Plucky Little Pony: NS Tourism Take a Hint!

Great example of a cheap and viral approach to Tourism Promotion in The Shetland Islands. Nova Scotia Department of Tourism: Take a page out of this book SVP.

Rienzi: Le poesie di Francesco Petrarca - Spirto gentil

The Canadian Campus Freedom Freedom Index 2012: Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

Canada's Low Perception of International Work or Study

Canada's Low Perception of International Work or Study

I can give great examples of my perception of the negative risk associated with international work and study experiences abroad from a Canadian perspective. As for my job applications, continue hammering me with silence; I will not remain silent.

http://crossculturalreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/trade-complacency-in-nova-scotia-at_27.html

ABOMINABLE INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE: Canada graduates ten times fewer international business researchers than Australia does. As a result, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) sees fit to employ US based researchers to write its most significant policy papers on the topic of international education strategy. In such reports, the quality of Australian education is debased, while at the same time, Canada is encouraged to follow the Ozzie's forty year head start to financing under funded public institutions. What a paradox; trash Oz but treasure their strategy?

PITIFUL PERCEPTION: of the exponentially growing quality of foreign academic institutions ( even those in Korea or The UAE, two of Canada's largest sources of international students). Canada's social capital debate on increasing the percentage of international students and exchanges is being moderated by the AUCC or Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada. This organization has no independent or arms-length quality standards assessment agency of its own members. Only one province in Canada has a government mandated assessment service to ensure the quality of education for international students regardless of origin. The status quo regarding international education in Canada is mostly against exponential increases in international students growth or exchange programs. The result is a very small percentage of Canadian students who are ever given the opportunity to take a year of studies abroad even or to expand their international network of contacts as a result.

http://crossculturalreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/costello-response-why-study-abroad.html

TOO FEW COLLABORATIVE EXCHANGE PROGRAMS: Canadian or western nation academics appear to have a very negative view of those few expatriates who do venture abroad for higher education studies and/or employment. The average foreign academic remains in Korean Higher Education employment for four months or proof of overwhelming inabilities to adapt to foreign working or teaching conditions. Those who do successfully collaborate or study or work abroad are often seen to reflect or endorse values which are not those of western nations and perceived to be of lower quality, unreliable, illegitimate or morally suspect. Reintegrating best practices and skills or abilities gained abroad are perceived of low social capital mostly because the status quo in home nations does not demand greater collaboration or exchange with the international world of its students and academic cadres.

http://crossculturalreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-defence-of-australian-education-to.html

I have sought a reasonable academic employer in Canada for the past year of my career sabbatical here. My opinions are experience based. Canada for example displays a mono-cultural practice of hiring, "in its own image." If I didn't love my country so much I would not be so critical of its opinions of the international expatriate trained worker or teacher.

Persistence and perseverance are essential to the expatriate returnee. As Trevor noted, one must find the positive even in a negative experience. I have not given up on my country yet. As its hiring managers and academics have such a low opinion of my training and experience abroad, I have no ego and no reputation to lose here. "Never rely on statistics." ( Deming Attribution) Until countries like Canada support a culture of critical change management its laggard status in international education will continue.

POSTSCRIPT: Do not rely on online forums to get your message out there. You might just run into a moderator who doesn't like what you have to say and who will block your constitutional right to say it especially if its supported by good research.

I appreciate the discussion generated on the Acadia Alumni website.

Here is what I have to say about the historical basis of Canada's laggard international trade and education strategies

Canada’s colonial past does impact upon its perpetually laggard approach to international trade and education. It is a track laid in historical underpinnings which might best be described in accounts of Imperial London during the Industrial Revolution. 

That was a period of exponential growth with reinforcement of three tiers of society. The world has not seen that type of growth until the rise of economic reforms during Bill Clinton’s era which ended in 2008. At the top of the pyramid, the aristocrats of heraldic England: Nova Scotia had/has its share as did/does Canada. People who never had to climb and have nowhere to go but down. These employed the designs of the world’s leading urban planners to "gentrify" (read "spin") the architectural landscape of a boom town. Canada is not anything like a boom-town now. The rafts of century homes lining nearly every urban centre of Canada’s economic boom during that time are evidence of its colonial role: taking only the best timber from its vast forests and leaving the scrub behind to reseed with an inferior growth. 

