It's The Economy, Stupid

As most of you know I have moved my writing from this platform to Substack. You can sign up to my newsletter or peruse the archives here https://david476.substack.com/ But I will be using this space to point to all the…

Statistics Canada didn’t release data from the Job Vacancy survey for Q2 and Q3 2020 during the height of the pandemic last year but the Q4 data showed a significant spike in job vacancies across New Brunswick. In other words…

As of late last week, I am now the chair of the board of the United Way of Greater Moncton and Southeastern New Brunswick, the backbone organization working with dozens of partner organizations to address social challenges in the region.…

I meant to write about this before but it slipped my mind. For those of you that do not know, Fredericton is becoming a CMA (Census Metropolitan Area) as of the 2021 Census. This is kind of a big deal…

I’ve always had this nagging feeling that government should do more to promote a positive image of places like New Brunswick. It just seems so capricious to leave it to the media or even social media. In both of those…

I have concluded that politicians these days would rather gin up the benefits of a policy decision and ignore the costs, rather than tell it to people straight. When it comes to addressing our climate change commitments, people need to…

My wife and I were headed out to Grande-Digue yesterday to take in Ballet-by-the-Ocean and impressive innovation during Covid-19 from the Atlantic Ballet of Canada. At a stop light my wife pointed out to me that on the driver’s door…

We have been spending a lot of time in the past few years talking about how we boost the talent pipeline as a driver of economic development. We can’t forget, however; that we actually need growth industries if we want…

On an annual basis I make my lament for the advertising and PR business in New Brunswick. Of course, I shouldn’t use the term mad men at all as 58% of all workers in the industry nation wide are women.…

Someone asked me this week to name my top 10 most influential New Brunswickers since I started my career in the early 90s. A few of the obvious came to mind but really I think it depends on what you…