More Giustra and Nova Scotian Seeds, Less Empire and Emera Please... a response to Ian Thompson's latest letter in the Herald

I haven't blogged about the news lately, thinking from now on I am  just going to translate my opinions into poems and Monkey Stories.   But I can't stop thinking about something in Ian Thomspon's most recent letter in the Chronicle Herald Magazine: "More Exports, Not More Government".

The last time Ian wrote a letter I got so excited that I wrote two blog posts, "The Nova Scotia Pottery Emergency" and another one contemplating more ideas for value-added exports.  

I'm not pretending for a minute that craft is the answer to all of Nova Scotia's issues but if we're calling for more exports, figuring out some things that could be manufactured here to export could be a good start.

Being a member of the private sector, I am a big fan of the private sector and concur with the theme of this recent letter.  What surprised me, though, was that Empire and Emera are on Ian's awesome-list of companies

To quote his letter:

We should also pray for more Michelins. And encourage growth of a few more dozen companies like Clearwater, Oxford Frozen Foods, Emera, Empire, Stanfield’s, Newfoundland Capital, LED Roadway Lighting, Nautel, Scotia Investments and its offspring, Acadian Seaplants, Protocase, A.F. Theriault & Son, Tri-Star, Seaboard, High Liner, IMP, Chorus Aviation, the Shaw Group, Velsoft and Cherubini.

Ian! What's up?

Why do we need more companies like Emera?  This is the parent company for Nova Scotia Power, which supplies the province's electricity.  Does anyone in Nova Scotia actually like Nova Scotia Power?  Haven't they given the boot to Nova Scotian linesmen while ratcheting up power rates, and giving their executives hefty salary increases? 

I suppose we could use another Emera-type company to compete with Emera and hopefully lower power rates.

Why more companies like Sobey's-controlled Empire though?  This is the parent company to Crombie REIT which has hoofed small-businesses out of their commercial properties to make way for American chains.  They've also sidled up to American chain Target, to replace Canadian-owned Zellers.  Apparently Target Canada isn't as great as Target in the states, so they haven't been doing so well according to this CTV article.  

It seems odd to me that Empire/Sobeys would be supplying groceries and supporting Target, who is now their competition.  I'm not convinced that aiding an American big box store is the most efficient, long-term use of a Canadian company's resources. 

And if we think things are tough in Nova Scotia here's a recent Salon article about the economy in the states: You Call This Middle Class? "I'm Trying Not To Lose My House"

Not sure Corporate America is the kid in the sandbox I'd want to be playing with.

Over the past couple of months I've gotten the impression from talking to various people that any public critique of the Sobeys in this province is frowned upon.  

That's understandable I suppose.  There there, Sobeys family. Yes you do make sandwiches, sushi and black forest cakes that are all delicious while employing a lot of people and giving back to the community, and you fund an art award and probably lots of other good stuff for the province.

I just wish that the businesspeople of Nova Scotia would all try to be a bit more altruistic and long-term-big-picture-thinking towards other Nova Scotians; residents and business owners alike.  

Maybe Emera could offer better power rates instead of constant rate hikes that are delivered amidst news of executive salary increases.  

Maybe Empire and Crombie REIT could run their business in a way that would give smaller, local commercial tenants a better chance to stay in business instead of giving them the boot.  

Maybe the entire Nova Scotia private sector could all work together to create a better sandbox for everyone to play in before some Chinese billionaires land here in helicopters and start buying up the whole show like they did in my home province.

After feeling sad about the positive nod towards Emera and Empire, which I reacted to on Sunday by eating a big bag of chips and then taking an 8 hour nap, I got up went online and stumbled across an interview with Frank Giustra on youtube.  This completely cheered me up. 


I liked the interview so much that then I watched this one, where Frank is being interviewed by Peter Legge of BC Business Magazine.
  


Maybe what Nova Scotia could use is a few billionaires with ethics and ideas like Vancouver billionaire Frank Giustra.  

Frank has done some cool things with his money and time, such as starting Lions Gate Entertainment, an Independent Vancouver Film company that produced The Hunger Games.

