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Articles By Alec Bruce
Divided we stand on guard for whom?
If America is a sermon and Britain a seminar, Canada is a conversation — the various chambers of its vast, collective mind thrumming with tolerance. It’s not the brutal winters that lure humanity to the Great White North’s diverse rural and urban landscapes. It’s the absence of intellectual straight-jackets. We manifest the simple proposition that rational accommodation is the one …Continue Reading
Digging for profits
As global pressure for commodities increases and New Brunswick’s mineral endowment becomes better understood, a mini-boom may be just around the corner. They were expecting it like a bill come due, with an odd mixture of dread and resignation. So, when the Swiss-based Xstrata PLC announced in February 2010 that it would not close down Brunswick Mine No. 12 after …Continue Reading
Paying the piper
Atlantic Canada’s provincial governments are drowning in debt — some more rapidly than others. These obligations are curbing efforts to build more prosperous economies and undermining expectations about what the public sector will, and will not, be able to deliver in the future. There are options, but none of them are pretty. Economic guru Donald Savoie doesn’t mean to parrot …Continue Reading
Want fries with that?
The lesson the current troubles in economies both far and near teaches we denizens of this third rock from the sun is not that life is unfair, or that poor people outnumber wealthy ones by an absurd order of magnitude. Surely, we already know this. The nauseating epiphany descends when we realize that even the most prudent, careful and responsible …Continue Reading
Vive les Irvings!
The federal government’s contract award of $25 billion to Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding means money. Lots of it. And jobs, just when the East Coast could use them. But what does it mean for New Brunswick, where the billionaire, family-owned conglomerate was born and raised and still employs thousands? It would be, without question, the most important federal announcement in more …Continue Reading
R&D boutique’s big and righteous claims to fame
When it launched 15 years ago, it faced funding challenges, legal obstacles and some skepticism. Today, Moncton-based Atlantic Cancer Research Institute leads the world in commercially viable research on early detection technology. With one patent under its belt, it may soon be ready for the prime time of the global marketplace. Shoe-horned into an older wing of the Dr. Georges …Continue Reading
Reconstructing Gene Fowler
Gene Fowler, former owner of what was — for a time — one of Canada’s most successful animation studios ponders the future of his newest entrepreneurial love interest and asks how many lives a FatKat has. To find the man who once employed more than 100 people to animate TV shows for networks around the world, you enter a side …Continue Reading
Sleep-walking to fiscal oblivion
If New Brunswick’s Tory government sincerely wishes to rouse a citizenry that remains demonstrably sleepy, at a time when fiscal oblivion beckons them from their beds, it should start by taking pabulum off the menu of provincial politics. As it was, November’s Speech from the Throne concluded with all the spiciness of a bowl of porridge: “Over the course of …Continue Reading
All snow that blows well
A few winters ago, in a fit of Christmas cheer, I offended the gods of common sense by giving away a practically new, all-metal-construction snowblower. Had I lived in Fort Lauderdale, my soft-hearted gesture might have seemed merely unnecessary. But I didn’t live in Fort Lauderdale. I lived in Moncton. I still do, and over the years of record-breaking accumulations, …Continue Reading
More business as usual at NB Power
When David Alward’s Tories assumed the leadership of New Brunswick more than a year ago, they promised to reconfigure NB Power as a competitive commercial enterprise. But three measures in their recently released, ten-year Energy Blueprint strongly suggest they are farther away than ever from this goal. Under the new plan, the utility – a provincial Crown corporation – will …Continue Reading
