Jennifer McKenzie Sees Potential In N.B.’s Entrepreneurial Drive And Spirit
FREDERICTON – David Campbell, a New Brunswick economic development writer and consultant would say, “It’s about the economy, stupid,” the name of an insightful and interesting blog that he’s written for years.
Others like Krista Ross of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce put it more diplomatically, arguing that the provision of social services like health care and education depends upon a robust economy that generates tax money to pay for them.
But however they frame their arguments – bluntly or more gently persuasive – many business people, economists, and economic development consultants and experts say much the same thing: a healthy economy is a foundation for a strong province.
With this in mind, I had conversations with some of the leaders of the province’s main political parties about the economy in advance of the vote next Monday, September 24.
Today, we hear from NDP Leader Jennifer McKenzie, a former tech entrepreneur, engineer and school board official in Ottawa who is now back in her home province full time. McKenzie lives in the north end of Saint John and running for a seat in Saint John Harbour.
Here is an edited and condensed version of our conversation:
What is it about your life experience or work history outside politics that would make you a good steward of the province’s economy?
I’m a hi-tech entrepreneur by training and I really enjoyed startups, that stage in growing a business where you go from 10 to 100 or 200 employees. That is really a core piece of who I am. Then I got involved in school board politics and seeing how society works, especially from a family perspective and a child’s perspective. And that’s given me the more socialist side of my Jekyll and Hyde personality.
I realize they’re both very different experiences, but what is it about both the school board experience and the experience of building a tech company that would help you tackle issues with building the province’s economy?
I worked with small teams in high tech and grew and learned how to take those small ideas and small ways of doing them in and build into a larger team. When I became chair of the school board, trying to get a large organization to move together and achieve great things, that was a real challenge and one I really relished and enjoyed. Getting the organization to move forward and become really progressive and dynamic and growing and learning kind of organization was a real charge for me. It’s in my blood now. I don’t think I could go back to the high tech world. I just love doing good in the world and with lots of people, and developing that consensus to get people moving together to achieve a really good objective.
You’ve helped build a company in Ottawa, a large dynamic urban centre. Do you see New Brunswick’s potential there for growth as a place for innovation?
I see huge potential, but I wouldn’t restrict it to the tech sector. What I see is all different parts of the economy that could benefit from not a high tech entrepreneurial approach, but a way of looking at how you grow your business, how you expand your business, how you put two businesses together to create something that’s bigger than the two would be by themselves.
When I relaunched my engineering career three years ago, I did it in a consulting capacity to help small businesses grow and see where they are and where they want to get to and how they might accomplish that. I see potential everywhere. I talked to the Culligan man who has expanded into water testing. I talked to the Uhaul owner who has expanded into creating safety training for trailers, safety inspections. I find all kinds of entrepreneurial spirit, little pockets of it all over New Brunswick. There’s real untapped potential there where we can really make a lot of different types of businesses flourish by just giving them the kinds of things they need at the right time and in the right way.
New Brunswickers often talk about the next big project that will save the province. That’s not what you’re talking about.
I’m talking about the little things all sort of growing together to become one really big great thing. I think youth are really thirsty for that kind of entrepreneurial type of environment where they can set their own course and chart their own direction. But they need support, they need advice, they need help. We’ve launched in our platform the Public Investment Bank, which would be looking at those kinds of businesses and growing some of the smaller, “Made in New Brunswick” types of businesses. There are some good examples already, but I think we could have many, many more.
What are some of the good examples?
Irving is number one, right, and Cooke Aquaculture. I think they’re wonderful examples of “Made in New Brunswick” companies. I was up visiting Xplornet [in Woodstock] a few weeks ago and looking at how they’ve grown their business. It’s really incredibly exciting what we can do, and New Brunswickers have that resilience and they have that drive and I think that we could do much, much more.
These large businesses probably don’t need much government help anymore. But I think some of the small and medium-sized businesses need help accessing new markets, helping them to decide how they grow their business.
How would the public investment bank be different than other existing economic development initiatives and agencies?
We would certainly design or try to design much of the politics out of it. We would give clear direction to as to how and what types of investments we were looking for. We would be looking for “Made in New Brunswick” solutions for investing in the people who live here now and who want to build and grow their businesses. We would be much less about trying to attract big corporations to move this branch or that branch into the province. We would be much more about trying to help New Brunswick businesses grow.
