N.B. business summit seeks new voices

New Brunswick business leaders will be turning to environmentalists, labour leaders and social activists to help shape a new economic course for the province.

The Future N.B. Summit is starting on Monday night in Moncton and will span the next two days hearing from a long list of speakersabout ways to kick start the flagging economy.

David Ganong, the chairman of St. Stephen-based Ganong Bros. Limited, said he wants to come up with solutions to the province's slow economic development and increasing dependence on federal transfer payments.

He said he's also worried that growth in public sector jobs is far outpacing the private sector.

The panelists included former premiers Camille Thriault and Bernard Lord, as well as university officials, entrepreneurs and economic advisors.

But Ganong said he doesn't just want to hear from people who think like he does.

So he asked New Brunswick labour leader Tom Mann, the executive director of the New Brunswick Union, to speak and to invite 20 others with a different perspective.

Mannselected a group ofenvironmentalists, social activists and labour leaders to join him at the business conference.

'If we're talking about a summit on theeconomy ... everybody should be at the table and everybody should be there on an equal footing, which is not right now.' Jean-Claude Basque,Common Front of Social Justice

The labour leader said he wanted more people at the conference who don't measure success simply by the examining the province's gross domestic product.

"It has been a measurement tool, but many believe that it is not an accurate measurement," Mann said.

"It doesn't measure our knowledge, it doesn't measure the joys of our children, it doesn't measure the quality of life in our communities."

Despite the effort to attract more of a different array of voices to the conference, Jean-Claude Basque, a representative with New Brunswick's Common Front for Social Justice, one of the non-business people who will be at the conference, said the summit is still lopsided.

"If we're talking about a summit on the economy ... everybody should be at the table and everybody should be there on an equal footing, which is not right now," Basque said.

Worsening economy

Donald Savoie, a prominent New Brunswick economist, warned in August as the provincial election campaign began that New Brunswick was facing an economic crisis.

New Brunswick's economic troubles have become a growing issue in recent weeks.

Premier David Alward's Progressive Conservative government called the situation a "fiscal crisis" in its throne speech last week.

Finance Minister Blaine Higgs has said the current deficit is now more than $820 million and it is on track for a deficit surpassing $1 billion if action isn't taken.

The debt is at $8.3 billion and is forecasted to surpass $10 billion in 2012.

Government departments have been asked to cut one per cent from their budgets this year and prepare for two per cent less money in next year's budget.

And the province's unemployment rate has been hovering close to 10 per cent for the last two months.

Richard Currie, a prominent Canadian businessman and the chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, called New Brunswick a "failing province" during a recent speech.

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.