N.B. must export expertise, not resources: report

New Brunswick needs to build a future on new technology, and let small sawmills and fish plants shut down, a report from a provincial government task force says.

The export business is New Brunswick's future, but not in the traditional sense, said Francis McGuire, a Moncton businessman and co-chairman of the task force.

Rather, he says, it lies inexporting expertise, developing new industries such as clean-coal technology at a second Belledune power plant and electronic medical records-keeping.

"If you look at companies like Blue Cross, they already do a lot of this," McGuire said Monday. "Half of the 800 jobs that are in Moncton actually do work for outside the province. Having developed that, it then doesn't matter if you're delivering it direct to the home [whether] that home is in Maine or Mississauga or Bouchtouche or Fredericton.

"So it's part of the export element that says, 'This is something we can do, this is actually how we can make health care an industry for us.'"

The second discussion paper by the self-sufficiency task force pitches some ideas that are bound to spark discussion, such as making the province a centre for nuclear technology, cutting back on forest conservation zones to let industry cut more trees, and letting small sawmills go out of business.

"There's no sense trying to prop up inefficient mills," McGuire said. "Therefore, you have to look to the workers and the transition. We also believe that it would be better to transition people out sooner. We talk about a potential buyout of sawmills, on a voluntary basis, so that the market decides, so you can have this rationalization."

Some of the suggestions have a familiar sound: Theformer Liberal government of Frank McKenna also tried to develop the economy with a coal-fired power plant in Belledune. The plan was later criticized as adding too much debt to NB Power.

The same government tried to develop an electronic patient record system with Blue Crossbefore abandoningit at a cost of $12 million.

McGuire was a senior development official in that government.