The ghost of economic development past
I'm interviewing Malcolm Bricklin this Friday at Riverview's Sustaina-Palooza
A quick search of the Brunswick News archives reveals 386 different stories referencing Bricklin between the early1970s and 1976.
When I was asked if I would be interested to interview Malcolm Bricklin this Friday at the virtual Sustaina-Palooza conference, I was surprised. Bricklin was building cars in New Brunswick in the early 70s and that wasn’t his first venture. Turns out he is in his 80s and still going strong - with a new EV product rolling out soon - a subject we will be talking about on Friday.
For anyone of a certain vintage, the name Bricklin is a household name. When I started in economic development in the early 1990s, the older bureaucrats would invoke the project when discussing economic development risk. In fact, 45 years after the the car manufacturing project was shut down (now), the project continues to be cited on a fairly regular basis.
The good thing about the passage of time is that we can be a little more objective. Emotions are less raw. In the immediate aftermath it’s like a Rorschach test - we see what we want to see. Pile of government cash to pursue highly risky project.
Now we can look at it from a wider lens. In the 1960s and 70s, aided by the federal government, Ontario and Quebec were attracting massive manufacturing investment in sectors such as automobiles, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, other metal bashing, etc. Premier Hatfield wanted a piece of the action. Maybe he had a point. Maybe not.
You can listen to my great conversation with Dimitry Anastakis on his recent book about the Bricklin story and you are welcome to join us on Friday at Sustainapalooza.