The Bruce Report

But what does our premier-elect actually think he’s won?

It can’t be a robust, innovative provincial economy. Here, in the land that Lord made, unemployment is running at about nine per cent (lower in the cities, and much higher in the heavily rural interior and Acadian Peninsula). Real gross domestic product has barely budged from the $20.5-billion level achieved three years ago. And large-scale industrial enterprises continue to curtail their investments in people and technology – the very things that would keep them competitive – without massive infusions of short-term cash from governments. 

If not the economy, perhaps our freshly minted first minister is comforted by the boundless patience of the people.

If so, he should recall how, over the past five years, more than 7,500 New Brunswickers – most of them young, highly educated and impeccably skilled individuals – have left their homes to find new ones anywhere but here. He should talk to just one of the hundreds of disaffected immigrants who have arrived only to discover barrels of red tape, bureaucratic intransigence and a culture of mistrust so ingrained that the specter of “job-stealing foreigners” routinely rears its ugly face in the letters pages of the province’s weekly and daily newspapers.

No, what New Brunswick’s recently designated chief elected officer has won is a rare opportunity to change the shape of his province’s future – this time for the better.

He would make an excellent start by collapsing the existing Department of Business New Brunswick and folding its useful functions into a new, streamlined entity dedicated to marketing the province in key international trade zones, including the U.S., northern and central Europe, and the Far East. Its overriding objective would be to secure four major business relocations, or subsidiary openings, in each of the next four years. Let’s call it the “Four-in-One” plan.

Related to this, the premier could authorize a new agency solely empowered to negotiate with adjacent jurisdictions and jointly break down shared economic obstacles. Specifically, its purpose would be to eliminate inter-provincial trade barriers, establish efficient cross-border protocols with New England (in concert with the Government of Canada), and develop the means necessary for reconstructing short-sea shipping and overland routes into the U.S. northeast. Let’s call this “Gateway New Brunswick”.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s political leadership could develop a comprehensive program that welcomes, rather than repels, new arrivals. International students, for example, represent a vast economic resource in a province that’s losing its homegrown talent almost daily. According to the Association of Atlantic Universities, foreign scholars studying in the Maritimes and Newfoundland and Labrador spend, per capita, $26,000. Altogether, the revenues they generate in any given year in this region amount to more than $150 million. They are, in effect, our ambassadors of global business opportunities. Let’s call what we do for them “Outreach New Brunswick”.

Three planks of a platform can spark a new beginning for the economy of this province. Increased foreign direct investment will yield new research and development, which will, in turn, generate both demand and money for more efficient transportation infrastructure. The people helping to execute the transformation can be recruited from all over the world, as long as we value and reward their contributions.

Our time to change the way we think about ourselves was not yesterday; it’s right now. We have a new government in this beautiful, hopeful, yearning province. And it’s up to each of us to decide whether the victor of this election gets the spoils, or merely the spoiled among us amid a thousand dancing flashbulbs.

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