It's The Economy, Stupid

I was on the team that attracted UPS to New Brunswick 25 years ago.  I wrote the proposal/business case arguing there would be significant cost and technology benefits from consolidating 13 operations into one customer service/back office operations.  The VP…

When I started writing It’s the Economy, Stupid! back in 2004 (the name was suggested by David Jonah and was taken from Bill Clinton aide James Carville who concluded if the economy was going strong it would cover many political…

Another good stat for New Brunswick was published by IRCC recently.  The number of international students, those with a study permit, rose by 17% in 2019 over 2018.  Only Quebec saw a faster growth rate.  Now, adjusted for population size…

After World War 2, Canada was settling some 1.5 million European refugees and the Prime Minister at the time asked the Premier how many did New Brunswick want?  An article I read a few years ago said the Premier told…

Several people asked me to comment on the good jobs report out of Statistics Canada this week. New Brunswick added 5,300 jobs (the workforce expanded by 3,100) in January 2020 compared to January 2019.  As I always say these numbers…

Australia announced a few weeks ago they would be planting billions of new trees to aid in the fight against climate change.  Greta tells us to plant trees to help fight climate change. Don’t pretend you don’t know who I…

Maybe I’m just paranoid but I am starting to think New Brunswick’s lost decade could be emerging as our destiny. A few weeks ago the national organization that forecasts agricultural demand came out with its forecast for the next decade…