Does that define brain drain? Maybe it does. 

The second class: merchants and business owners who grew their entrepreneurial empires through the scratch and scrape of international trade. While their economic power quickly outstripped many of the wealthiest of the blue bloods, their societal and political power remained of low repute. Independent international traders were viewed with a jaundiced eye; it’s clear that eye remains in Canadian society otherwise, our economy would be overflowing with programs to induce new trading relationships abroad other than with a mostly over reliant large corporate alliance across the US border. 

The third class being the working poor: a class of labourers with few opportunities for advancement other than to collectivize their resources (at the threat of revolution a set of compromises businesses and powers were happy to make) and work to improve minimum standards in terms of quality of work and life. Their fortunes heavily relied on an increase in the latter at the cost of the power of the former. That in a nutshell, is the ramification of increasing small and medium business international trade beyond the traditional US-Canada sales to the lowest bidder. 

It is also the ramification of expanding Canada's educational income through greater international student draws. In terms of Canada's international education exchange effort, its third class. In terms of Canada's ability to absorb new knowledge and innovation from abroad, its third class. It is exactly the way the established systems in Canada seek it to be. It is under-grown, under-valued and under-marketed because to do so would upset the current balances of power. Canadian academics seem to employ the tactic of the dangers of a two tier system in education but what they really support by doing so are the three tiers of British Society Circa 1880-1920. That remains Canada's cultural quaintness and its failure to internationalize on a scale that would support its own quality of life. 

Trade Complacency in Nova Scotia, at NSCC and Canada?

TRADE COMPLACENCY IN NOVA SCOTIA, AT NSCC AND IN CANADA?

Welcome to connect on linkedin. costello_daniel @ yahoo.com

I have no real figure to estimate what percentage of, for example, Nova Scotian graduates must leave the province to look for work. But I imagine it to be close to half or more. That leaves from 40% to 60% of people who have NEVER had to leave their hometowns or regions to look for work.

PETER PRINCIPLE IN PRACTICE

These are the people with the best local network to continuous advancement as they have never been required to be more mobile out of necessity. I would also imagine, they are among the least trained for their positions on the whole. It would also be a reasonable expectation that since they've never left their hometowns or regions, they have the lowest quotient of international experiences and the highest perception of risk associated with hiring people from other regions or provinces let alone those trained and experienced in foreign countries.

Canadians are often self-described as risk averse; I would hazard to say this is correct. The only international trade teaching they appear to allow are from those retired or laid off, fired or quit from Canadian corporations. A long line of ex-bankers and ex-accountants who might never have set foot in a foreign land to work or do business. There are definitely many more career paths and perspectives on international trade and management that are equally valid or of equal or greater value to the learning of rural Nova Scotians or Canadians. It is a myth that older is wiser. It is a myth that gut instincts in business experience can substitute theoretical and proven knowledge in business based on a humanist foundation. 

What Canadian international business strategies at national, provincial and regional levels largely prove are two basic concepts; the winner's curse and dynamic overconfidence. 

The first is for logic based thinkers. Common sense dictates (in Canada where common sense is not that common) that allowing 10% of Canada's working population abroad to remain largely un-networked by its embassies, either through lack of federal and policy initiatives or foreign nation all institutional alumni associations, gala events, dinners, and marketing opportunities (other than a few stale sandwiches) would be an extremely cheap way to engage Canadian expatriates in Canada's international trade strategy.

The second, career bureaucrats abound in Canada's national innovation system. "We've never done it like that before," is costing Canadians jobs, jobs, and more jobs (to quote Deming). The "experts" in international trade in Canada who are getting paid good salaries to come up with ideas can gather 90% of the information they need to make decisions on foreign markets sitting in cozy offices in Canada. But it is the extra 10% of knowledge coincident to the Canadian expatriate population abroad which holds the keys to unlocking Canadian innovation potential in my opinion. These bureaucrats sit on good ideas rather than implement them. Instead of creating a culture of creativity, Canadian businesses, governments and perhaps society itself have created a great example of the hazards of organizational slack. It appears to be extremely important to present the image that elephant-sized Canadian businesses, governments and agencies look like they care about growing the bottom line. But in reality, the spin takes precedence over substance. 

