Former Nova Scotia Premier Says Maritimers Must Embrace Change
HALIFAX — Stephen McNeil left politics in February, but the former Nova Scotia premier hasn’t stopped thinking about the future of the Maritime region.
Shortly after leaving office, McNeil entered the consulting world. First with a gig with law firm Cox and Palmer, and now also as an advisory board member with the Coalition for a Better Future.
The Coalition is a collection of business, environmental, Indigenous, and not-for-profit organizations trying to create a social and economic vision for Canada. It’s been holding a series of roundtable discussions across the country as a lead-up to its October 27 Summit.
Last week, the group held a roundtable discussion in Halifax, focused on “building innovative and globally competitive companies.”
‘People have to accept change’
In an interview with Huddle, McNeil said the discussion was broad and wide-ranging but touched on things like bringing more venture capital into the region, continuing to grow the startup ecosystem, and ensuring better collaboration between academia and the private sector.
“How do we continue to build on Volta or the ocean supercluster, making sure that the research is not just academic, which is good. But how do we leverage the university research capacity from a private sector point of view to drive job growth?” McNeil said.
Growth discussions are impossible without considering immigration. McNeil said that will continue to be a focus for Maritimes and argued there should be a serious overhaul of the system.
Immigration, McNeil said, should be taken out of the hands of the federal government and dealt with more at the local level.
“Because, locally, they know where the workforce is needed, they know who is required, they know what their infrastructure is… all that stuff,” he said.
That would require a systematic change in how we do things. And McNeil said there are other places those big changes will be needed.
Medicine is another example. McNeil said the various colleges that regulate medical licenses in Canada need to change so doctors can work more easily across provinces.
He said the biggest hurdle keeping the Maritimes from achieving its most prosperous future is its resistance to change.
“People have to accept change. The irony of it is it’s the only thing that’s constant. But you have to shape change otherwise it’s going to shape you,” he said.
Government can’t do everything
Changing things, and changing them for the better, is a legacy most politicians want to leave—and McNeil is no exception.
But talk to him long enough about his time as premier and a big theme emerges: the government, he argued, can only do so much.
“You learn very quickly that you can pull the levers to make decisions on the things you totally control. But then you realize there’s a lot of things you don’t control,” he said.
That’s a vital point for McNeil.
He argued the responsibility falls on more than just the government to usher in the kind of changes the Coalition panel talked about.
He holds up the Ivany Report as an example of the kind of accountability that should be built into plans for Atlantic Canada’s future growth.
Look through the report’s goals and you’ll see benchmarks pegged not just to the government, but the private sector, academia, and others.
“When you look at trying to build a better future, it’s not one organization or one view of the world that’s going to actually lead that change. It will be, can you point out and address the systematic challenges in the system, and who then will take the lead. And that’s not always government. Sometimes it is. But not always,” he said.
McNeil believes a big reason Atlantic Canada was, generally speaking, so successful during the pandemic is that the private sector, public sector, academia, and not-for-profit organizations all worked together much better than they have in the past.
It will be essential to keep that momentum going once the pandemic starts to fade from view.
“Now it becomes what did we learn? Are we going to take the lessons we learned from this and move forward or are we going to fall back into the way things used to be?” he asked.
Trevor Nichols is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].
To read more stories like this in Huddle, sign up to receive our free daily newsletter.