Quote:
Originally Posted by Colin May
My question was 'any business' and you have provided no reason why Nova Scotia should be preferred over Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon or many other states or provinces.
Corporate taxes is a minor issue and based on police statistics the other issues listed in 1) may be good reasons not to locate in Halifax.
'Highly educated' is dependent on the particular qualifications and how they fit in the marketplace. Having a lot of people with a Bachelor degree does not translate to highly educated.
A company looks at several key factors : Availability of skilled labour, competent government, good schools, cultural assets, quality of life, connectivity to the world, and attitude towards business. We have the last 3 but the first 4 are somewhat lacking.
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The culture of defeat that is evident in your reply is a major part of the problem. All the hand wringing and negativity about apparently how awful it is here and how no company should want to come here is a huge part of the vicious cycle that we can't seem to break here in NS... and frankly it is untrue that no companies see reasons to come here based on our strengths.
In fact, your question as posed is way way too broad. We in NS will never, nor should we be, the ideal locale for any and all sectors to locate. We do have gaps that make NS the wrong place for certain sectors. For a century now the approach to economic development in NS has to been to throw money after chasing the next big hit, in whatever industry that might be, or in propping up as industry because it already happened to be here. Such an approach fails because it is unfocused and does not start by looking at what our strengths are. Instead, one of the issues with that and with your approach in the above response is that we need to look at slowly building from the ground up, based on identifying those sectors in which we DO have what companies are looking for.
The issue is that that is not sexy, and it is not a quick fix with immediate political gain. Instead, we then end up with government after government looking for the quick fix, and those in opposition to the government wringing their hands and spouting the same kind of extreme negativity of "name a reason why a company would actually want to come to this hellhole?" (to paraphrase how your question comes across).
The long term play is the only solution that will result in a fundamental shift in this province's economy, but of course, just like Maple Leafs fans, many people in this province will not put up with a long term rebuild.
The fact is, Someone123 and Fenwick are right... the financial services sector has specific business reasons why they chose to come here that have nothing to do with tax breaks. These reasons don't support your argument, but the fact is that they would disagree with you on things like lack of skilled labour, good schools etc. Instead, this sector often cites the strong business schools in Halifax, the pool of available talent who wish to work here, and the strategic business advantages that Someone123 mentioned of the timezone shift.
In the life sciences sector I am seeing the same thing. In the past year there have been multiple companies who have moved here from places like Toronto the bay area of California. They didn't come here because they were offered a payroll rebate, they came here because they fundamentally see it as the right move for their business. In the lead-up to chairing a discussion panel on the future of the life sciences industry at last year's BioPort Atlantic conference, I talked to the CEOs of these companies and asked them why they moved here. I can tell you that they would disagree with your conclusions, when it comes to this specific sector. Instead, they moved their companies exactly because NS offered a better environment to grow their company that a place like Toronto did, and because for them there were strategic advantages to doing the work here.
This obviously is not true for every sector and every business. Instead, we need to as a province look at those sectors who DO see the strategic advantage of being in NS, and focus on building those up slowly through a series of small hits rather than one big home-run. We are seeing that sort of growth at the start-up level in sectors like IT, life science, and financial services. Are things perfect? No. Could we do even better in building up these sectors? Absolutely. But I can tell you from talking to the life science CEOs that I know, that these people are serial entrepreneurs, and they are seeing the advantage of working here and already some have plans to continue to create new startups here in Halifax. That is how we will create a shift in our economy.
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