Otherwise, logically the economy would already be trade barrier free between provinces, and Canada would not be the laggard in signing free trade agreements around the world, the human resource functions would be the best in the world, the provinces would trade with foreign nations at a higher rate than they do with each other, universities would be employing three times their numbers, and graduating ten times their number of researchers, the list goes on. Rationally, Canada is the laggard trading nation that it is because the powers that be in industry, government and academia want it that way. Look no further than the northern roads of Ontario or Quebec to see the company town mentality that rules Canadian international trade strategies.

AN EXPLANATION FOR REGIONAL VERSUS INTERNATIONALIZED VIEWS THUS COMPLACENCY?

To reiterate, the natural human condition favours cultural familiarity in hiring practices everywhere. It is called cultural ethnocentrism and is nothing new.

If there was a root cause for cultural complacency in Nova Scotia as a province and Canada as a whole, that is how I would define provincial and national complacency in a country that over-relies on natural resources and non-value added trade with the USA for its wealth. At the same time Canada as a nation underendows itself with research commercialization (Australia graduates ten times more researchers than Canada with two thirds total population), international trade growth with other nations only a recent and inconsistent interest, provincial trade barriers that belong to the era of the last spike, and fewer than 2% of university graduates who ever travel or work abroad (how many of them took an all inclusive trip to Varadero to generate that statistic?).

MONO-CULTURAL HIRING PRACTICES

Nova Scotian hiring patterns display to me a perfect Canadian example of the monocultural mindset or HRM policies which align closely with leadership which supports the status quo or, “hiring in one’s own image.” Statistics show Nova Scotia has more trade with other Canadian provinces than it does with the world.

THE EDUCATORS AND ACADEMICS WEIGH IN (AND I AM NOT IN AGREEMENT)

Many educators and academics share two standard views in Nova Scotia and Canada perhaps in general: 1) Just say no to any exponential sector growth as the status quo does not demand it (logical as the largest percentage of growth is among pensioners who no longer need to work) or 2) In response to declining and trailing GDP projections over the next ten years which according to StatsCan in 2007 will amount to a possible 30% decline in population for the entire Atlantic provinces region by 2022 “,there are other ways to measure quality of life than GDP.”

Actually, I hope there ARE other ways to measure quality of life in regions of Canada facing enormous projected declines in GDP over the next decade as the status quo is saying “no” to seemingly any changes to strategic policy planning which would effect exponential growth in innovation which cannot be de-linked from contingent increases in GDP.

THE RESULT: LOST BILLIONS THAT COULD HAVE STAVED OFF RURAL DECLINES

I cannot begin to address the lost billions Canadian educational institutions have missed out on, as well as the significant impact on the quality of life of its citizens due to this kind complacency particularly over the last forty years of Australia’s success in staving off its own educational budget cuts. At the same time, Canada’s educational establishment imported thousands of foreign academics perceived by some as “bottom of the barrel” in their own countries to assist in teaching the boomers during the heyday of Canadian institutional exponential growth from the mid-sixties to the early eighties.

AUCC UNACCOUNTED POTENTIAL EXPONENTIAL ENROLLMENT DECLINES

Regarding carrying capacity I do agree with AUCC that Canada has no problem in carrying more international students. However, what they are doing about international student growth looks more and more like nations-based quota systems.

The next decline may be seen in the ability to attract foreign students here, not because of other international competitors alone who are also facing stagnant population growth without them. The rise in quality of educational institutions in source nations will perhaps outstrip Canada’s ability to maintain many domestic institutions without new domestic students or international immigrants.

DOING TOO LITTLE TOO LATE? 

I seriously question the AUCC plan to merely double international student enrollments by 2022; I believe they have not accounted well for domestic student enrollment declines in the Atlantic region or other more rural and less urban academic settings across Canada.

Costello Response: Why Study Abroad?

Rhondine P. Why study abroad? We challenge our community share at least two reasons why study abroad is important.

Costello response:  In the first case, necessity; I am a Canadian with an entire career working abroad. As Australian universities graduate nearly ten times the number of researchers as Canada does each year the opportunities for further education in Canada are ten times narrower; a ten fold concentration of competitiveness that seems an unnecessary bottleneck. As a result, I recognize the contributions that Australian institutions have made in assisting the economic growth of many of Asia's tiger economies. Australia didn't just make money educating its international students, it helped them form increasingly competitive Asian economies.

