I didn’t follow the Ontario election particularly close but I did review the party platforms, read articles and listened to TVO podcasts on it and I never once heard any of the Liberals trumpeting one of their signature accomplishments. Under…
Continue ReadingWe need good rural economic developers now more than ever
Apparently we are close to some form of announcement on the future of the regional economic development agencies (Enterprise agencies). One rumour circulating is the current 15 agencies will be collapsed into five to align with Statistics Canada regions in New Brunswick. There are…
Continue ReadingCanada is #1 for business investment climate – HST big part of this
Frequent readers of this blog will know that I have written many times on how positive the tax environment is for business in New Brunswick. One of the main reasons is that business doesn’t pay sales tax here. They also…
Continue ReadingGrand vision is okay but baby steps are critical
Call me cynical but I guess I have been around too long. When I read this article this morning about the new Currie Center, a state-of-the-art multi-purpose sports facility that’s expected to attract top athletes and researchers to UNB, I…
Continue ReadingQ1 Labs – another one bites the dust?
I got an email from a friend about the sale of Q1 Labs to IBM. It was titled “Another one bites the dust”. I’m not sure about dust. For the most part there are three options for these tech…
Continue ReadingAfter a bad year, wage growth back on track in NB
I see in the latest Statistics Canada survey of payroll, earnings and hours that NB had the second largest year over year growth in avg. weekly wages. This is after significantly underperforming the average growth rate last year (NB had…
Continue ReadingQuality jobs? Yes, but….
I actually got quite a bit of feedback on my column suggesting that we still need to focus on jobs for those that need them while at the same time looking for high quality jobs (the quality vs. quantity debate).…
Continue ReadingAnyone else with a comment?
There is a scene in one of my favourite odd ball movies – The Three Amigos – where the German bad guy blows away a half dozen people because one of them makes a comment. His response “anyone else with…
Continue ReadingEfficiency and Effectiveness of Fragmented Econ. Dev. Programs Are Unclear
I’m a big fan of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) – Canada has a version of this but not as wide ranging – the agency used to monitor government spending and to test the veracity of program spending and…
Continue ReadingAre you a New Brunswicker or a Canadian?
Doing a little more research on this issue of Maritime Union, I wanted to know how much affinity New Brunswickers have with the concept of New Brunswick. Because of a lack of immigration, New Brunswickers have the second highest percentage…
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