Natural resources development: Local communities and First Nations must see benefit

With all the madness around these days, it is hard to think coherently about economic development. My advice to Atlantic Canadian governments is to double down on natural resources development and think more creatively about how the urban centres could be leveraged for growth. For example, I thought that boosting international students and the post-secondary education sector was a win-win-win for the region’s cities. The schools get much needed revenue. The communities get workers for part time roles that are getting harder to fill. Governments get much needed export revenue and taxes and, the cherry on top, industries have an expanded local talent pool to recruit from. But I guess win-win-win isn’t good enough as that sector is in the process of a significant retrenchment. We will see where it ends up.

On natural resources development, I will come back to my core principle that local communities must see direct benefits from the development. This point hit home when we were considering natural gas development in the 2010 timeframe. In the U.S., landowners own the mineral rights under their land. In Canada, we own just six feet down (I was told) - deep enough to bury the dead - but the Crown owns everything below.

Nova Scotia’s Premier seems to be determined to develop the province’s natural resources. I would urge him to consider ‘local economic benefits’ as part of the development package. By ‘local’, it needs to be some kind of revenue stream. Despite my best attempts, people don’t see ‘jobs’ and local business opportunities as enough anymore.

I would suggest for every new mining project or other big natural resources project, some share of the proceeds be channeled back to the local municipalities and First Nations. This could be part of any royalties paid or just a share of the taxes induced from the project.

You need local community support for these projects. And, the reality is that ‘local community’ these days tends to mean a lot of retirees or soon to be retirees and people not particularly interested in ‘jobs’. A share of natural resources development revenue that goes right into the community should be a better foundation for getting support.

I am increasingly worried about the economic foundation under our region. We are highly dependent on the United States and that country seems to be moving in a negative direction on trade. We are reliant on a number of export-focused industries that are not growing, and many are in decline. Over the longer term, that’s normal but normal is also the development of new export focused industries.

Natural resources development is always an important economic driver because it is based on an asset you have and not on trying to entice ephemeral foreign investment that is highly competed for.

But these days we have dozens of examples of projects being killed before they even got through a proper environmental review because of public backlash.

Making local communities and First Nations true partners in the development must be part of the solution.