Now before you criticize me remember that free advice is cheap. A recent study found that 80% of data centres in the US are going to expand. Another study I saw estimated at least 100 new large scale data centres…
Continue ReadingFarming in New Brunswick
The farm Census was released yesterday. New Brunswick’s 8.5% drop in the number of farms from 2001 to 2006 was the third worst decline among the provinces in Canada. I don’t have time to dig deeper to assess the health…
Continue ReadingT&T stays the course
You can always count on the Times & Transcript to take a one-sided and not-thought-out position on just about every issue. I guess that is the papers’ right but it doesn’t do much for the residents of this region. Take…
Continue ReadingAmalgamation makes sense
I have commented on this before but it is well worth revisiting in light of attempts to merge a few communities in southeastern New Brunswick. New Brunswick has 256 distinct municipalities ranging from the Alma Parish with five residents and…
Continue ReadingThere’s not many secrets in this biz
Look, if you want to attract business investment into Atlantic Canada, you need people positioned in regional economic development organizations that play in the global business market. Here are the seven new appointees to the ACOA board: Ross McNeil, of…
Continue ReadingLack of British interest in Atl. Canada called ‘puzzling’
There hasn’t been a lot of foreign direct investment into Atlantic Canada from the United Kingdom. It seems there is not a lot of trade either. “Sadly, we are aware of only 14 businesses from Atlantic Canada operating in the…
Continue ReadingA little ‘scale obsession’ might be good right about now
I got into the office this morning and was promptly greeted by an email from some weight loss web site saying “Stop Scale Obsession!”. When I saw this email, I had to chuckle. In a couple of weeks, my wife,…
Continue ReadingA theoretical question
You know the old axiom about if a tree falls in the forest? I have a slightly different twist on it. If your ‘incentive’ to attract a company is forgone taxes – taxes you would not have received anyway if…
Continue ReadingAvoid group think on manufacturing
There were another series of articles last week about the decline in the manufacturing sector in Canada. Most economic developers I talk to don’t want to touch manufacturing with a ten foot poll. One group I work with ocassionally has…
Continue ReadingOld world thinking for a new world
A few years ago, somebody I worked with calculated the savings that a pulp mill in New Brunswick gets from incentive power rates from NB Power and found that over a ten year period, it was literally tens of millions…
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