04Mar14: “It’s a town with a decreasing population and we have a senior population and we have a large out migration.”
03Sep14: “Nova Scotians have overwhelmingly expressed concern about allowing high-volume hydraulic fracturing to be a part of onshore shale development in this province at this time”
“have overwhelmingly expressed concern”
How about making important decisions based on empirical evidence instead of concerns?
How many of the out-migrants have gone to work in Fort Mac or the Bakken, I wonder?
I guess the Anne Murray Museum isn’t bringing in the crowds it used to. Springhill was a coal mining town and like most single industry towns, will have to adapt or wither away. Unless or course, some government grant or other scheme can lure industry to start something, hire some locals and then split when the handouts stop.
Honestly, having lived four years in Halifax and another seven in New Brunswick, I can personally attest to the resistance to change attitude that abounds down east. There are those who believe that since they sent cod and potatoes out west during the dirty thirties, the rest of Canada owes them.
Nova Scotia has natural gas off shore but believe it or not their energy sector thought it would be better to ship it wholesale to Maine than to distribute it to Nova Scotians. Seriously, only in the last few years have they done any local distribution infrastructure. Most residences either pay through the nose for electricity or burn foreign oil. And, like Ontario, power is pricey as the consumer has to pay for all those wind farms and tidal power.
The living is a;ways easy when you get another person to pay for it.
Sorry to say but IMO they’re a bunch of clowns acting up in Atlantic Canada and the ROC is paying for their performances. Refusing fracking or any development of their resources, make them self sufficient to get them off the dole is a disgrace. Here we have another reason to can the equalization program, let provinces be more responsible for their own welfare.
Leaving the grocery store in Nova Scotia a couple of weeks ago I met up with the anti-fracking nut jobs, when I told the foreign born whack job I support it he had a hissy fit in the parking lot slapping my car windows in rage. I give up, if I can sell my house next summer I and hubby are off to BC. I can’t take the cost of living here anymore, our electricity bill has gone up 53 percent, oil has gone up, our taxes are obscene. We’re taxed to near death, and the politicians babble on about social justice and kill any meaningful employment advances. No wonder our young are leaving in droves.
Frack ’em and the horse they rode in on.
when you live off the federal government teat why would you care about actually producing something that assists in your survival.
wow. where did my last post go? gone like the wind. I will not bother re posting. as far as coal goes, cape Breton produced coal that was used to heat homes and smelt steel that aided in the war effort. when coal fired electricity plants were built the mines were closed and coal was shipped in from Pennsylvania. that my friends is Canadian economic reality.
What was that a wise man once said ? “A culture of Defeat ” or something like that. But what have you done for me today. Stop the equalization welfare state.
Nova Scotia. That means new Scotland, eh? 😉
The town council refers to their new entity as being in the county of Cumberland county.These people need an investigation by the Department of Redundancy Department. No wonder their town is dieing out. They are very wasteful.
I just had my last post (above) cross posted to the preceding thread. We are having really bad data transmission problems down here and the TVs are down in our area. I thought it might be that, but now maybe not.
What was that relevant saying…..let the eastern b’tards freeze in the dark? They do seem to like it. And whale oil is selling for what?
why go all the way to BC and be taxed almost as much? try Sask or Alberta first 😉
“Unless or course, some government grant or other scheme can lure industry to start something, hire some locals and then split when the handouts stop.”
They already tried that, it was called the Bricklin.
I live in the Maritimes. New Brunswick will soon go the way of Nova Scotia and it will all have to totally break before it can be fixed. So I am simply trying to enjoy the decline. The Captain would be pleased.
Fastest way to destroy industrious people is to get them used to the public teat lip lock. Industriousness gives way to victimhood and it is downhill at that point. The Maritimes, almost all the Aboriginal bands . . . well intentioned freebies from the government leads to an addiction to freebies, welfare and handouts.
And the rest is that slippery slope.
Exactly. The welfare mentality is well entrenched in the Maritimes.
A local acquaintance relocated there in the late 1980s to do home renovation work. He soon discovered that many people wanted to pay cash under the table and only wanted to work if it did not interfere with their pogey qualifications or get paid cash wages.
Anti fracking is analogous to being anti-blasting meaning opposed to mining and quarrying. Aside from the residual Oatmeal Savages in NS that would be happy digging coal out of the ground with their bare hands, anyone opposed to fracking should not be allowed to purchase anything mined, quarried, drilled and fracked. Back to the stone-age Green Priests!