Second, international education has become Australia's second largest export product not only because of access but in growth of opportunity to learn and apply the inter cultural relationships of forty years of successful development work in Asia which attests to the quality and relationship building nature of its programs. 

I challenge my country Canada and its academic and research community to acknowledge, recognize and grow their contribution to the world based on that fact. 

Canada's future GDP depends on a speedier strategy to engage the world. Where many Canadian institutions can claim less than 2% international student enrollments, many Australian schools carry 30% international students already.

The dialogue, exchange and relevancy of an education abroad only deepens in the research domain where finding cases that really work for economic development exist around the world and rely upon those with no fear in attempting to repatriate fresh ideas to those too busy playing monocultural power based politics. 

Canada is taking a rather long time in applying rational principles to engaging the international world. 

However, I patiently wait for the day a Canadian hiring manager is able to penetrate the scope and scale of my contribution and call me for an interview to my first full-time job in Canada. Who says teachers don't have business experience when they've only ever worked in profit earning instituitions? Who needs government or endowments if you match good teachers with motivated learners?

In Their Own Image = Going Going Gone

In Their Own Image = Going Going Gone


[CANADA] has now suffered 20 years of content-free [COLLEGE] management. While in the early stages of reform, the top spots were effectively controlled by government policy and regulation, it did not take long for those who were best suited to implementing the new ideology to gravitate to their niche and set about reinforcing it by hiring people in their own image. Thus, the Human Resources department has become one of the most important arms of management, providing the means by which potential dissidents can be legally filtered from a group of would-be employees and should one slip through and cause trouble, the full power of the HR dreadnought can be unleashed on the hapless soul to ensure dismissal or at least retrenchment. Instead of [COLLEGES] being a haven for diversity, as they used to be, they are well on the road to becoming a monoculture. Anyone who has been a practicing [BUSINESS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR] or has even moderate knowledge of the history of [BUSINESS] would be well aware of the idiosyncratic nature of the [ENTREPRENURIAL] mind. There is no question that the pervading culture in the modern [CANADIAN COLLEGE] is profoundly anti-individual and anti-intellectual. How many of the world's great minds would be interested in, let alone capable of, working in the regimented bureaucratic mire that passes these days for [NOVA SCOTIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE]?

http://www.australianuniversities.id.au/Australian_Universities-A_Portrait_of_Decline.pdf


" In the Atlantic Provinces and Saskatchewan, any enrolment growth from the base line is minimal or even non-existent. In Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick, the base line level of enrolment is already the highest point, so the decline in enrolment is general for the whole projection period. In these provinces, the index of variability is the highest, ranging from 23% in Nova Scotia to 31% in Newfoundland and Labrador. In these provinces, enrolment is projected to fall below the base line early in the projection period, i.e. in the first couple of years in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, in 2011/2012 in Nova Scotia and in 2012/2013 in Prince Edward Island."

Provincial analysis (Charts and Tables 6.2.1 to 6.11.3)
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-595-m/81-595-m2007058-eng.pdf

"However, there are already indications of a negative trend. Commencements, as measured by Australian Education International (AEI), showed a 6.3% decline for the year to June 2010, with ELICOS commencements being hardest hit, down 20.5%. Further reports from agents and providers suggest enrolments could fall by 30 to 40%. This is worrying for the higher education sector as ELICOS is a common pathway into higher education in subsequent years."

http://www.atn.edu.au/newsroom/Docs/2010/August_2010_Economic_implications_of_fewer_international_higher_education_students_in_Australia.pdf

I've Been Everywhere

A Defence of Australian Education: To DFAIT and Ghur

A Defence of Australian Education: To DFAIT and Ghur

Looking for an international business research and teaching position where my training and experience will make a positive impact on the organization policy needs and its students. Your advertised opportunity was found by tracing your authorship of Best Practices on Managing the Delivery of Canadian Education Marketing.

