Keep an eye on this.
Lest you mistake my intent, I have never said we need to exclusively focus on attracting foreign investment. I think that is a key component but my real focus in on attracting our share of investment capital – into our SMEs and also by attracting firms themselves from outside the province.
So far, I have been more than a little impressed by the New Brunswick Securities Commission. I don’t know who’s running it or what their motivations are but this group just might end up being an important catalyst for opening up New Brunswick for investment capital.
Remember what a securities commission does:
The New Brunswick Securities Commission (NBSC) is the Crown corporation established by the Province of New Brunswick in 2004 to regulate the securities industry and ensure the efficiency and integrity of capital markets in New Brunswick .
In most situtations, a securities commission is about regulation, efficiency and integrity – just like th vision of the NBSC.
But somebody over there, wisely, figured out that there ain’t any friggin’ capital market here to speak of and maybe the NBSC itself could do something about that.
Maybe if we had this type of thinking more broadly in government, we just might move ahead in this province.
For example, somebody told me once that the DM of the Department of Health said “we are not in the business of economic development, we are in the business of health” in the context of health research.
Well, the department spends $2 billion a year. It’s in the business of economic development by default.
Whether or not that $2 billion is spent with an eye to economic benefit depends entirely on that DM and his/her boss and his/her boss.
And if I need to spell this out, maybe you need to go get an economics 101 textbook.