This article appeared first appeared in the Telegraph-Journal

On Premier Gallant’s recent trip to western Canada he took time to meet with New Brunswickers who’ve moved away in an effort to drum up more business for the province.

 

Finding ex-pat New Brunswickers in other parts of the country wouldn’t be hard to do, thousands move away every year. It is a telling sign of the economic pit the province is in.

 

Over the last three years, New Brunswick’s population fell by 2,966 making it the fastest shrinking province in Canada.  

The solution?

 

Conventional wisdom has been to push for a dramatic increase in international immigration. Recently, Former Premier Frank McKenna says of attracting and retaining immigrants to New Brunswick, “it’s the number one, two and three priorities.”

 

But New Brunswick is not taking in too few immigrants. While the population is declining, the number of immigrants is on an impressive rise. New Brunswick has welcomed 7,110 new immigrants from around the world between 2012-13 and 2014-15.

 

The real problem affecting the population is that too many New Brunswickers are packing up and leaving the province.

 

At the same time the province gained immigrants, there has been a net loss of 9,067 New Brunswickers to other parts of Canada.

 

Most of those are young people just getting started in their careers, taking themselves, and their families to live, work and pay taxes somewhere else.

 

Yet despite these numbers, the New Brunswick government isn’t talking about what they can do to keep people home. Worse they are retreating from the fight to keep our young people here.

 

David Campbell, New Brunswick’s chief economist says immigration is “Fundamentally, it’s our best option” and “some will say we don’t need growth, but unless the federal government is prepared to come in with billions, every jurisdiction has to have economic activity.”

 

Campbell’s argument of immigration or bust, misses the point. If poor economic conditions push Canadian-born workers with ties to the province to leave New Brunswick for better jobs, why on earth would immigrants stay?  After all, many of these immigrants have already travelled greater distances to start a new and, they hope, better life.  We can't expect them to settle for less because New Brunswick is a beautiful province.  We need to offer them, and native New Brunswickers, a more compelling reason to stay – a strong economy.

 

Immigration is easy for provincial politicians to talk about because they don’t have responsibility for it, the federal government does. It’s much tougher to tackle the underlying problems of why people move. And every week that they talk and strategize about immigration 58 New Brunswickers pack their bags and make a future for themselves somewhere else.

 

Areas with a growing population have a few things in common. They have a strong economy, offer well-paying jobs and competitive tax rates.

 

For example, Alberta added 1.5 million more people between 1996 and 2015, a 55 per cent increase. Alberta has some of the lowest income taxes in Canada and no sales tax. Or look at Saskatchewan that has permitted massive growth in the natural resources sector (something New Brunswick has outlawed) and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. The result is they’ve grown their population in the last four years alone by over 67,000 people.

 

We need to create those same advantages here at home.

 

We need to develop New Brunswick’s resources. It makes no sense to allow New Brunswickers to leave for places like Saskatchewan to work in industries that could be right in their own back yard.

 

New Brunswick needs to show it is open for business. High net worth individuals who have the potential to invest and create jobs face a steep tax burden in New Brunswick. Anyone earning more than $150,000 will pay a marginal tax rate of 50 percent. That means for every two dollars they earn in income, the government takes one. Not the type of taxation system that screams for investment.

 

Lastly, we need Employment Insurance reform. 

 

New Brunswick has a 9 per cent unemployment rate and between 30,000 and 50,000 people a month collect Employment Insurance benefits. Yet businesses complain they can’t get workers.

 

New Brunswick has a number of natural advantages to create a population boom. There are thousands of people who are either from New Brunswick, who’ve lived here, who love it and want to come home.

 

Now let’s go create the opportunities that will bring them home.

 

Kevin Lacey is the Atlantic Director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation