This is supposed to be titled Quality of the strenuous life. Not sure what happened. It’s my column today in the TJ. Not sure if this is one of my finer columns over the years but I am trying to…
Continue ReadingVirtual whiteboard
People have been asking me how I would recommend going about the process of selecting targeted sectors to focus on and build up a strong value proposition. I was thinking we could adapt some of the old BCG modelling from…
Continue ReadingAlabamy Bound
There is an old saying that what comes up must come down – eventually. Ontario boomed for 15 years and it hit a rough patch 18 months ago. Alberta boomed. Ireland outpaced the rest of the world for 20 years…
Continue ReadingThere ain’t no place like Alberta
Alberta just came out with their 2010 budget last week. It is a fun thing to read through if you are interested in such things. A couple of interesting things: The life blood. No other province in Canada (except NL)…
Continue ReadingWe need growth
I read a letter to the editor in the Telegraph-Journal that I wanted to share with you. I’ll just pull some quotes and leave off the name. The title of the letter is “Continued growth has drawbacks”: Once again I…
Continue ReadingExistentialism
I had a great lunch yesterday where we delved into the question of why urban areas or communities exist at all and the role of public policy and economic development. A hundred years ago we had hundreds of thriving small communities…
Continue ReadingEconomic development focus
For those of you Joe Q. Publicians you may find the following a little too inside baseball but I had some interesting conversations today that are interesting to the practioners of economic development at the local level. A guy was…
Continue ReadingBC ramps up incentives
BC is doubling down on the film and digital media sector. They are beefing up their incentives to this industry. Subject to approval by the legislature, the planned tax measures include: New BC Interactive Digital Media tax credit for video…
Continue ReadingInteresting NB Power stats
I was in the Census database today for a client and found some interesting stuff relevant to the NB Power discussion. The table shows the average wage for a full time/full year worker in the electricity biz in New Brunswick…
Continue ReadingMusing on the Olympics
I see that New Brunswick is not sending a single athelete to the Vancouver Olympics. I think there are parallels here to my thinking on economic development strategies – small provinces need to focus. We can be mediocre at a wide…
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