RIM Decision-The Shame Is-We Were Never in the Game

The decision by Research in Motion ( RIM) to go to Halifax is a good one....for all of Atlantic Canada, Greater Moncton included.

RIM -Canada's hotest tech company.

It is, when expressed in 1950 terms, the equivalent of locating an automotive plant in a community like southern Ontario. Something that has driven Ontario over the past 50 years, to where 1 in 6 jobs are tied to the automotive sector.

Drive down the 401 Highway in southern Ontario towards Windsor from Oshawa and the impact on many smaller towns and cities of a car plant economy are there in the small parts companies and trucking firms that play a supporting role. Employment spin-offs are huge and sneak up on a community.

So much so that when a car plant, or in the case of New Brunswick, a pulp mill goes down, the job loss is huge.

The same will occur around the future anchoring of Nova Scotia as a creditable location in eastern Canada for service support for the sophisticated IT enterprise networks that companies like RIM represent in this 24/7/60 second world we have come to live in as a plugged in and always on information worker.

This is the Information Economy predicted in 1970 by Alvin Toffler writ large.

There are many lessons in this advantage Nova Scotia story about getting the nod from RIM, or the click to stick to Nova Scotia as it were.

The worst of the lessons for Moncton and New Brunswick in general is that we were probably not even on the short list of contenders.

There are many provincial lessons for this starting with the economic development policy of the wunderkinds who are guiding economic policy in New Brunswick, from their pension induced bunkers in Fredericton. The blame for not being in the hunt- to at least been a worry to Nova Scotia, simply means that we did not mount an effective campaign.

But that is not my focus.

There are excellent analysis articles being put forward by David Campbell , in his It's The Economy, Stupid , Blog and Alec Bruce, in his Alantic Canada First's Blogging article that analysis economic and regional events better than I.

I am however, a veteran volunteer of the pick up our own bootstrap school of economic development that Moncton and Dieppe and Riverview at one former time, used to be good at and successful as a result. Those days may be past us in Dieppe-Monctgon, if the RIM decision is any indication.

My concern is for Moncton and Dieppe and the total failure of the present political and community leadership to understand the potential for loss in progress that can occur- rather is occurring, as a result of the growing pettiness in personalities and politics in the leadership of Dieppe the Younger City, and Moncton- the Elder City.

Neither applications are complimentary and reflect that lack of judgement and wisdom in decision making for the former and a certain laissez faire illness that is creaping into the execution of Moncton as an economic force.

Sounds like nitpicking, but it is more out of wariness and warning that the goose that has been laying golden eggs of late has taken to arguing about the perch position rather than focusing on critical elements of getting the next deal. If this appears harsh, it is only meant to be a wake up call. Lots is still going right, but going right and doing right are too different things.

Moncton and Dieppe have managed to render impotent the Golden Goose that was developed at significant cost in volunteer energy and collective community energy, the focused effort to rebuild the economy of southern New Brunswick that Moncton once exemplified, promoted under a brand of economic recovery called "Moncton" for short hand compliments by other municipalities accross Canada.

Political correctness now suggests that this be called Greater Moncton, but currently Moncton and its blossoming twin sister City of Dieppe, together as an economic development unit are not living up to Greater anything with their mindless internal petty political and penny pinching wrecklessness.

Rather, the two communities, especially the citizens who tolerate the empty rhetoric and artificial positioning of political opportunism on water rates, or the once shared cost of issuing building permits, and who gets to create and administer the red tape that builders and developers of business opportunity have to endure to get a project approved in Greater Moncton: are to blame for Moncton, or Dieppe, or Riverview, now in this instance; not being considered as a home base station for RIM's service support center.

It is not sour grapes to look at our own behavior as citizens. Or to allow as a citizen of Dieppe their leadership to take their eye off the ball of economic development success in expanding their Industrial Park, or driving down the cost of their tax base by seeking more efficient methods of delivering essential municipal services; to instead embrace deconstructing the Moncton-Dieppe-Riverview troika of economic development strategy based on presenting a unified and co-ordinated community.

An aggressive and success minded community. Lingusitically flexible and examplifying the best of two divergent, but complimentary cultures that express themselves in unique and distinctive ways. We appear to be slipping from the advangage of the dual culture to the penalty of individualism and petty envy pouts.

