn't take the time to actively research the platforms of federal candidates - at least during this election cycle - so your taking the time to flesh out ideas here will give you another up to 6,000 pairs of eyeballs - although I don't know how many are in your riding.

I like your support of the energy park concept associated with stranded gas. This could be a very interesting way to have the gas developer receive a market rate for his/her production but at the same time have natural gas to the end user at significantly lower cost than most competitor locations (although it is hard to compete with some areas in the western US).

We agree on rail. As a kid I remember sitting in front of a two mile long train in Chicago and being fascinated. I would like Indian sub-continent cargo bound for the eastern seabord of the USA to be routed right through Sussex and down through Vanceboro. Over time, that would lead to dramatically lower shipping costs for NB companies.

Alternative energy -we agree - nuclear - not sure we agree. I haven't formulated a position beyond my much quoted mantra that energy produced here should be used first for economic development here ahead of any export strategy.

Forestry - not much agreement here. The world will always need pulp and paper, and sawmill products and there is high value in them. The mills in this province pay average salaries in line with government bureaucrat salaries. If we shift over to lower wage industries like pellet mills - we have less jobs at lower wages.

However, your point about "installing high efficiency wood-burning units in the 150,000 residences" is a good one - this government policy driven and supported effort to have housing heated by baseboard electric heating has been a serious problem and we need to aggressively tackle it. And the short term economic activity from converting the 150,000 homes would be substantial.

As for where I stand, you can read the 2,500+ blog entries and close to 4,000 pages of original content in the past four years (come to think of it, you can read almost as much content from those in opposition to my ideas as well).

I am tired of watching friends and family going down the road without much of a choice in the matter.

I want New Brunswick to have an economic foundation that is attracting people not repelling them. I would like, just once in my lifetime, for New Brunswick to lead Canada (or be among the leaders) in economic activity and job creation over an extended period of time.

I want us to understand the importance of national and international business investment to economic growth. For so long we have tried to prop up the economy with essentially government and local business investment. The only international investment we see here is for the occasional mine or mill and for local retail and services. Something like 90% of the non oil & gas FDI comes into Canada and lands in the Toronto/Montreal corridor and I have never heard a federal politician even mention that in passing.

In fact, many are of the persuasion that FDI is a bad thing for a place like New Brunswick and decry the evils of multinational firms. I dislike this position deeply. BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Seimens, Nestle - on and on - have made hundreds of billions worth of FDI into the southern U.S. and are revitalizing those economies. They pay far higher wages and benefits and offer good working conditions and career mobility. None here. We get a beer plant - mostly for local consumption.

We spend tens of millions to promote French in New Brunswick and then the few international French companies that come to the Maritimes go to Nova Scotia (Michelin, Composites Atlantic, etc.). That's a little off topic but it is a bugaboo that we don't use our one distinct attribute in our economic develpoment efforts.

Mr. Moir. Soldier on and thanks for contributing to the discussion.

My column today is likely to annoy environmentalists and community activists but what the hey. I happen to believe every word of it and would be happy to expound in greater detail if you like.

Take Rob Moir, the NBP candidate in the federal election. Somehow I am on his email distribution list and I have received 4-5 emails on the 'issues'. All of them have been negative slams with no alternatives offered beyond platitudes. I know that kind of stuff is designed to whip up the NDP base and I am sure it will - but if Moir really wanted to get elected wouldn't he adopt a solutions-oriented more mainstreet approach?

He doesn't like refineries, nuclear power plants, forestry operations, etc. but what does he like? He should start sending around emails with his five point plan for resuscitating the NB economy.

I have been keeping an eye on Indiana over the past few years - particularly after they landed the largest pharmaceutical benefits management (PBM) project I have ever seen - the HQ of Medco and 1,600 high paying jobs.

In this op/ed, the Governor talks about building "the best sandbox in America." If you get through the hyperbole, you see a few interesting things that the state did:

We lowered the taxes on research and development...

Another example of using the tax system to incentivize a specific behaviour (i.e. more R&D) rather than just generalized tax cuts.

A great product doesn't promote itself, of course. We abolished a stodgy state bureaucracy that had been constantly outrun by its competitors, and replaced it with a non-profit corporation staffed with real businesspeople. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation shattered the previous record for new jobs attracted in its very first year, then proceeded to rebreak that record every year since. Companies like Honda, AT&T, Nestle, Toyota, Amazon, Medco, and hundreds more have begun choosing Indiana over a literal world of alternatives. In 2006, we were number 1 among states of all sizes for insourcing new production jobs through international investment.

