[JHikka]

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

It might lead to nothing, but I'd rather have our premier courting businesses of the future than more soul-sucking call centres that feed off grants and pay their staff so little that there's effectively no net financial benefit.

Absolutely agree. It remains to be seen how productive Premier Gallant has been in courting businesses. One of our former Premiers works in China, another in Boston, and another in Toronto, and another in Ottawa...how much business have they been able to court to NB...either during their mandate or after? Perhaps Graham's Chinese company will make a meal out of Mactaquac...how scandalous!

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

Honest question: Does fracking even make economic sense now given low energy prices? I've read a mix of opinions and I don't know what's what.

It doesn't currently, but it would be quite a large window of time between approval and implementation and extraction. Just because prices are low now doesn't mean that they will be low in five years. If hindsight is 20/20 and the PCs had implemented shale gas and we had extraction currently i'd assume the extractors wouldn't be doing as well as they thought they would have been. The American supply has essentially diluted a lot demand for the product, even before the resource crash.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

The previous Liberal government had reduced the corporate tax rate to 10% (which was the lowest rate at the time, matching Alberta) and intended to decrease it further to 8%, which would've been the lowest rate in the country. Did that spur any growth? Nope, but the Liberals would've deserved credit.

These tax rates need to be in place for a substantial amount of time without the fear that they'll just be raised by the next government, which they have been. I think people like stability in government policies and it's the exact opposite in NB. Up one government, down one government, up one government, down one government.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

The subsequent Conservatives are the ones who then decided not only to put an end to the planned decrease, but to revert the rate back to the current 12%. Did that kill off business? Nope, but the PCs would've deserved the blame.

Arguable. Didn't hurt start-ups but it's difficult to say how many businesses were affected. We can't sit here and say that businesses didn't close up shop in NB from 2010-2014, or downsize, or relocate.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

The current Liberal government is proposing to increase the corporate tax rate to 13% or 14%. 14% would match NL and still be lower than NS & PEI. How likely is that to change anything? Again, not very. It won't kill business, just like the new high marginal tax bracket won't have any noticeable effects on wealth in the province.

Will it kill businesses? Perhaps not. But what incentive is there for me to move from Ontario (11.5% high) or Quebec (0%) to NB (13 or 14%) or anywhere out east for that matter. Have something at least reasonably similar to larger provinces to make up or equal the much smaller local market in the Maritimes.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

Granted, the wealthy we're talking about (we've counted two so far) will end up saving a lot more by moving away; good for them...

The most wealthy in Canada don't have accounts in Canada. Pretty straightforward. The high income taxes hurt doctors and lawyers (and perhaps strong real estate agents) the most, not the super wealthy.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

Another anecdote: Nova Scotia's corporate rate is 16%, yet they're the ones getting an Ikea...

They also have more than half of NB's population in a single metro area. That helps a bit i'd imagine.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

I'd be more worried about upcoming social adjustments. The future will be increasingly urban and automated, and if we want our province to thrive, we need to direct investments to our cities, as opposed to wasting resources on foolish attempts at reviving northern rural areas (like with the Caraquet Naval Centre). Rural areas will die off; and that's especially true for northern NB because it has no anchor city to support small communities.

Absolutely. If it were up to me we'd remove as many rural hospitals and schools as we possibly could and force growth in our urban areas. Centralizing and regionalizing within the province is key to growth in the longterm when a lot of our rural areas will become untenable, which they nearly already are. That means amalgamating rural areas, forcing suburban areas to either amalgamate with cities or become cities in their own right, and coercing villages to become towns.

The startling thing is how much the rural areas are going to dry up in the next twenty years. Shippagan, for example, was the poorest performing town/region in NB from 2006-2011. In those five years the population decreased 6.3%. The worst part? Ages 0-14, -16.7%, ages 15-64, -9.3%, ages 65+ +21.5%.

Not only is Shippagan getting smaller but the proportion of seniors went up by a quarter in that five year period. In twenty five years the vast majority of those seniors won't be there anymore (sorry for your loss), and there will be no young people left.

For Bathurst (city), NB's 9th largest area and 327th in Canada? -3.5% growth in population. For Bathurst (region), NB's 4th largest and 82nd in Canada? -1.8% growth in population. Again, in the Bathurst region, the trend is obvious (2006-2011 changes):
Age 0-14 - -14.7%
Age 15-64 - -3.9%
Age 65+ - +19.8%

Are places more rural than Bathurst lost causes? Perhaps. In the event that rural areas near and surrounding the bigger centres (Bathurst, Miramichi, Campbellton, Edmundston) dry up, and these centres become more isolated from the growth areas in the province (Dieppe, Quispamsis, Lincoln, etc.) how will they fare? It's a conundrum for the Province: Do you try to salvage what's remaining or do you cast them away and focus on growth areas? More recent governments have done neither substantively.

The scariest thing to me is that these numbers are five years old, meaning the 65 year olds in those stats are now 70.

Originally Posted by pierremoncton

For future urban growth, Nova Scotia has the distinct advantage of already having a medium-sized city, while New Brunswick has three small non-descript cities competing against each other; we might be better off if we had one major city like NS.

This has been plainly obvious for decades now. Can't fault NB, just the way the cards were played. We could always ho-hum like older folks in SJ do about Fredericton taking the Capital away from SJ...