I see that Sue Rickards recently passed away. As cited in the CBC article, she "was a teacher, educational innovator, mentor, an outreach worker, a government hack, community organizer, advocate, activists, highly respected newspaper columnist, mother, neighbour, and friend to all."
It’s that last one where I come in. I met her probably 15 years ago - I was speaking somewhere and afterwards she came up to me and gave me the gears for something I had written in my newspaper column. That started a long period of intermittent conversations - emails, phone calls, etc. about the best ways to support economic development in New Brunswick, particularly rural New Brunswick.
You might wonder how someone like Rickards - a left-of-centre skeptic of capitalism and myself - a determined advocate of capitalism (the real thing, not crony capitalism) could get on famously- as we did. It’s because she and I don’t discount people thoroughly because we disagree on some points. She helped me understand the importance of rural development, agriculture, the importance of work and other issues that I had previously given short shrift. Plus she was just a dang decent person - maybe the most important attribute if you want to change minds.
The other think about Rickards is she was smart. There are lots on the right and left these days that are guns blazing but there really isn’t much foundation. Sue’s positions were always well thought out.
RIP. We’ve lost another good one.
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I got far more commentary on my Brunswick News column this weekend (paywall) than usual. To clear things up for my critics, I don’t consider myself an expert in federal-provincial jurisdiction or the Constitution, Charter or other related matters. I do believe that when you start to see alignment between Alberta and Quebec on certain issues along with other smaller provinces, you need to pay attention. And my maxim that “those with the least to lose shouldn’t be able to dictate policy impacting those with the most to lose” should apply to our efforts to develop a national strategy for net zero 2050. That doesn’t mean national policy always gets trumped by provincial concerns - it just means that those Canadians that will suffer the most need to be listened to.
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Finally, Statistics Canada’s latest Real-time Local Business Condition Index (RTLBCI) came out on Friday and Moncton is still ranked 29th best out of 30 for the strength of its local economy since the onset of the pandemic (using a variety of measures). With August 2020 as the baseline (Index = 100) it is interesting that places like Hamilton (Index = 202) and Saskatoon (Index = 249) could be so far behind Moncton (Index = 427). Even Toronto - which the last time I was there seemed to be booming has an index of 217.
Re: your Brunswick News column.
Politicians who ignore local politics do so at tremendous risk to themselves and the country. Alberta will not put up with losing their oil revenues because they can't. Rules, laws, contracts, the constitution are all dependent on the parties' agreement at any given moment. Without sugar-coating, and taken to its extreme, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec could break Canada apart, destroying its legitimacy, forcing it to go hat-in-hand to the U.S.
Global warming is certainly an issue in Canada... ask any Canadian in January how they feel about a three degree rise in temperature and they will say, "Bring it on!" As winters in Canada become less severe, the golf season begins earlier and ends later, and Canadians pay more for less, they will be harder to convince. That reasoning also applies to the highly populated northern U.S., most of Europe, and most of the developed world. The people most negatively affected by climate change live in under-developed countries that have contributed close to nothing to global warming but have no power. The war in Ukraine is killing more people in Africa through starvation than it is civilians in Ukraine, but it's not good form and doesn't sell air time to mention it.
Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear are the major energy sources we have now, and cleaning up their act, getting them to or close to zero is a shorter, more achievable goal than chasing dreams like renewable batteries that will charge in a few minutes, cheap energy storage that will make windmills and big solar viable, and nuclear fusion. The people are not as stupid as politicians sometimes think they are; they know that a carbon tax will increase the price of everything they use, and those who don't will soon see it. Electric cars are expensive and the money for subsidies comes from the people who can't afford them. Steadily raising taxes on gasoline will soon come home to roost with the government in Ottawa. Once the country tips, the backlash will be impossible to stop. A 'conservative, even reactionary' government looks possible, and gets closer to inevitable every day. A split in the country is looming large, too large to ignore.
Eventually, if we don't listen to people in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and elsewhere, we will lose more than our cheap transportation. If we don't fight climate change with financially viable solutions like natural gas and nuclear on a large scale, we will be too late to the party and the cost of catching up will overwhelm the economy. The oil industry is not the evil we are told it is; it is at least part of the solution. Idealism won't fix this. Put the "someday" solutions aside and do what works now, not what we might be able to do in the future, if only.... Our country depends on it.