It's The Economy, Stupid

From a recent column in the TJ: The 18th Century German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote “the destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men”. A decade or…

Many people will say they are proud of their community or province or country for very specific reasons but it is rare to see almost universal pride over anything.  One guy who watched Paul Henderson score in the 1972 Summit series…

People seem to confuse my thinking about economic development.  I get the charge that I am advocating ‘picking winners’ or old school ‘industrial policy’ that are ‘known to be a complete failure’, etc. Sometimes people see what they want to…

I had an excellent conversation with a gentleman yesterday who was pretty vigorous in his view that I shouldn’t be talking about Saskatchewan – contrasting the economic situation out there to New Brunswick.  We need to get used to very…

It’s interesting that the opponents of shale gas – the latest in Nova Scotia- have gravitated around this term ‘go slow’ to justify their opposition to the development of the industry.  When you read their comments carefully, however; what they…

I took a quick look at the 2013 health indicators recently and found some of them kind of interesting.   If you want oodles of statistics on regional health and determinants of health, you can use the NB Health Council data…

From a recent TJ column: Last week, Statistics Canada published is latest data on federal government spending on science and technology. The numbers are pretty grim for New Brunswick. Across the province in 2012-2013, the federal government employed 409 people…

My attempt at a response to the tragic events in Moncton last week. From my TJ column: After the tragic events of this week, it’s worth remembering this isn’t the first time the City of Moncton has faced a crisis.…

Since 1998 the Business Development Bank of Canada has been running its Young Entrepreneur Award contest every year to reward an ambitious Canadian entrepreneur aged 18 to 35. One finalist is chosen from each province and through a process of…

The lobster processors in the Maritimes are saying they are unable to handle the volume of work because of a lack of workers.   The feds are cracking down on temporary foreign workers – they are insisting that in high unemployment…