Donald Savoie's Bad Medicine

The Telegraph Journal ran a front page article this weekend on the new book by University of Moncton Professor Donald Savoie, titled "Visiting Grand Children: Economic Development in the Martimes, which neatly coincided with Stephen Harper’s whirlwind tour of New Brunswick’s three major cities. The book lauds neo-conservative policies, including devolution of federal powers to the provinces and further economic integration with the United States, as the harbinger of future "Glory Days" for the Atlantic provinces. While Savoie purports to have proclaimed something new, it is really more of the same policies that have driven Atlantic Canada’s economic stagnation and decline ever since the early 1980s.

Mr. Savoie’s recipe for Atlantic Canadian economic success reads like a wish list for the large corporate interests which are largely controlled by a handful of powerful families in the region. He cites deep cuts to corporate taxes, clawbacks on Employment Insurance benefits and transfer payments, a need for Maritimers to lower their salary expectations, a re-orientation of pension regimes towards the private sector and for rural families to begin what he calls a "painful process" of closing their communities as ingredients to a bitter future that will be tough to swallow.

None of these prescriptions adequately address the larger economic dilemmas that are causing the region’s economic decline. In fact, we have been subject to the policies he expounds since the beginning of the Liberal Government in Ottawa in 1994. Lowering the living standard for Atlantic Canadians does not constitute or preclude economic growth. His recommendations for the region are an expansion and entrenchment of the economic system that has been in place for decades.

Citizens of rural areas should be outraged by Mr Savoie’s words. He says that tightening employment insurance eligibility is necessary even if it means "closing some villages" as people leave "unsustainable" rural areas.

This is a perverse notion of sustainability. If anything sustainability means supporting rural villages through farmers cooperatives, helping them expand into new organic food markets for the 21st century. It means helping those in the forest industry adapt to the global markets they are now priced out of. This can be done by authoring new laws governing public forests to manage them for ecological integrity. We need to re-orient the industry away from paper and timber production and towards high value added production, which will allow the diversity of tree species found in our Acadian forests to thrive through Forest Stewardship Council certified harvesting practices. The situation with our fishery does not have as many ready answers, but innovation in a humane and ecologically oriented spirit can bring about changes that ensure a decent living off the sea for our cherished coastal communities.

Savoie’s approach is to strangle rural Atlantic Canadians out of livelihoods they and the generations before them have known for centuries. Instead we should be focussing our energies on solving the dilemmas that are facing rural communities rather than feeding them more of what they are already choking on.

What is most shocking about Mr. Savoie’s narrow view of the world is his assertion that Atlantic Canadians should subject their living standards to vulgar forces of the global free market. Imbedded in his statement that Maritimers should lower their salary expectations and accept the elimination of corporate tax is the idea that the Maritimes should not be competing against Central Canada for jobs, instead we should be competing against Bangladesh. The Atlantic provinces already have the lowest minimum wage rates in the country with the lowest in New Brunswick. Savioe wants the Maritimes to take the lead in the global race to the bottom no matter how much human suffering it will entail.

Implementation of the Neo-conservative agenda has already diminished the standard of living for Canadian workers coast to coast, but especially in Atlantic Canada. Savoie’s solution is the further divestment of public services and assets to the private sector by giving the big corporations, and the billionaire families that own and control them, a free ride on the backs of working people. If anything, in these days of massive federal budget surpluses and unprecedented corporate profits, it is time to support people in every community rather than strangle them out of their traditional livelihoods. This can be done through investments in publicly funded and delivered childcare, coupled with workforce training and placement programs for their parents; an end to the hypocrisy of having the most expensive post-secondary education in the poorest region of the country, long term planning for the sustainable use our natural resources, and an ecological revolution in our energy and transportation sectors to meet the challenges of global warming.

If Mr. Savoie’s dream for Atlantic Canada were to come true it would only exacerbate the decline in population, economic output and ecological integrity that our region of the world is currently facing. His rash, a-historical market analysis of Atlantic Canada’s challenges is informed by the same logic that led to these problems in the first place. In short, Savoie’s prescriptions have already been swallowed and they didn’t cure anything. It is time for new remedies and the rejection of neo-conservative policies that have cause so much damage in the past.