Daniel J. Costello                                                                                                                                                                              35 George Street, New Minas, Nova Scotia, B4N-4E2, Canada                                                                                        Tel: 1-902-681-0504 Skype: costello.daniel 
Email: costello_daniel@yahoo.com

January 27, 2013

Dr. Daniel J. Guhr                                                                                                                                                          San Francisco Bay Area Office                                                                                                                                              P.O. Box 262 San Carlos, CA 94070 USA  

                                                                             

Looking for an international business research and teaching position where my training and experience will make a positive impact on the organization policy needs and its students. Your advertised opportunity was found by tracing your authorship of Best Practices on Managing the Delivery of Canadian Education Marketing.

Allow me to submit a brief review of your analysis regarding the Hollowed Out Quality of Australian Education as perceived by your report and presented to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Canada and by extension the academic community in this nation which consistently rejects the notion that there is anything to be learned or applied in digging a little deeper in the dry.

Of mixed pedigree, a Canadian applicant for your policy analyst position advertises the swag of a hollowed out Australian graduate education. Even a rooster puffs itself up as big as it can.

Yes, funding cuts made more than forty years ago propelled the establishment of IDP and a federal international marketing alignment was born out of necessity; the Canadian government published their first policy paper on that topic just last year, or forty years late. These are the same determining factors at present in Canada’s educational internationalization scheme, consistent cutbacks and declining HDR enrollments are familiar driving factors. Unless addressed, Canada may see a similar threat in decline of GDP due to rising rates of research investment and intensity in IP and new patents from other proportionally higher invested research competitor OECD nations.

How Australia’s clear blueprint to follow could be seen as a negative approach to financing and a small tax base in population or as a poor solution for Australia, but a good one for Canada is uncharitable. While realizing your report was published in 2009, Australia’s institutional research aims and accomplishments, despite consistent cutbacks, are noteworthy for their growth in research commercialization planning and clearer accountability measures even in the past five years; similar transparency issues in taxpayer financed research in Canada has yet to be addressed. The hollowed out quality foundation of which you write is now measured and monitored by The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and while acrimonious in application and contentions, it is an independent body as opposed to Canada’s own AUCC quality assessment of itself which could be perceived as an effort to avoid the conflict of interest which that reveals. Only one of Canada’s provinces is monitoring its higher education on behalf of international students surely based on nefarious recruitment campaigns which only harm Canada’s international educational brand.

The financial difficulties of Australia’s institutions are apparent in the past four years, amounting to the growth declines you presented however several racially motivated attacks on foreign students carry some of the blow-back  a rapid 71% decline in Indian students enrollment following the murder of one of their classmates in Sydney was an opportunity for Canada to pick up a concurrent increase in Indian enrollments itself with a well-timed marketing campaign which never took place.  It is also difficult to assume that declines in enrollments are based upon quality issues when it is seen that the UK is facing similar declines due to tightened visa requirements and the US is enjoying increased enrollments based upon price cutting measures such as delivering university programming through high school extension services.

Yet, Australia’s firm footholds in Asia are based upon forty years of relationship building; the success of these markets provide tangible and positive social capital impacts upon the growth in business and IT research and evidence of the quality of education delivered. Progressive steps to offshore branch campus developments in several of those nations somewhat anticipates future declines in international enrollments in Australia. The growth in local competitors abroad which Australia largely helped to train and teach will squeeze resources at home in the estimated 30% declines in domestic student enrollments predicted not only for Australia but Canada as well over the next decade; a commitment to doubling of international students in Canada by 2022 according to a recent DFAIT report on commercialization will hardly meet domestic enrollment declines. In short, it appears to me that Australia has utilized its scant resources to the best of its capacity while Canada’s institutions have yet to do so and have displayed an elegant example of agency theory without greater revelation of forever missed past and future opportunities to support research which maintains and ensures Canada’s quality of life.

Relocation ready; available immediately.

Sincerely,

Dan Costello

It is Laughable: Message for UK or British based recruiters

Message for UK or British based recruiters: As you will see from my background and c.v. my experience spans fifteen years in Asia and The Middle East. I have spent the past eight years conducting pure research in international business management and am graduate qualified in cross-cultural management. 

So kindly refrain from forwarding these kinds of offers. For example, do not describe 45,000 USD as an excellent salary for Saudi Arabia. It's not. I know its not. How could it be when 50,000 a year was the bottom end of salaries in The UAE a dozen years ago? Or another example, claiming a salary of 7,000 USD a month is inclusive of benefits where the salary is actually 5500 USD a month? 

