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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
Bagging groceries, sweeping gutters
At age 26, Robert MacLeod changed jobs, packed up his belongings and said good-bye to his life in New Brunswick. His mission: criss-cross Canada as leader in sales for McCain Foods. For a small-town boy with powerful family connections to New Brunswick, the experience was challenging but deeply formative — his first entry point into the rich, multi-cultural world of …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
In the fiscal crosshairs
Avuncular in manner, consultative in political style, New Brunswick Premier David Alward knows his province is facing one of the most serious money meltdowns in its history. With a long-term debt approaching $10 billion, rolling annual deficits exceeding $500 million, and a population base insufficient to cover the costs, this first-term leader has “quandary” written all over his competing agendas. …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
State of play
Mature products, flattening profits and increased competition from cyberspace have pushed the Atlantic Lottery Corporation to quietly seek out new opportunities – they just aren’t very keen to discuss them The Atlantic Lottery Corporation says its players have been “dreaming big” since 1976. That’s when ALC began offering lottery games on behalf of the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, …Continue Reading
The government sovereign dimwit crisis
If it was an avalanche of avarice that triggered the first great global recession since grampy was knee-high to a T-bill, it will be a surfeit of stupidity that sparks the second. For the former, we can properly blame the largely self-regulated, international financial system and its slathering pursuit of short-term gain. Kiting the prices of essentially worthless mortgage-backed securities …Continue Reading
Upfront
$25-billion boon for Halifax Irving Shipbuilding wins federal combat vessel contract, sparking celebrations across Nova Scotia Halifax’s ship has come in — actually, many ships. Irving Shipbuilding is celebrating a $25-billion federal contract to construct 21 combat vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy. And the rest of Nova Scotia is celebrating as well. “On behalf of the men and women …Continue Reading
