Ganong creates N.B. business summit

New Brunswick businessman David Ganong is putting together a summit of business leaders and young entrepreneurs that he hopes will help the struggling province.

"If we don't take some steps as New Brunswickers to improve our situation, then we're likely to see significant tax increases and reductions in services in order to deal with paying the bills," said Ganong, chairman of the St. Stephen-based candy company Ganong Bros. Ltd.

The Future NB Summit will take place Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in Moncton.

Ganong, one of the province's most successful entrepreneurs, hopesthesummit will generate new ideas about how the province can counter slow economic development, increasing dependence on federal transfer payments, and a lack of private-sector jobs.

The province is projecting a deficit of roughly $750 million. New Brunswick alsohas a debt of $8.3 billionand it's projected to hit $9.5 billion in 2011 and $10.2 billion in 2012.

New Brunswick's economic outlookwas downgraded from "stable" to "negative" by a major international bond-rating agency in early October. As well, New Brunswick's unemployment rate has hovered just below the 10 per cent mark for the past two months, according to Statistics Canada.

Ganong said summit attendees will identifyproblems and then come up with policies to solve them.

"I think we all as leaders in New Brunswick are going to have to play a role whether it be labour, whether it be business, whether it be government or whether it be the academic community," he said.

Ganong was chairman of a panel that endorsed the proposed deal to sell a majority of NB Power's assests to Hydro-Qubec.

Before the deal fell through, he said it would have meant rate savings in both the short- and long-term and would have reduced financial risks related to the utility's debt.

Last week, Richard Currie, the chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, called New Brunswick a "failing province."

Currie's speech targeted New Brunswick's ongoing reliance on federal transfer payments and its worsening fiscal situation as some of the key indicators the province is failing.

He said the provincial government spends too much money on government programs and not enough on education.