The Bruce Report

The defining features of Premier Shawn Graham’s first term have not been the little successes sprinkled lightly over his policy agenda, but the astonishingly big appetites for change his government members have displayed.

            Every rookie legislator promises, at one time or another, to transform the world – or, at least, his corner of it – to benefit the electorate. He pulls out the usual suspects (health care, higher education, social services, economic development), vowing to whip them into shape for the greater good of existing and unborn generations.

            Few ever really deliver if only because they’re constrained by the attitudes of their constituents and the duration of their mandates. What sets Graham and his cabinet apart is that setbacks don’t seem to bother them much. The fiercer the public opposition to their grand schemes, the more determined they are to be understood, if not admired.

            That’s not to say they often manage to swing this minor miracle. The Liberals are still stinging from their early experiments with higher education, French language education, and health care. And Graham may have reached his Waterloo with the agreement to sell much of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec.

            Still, you tend to believe him when he declares that obtaining a second mandate, months from now, is less important to him than maintaining a principled, if sometimes flawed, policy of “self-sufficiency” improvements today.

            That, at least, was the underlying message in his State of the Province address two weeks ago, when he said, “The risk for anyone who seeks to change things for the better is that sometimes in pursuit of a better way of doing things, you’ll move ahead too fast or too far or both. There’s no shame in that.”

            No, there isn’t. But what’s peculiar, even ironic, about the address is the evidence it presents of small, positive changes – not big, spectacular advances – in New Brunswick since the Grits assumed office almost four years ago.

            In 2006, the province’s population was shrinking, nine consecutive quarters of population decline had led to 4,300 fewer New Brunswickers. According to Statistics Canada, the province added nearly 1,000 people in the third quarter of 2009, bringing the total increase since Graham’s election to 5,300.

            Four years ago, children in the province lagged their peers, elsewhere in the country, in educational attainment; grade schoolers here, for example, ranked ninth in reading, nationally. Today, according to the address, the situation is improving: “We invested more than $34 million to help kids with special needs, introduce new trades courses in our schools. And we brought back art, music and physical education. Has it made a difference? Last year, alone, we saw a seven-point gain in literacy at the Grade Two level. [That’s] the biggest jump in literacy since testing began.”

            And despite New Brunswick’s reputation as one of Canada’s least economically robust jurisdictions, the province has actually overtaken the national average in job creation and full-time employments.

            Slowly, steadily and convincingly, New Brunswick has become a better place to work, live and raise a family. Incomes are higher. Professional opportunities are greater. The cities are thriving. And a comprehensive, funded plan for northern economic development is in place.

            None of these developments reflect industrial planning on a massive scale, or centralized efforts to terra-form the economic landscape. None have relied on anything more impressive than daily attention to detail and prudent, targeted spending on specific priorities.

            “Ladies and gentlemen,” Graham’s address closed. “in the end it’s about believing in and building on the potential of every single New Brunswickers; the potential of our families and children, our businesses, our workers. Quite simply, it’s about making New Brunswick better.”

            Actually, the soaring rhetoric aside, it’s about keeping New Brunswick from foundering on the shoals of political hyperbole – which, despite itself, the Graham government has managed quite nicely over the past four years.

            Self-sufficiency, after all, is in the details.

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