Don Mills: New Brunswick’s Rural Challenge
Everyone is talking about New Brunswick’s problems. But fewer people have offered ideas about how to actually fix the economic and demographic issues that plague the province.
Don Mills is one of the exceptions.
The Halifax-based Mills is CEO of Corporate Research Associates, and one of Canada’s most respected pollsters. He’s also one of the investor who brought professional basketball back to Halifax.
But for the last few years, Mills has been focusing much of his energy arguing for a structural transformation of the region’s economy.
“There are some things that need to be fixed for us to have a good future in this region,” says Mills. He’s given hundreds of public and private talks on the challenge and what he believes needs to be done.
The bottom line is obvious – New Brunswick’s weak economy is both driving away current residents and making it difficult to attract new residents. And to Mills one major cause of our weak economy is that New Brunswick is still a rural province.
“We have the highest rural population in the country. Not by a little bit but by a lot.” Mills says that in Canada 19 per cent of the population lives in rural communities (defined as places with populations less than 5000 people) but in New Brunswick the number is 47 per cent.
“We are the last place in North America to urbanize. And all the growth that comes in an economy usually comes through urban areas. It does not come through rural areas,” he says.
“We cannot afford to do what we’re doing. So we need a new model.”
Listen to Huddle’s full conversation with Don Mills:
“The only way to get around that in my view is to create what I call urban centered economic zones.” These economic zones serve people within a reasonable driving distance. Mills says there are seven economic zones in New Brunswick around urban centres that service 95 per cent of the population within a reasonable commute.
Of course, many New Brunswickers don’t want to leave their rural communities for work or public services.
“We’re not asking you to move from rural areas to urban areas,” Mills says. “We’re asking you to commute a reasonable distance for public sector services and for full time employment.”
Mills says his research shows that most people are willing to travel about 75 km for public services and jobs.
“We have to change the attitudes of a lot of Atlantic Canadians to understand that they don’t have to move but they do have to commute for services and job opportunities. If we start doing that we’re going to have a better economy.”
But the pace of change in the province is glacially slow, with things like seasonal jobs and Employment Insurance allowing people to stay in rural communities.
“I’m frustrated more than angry. It seems so obvious to me what the issues are but we keep doing to same sort of solutions and thinking we are going to change the future of this region. No we are not. We need to restructure our economy around the urban areas,” Mills says.
“We need to understand and recognize that we do not have the capacity to keep all the hospitals and all the schools and all the government services that we currently have available in communities where there’s not sufficient population to support those services. We have to concentrate the delivery of services.”