*In millions $$
One of the government’s favourite statistics these days is the ‘record’ growth in exports from New Brunswick. They toss this around in every speech and report on the economy. What’s interesting is that they fail to mention that almost all of the exports growth comes from the one Irving Refinery in Saint John. They further forget to mention that five of the top ten exports from New Brunswick have actually registered a decline since they have taken office – a drop of over $460 million in value. This easily translates in to several thousand jobs (direct and indirect) lost in the economy. Also, the last time I checked, New Brunswick had the worst performing export sector in Canada when the Irving Refinery is factored out.
Another interesting tidbit is the Prosperity Plan talked about reducing our dependance on ‘commodity’ exports and increasing the value added exports. Well, the one refinery now accounts for almost half the value of exports from the entire province.