In New Brunswick, less is more
But, for reasons both obvious and predictable, nothing conjured fully reflected the popular weal, the Zeitgeist of the community.
“New Brunswick: Hey, it could be worse” came close. Somehow, though, it left too much to chance. What if conditions suddenly improved?
“New Brunswick: Where the future is only a voice-mail message away,” cleverly alluded to the province’s growing sophistication with telephony. Still, it suggested we’re never home to answer the phone when it rings.
“New Brunswick: When opportunity rains, it pours” just seemed flatly wrong unless you were a weatherman, in which case it seemed all too literally right.
No, nothing actually worked and the drive-through province appeared forever doomed to subsist on a diet of hard-scrabble reality and existential angst without so much as a morsel of a motto to colour its cheeks rosy.
Until now.
According to news reports, New Brunswick Finance Minister Blaine Higgs told a group of business leaders on Tuesday that if the province wants its books balanced and its economy healthy, it’s going to have to “demand less”.
Specifically, he said, “We’re not going to save ourselves to prosperity. But at the same time, we can spend taxpayer dollars a whole lot better than we currently are. . .despite the fiscal challenges we face, there are reasons for optimism. It’s not like we can do it all, we just have to do better.”
In short, and in a phrase that perfectly captures the mode of this government and the mood of the times, we have to “demand less”.
Can you see it? Roadside placards from Edmundston to Sackville, from St. Andrews to Shippagan, reminding residents and visitors, alike, of New Brunswick’s newfound, virtuous parsimony – a transformational event of epochal proportions.
“Ask not what your province can do for you. Demand less.”
“Hope for the best, but expect the worst. Demand less.”
“You can’t always get what you want. Demand less.”
“Hey, you think we’re made of money? Demand less.”
“Whaddya mean you want your allowance? Demand less.”
“Gruel was good enough for your grandparents. Demand less.”
Still, demanding less does not automatically produce a “demandless” society. Quite the opposite, in fact. The injunction is an imperative, framed in the active voice. The provincial government is clearly telling us to speak up. So, shouldn’t we?
I, for one, demand less costly, inefficient, redundant bureaucracy, especially on matters of economic development, trade and investment, health care delivery and educational administration. Currently, New Brunswick labours under the weight one of the largest per capita public sectors in the country with very little to show for all the lard it throws around in the execution of its members’ safe jobs and protection of their magnificently pensionable salaries (apart from unsustainable levels of structural debt).
I also demand less dissembling, prevarication and irrelevance in provincial governance. Why should New Brunswickers tolerate cut-backs to essential services in both urban and rural areas when the only vision the Legislative Assembly seems competent to muster concerns its own short-term, electoral interests and the partisan games it plays to secure them?
I demand less foot-dragging on eminently controversial, but potentially lucrative, industrial opportunities, such as wind energy. I demand less nibbling around the edges of the federal government’s contractual responsibilities to the Point Lepreau refurbishment project. I demand less meaningless bafflegab from provincial ministers who yap about “bright spots” in an economic thunderstorm. I demand less pork-barreling, perk-making, pabulum-stirring and kite-flying in public office; less entitlement, smugness, distraction, boredom and laziness among those who owe their living to the private sector schlubs who installed them.
Finally, I demand less complacency, ambivalence and apathy among electors who hold the most important jobs in civil, democratic society: Keeping their representatives accountable to the common, not individual, good.
If these demands are met, then maybe the sign that graces the provincial borders should properly read: “New Brunswick: Where less is more.”
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 16th, 2011 at 9:13 pm
If New Brunswickers could keep ‘their representatives’ accountable to the common good – we wouldn’t be in such a financial and social mess to begin with.
With billions splurged over the years on boondoggle after secret boondoggle – NB’s collective (when the bill comes due) charge account is maxed out.
Credit raters and financiers who listed junk US mortgage bonds as AAA right up until the 2008 crash have told the NB people if they want to keep enjoying the plastic fruit of globalization down at the ‘ol Walmart, they’re just going to have to buck up and accept Greece-style austerity in the face of never ending paper debts.
The alternative: throwing off the flee-ridden blanket of ‘free-trade’ tyranny and fraudulent currencies that only benefit off-shore feudal lords will cause some major pains in the short- to medium term for our province. On the other hand, continuing to boil like stupid frogs in a caustic witch’s brew is no acceptable alternative.
So, Vive la Nouveau-Brunswick libre and cast out the vassal legislative servants of the oligarchs and international criminal syndicates at each and every opportunity (by election when possible, by torch-wielding mob when necessary).
June 17th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Well said!