For some reason, UK and British recruiters have a tendency to misrepresent the salary offer in their advertisements for MENA based positions. Perhaps it is a cultural difference. As I have been recruited by numerous American agencies in the past, this misrepresentation of salary with benefits has never been an issue with US based recruiters. 

Recommendation: Seek to practice your recruitment role with intellectual honesty and Canadians will be more likely to work with you. For example, I am more than willing to negotiate to gain a desirable Saudi-based position, if the contract, benefits and salary are reasonable. After fifteen years in my industry, I certainly know my business. So let's not play any games. 

Your offers are so far below what I would require to go sit in the desert without a drop of whiskey it is laughable.

Submission of Reasoned Suggestions to The Nova Scotia Commission on Building our New Economy

Title: Submission of Reasoned Suggestions to

TheNova Scotia Commission on Building our New Economy

How to get more than six seconds: Why did it take three hundred years and an Icelandic entrepreneur for Nova Scotian stockfish heads and tails to find an export market in Africa?

PREFACE

This letter to your committee receives a preface; Dr. Ray Ivany, you made a pledge to call all Acadia Alumni upon arriving at your current post. I am still waiting for your call, my telephone number is 1-902-681-0504.

BACKGROUNDER

Now allow me to give a backgrounder: Bred on English language by the Acadia University Department of English Literature and Theatre my BA was gained with three years of science studies while working as an international shipping lobster packer, grader and cook at Hall’s Harbour Lobster Pound. I worked my way across Canada and ended up spending the last fifteen years teaching and studying abroad in Korea and The United Arab Emirates, gaining a Master’s of International Business from The University of Wollongong in Dubai and Australia in the top 5% of my class and holding a letter of recommendation for doctoral studies from the Dean.

UOW Sydney Business School has gained fourteen positions of quality to third ranked business school in Australia over the past eight years since I graduated. The program has doubled in size, price and duration and it was the first MIB graduate program in the nation.

Where are the comparable improvements in quality and ranking of Nova Scotia Business Schools?

A most recently completed eGSA Graduate Certificate in Research Commercialisation with Queensland University of Technology comes from the Australia Technology Network (ATN). eGSA provides preferred research management training for The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) around Australia. QUT is the first institution in the world to offer a Master’s in Research Management.

Where is such training available in Canada?

My travel and research experiences have taken me to:  South Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Italy, Spain, France, The Netherlands, The United States, Australia and Canada.

There are those who travel to expand the mind; there are those who visit as many places as possible. Personally I like about a week at a time in a new city. Since completing my most recent teaching position for a record breaking six years and besides off-ramping here since March 2012, I found the time to visit a new place every week from July to December across the Southern US States, Morocco for two months and Southern and Central Spain for a month.

A year off-ramped in Nova Scotia; a dozen applications to relevant teaching positions at Nova ScotiaCommunity College and a half a dozen export trade positions at NSBI without a single call back getting a real sense of what newcomers here face.

PERSPECTIVE

The English major in me reads most texts cover to cover, the international business teacher adds new knowledge and method based on what appears to be working elsewhere and compiles long bibliographical references in the case studies I have researched. At the moment, I am on a 24 hour deadline for submitting a panel position proposal for the first time to the Academy of International Business on the topic of comparative investment strategies in China and India for the 2013 Conference in Istanbul; a city I am familiar with and would enjoy returning to visit. It is the first time they have asked me to and as an itinerant and contract teacher abroad looking for work there is nothing better than a conference. So please accept that my global to local suggestions are un-referenced however in due time accessible if need be.

SUGGESTION ONE: LOOK AT THE WORLD

It is my opinion that rural Nova Scotia is running out of good ideas as well as people. So my first suggestion is to start looking at other well developed nations that are facing similar challenges all at the same time. Particularly good research is coming out of Terry Mughan’s Department at Anglia Ruskin University and The East of England Development Agency on the topic of business incentives to repopulating rural or economic wastelands with small scale superstores to replace bankrupt groceries in food desert environments. When the researchers present the business case to, for example, Tesco, that square footage profit returns are nearly identical in well placed heritage districts, decaying communities get walking distance food sources that haven’t existed in many locations for fifty years.

