Why Atlantic Canada Fails

The Maritimes is Canada's (possibly North America's) largest social welfare state, with the possible exception of Quebec, of course.

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Most people know of the federal tax dollars wasted profusely in Canada's all-French province, but many people don't know how much is also wasted in the Maritimes. Now in 2011, the economic disasters and job loss are growing. Businesses are shutting down, more and more people are collecting government handouts. But that's not all. Most people who ARE working are nevertheless still using stolen money from taxpayers to fund their pet projects that probably wouldn't survive (and therefore SHOULDN'T survive) in the free market. For example, the federal program called the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is long known to have wasted countless millions of dollars every year since 1987 when it was vomited forth from the self-centred bureaucrats looking for ways to bribe the taxpayers out of more of their hard-earned cash, mostly on failed projects, in an effort to buy votes from people who don't seem capable of understanding that this type of rampant socialism simply cannot work. These programs exist solely for wealth redistribution and to allow politicians and bureaucrats to pat themselves on the back and tell voters how "they created new jobs". Of course, when those fake jobs wither and crumble months later they conveniently forget their half-baked lies.

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From Wikipedia: The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is the Canadian federal government agency responsible for helping to build economic capacity in the Atlantic Provinces by working with the people of the region – in their communities, through their institutions and with their local and provincial governments and businesses – to create jobs and enhance earned incomes. Planned spending for 2011-2012 consists of $170M for enterprise development, $100M for community development, $36M for internal services and $11M for policy, advocacy and coordination. That's $317,000,000 for just two years! This kind of thing has been going on for 24 years now, just under this ONE agency! That's about $135 per citizen (pop. of Atlantic Canada approx. 2.4 million) every two years, or probably quintuple that per tax payer in the Maritimes (Remember, only people who actively work in the private sector, without a government grant or government funding actually pay taxes. that leaves very few who actually fund all this!). I remember a story from decades ago when ACOA spent millions of dollars on a palette manufacturing facility, a facility who's founder had come up with a new type of shipping palette which was egg-crate designed pressed from particle board. Anyone who knows anything at all about palettes can see that such a design has more flaws than benefits (egg-crates cannot be stacked and separated by a forklift, and when left outdoors in the weather, as all palettes are at some point, the particle board simply disintegrates). Well, that serious and obvious flaw didn't stop ACOA from spending millions on the factory and shortly thereafter, when the grant ran out, the business went bankrupt, and the factory was disassembled and sold off to a Korean company for ten cents on the dollar. Most of the time that's what happens with ACOA funded business. They use up the grant, the company goes out of business and the employees go on "Pogey" for the rest of the year. More welfare. ACOA also administers 41 Community Business Development Corporations (CBDCs) operating in rural Atlantic Canada. But it doesn't end there! Here are just some of the other agencies we're paying for within ACOA, each of which wastes millions of dollars every year in Atlantic Canada: The Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF) is a financing program run by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) to help Canadian organizations in Atlantic Canada to develop innovative products and services. The average funding level is about two million Canadian dollars per project. Average project duration is about 2 years. Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation (ECBC) is a Canadian federal Crown corporation which promotes and coordinates economic development throughout Cape Breton Island and adjacent areas in the eastern Nova Scotia town of Mulgrave. Based in Sydney, in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, ECBC is administered by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and is the responsibility of Industry Canada An acquaintance of mine was boasting how he was getting his place of business (an old house in the neighborhood) painted and said that he got a grant to have it done from some kind of "city beautification fund". When I half-joked that I was actually the one paying for it, he quipped with a Cheshire cat-like smile that "I'd better get used to it, that's the way the world works". Meanwhile I constantly get emails from entities selling catalogues of the thousands of government programs and millions of dollars available to me for the taking. I see advertisements on TV put out by the "Gouvernement du Canada" saying the same thing... Yes, the government actually advertizes welfare handouts and so-called "stimulus packages" in a constant effort to lure as many of us as possible into the appalling, unending opiate of the nanny-state. All this stolen money, all this apprehended funding thrown to the wind and flushed down the toilet, all the burdensome regulations and government intrusion in our daily lives regulating literally everything imaginable in our lives from our automobiles to our toilets, light bulbs, paint and food, yet Atlantic Canada continues to wallow and languish in an economic hell. Businesses are folding up by the hundreds. People aren't finding work. Those that do are stuck with minimum wage paying jobs while the radical leftist NDP continues to raise taxes on those of us who aren't stealing from their neighbors via the self-serving and self-important bureaucrats. Yes, the Irving corporation just landed a 25 billion dollar project building warships in Halifax for the next thirty years, but I'll give you just one guess where all that money is coming from. Hint... It's not being traded voluntarily through the free market! When will people finally wake up and say to the government: "Enough! Leave us alone and let us grow the economy ourselves! We know how to spend our money better than you do!" Oh yeah, that's right. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you always have the unwavering support of Paul. In this case, Paul is pretty much everybody who gets a government grant (most of the population in some way, shape, matter or form), and Peter is the stupid sap who pays the taxes to fund the obvious, complete, utter and dismal failures of the social welfare state. I'm wondering just how much of a burden Atlas can take before he shrugs. His back is most certainly fractured by now. E. James Small currently lives near Truro, Nova Scotia. James was born in Montreal in 1965. James’ parents were both independent commercial artists, but they were English and were therefore boycotted by French businesses in the 1970’s so they opted to retire and move to Apple River, Nova Scotia in 1980 (there’s a whole story to that one!). Since then I have also lived in several towns in NS, such as Springhill, Amherst and also lived in Oshawa, Ontario and Brandon, Manitoba, but Nova Scotia, unfortunately, keeps dragging me back. I currently earn a living as a modelmaker, my primary passion, building models for everyone from individuals to businesses. James can be reached at: jim@smallartworks.ca

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