Is it time for a new think tank to support economic development and population growth efforts in New Brunswick?
When the late Don Dennison was heading the New Brunswick Business Council, him and I had long conversations about the possibility of establishing an independent ‘institute’ to support good economic development policy and economic opportunity development. In fact, the initial idea for what became the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network (NBSPRN) was that it would be mostly focused on economic policy but when the universities were approached that was a no-go. In fact, I pushed to get an ‘E’ in NBSPRN name (i.e. NBSEPRN) and that again was a non-starter. The bottom line is that most academic researchers are interested in social policy – except a few like Herb Emery. I’m not even sure what is happening with NBSPRN as there hasn’t been a news item or blog post since 2017.
If you haven’t read Don’s The Power to Change: A Letter to New Brunswickers, you should.
There are a variety of research groups in the orbit – APEC does regional economic reports and recommendations – mostly good work. The Public Policy Forum has some cash to study Atlantic Canada and has published some good pieces related to the economy. The Atlantica Centre for Energy is poking and prodding on the energy transition. Daryl Branscombe’s Coalition of Creative Old Curmudgeons (JK it’s Creative Citizens) has been asking a lot of good questions. The aforementioned Herb Emery has done some really good work over the years since he has been at the Vaughan Chair.
But I was more interested in research directly related to economic development. How do we change our policies to accelerate the mining for strategic minerals in the province? What do we need to do to ensure we can attract population at a rate of 1.5% per year for the next 20 years? But even more granular than that. I have written on these pages before that I would like an economic development culture to be fostered across the province. Ideally there would be very interesting economic opportunities being pursued in all corners of the province. When I was in government from 2015-2017, I pushed hard for an ‘opportunities’ approach to economic development (as opposed to promoting the province as a good place for business in a general sense). We ended up settling on a handful of economic opportunities – many of which are doing quite well – but I wanted something even deeper.
Take something obscure such as legal services. New Brunswick imported $127 million in legal services in 2019 mostly from other provinces. Over the decade 2010-2019 we imported just under a billion dollars worth of legal services ($993 million). Put simply, that is lawyers and law firms in other provinces doing business with New Brusnwick customers. A billion dollars’ worth over a decade.
In my ‘model’, we would want to know why. We would sit down with the firms in the sector to figure out why and if we could do anything to reduce those imports (Nova Scotia imported only $41 million and Newfoundland and Labrador $31 million). In fact, on a per capita basis, New Brunswick imported nearly four times the value of legal services compared to Nova Scotia. If we could reduce those imports by just 20% that would mean about $4 million more in tax revenue for GNB every year. Why not spend a few bucks to make it happen? Or not. The point is to find out.
There are over 900 different industries as classified by the NAICS system and I think it would be a good idea to evaluate them all. New Brunswick has over 30% fewer tour operator companies than the country overall (adjusted for population size). Why? We imported $316 million worth of architectural, engineering and related services in 2019. Could we chip away at that?
So, my vision for a ‘think tank’ would be a hands-on research shop that would help provincial and municipal governments (and RSCs) think through economic opportunities, population growth opportunities as well as broader barriers to growth.
I’ve raised this before and it doesn’t get much traction, but I will keep poking away. Someone like Herb Emery could run it and use his grad students to do much of the work. It could collaborate with government departments, municipalities, other research groups – but it would be a research factory – turning out stuff on a daily or weekly basis.
A guy can dream….