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…
Continue ReadingAccessing the right envelopes
We talk about this a lot but it is a fascinating reality. Yesterday I posted that the feds spend less on culture in New Brunswick than just about anywhere else. We know the feds flow less R&D spending here than…
Continue ReadingFeds underspending on culture in NB
Statistics Canada is out with its latest data on cultural spending by governments. New Brunswick is second last in Canada in total spending (adjusted for population size). The feds spend more here than in the past but still well below…
Continue ReadingPolitical neophyte strikes again
Once again, I have revealed my lack of understanding of Canadian politics. I don’t think I have accurately predicted an election outcome in a decade. In my last post I was rambling on about permanent coalitions and regional parties and…
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