How to run a Province

To the Editor: ( unpublished )

“Premier Alward will soon appoint a group of independent business people to help the provincial government run more like a business.” I read on the front page Jan 27. This is not an innovative plan; think tanks (mostly sponsored by corporations) have been pushing the idea for years. Government must act more like business because free market competition forces businesses to be efficient. That sounds sensible but its not the whole story.

Running a country or a province like a business is the wrong path to take.

A corporation includes two types of people; share holders who get a percent of the profits and workers who get a wage. The prime objective of a corporation is profit. A state includes only citizens and its prime function is to ensure the wellbeing of these people.

If we consider a state like a corporation, we would assume the citizens are share holders. Thus the executives / government would act in our best interest. That is how the theory goes. But in reality we the people would be treated like workers, a necessary feature of the corporation. Just as the wages of workers are an expense to the company, and it tries to reduce them as much as possible, so our social programs are an expense to the state.

In the business world workers are squeezed so the company can get more for less. Managers with innovative ideas about how to reduce costs are rewarded. Of course workers are never happy with wage roll backs or benefit downgrades. But corporations keep finding new ways to make them swallow bad deals.

We can expect similar treatment from our corporate run state. Citizens faced with innovative ideas about how public services can be trimmed. Millions can be cut without any harmful effect; we are told, but few of us believe it. “We must make significant changes to how we spend public money if we are to balance the budget and deliver services that are affordable and sustainable.” Alward said in his speech.

According to Statistics Canada, New Brunswick had a total revenue of $8,254 million and a total expenditure of $8,625, million thus a deficit of $371 million for the year 2009. However it is critical to point out that $936 million of the expenditures were debt service payments. The often expressed idea that government is spending way too much and must drastically downsize itself and cut back social programs is flawed. If we were not saddled with debt service payments, which are growing fast, the regular revenue would have covered the regular expenses.

My point is that a province is not a business, the state is not a corporation, it should not be run like one. Of course we need responsible financial planning but the prime goal of government must be the wellbeing of its citizens not the balancing of its books.

If Premier Alward wants to make real innovative changes, he should assemble an advisory body of political scientists, public policy scholars, political philosophers and a few historians. They all know that the economy is important, but they will also present ideas of what the state should be and what it can do. A council of businessmen will offer only the neoliberal outlook, calling for public downsize, deregulation, and the creation of a more business friendly environment.

Think about it