His results based applied research is just a taste of what is out there.

REBUILD THE CORES OF RURAL COMMUNITY à la TRIPLE HELIX

Nova Scotia is full of rural communities that have seen most of their essential services close, reducing their attractiveness to newcomers. The triple helix model of higher education institutions, government and local businesses designing regional partnerships is off and running in many nations compared to Nova Scotia. The scales of these partnerships are determined through rate of return business cases.

A character like Ifor Ffowcs-Williams comes to mind as a Canadian triple helix model and cellular team building across disciplines expert who could probably assist you in internationalizing and globalizing your rural development programs. I think you need more knowledge based exchanges with Nova Scotian based experts taking work terms in other regions of the developed world to assist in developing strategies that are really working elsewhere and repatriate good ideas from abroad.

NOT MISSIONS ABROAD BUT EXCHANGE POSTS ABROAD

These are the kinds of learning and knowledge exchanges that the Japanese conducted after WW II to rebuild a shattered economy. They are also documented in several quality framework improvements in government and community services undertaken in places like New Zealand around the same time as the Japanese. As for Nova Scotians, there are some culturally inherent skills that we do better than anywhere else in the world so an accountable checklist of world leading advantages to the way Nova Scotians tackle certain challenges better than anywhere else in the world needs to be made. Exchange is always about sharing as much as is received. Unfortunately, Nova Scotia shares much of Canada’s cultural and global knowledge complacency. Less than 2% of all higher education students have international work or study experiences in Canada.

So why not double the number of business, education, and government leaders concerned with this issue committed to taking international exchanges over the next ten years? Should not these Nova Scotians take the time to go abroad and learn of new ways to handle similar local challenges and should not their commitment to do so be as incentives to their own promotions and advancement? Such quality knowledge gathering strategies have worked all over the world and improved the quality of lives of workers, students, governments and societies for millennia.

SUGGESTION TWO:  NEW TAX BENEFIT INCENTIVES

Nobody needs to tell you, you know already, your business and personal taxes are the most horrendous in the nation surely advertising, “Don’t come here.” So this suggestion is multifaceted. Observe New Brunswick’s historical and seemingly better track record of attracting new businesses that exactly remain beyond incentives. They are certainly doing something differently to make that happen, and while I don’t know what that is, there is a very near example of where comparative learning and application could be taking place. However considering your rates of return on recent millions provided to either profitable or non-profitable enterprises as of late, there is a better example. Take a look at the foreign direct investment policies for example in Sri Lanka or Thailand.

While Sri Lanka is making do with low skilled industries with low wages and benefits, there is the distinct possibility that free trade zones in Nova Scotia employing potential immigrants or foreign workers as low skilled labourers would actually work. Especially if unionized port environment construction and maintenance teams were employed. The cost to deliver to markets might make up the difference. As the new regional development authorities are being formed, they should encompass free trade zones for particular industries on a similar design framework as a country like Thailand where Bangkok does not beggar its rural regions, in fact the farther you get from the capital the better the incentives are. As the US import and export economy as set to double in scale and logistical capacities by the year 2025, it makes sense to look at the hinterland port schemes employed in parts of China and Singapore. Western Europe has also managed to set up a few as well.

HINTERLAND DEVELOPMENT

Factories and port facilities are often indistinguishable in Asia to avoid costly delivery and logistics delays due to poor transport infrastructure. In my opinion, many of Nova Scotia’s underutilized ports should be free trade zones where they could even promote sweatshop free practices. These are creative suggestions that are working in many international ports and rural incentive programs around the world. The only difference there would be between having labourers assemble your many common household and consumer products in South East Asia and Canada is a few thousand kilometres and ever increasing energy constraints. There are probably dozens of Asian manufacturers as well as Mexican based maquiladoras who might lose out if a similar ready to occupy infrastructure were prepared for relocations.

Excellent examples of heritage port facilities which could and should be renovated into free trade small business zones exist all over Nova Scotia.

