It’s hard to get away from it. There is an economic development thread throughout this Ideas Festival. Jacques Poitras talked with Michel Bastarache about the law and chronic under economic development performance in the Maritimes.
Lieutenant-Governor Herménégilde Chiasson lamented in poetic fashion the decline in communities and the need to do more.
There are ideas here about technology, environment, leadership, etc. but most of those ideas are pan-Canadian and even pan-developed world concerns. The issues of systemic economic underperformance and chronic out-migration and the resulting attitudes are specific to certain regions in Canada.
So it is natural that ideas are tilting towards how do we address our specific challenges.