It turns out that I'm not the first person to have a hunch that the world would be a better place if more rich monkeys could figure out how to share their bananas in ways that help out other monkeys.  

Frank is a fan of the teachings of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1911), the self-made wealthy Scottish-American Industrialist who is responsible for Carnegie hall and a pile of other good stuff. I never looked into Andrew Carnegie's story until last night, but Andrew Carnegie inspired Napolean Hill to write "Think and Grow Rich" (which is a great early book, popular among those who believe in the Law of Attraction).

Carnegie is noted as being a literal 'rags to riches' story and in 1889 he wrote an article called the 'The Gospel of Wealth'.   To quote the wiki article about it: "Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner."

It is reassuring to see that some rich guy got to thinking in this way!

On another topic, as with the Fabian Calvo video at the end of my most recent Favourite Things list, Frank Giustra mentions food production as something worth investing in.  He's even gone as far as to back this good-looking new magazine Modern Farmer.

Back to Ian's letter, in which he prays for oil...(the black gold kind not the olive kind).

Fossil fuels would be great, who wouldn't love cheaper heating fuel in this province, and jobs of course.  But personally I could only get excited about it if the oil and/or gas were to come out of the ground easily in large quantities that don't foul up our farmland and water in the process.  I'm still not clear on why booty from oil isn't shared more equally among provinces. 

The way I see it, if we don't have gobs of oil we don't have gobs of oil.  If this is the case then praying for oil would be as productive as praying for a mountain chain to spring up so we can have a helicopter skiing industry like in BC, or for residents of Saskatchewan to pray for an inland saltwater sea to form so they can go catch scallops and lobsters.  Why can't the provinces just get along and share the diversity of resources our great country has to offer?

Ian, instead of encouraging Nova Scotians to envy Newfoundland's oil, how about celebrating the rich abundance of good farmland Nova Scotia has?  

We all need to eat, after all. 

Our current food supply as we know it has been highly dependent on industrial farming and the trucking of food for long distances.  These are extremely oil-thirsty activities.   Growing 'organic' food and exploring permaculture would mean we'd need less oil and at the same time be rewarded with healthier food and soil.

Where I'm from in BC much of our very best farmland has been covered over in recent years by townhouses.  Nova Scotia not only has a lot good soil, and a decent growing season, it has very good, very delicious freshwater.  Abundant fresh water is something I'm sure the farmers in California were coveting with their recent drought.  

I think that as consumers grow more conscious of the potential threats of GMOs and more hungry for healthy organic food, the safe farmland, good freshwater, and relatively long growing season of Nova Scotia could turn out to be three of this province's greatest assets.
 
On that note, here is a shout-out to a few companies that got left off of Ian Thompson's list.  Nova Scotian seed companies! Seeds are life and there are a few excellent companies mailing their non-GMO heirloom seeds out all over: Halifax Seed, Hope Seed, Annapolis Seeds,  Incredible Seeds and any others I might have missed.

More healthy happy earth-friendly corporate citizens like these, please! Let's all appreciate this province's farmland and protect it from genetic contamination by Monsanto or from fouling by unsustainable development. 

I think perhaps what needs to happen is more productive interactions between our elder business types stuck in our old paradigms of profiting via resource extraction, and our younger generations who are evolving to listen to and live symbiotically with the earth. 

To be clear, I completely agree with the overall gist of Ian's message.  But here is my twist: government get out of the way unless you're going to help.  Private sector, take a minute to review "The Gospel of Wealth" full article here , then hop in and let's figure some awesome exports that won't wreck the planet, or our minds or our bodies, and/or some awesome systems to drive more dough into the wallets of hard-working Nova Scotians, that would make everyone richer.

Let's go easy on the earth and work with her rather than against her.  If she wants to puke oil or gas at us in a way that doesn't wreck the place, then great, lucky us.  But in any case I think if we can get a few of our money wielding elders to invest in more sustainable sectors (eg organic farming and value-added organically grown food products), Nova Scotia could quickly find itself to be one of Canada's richest provinces, in terms of personal, community and environmental health.

Or maybe it won't, but it could be worth a try, eh?