Today, the Herald is reporting on Stora Enso's efforts to blackmail the province: Give us a break of $200 million off our power bill, or we close the Point Tupper mill and 610 people lose their jobs. Hopefully the province will tell the paper company to fuck itself.
Why? As reported in yesterday's Globe and Mail, there's a new reality in Canada's economy: we actually have too many jobs. Governments like ours don't have to specialize in kissing corporate ass anymore. If Stora thinks it can find 610 skilled workers and/or millions in handouts somewhere else, go for it, and stop trying to suck our province dry.
Here's a chunk from the Globe story, "Plenty of work, not enough bodies," by Patrick Brethour and Heather Scoffield. Required reading for members of the Nova Scotia Utilitly and Review Board before Stora's power rate hearing starts in September :
For Jim McNevin, former dean of Dalhousie University's Faculty of Management, such reversals are mind-boggling. He spent much of his 30-year career in economic development pondering how to find jobs for people. Now in his semi-retirement, he has struggled to come to grips with economics turned on its head: finding people for jobs. "The way we've thought about our economy for the last generation-and-a-half is no longer relevant," he says.