It has been suggested recently that government subsidies to business in Atlantic Canada are considerably lower than the Canadian norm. This runs directly counter both to popular perception and to the work of a number of analysts. Both views cannot be correct, and yet getting the right answer is vital if public policy is to help rather than hinder the arrival of prosperity in this region. So who's right?
Road to Growth, by Senior Policy Analyst, Fred McMahon.
Shortlisted by the Donner Canadian Foundation, Retreat from Growth analyses the effects of 40 years of massive transfers and other forms of government intervention designed to close the disparity gap between Atlantic Canada and the rest of the country.
In the December edition of Policy Options magazine, the cover story was the future of Atlantic Canada. Editor William Watson interviewed AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, as well as APEC President Elizabeth Beale and MUN economist Wade Locke on their policy prescriptions for the region.
All four Atlantic Premiers are lobbying hard for additional transfers to their provinces. With low population growth and with increased cost of providing basic health and education services, the premiers tried to get the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) increased to Atlantic Canadian provinces. Their failure, reports Peter Fenwick, is a sign that the rest of Canada is tiring of transferring money that only props up the political regimes of the Atlantic Premiers. With the Canadian Alliance committed to ending ACOA and with the federal Liberals trashing the Canada Jobs Fund, in future the Atlantic Provinces will have to do more with their own resources. . Publication: ETSJ, August 26, 2000.
According to an editorial in the Globe and Mail, former Canadian Alliance pollster and advisor John Mykytyshyn would have avoided making his ill-advised comments on Atlantic Canadians if only he had read the Institute's last book, Retreat from Growth. The Globe reached a very AIMS-like conclusion: Proposing to wean the region off federal subsidies is a legitimate and, depending on the approach, commendable plank. To slip from that into wholesale slandering of Atlantic Canadians — writing them off as inveterate layabouts because many of them have accepted and grown accustomed to the money on offer — is to mistake the patient for the virus. Mr. Day must hope that, unlike Mr. Mykytyshyn, other Alliance members can tell the difference.
In his bi-monthly newspaper column, AIMS president Brian Lee Crowley asks why doesn't the Nova Scotia government speak up on Ottawa's proposed EI reforms before it is too late? Publication: CHH, August 2, 2000.
AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley examines the questions that no one is asked about the Prime Minister's July 2000 announcement of $700-million in spending in the Atlantic region. Here's an extract: "What exactly is the problem that Ottawa is trying to fix? By making this announcement, Ottawa drives home yet again, both inside and outside the region, the message that we're a "have-not" region. Unless we get a handout from taxpayers in other parts of the country, we're going nowhere and, worst of all, that we're failures at the high-tech game. But none of these things is true."
On 21 June 2000, AIMS President, Brian Lee Crowley, spoke at the Bangor Summit on New England/Quebec/Atlantic Canada Co-operation, in Bangor Maine. He took the opportunity to tell the story of a single region, divided only by history and a common border and united by one of two possible futures.
New book argues too much politics, too little economic common sense, drive region far from road to growth