I think this speaks for itself.

....the jobs that IEDC deals have landed average well above the current state wage level, and more than half have been in towns of less than 25,000 people.

This is vital. Most economic development agencies require that new projects looking for government tax breaks or incentives pay wages above the average. Do we in New Brunswick? Or do we replace $25/hour paper mill jobs by offering incentives to companies offering $14/hour for manufacturing jobs? And as for the smaller city/town thing, that's common.

In the last two years, we've become home to the world's biggest soy biodiesel plant, the nation's second-largest wind farm, and the world's first full-scale clean coal power plant is now under construction here.

You can talk about alternative energy until your head pops off. Or you can go out and help build an industry. We are 10 years behind on wind energy compared to Quebec and much of Europe where will NB sit on this file?

The soft spot we must address to complete our portfolio is education and workforce readiness...

Interesting that education and workforce development concerns come after five years of record levels of growth. There's a learning here. If you put all your eggs in the education basket, you just become an incubator for Ontario, BC and Alberta's workforce needs. I am not saying cut education funding - don't freak out on me. But I am saying that if we don't look at these issues on parallel tracks, we do so at our own peril.

I like what I am hearing out of the Governor of Indiana. Mostly because he has hard data and facts to back up a successful record. In New Brunswick, the jury is still out.....

An enduring memory from the McKenna days. They would start by hinting a new project would be coming. Then they would announce the project at a press conference. Then they would have another press conference when the sod was turned or the ribbon was cut on the new building. That way you get three stories out of one economic development announcement.

I assume that is what is going on in the Miramichi. I just hope it is a serious, high paying good quality project. I still get the chills when I remember hearing former BNB Minister Mesheau saying that saving the Nackawic Mill was his greatest achievement as Minister. A project that meant less jobs with lower wages. His greatest achievement. Not to belittle that project. Hopefully the $70 million in government money was well invested. But when the project you are most proud of led to less jobs in the community, I think that says something.

Same in the 'Chi. That community needs nothing less than another 2 or more large anchor projects that pay good wages and offer good benefits - and long term stability. Giving away the store for 100 jobs won't cut it.

Someone asked me to comment on the VW/Tennessee auto deal:

Tennessee, for instance, has just disclosed that it agreed to give German carmaker Volkswagen $577m in incentives for its $1bn plant in Chattanooga. A senior executive at Fiat, the Italian industrial conglomerate, said: “With the amount of money US states are willing to throw at you, you would be stupid to turn them down at the moment. It is one of the low-cost locations to be in at the moment.”

First of all, the bidding for auto plants is getting crazy. However, the cash out of pocket to attract VW was actually limited. The subsidy to Volkswagen included free land worth $81-million, plus cheap electricity rates. In addition, there were a pile of tax incentives worth 10s of millions if not several hundred million or 20 or 25 years. Remember, all of that doesn't cost the taxpayers a dime. However, I still think these are crazy sized deals.

The real point I want to keep making, however; is the use of these large projects as economic anchors in the community. According to this article:

Nearly 15 years after opening a $500 million BMW assembly plant with nearly 2,000 employees in Spartanburg County, the German automaker has more than doubled its staff and boosted its plant investment nearly tenfold. A new study estimates BMW now generates 23,050 direct and indirect jobs for the Greenville-Spartanburg area.

Now, ask yourselves on simple question. That $200 million that the Transportation Minister just announced to expand a highway around the Acadian Peninsula (for 'economic development' benefits we were told), would it be better served trying to attract a BMW plant or putting down asphalt?

Before you answer, let me give you a couple more numbers.

$2 billion. That is roughly the amount of EI paid out in the Peninsula in the last 15 years. $200 million for an auto plant doesn't seem as much in that context.

10,000. That is roughly the amount of population lost in the Acadian Peninsula in the last 15 years. If 5,000 of those were working and producing an average amount of tax revenue in New Brunswick - it would add over $80 million per year in tax revenue to the provincial coffers.

If you have been following the U.S. financial crisis you will have heard this term - Too Big To Fail and its acronym TBTF. It refers to those huge, globally interconnected financial firms that if they went down would drag down a significant part of the economy with them. The government reasons that the cost of the company going down is larger than the cost of bailing them out. Hence we get the Bear Stearns, Fannie/Freddie and AIG bailouts.

We have the same issue in economic development - although we haven't used this clever acronym yet. That is companies that are perceived to be TBTF and are continuously bailed out by government. Think the coal industry in Cape Breton, textile mills in Northe