What the needless debate over the cost of water quality sourcing and transfer debate means for those who are maintaining a premium rate for water charges that comes from the cost burden of the water treatment plant paid for by Moncton taxpayers, for Dieppe means, is that Dieppe is now seeking its own in-ground sources. Moncton's citizens bore the cost and deserve the cost recovery, but not at the expense of crippling our mutual competitiveness to attract outside industry.

Perhaps Premier Lord, himself a resident and Member of the Legislature for the community should fullfill his first responsibility to his constitutients and act as an arbitrator. Of course, there is Ex-Prime Minister Mulroney, who has a distinguished career as a labour mediator who could for a fee intervene and lead the parties to a conclusion. This is important.

Well water and its questionable, if not temporary purity in this pollution obsessed world where a thimble full of gasoline can ruin a water aquifer of millions of underground gallons for generations for potable water usage, Dieppe's drive to embrace a failed source of water purity for New Brunswick's newest and shiniest City is incomprehensible.

It is dangerous thinking. It is dangerous economics for our tax base for attracting industry and bad community imagery.

It is similarity dangerous for Moncton to stand hoisted on its own petard in setting water rates at such a premium that now Dieppe feels justified in grasping a flawed economic policy instead of negotiating a fair water price that recognizes the true capital cost of the superior water treatment plant.

Few understand that Moncton plowed on alone and created the water treatment plant without Dieppe's participation in the capital burden. Hence the moral position that Moncton assumes as a position in wanting to recoup its capital risk and reduced borrowing capacity from underwriting the cost of the water plant.

And then there is the cost of policing the area. Every story in this 24 news cycle world gets picked up and relayed and soon residents of Calgary get an impression that Moncton and Dieppe cannot get along. Impressions are created and are difficult to undue with an advertising campaign that says locate here for success.

The list of petty and minor irritants that continue to mount and get stoked day by day by real and imagined slights that happen in the daily discourse of business builds a fissure of trust and costs us jobs. Anyone who has crash dived a marriage or a business partnership understands all too well the costs involved in tallying up the minor slights till they become a fissure. A fissure that can be too broad to span and meanwhile, our true economic development competitors ride a wave to the job bank.

Citizens of Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview need to send a clear message and soon to their elected representatives and the staff they employ to execute their municipal management mandate. Get on with preparing this region to survive and prosper and stop fighting over who gets to sit closest to the orchestra while the ship sails into an iceberg field with the captains on the Bridge arguing as to who paid the last fuel fill up bill.

Hats off to the forecefully amalgamated and politically renewed Halifax who deserve the job creation win because they took the time to prepare a platform for success and future economic development.

Meanwhile the managers of the Moncton-Dieppe-Riverview and southern New Brunswick economy are turned inward and fighting among themselves. We, the citizens can allow this condition to continue. There is a reason that the term short sighted means having no long view capacity.

We definitely need a long view in Dieppe, Moncton and Riverview, otherwise our economic lifeline is a short straw.

Call your local, elected municipal representative today. Send a strong signal that you are not prepared to have them be petty in your name.

Or, if you think this point of view expressed here is wrong and there is value in your future in having a Made-In-Dieppe economic policy that is independent entirely of the region and similarly for Moncton and Riverview, then encourage them to fight the mean spirited and petty fight in your good name.

Just do not ...do nothing because not being outraged allows a proxy vote to continue in your name where Moncton and Dieppe get to spar over everything from water rates and source quality, to community planning commissions, to police services, and any latent local service costs that could be reduced by cost sharing efficiencies that are being suspended in order to get temporary dominance in a community battle that does not matter to anyone, but ego stroking.

Meanwhile, we will let economic opportunity and the preparation for success as a location victories of the past be historical and with luck, the Dieppe-Moncton-Riverview region will be once again, a tried, tired, and job shopping free retail experience driven by a confluence of roadways and community proximity; rather than enjoying a co-ordinated aggressive policy of being a contender whenever an economic development initiative for eastern Canada is up for grabs.

We cannot complain about Fredericton as the Province's Government and economic development agency for the Province not doing its job, which entirely seems plausible, given the current press reports on Premier Hamm's aggressive salesmanship in winning the RIM decision, when we in the Greater Moncton community tolerate short minded political leadership.

Short sighted leadership lacks that fractures joint cost agreements for regional cost efficiency, instead of building a better, more cost effective urban and unified regional voice for southern New Brunswick's economic development initiatives.

We have allow flawed thinking and fixed math calculations to determine our future.
Every conflict between communities is based on whinnying about the cost not being fair. How hard can it be to divide a total cost of service among two categories of service users?

