After Screening the Film

We think these questions are important and worth asking, especially in a province that has faced the economic and demographic challenges that New Brunswick has for the last 125 years.

Here are some of the many questions the film raises, questions that we hope will be part of further discussions in New Brunswick:

1. To what extent do we elect public officials to safeguard the economic well-being of all New Brunswickers, regardless of where they live?

We pose this question because of the lack of results in addressing the de-industrialization of northern New Brunswick. While there was much rhetoric and gnashing of teeth, there was no redress of the loss of jobs. Did the political system work for northern New Brunswick, then, or is it an expensive taxpayer subsidized system poorly equipped to act when action is most needed? Given the appalling lack of progress, this question, though seemingly tough, is not unreasonable. Newfoundland's government, it should be remembered, at least fought back against Abitibi when it shut down the Grand Falls mill. From New Brunswick politicians there was nary a whimper. Why?

2. What has been the human cost of growth-pole economics in the northern and rural areas of New Brunswick?

Growth-pole economics, simply put, involves investment in key industries and population densities. The denser the population of a community is, the greater are the attentions of government. If New Brunswick governments have indeed embraced growth-pole economics, they should come clean about this, for it marks a significant departure from the strategies of equalization (Equal Opportunity) that sought to create balances between rural [northern] and urban [southern] New Brunswick. If governments have not embraced growth-pole economics, then what are their strategies, and investments, to rebuild the north?

3. What has been the influence of the neo-liberal programme of Self-Sufficiency on New Brunswick?

Though the program ultimately failed because of poor implementation, its principle goals and assumptions have found traction. Those assumptions include the view that the province's future is knowledge-based not industrial; that the areas of New Brunswick best positioned to take advantage of a knowledge economy are clustered around the three universities in the south; and that any form of subsidy to industry is a kind of welfare capitalism that should be avoided at all cost. Can such a program work in a province comprised of historically successful industrial regions? Can an industrial region and mindset be retrofitted without wholesale attention and investment from government?

4. Likewise, can a province like New Brunswick be retrofitted to the demands of a knowledge economy?

The question is not as naive as it may appear, for the province has proven that it can be viable as an industrial and resource-based economy. The technological promise of NBTel, by contrast, the promise on which our knowledge future was supposedly secure, was soon obsolesced by equivalent technologies in lower-wage markets, and jobs moved out of the province in record number. When it was clear this was happening – that, in other words, the "McKenna Miracle" was failing – why did provincial politicians not do everything possible to retain what was a successful industrial economy in northern New Brunswick?

5. Beyond the estimated $50 million annual revenue stream no longer flowing into communities in northern New Brunswick, what else is lost when a major employer ceases operations?

What value do we place on the loss of social capital when skilled workers and their families leave the province? Are industrial workers in northern New Brunswick more expendable than knowledge workers in the south? Likewise, are communities in northern New Brunswick more expendable than communities in the south? What would be the effect, and the response from Fredericton, if CFB Gagetown left Oromocto, or McCain Foods left Florenceville, or JDI left Saint John? Would those communities be abandoned as communities in the north have been? Would they be blamed for falling victim to global economic circumstances? What, then, to repeat, is the role of government in equalizing opportunities for ALL New Brunswickers?

6. More generally, what is the value of small communities for the people who live in them and for the province as a whole?

Are small communities indeed "inefficient," as Commissioner Jean-Guy Finn's "Report on the Future of Local Governance" (2008) would have us believe? Is this all that can be said of them? And is amalgamation the key to our successful future? If so, why don't pro-amalgamation advocates in New Brunswick propose the amalgamation of New Brunswick with Nova Scotia, thus eliminating one entire bureaucratic infrastructure? If small towns are expendable in the name of efficiency, then why not small provinces? If this is the logic we are being given, then that logic, by definition, is reproducible. Why, then, are small provincial governments in debt-ridden provinces not being regionally amalgamated for similar efficiencies?

7. Lastly, what can one-industry towns like Dalhousie do to insulate themselves from the loss of their major employer?

This question provides the answer to one of the economic problems that has plagued New Brunswick. And the answer, of course, is diversity: specifically, that there is a direct correlation between diversity and sustainability. So must be the thinking that drives economic development in the future. The one-economy model [either industrial or knowledge-based, either pro-subsidy or anti-subsidy, either northern or southern] must cease. Rather, if the provincial economy is to be sustainable, a suite of approaches must be implemented that take account of the strengths and weaknesses of ALL parts of the province. To do otherwise – namely, to franchise a set of efficiencies that privilege a political class in Fredericton at the expense of citizens in rural and northern New Brunswick – is to further institutionalize insolvency. Deficits will continue, as will out-migration. And New Brunswick will remain a have-not province.