They brought in Oxford blueberries up in the Acadian Peninsula and put all the local blueberry growers out of business. We would do the opposite to that. We would invest in the local growers and help them access new markets, create new products and put in the value-added processing where a lot of the higher-worth jobs are created. Do things in a way that’s good for New Brunswick, good for the economy, good for the society that we live in.
What is your approach to energy and renewables?
When I became the leader, we talked about what we could do to make the province attractive for young people to stay. There are three reasons why youth leave the province. One is post-secondary education, one is jobs and one is for adventure. And so we tackled the first one by reducing tuition fees and eliminating college fees. The second one is really by building a green economy. Our carbon reduction fund would generate $400,000,000 a year.
First, we would we return [a portion] it to low and middle-income earners through a rebate system. Second, we would invest in green energy. There’s lots of wind here, lots of solar, tidal energy, and geothermal. We were second to British Columbia in terms of our potential for geothermal energy. The final third, we would invest in research and development. We would invest in “Made in New Brunswick” solutions. We would invest in a green infrastructure like transit. I hear a lot about the transit system and the lack of public transit, so we could have a really good transit system with $133-million a year across the province, both inside the cities but also between towns and villages so that seniors can get around more easily.
There’s lots of potential for all sorts of really good green projects with that kind of funding. It’s been shown to have a really wonderful impact in other countries like Sweden and Norway. We would see that as being a good fit here. It’s an investment. It’s seven cents a litre, but it’s seven cents to keep our kids in the province and it’s seven cents to invest in green energy and green infrastructure so that eventually our cost of living will go down by a lot because green energy has zero fuel costs and it’s much cheaper. Once the infrastructure is there, the energy’s almost free.
What is the party’s view on energy infrastructure projects like pipelines?
I have joked that the NDP is going to bring back the pipeline so he can pipe cold air inland on hot summer days. I think it’s probably more lucrative than oil. I would appreciate it in August [laughs].
As an environmentalist, I’m not really in favour of the Energy East Project because of its environmental impacts. But if it were to come to the province, I would make sure that New Brunswick got the most benefit it could from the jobs and whatever environmental protections we had to put in [place].
What’s the party’s position on lifting the moratorium on shale gas development or keeping it in place?
We think that the government lost its social license to do fracking. There’s so much concern about the health impacts, about the environmental impacts, about what it would do to the communities in which it’s taking place, so we wouldn’t lift the moratorium. My brother’s in the fracking industry and he’ll swear up and down and sideways that it’s safe and that it’s fine. If we found a way to do it that was local and beneficial to the community and beneficial to New Brunswick, we might regain our social license, but it’s not a priority for the NDP.
In the party platform, you spent a fair amount of time talking about enhancements and protections for the labour force. What are some of the key ones for you?
One of the things about being a woman politician and being a woman leader is that I have moms that come up and talk to me and tell me about some of the things that their kids are going through in their workplaces. I hear things like, ‘my son’s breaks were being taken away’ or ‘my daughter is getting minimal vacation and she has no say over when she can take it.’ What do you do when you have kids and that particular amount of vacation and time for vacation may not work for your family. I think there are many things that we can do with the labour laws to put a little bit more of the power back into the hands of the people that are working.
I think that it’s tipped too far. People are actually afraid to speak up when their rights are being taken away. I heard that from a woman yesterday when I was at her door, that she’s afraid to speak up when her hours are cut back because she thinks they’ll just cut them back even more. We need to make sure that we have a fair and balanced approach to our labour standards and to make sure that people can get help and support when they need it.
You’re also proposing to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and argue that this is good for the economy as well as the employees.
Just about everything in our platform is actually good for the economy. If you give [more money] to a low-income worker, they will go out and buy the necessities that they’ve been holding off paying for. They will buy food, they will buy clothing for their children. They’ll buy shoes. In Ontario, I heard when they raised the minimum wage, people went out to all the kids clothing stores and bought their kids new clothes. That’s the kind of thing that will help a local economy and create a multiplier effect so that there’s more prosperity everywhere.
This was an edited and condensed conversation with NDP Leader Jennifer McKenzie, part of a series of interviews with provincial political leaders in advance of the September 24 election. Next up: Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs.
Past Interviews:
- Brian Gallant Inspired By Early Family Financial Struggles To Campaign For A Fair Economy
- David Coon Says A Local, Green Economy Could Create 14,000 New Jobs