Commercial/business and residential units as a factor of the number of service units enjoying the service outcome.

If there is a hidden flaw in simple math, then someone in a elected leadership position needs to spell it out so that we know exactly why we are failing as an aggressive seeker of economic opportunity, because in our little piece of the world, any number is not divisible by the total units of three subtotals. It is to weep.

Shame on us in Greater Moncton, and praise on the recently amalgamated regional municipality of Halifax.

The shame was in not even being in the game and having our local agenda dominated by public press stories about how we can't add or divide in Greater Moncton or even agree on where the solutions are, while 1,200 hundred jobs drove right by us, whether we have our own or someone else's expensive water supply running through our taps.

Somebody needs to be held accountable for this. The mistake was not the loss, the loss was that we were never in the game because we were too busy re-arranging the deck chairs while we sank.

Shame.

Baby Steps to New Brunswick Energy Production

I continue to watch closely the emergence and production of natural gas in the Mc Cully Field area southeast of Sussex and the Hiram Brook range that wanders into Albert County a short distance away.

As anyone who has traversed the back roads and snowmobile trails of Albert County and Westmorland Co., around Sussex knows, the-as-the-bird-flies geography of Westmorland Co's Penobsoquis is much closer to one another than one might think.

There is a lot to keep in mind about the oil fields south, and now west, of Moncton. Things we should keep in mind in this age of high oil per barrel prices and the natural underground geography around the Moncton and southeast New Brunswick region, and this region's possible potential as a New Brunswick energy producer.

Natural gas, oil and in the case of Albert County with its Albertite dark mineral formations, as well as a deep through of embedded oil sludge in something that resembles cold molasses that is deep in the underground passages surrounding Hiram Brook and the Salem-Hillsborough and Stony Creek fields in terms of energy resources; well the draw back has always been economics. The cost of penetating deep enough and then expending energy in the form of giant steam heated extraction to get the oil separated from the sandy-embedded sludge.

A cost that is guesstimated to be nearly twice the cost of current oil production from off-shore and more than the cost of the famous Alberta Tar Sands projects. I appreciate the irony that the naming of Alberta, was in part due to the similarities in the sub soil structure and geo-formations that were so similar to Albert Country, where the albertite deposits lead to the connection with creating a name that also had a connection to the consort of an English Queen, by the name of Albert.

This is forelore history and may not be true to the accepted Professor MacNutt version of New Brunswick's history, but it works for me and this take on Albert County and the future of energy production in New Brunswick.

North of Moncton we had in the 1,800's some limited low grade coal deposits and extration production. Travelling along Route 126 - less than 50 crow fly miles from Albert County's borders is Coal Branch, Kent County, hard on the northern border with Westmorland Country, where a early railroad spur line once connected to Kent County coal mines.

Further along this same geo-formation to the north and west are the Kent County peat bogs. All signs of the geological formations that have energy of one form or another buried deep within the recesses of the underground. Peat itself is a fuel that has never been popular in the colonies, but Ireland and Scotland, both used it extensively. Want to encounter a hot fire, be near an peat smoulder and you can understand why men in skirts in the age of Stonehenge build homes around a peat smouldering burn.

Follow, as a hunter walking on a compass point to the west and north and you will hit Minto and the larger Grand Lake coal fields there that are now not feasible for NB Coal production because of their low quality, high sulpher content that also leads- as it did in the age of steam locomotives- to heavy clinking. Clunkers are the hard residue left over after the burn process that resembles hardened gum and brittle stone that once cooled; is difficult to clean from cleaning grates.

While this has made New Brunswick coal among the low grade in quality for steam plants and locomotives, it matters less now, because in this world of scientifc breakthroughs and marginal improvements in one technology that allows for a new life for an old.

Coal may have a new life as a feedstock for a conversion process to bio-fuel feedstock for energy of electrical production in a steam plant. A liquification process that allows it to be burned entirely at a high enought temperature to create a low cost alternative to burning bunker C oil from foreign markets. Replacing and displacing oil that is in competition to become jet fuel, gasoline, diesel and lubicants as the barrel of oil is broken down in the food chain we call market niches for bunker C grade oil.

It is an education to see the breakdown of products that are streamed off from cruded oil in terms of refined products for different levels of combustion point and lubrication capability.

It is worth now, at current prices and approaching prices, to look at liquifying coal into a high energy conversion fuel for producing among other things electricity. A made in New Brunswick form of oremulsion.

