I think I might have mentioned one time that I have a Google Alert set up for the word ‘equalization’ and I get an email on a daily basis showing references to articles, reports, etc. with this key word. …
Continue ReadingA different kind of spin
I am involved in an increasing number of economic impact studies and I am clear with clients that there is a huge difference between projects that increase economic activity and those that just recycle it. An economist once joked that…
Continue ReadingAre we a drive through province for creativity too?
Despite the newishness of the provincial and now federal governments, I sense a subterranean melancholy among a lot of folks involved in the development of this province. I talked with another old timer recently who suggested that New Brunswick’s only competitive advantage…
Continue ReadingThe pen is mightier than the voice?
The migration from voice communications back to text-based communications is pretty amazing. 150 years ago virtually all communications of any distance (beyond shouting) was done by the written word. Even 50 years, most customer service, any kind of formal business…
Continue ReadingAvoiding the fire sale
I dip my toe into the economic development incentives pool in my column this morning. This tends to be a subject that gets people worked up. There is a group of folks that deeply oppose any kind of government ‘incentives’…
Continue ReadingMcGuinty’s green dilemma
I was talking with a friend in Ontario who tells me that McGuinty’s green energy agenda is going to be a wedge issue in the Ontario election. The Tory leader is promising to scrap the deal with the ‘foreigners’ Samsung…
Continue ReadingWallace McCain RIP
I have met many of New Brunswick’s business leaders over the years but I never had the opportunity to meet either of the McCain brothers but I have talked with a lot of folks that were impacted by them over…
Continue ReadingThe complicated marriage between economy, environment and social activism
I get tweets from the Conservation Council talking about the moral obligation we have to protect water habitat and tweets about Bill Clinton and social activism. It just seem righteous and easy to support environmental or social activism. And so…
Continue ReadingThe ghost of Bricklin and the death of ambition
There has been a lot written over the years about the Bricklin. When I started working at the econ. dev. department in the early 1990s there were still a number of employees that had worked on or were there during…
Continue ReadingHow bad do you want it?
I had one of those conversations over the weekend with a thoughtful guy who is just convinced that places like New Brunswick can’t really build any competitive new industry clusters. We are just too far out of the way, too…
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