I have written on several ocassions about the government’s convenient use of the energy sector to brag about New Brunswick’s exports. They claim to have the highest increase in exports in Canada. Prosperity abounds!
They forget to mention that without the new Irving Refinery we have among the worst export performance in Canada and our trusty mainstream media cheerfully neglects to mention this as well.
So, for the benefit of the few hundred that ocassionally read this blog, here’s a few interesting tidbits.
According to the New Brunswick government’s own publications, New Brunswick exports $3.4 billion in energy products each year – this is mostly the Irving refinery. This represents a whopping 45% of the entire exports of the province. Now, the interesting thing is that we import $2.9 billion in energy products per year – about 60% of our total imports. Again, the vast majority of this is the oil brought into the refinery to be processed and shipped out.
So what we have is something like have the import/export level in the entire province being fuelled (no pun intended) by a few hundred workers in Saint John.
If you back out energy, New Brunswick would have an absolutely woeful export performance.
Food for thought, folks.