SUGGESTION THREE: INNOVATIVE  RESEARCH INCENTIVES 

I am thinking of companies like Allen’s or Canada Packer’s, Maple Leaf Foods, or Larsen’s, the list goes on, what research into new foreign markets and product adaptations to meet ever shifting demands was going on in these decades old companies? What local universities were assisting them by sending student teams out into net food importing nations such as those in North East Asia to find out what their tastes might be? To give two unrelated examples, I choose Korean ones.

Not everyone eats wieners and beans.

Did you know that Korean jewellery manufacturers dominate the supply of the Dubai Gold Souk and they learned how to do so by sending market researchers out there consulting with wholesalers and delivering a quality product and that that domination of the market did not take place in decades but in years? Or that Samsung cellphones for example, do not dominate based upon price or quality but upon the short and dizzying three month life cycles of their phones or that they test release dozens of new products in their home Korean market because, for most global companies in the world, Korea is one of the best test market guinea pigs?

TEAM GRADUATE STUDENTS IN MARKETING WITH REAL BUSINESS CASES

I often wonder if some of the local businesses above could have been saved in selective three and five year international market penetration plans with tailored products to offer those consumers not here at home but in emerging markets abroad which have the most growth.

They aren’t in Europe or Boston, they are in Africa where the Chinese are making billions, they are in Tamil Nadu where the Japanese and Koreans are making billions; new markets are growing, that’s where Nova Scotian products need to be sold. I remember walking into a five story warehouse of Italian household furniture in Busan, Korea a few years ago and thinking to myself, “not one of these chairs looks as good as a Bass River Chair.” And when I contacted Bass River Chairs and suggested they might find a good market there for their products, their manager told me they don’t do exports. And now Bass River Chairs no longer exists.

INCENTIVIZE SME EXPORT TRADE DEVELOPMENT PRONTO

The takeaway is any product based company in Nova Scotia that has existed for more than five years should be given a tax incentive to hire a dedicated export manager and eventually five years later, two more to form a full export department without excuses.  Especially in traditional and culturally intangible industries like even quilting or knitting or the carding of wool, the makers of goat’s cheese, the brewers of fair trade coffee; in Korea there’s a guy who salts smoked mackerel by hand and he is more famous there than Colonel Saunders.

SUGGESTION FOUR: INCENTIVIZE THE FOREIGN STUDENT WELCOME, THEIR PARENTS, FAMILIES AND FRIENDS WILL COME

How many of Nova Scotia’s universities are presenting international students with internet welcome pages in their own native languages? How many of them are coordinating with The Department of Tourism to design similar local language information and booking services for visits to Nova Scotia? How many of the international students in school boards across the province are coordinating with The Department of Tourism to welcome student’s families to this beautiful province?

And when you say that the school boards and universities of this province are not responsible for improving economic and employment opportunities here and engaging the international markets of the world with the same dedication those Team Canada hockey players put into the game, the purpose of education is put into doubt.

And again, how many Nova Scotian school boards are studying the non-profit agencies in Northern British Columbia to ensure that little two room schoolhouses like those in the Wentworth Valley get to stay open because they’re not only still serving rural and small community schools but fully financing their operating costs through their international student draws? Finally, how many Nova Scotian universities are operating offshore campuses or franchise operations to ensure their market is being adequately presented abroad?

There are multiple solutions to keeping schools in rural Nova Scotia. Why aren’t the national and international best practices available to be implemented not being made? The tourist draw of international students in their home nations, are they being pursued?

CONCLUSION AND CLOSING COMMENTS

It is not my intention to overwhelm your committee with my suggestions. However it is my opinion, that if Nova Scotians had all of the answers and the examples of what works here in their midst, then you would not be asking for opinions from the general public and the state of affairs would be rosier and brighter than they are.

In Nova Scotia and perhaps Canada and the western world, the suggestion box is almost always nearly empty when compared with those in places like Japan. Our quality of life depends on trying out new ideas that make sense. But without a culture that rewards and applies new ideas to improve the quality of life of its citizens, many of the best and brightest lighthouse keepers, where pure research and one person’s one idea begins, will always remain on foreign shores.

Good ideas make sense at any time. It’s my pleasure to share mine with you, so don’t be devaluing the training and experience it took to submit them to you however free. Imagine what the result could be? Perhaps six seconds turns into six minutes?

Sincerely,

Daniel J. Costello

Daniel J. Costello, BA (Acadia) MIB (UOW)