Dated a gal who moved to Alberta from NS. We visited a couple times and travelled all over the province. Outside of Halifax the province seems like it’s on the verge of becoming the worlds most beautiful ghost town. The towns are devoid of young people and all that’s left are their parents who lament that they only get to see their 20 something year old kids at Christmas. The one friend that she had left in the town moved to BC shortly after we were there.
It’s a really nice part of the country and kinda sad that it’s sliding into oblivion like that. You wonder at what point the province will wake up, if they can be hollowed out as they are and still be so anti business they are probably lost.
Oh, don’t give up Chris. Most of us do support development. It’s just that the well-financed greens and their local stooges drown up out. This is a crucial election. . . .
It’s not really that they are against fracking. It’s that someone else might get a leg up on them
without providing room for their snouts in the trough.
A couple of little vignettes:
The first Toyota car assembly plant in Canada was located in North Sydney. It was a small volume
site that put together cars from kits shipped in from Japan plus some Canadian sourced parts.
There were probably a dozen similar successful start ups like it scattered around the world at the time.
The union geniuses promptly announced they wanted wage parity with Ontario auto workers. Toyota built
its huge mass production facilities in Ontario not too much later.
One of the most evil vote buying facets of the UI Fund at one time was that high school students in
“certain areas” could quit school and immediately go on pogey. Right thinking people were totally
appalled at this terrible life skills corrupting situation and prevailed upon a certain prime minister
to change the regulations.
Result? The NDP at the next election won in these pogey deprived ridings, defeating Liberals.
Things were “put right” for high school quitting pogey applicants before the election that
followed that one and the ridings were then regained by the Liberals.
“Drown US out,” of course. If you’ve seen Phelim McAleer’s “Mine Your Own Business,” then we’re Madagascar. Depressing, I admit.
Exactly. The welfare mentality is well entrenched in the Maritimes.
Anyone worth their salt left the Maritimes long ago, leaving the pogy sucking losers behind. Let ’em freeze in the dark or mine their coal.
I wish you luck.
You can’t fix people who are bent on stupidity. You have to let them rot away from self-inflicted wounds.
I can see one of two things happening. Either a whole bunch of Muslims move in and buy up all the oldsters properties and the province keeps going down the welfare highway. Or if the nat gas/oil reserves are economically viabile…a whole bunch of Chinese from mainland China will buy up the oldsters properties, vote out the party that opposes fracking and allow only Chinese-backed oil/nat-gas companies to frack and will sell the nat-gas/oil directly to China.
At this point, when they’re refusing to allow industry that will provide them honest work, full time employment, forgive us if we call them welfare bums. The culture of dependency reigns supreme in the Maritimes, they don’t like to hear, but they’re proving it once again.
We all know how angry they were when PM Harper said he wanted to get them out of that culture of dependency, the truth got them right mad, they haven’t gotten over it yet.
“Outside of Halifax the province seems like it’s on the verge of becoming the worlds most beautiful ghost town”
And as a Haligonian, I can tell you that Halifax is only afloat due to a housing bubble that, while not as severe as Toronto or Vancouver, hasn’t popped yet. There are condo & apartment towers going up EVERYWHERE around here, and new housing developments selling for way too much money (some down the street from my home going for $450,000! Ridiculous). The local Muslim population is also growing at what seems to me an alarming rate; it’s really unsettling seeing so many head coverings and even the odd beekeeper garb down at the local park. I suspect we’re within a decade or so of the usual Muslim-led “social unrest” (one local swimming pool already has men-only and women-only swimming times to accommodate them). Maybe that’s what will finally start the decline here.
The current Liberal government got elected by being not-NDP. They promised nothing, so they’ve delivered nothing. The PCs are milquetoast losers and have been for years. There’s no electoral hope on the horizon here. The best & brightest tend to just leave.
My wife & I both have pretty secure employment so we’re not going anywhere, but the province’s future is stagnation and decline. There’s no vision nor stomach for anything else around here. I’m a life-long Maritimer so I don’t really want to go anywhere else, but I’ve no illusions about this place. I am conservative, after all. I try to see the world for how it is, not how I wish it to be.
(side note: I work with an Egyptian Christian. There is nobody who is more clear-sighted about what growing Muslim populations will do than him. He personally argued with that pool’s manager about implementing those swim schedules to no avail. He should be a slam-dunk conservative voter, and I’ll have to work on him before the vote next year.)