Had the Governmnet of Venezula not gone on a walk about for implementing a made-in-Venzelua oil policy that chooses customers according to their political deseriability and economic governing model and executed a trade agreement with New Brunswick, we would, as a Province, be sitting comfortably, if not prettily in the energy to distributed electrical heat model at fixed prices considerably lower than the current bid-it-up-managed-price-per-barrel scenario that is penalizing us now.

Point Lepreau and its colossual debt-to-risk ratio would not have been necessary, if we had been able to play nice in Venezula.

I cannot believe that if we had come across as something more than pale imitations of US capitalists with no consideration for the poor and working poor of his country, that Chavez would have relented and let the deal go through. But he probably could not see any difference in us and the brand called Canada, and specifically the brand called New Brunswick, did not offer anything of perceived value in elevating his poor and improvished.

Think about what we could have pointed to in terms of Equal Opportunity and govnorance models to provide ideas in addition to cash. We missed a huge oppirtunity and we are going to pay dearly for not having any etiguette to accompany our business developers from NB power and the Province.

Which bring me back to Albert County and the potential for a New Brunswick energy field.

Driving through the rolling hills of Albert Country is a wonder in traditional easy sledding of winter on snowmobile trails, or in the brief summers when largely coated dirt roads intertwine to reach through the valleys to Sussex. Deep under many of these hilly formations are hugh deposits of ( and I do not know the proper term in the oil exploration industry ), oil deposit sludge that has to be heated and placed under extreme pressure to be forced to the surface.

We are an expensive form of fuel supply that is not entirely documented, except that it is costly.

According to a recent magazine article, this form of depost is found in depths that no one has calculated yet, and have been un-attractive because of the low cost of oil per barrel.

Low is considered anything below $45-55.00 (US) per barrel. Now, as oil prices flirt with $60. per barrel, a number of options open up- in particular tar sands such as are found in Alberta. Heavily subsidized and supported by governments and private oil capital at current prices, the oil and tar sands begin to make economic sense.

According to a chart in a recent Wired Magazine report - see December 2005 edition on news stands now, the oil sludge buried in deep sand deposits ( exactly as they have been described in the Hillsborough fields ), are economical and viable at $70.-$80. per barrel.

Those prices are only months away and not years away, as the World, driven by an awakening China that wants its place in the sun, consumes more cars and more oil resources and global oil reserves decline as market forces drive the price per barrel towards $100. per barrel. I will see it in my lifetime, of that I am convinced, unless I am hit by a car on Main Street, before my time.

Which brings me further around to the press release from Corridor Resources in Halifax-Moncton, who keep updating their public shareholders on their steady progress in getting natural gas out of southern New Brunswick.

It is conventional wisdom that natural gas and oil often are found in similar geo-formations and while I am not an expert on this matter, where there are deposits of energy, there is new technology coming online to turn it into domestic production.

What is needed is a made in New Brunswick energy policy that is more than trying to dry up drafts in residential houses that are built in New Brunswick with the same technology in car terms that was used in a 1965 Impala. We still use cheap baseboard electric heaters that are only cheap heat and cheap to install because we subsidize the true cost of energy production into electricity with tax dollars.

We are cutting off our shovels to spite our furnaces; so to speak.

Keep an eye on the price of oil in per barrel terms.

Altantic Canada, despsite some pretty bad energy policy decisions and a pipeline that feeds Boston our lowest cost production and price of natural gas directly with some tiny driplets into New Brunswick through Enbridge, may have an energy production card to play yet.

If you have read along this far, the map below helps to understand where the natural gas production in New Brunswick is occuring please see the geological map below.

To be clear, this production of natural gas is already allowing a substantial employer and huge consumer of energy to remain competitive in world markets for potash. There is an existing economic development model and local politics instruction lesson here in terms of what all of this focus on local natural gas reserves means.

To understand this issue even further and what it could mean for a municipality like Sussex, I encuorage you to read the 2002 Kings County-NB natural has pipeline hearings that led to Potash Company of America gaining a direct feed of energy from local sources. I will return to this issue again in the future, because we need to be very careful that energy cartels and international players do not get in a position to prevent local domestic markets from having access to local natural resources in the form of natural gas.

Here is the link to the Potash Natural Gas Pipeline Hearing as published on the Web in 2003-2003, as part of the Procince of New Brunswick's regulatory process. Very instructive.