Another rough month for employment in New Brunswick. Total employment is down almost 2,000 month over month. Full time employment is down by 9,400 from June 2010 to June 2011. That is a big drop. Canada as a whole added…
Continue ReadingDaycare nation: Liberals and the cynical politics of shale gas
Politics in New Brunswick sometimes feels like a daycare. I said here last week the Liberal party would likely call for a moratorium on shale gas drilling just because…. Does everything have to be politicized? I remember when…
Continue ReadingIt’s a small world, afterall
My father-in-law went to a reception yesterday with Minister Ed Fast, Canada’s Minister of International Trade. Apparently there is a big trade mission from Canada going on right now here in Brazil. Brazil is a growing market there is no…
Continue ReadingIt’s our hill and these are our beans
In my favourite movie, Casablanca, Rick tells Ilsa that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this world (or something similar). In the less famous Hot Shots, Charlie Sheen says “but this is…
Continue ReadingSetting the shale gas context
I promise I am not going to turn this blog into cheer leading for shale gas development. However, it is a potentially important industry and the question that those for and against need to answer is “why not New Brunswick”.…
Continue ReadingEnergy as a competitive advantage
It’s kind of funny. Minister Leonard makes an impassioned defence of NB Power in this opinion piece today positioning the company as a paragon of fiscal management. He never mentions the stranded debt. Never mentions the industrial power rate…
Continue ReadingDispatches from the road: Sao Paulo
The family and I are here for our now bi-annual pilgrmage to see my in-laws in Brazil. I was here two years ago but in that short time the country had a significant growth spurt and significant foreign investment flowed…
Continue ReadingBirth of a travelling salesman
I have made six different public presentations related to economic development in the past two weeks. I am starting to feel a little bit like a travelling salesman. I have my pitch lines down and I inject a little rah,…
Continue ReadingDoes size matter?
One of the interesting discussion threads yesterday at the Social Policy Research Network forum (at least in the groups I was in) was this issue of size. Dr. Haan made the case that he can’t see much correlation between…
Continue ReadingProfessor Haan: Rock Star
I got to see Dr. Michael Haan’s demographics presentation last night for the first time. Haan is the Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Population and Social Policy at UNB. His stuff is sobering and clearly shows the impact of out-migration…
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