“There is no shortcut to prosperity.” These are the words of New Brunswick Finance Minister Volpe yesterday.
Well, the province has one of the slowest rates of growth in Canada, and is predicted by some analysts to be dead last in 2006 according to the Globe & Mail.
We know from my previous blogs that net out-migration from New Brunswick is close to 6,000 people in this government’s first five full years in office.
We know that, barring a miracle, at the time of the next Census (2006), we will have registered the second staight five-year Census with a population decline (first time in the province’s history).
Mr. Volpe is right. There is no shortcut to prosperity – but you have to at least move in that direction. Instead of things getting incrementally better, I think the evidence is clear they are getting incrementally worse.
But maybe prosperity means something different to Mr. Volpe compared to the rest of us.