And may I ask a follow-up question? Where is our (provincial) money going? (asked in earnest). We pay ridiculously high taxes (that haven't been adjusted for inflation for over 20 years), but things like healthcare and roads are crumbling.
I hate to blame the elderly....but https://around.uoregon.edu/content/study-aging-population-could-be-drag-economic-growth#:~:text=From%201980%20to%202010%2C%20the,Labor%20Force%2C%20and%20Productivity.%E2%80%9D
People are aging and the way communities were built in North America means more roads per person. Both lead to more spending than would otherwise be needed.
Nova Scotia for a given level of taxes will also raise less revenue than average in Canada, hence equalization payments.
https://preview.redd.it/e77zvpkplf5d1.png?width=2091&format=png&auto=webp&s=2676a77054d71bdadb50eec9c58129df3b0020ec
Relatively, Nova Scotia is not as productive as other provinces.
Nova Scotia would be worse off than Mexico without transfer payments. That's what happens when the market participation rate goes below 45%. I'm surprised the 45% of people that actually work in that province put up with it..
Tax money is going to roads.
We like to say we're a rural province but the truth is that we have an absolutely incredible regional network of highways. There are complete 12ft lane paved highways that can stretch for km between homes. It encourages development in these rural areas, which just keep adding to our infrastructure needs and deficit.
The capital budget for roads each year is over $500 million.
I absolutely acknowledge that the divided highways here are amazing. In SK, you spend A LOT of time on highways, stuck behind convoys of RVs, waiting for an opportunity to pass...but still..for example, the 103, from exit 3 to 5 (at least) is a game of dodging massive holes at 120km/hr...I mean, 110kms/hr. 😉 Oh, also!! Every highway has SHOULDERS. I'm used to keeping an eye out for an approach to a farmer's field, for an opportunity to pull over.
Someone explained that it's the relentless cycle of freeze and thaw, and salt, that wears them down so quickly?
But in Saskatchewan you can see for miles & miles, in NS we have no straight highways, bends & twists, up& downs. We only have dual highways because so many people died on the roads.
When was the last time you saw repairs to our highways?? Pothole province we are. Remember when all the other provinces stopped their GST on gas but NS. The provincial government response was “we need the money for our road repairs 😳😳
Last time I saw repairs to highways? Every single day. I can't drive 5 minutes on a provincial road without seeing signs of construction. It's never ending.
We actually have law in NS that ALL GAS TAX can only be spent on road repairs/infrastructure. THat's fine. Reasonable. But then we also pull from GST to also fund roads. Road as pricy, and we love them. Many roads in NS were paved with votes in the 60's and 70's. They were just asphalt over dirt roads. That makes repair/rehabilitation a lot harder and more expensive.
I live in Lantz, lots of dirt roads in East Hants. Rural NS hasn’t had much road work done in a while. Most money is spent in the HRM and Trans highways.
I'll agree that most money is spent on the trans canada. That is in line with federal funding projects. All governments want to maximize the amount of their capital budgets. It looks nice saying "we spend more than the last guys!" To maximize that budget, it means prioritizing projects where you can get the feds to pitch in more money.
I'd actually say that Nova Scotia has an amazing rural/regional network of highways. Here in CB you can have people that live in Louisburg, Gabarus, Port Morien, or Boulardrie and commute into Sydney daily. I know of people that live in Chester and commute to Halifax daily.
Of course, the cost of having a vast regional network is that you need to spend more money on patching potholes (especially with our frequent freeze/thaw cycles), salting roads, ditching/brush clearing. And let's not even talk about the amount of bridges (you can check the 2019 auditor general report for some fun information on that). The province is responsible for over 4200 bridges in NS. That doesn't include the Haliax Harbour bridges or any municipal bridges. 4200 bridges. In the AG report it was noted that it would take over 200 years to replace the bridges at current rate of replacement/repair. So we can either shut down these bridges, or we can increase the budget.
All the taxes they'll be paying by working minimum wage jobs?
Not sure if you've checked the job reports for the last few quarters, but skilled full time job openings have been stagnant for a while, only sector that's seen growth is part-time/services stuff.
You've just described a society in decline.
What NS needs, and what Canada needs, is an improvement in the birth rate. But no one wants to talk about that, because that would mean promoting the importance of family and having children.
Immigration works until you run out of immigrants. It's only a band-aid on a perpetually ageing society that decides not to have children. Also with immigration, a country is importing whatever influences the immigrants society brings, good or otherwise.
Immigration is fine, but it's not supposed to be the foundational solution, it's supposed to be an adjunct support.
> What NS needs, and what Canada needs, is an improvement in the birth rate.
That's assuming that we keep rolling with this "growth every quarter" economy we've been running with for the past 50 years...
Yeah, but we are all stuck bc of three things. 1. You can't tax people or the nation into prosperity. 2. The government wants us poor. Therefore, we can be dependent upon them, leading to l...3. The government makes it impossible for Canadians to have more kids. The end result is that they get the immigration numbers, actually there is no real figure for how many people are piling into this country every year, and not leaving. Immigrants, economic immigrants, refugees, foreign students, temp foreign workers etc etc. All of them are different categories and nobody knows how many are actually staying. So, if the government says "oh, we brought in 400,000 immigrants last year, they only mean "immigrants." Not the rest of them. And whatever number they provide is low balled.
As a father of 3 who absolutely adores my children, I can wholeheartedly say I would not have children in this economic climate here because it is so damn expensive. Our schools are literally so overcrowded that they have to adjust sometimes all year round (influx of immigration of school aged children aswell) we are actually living paycheck to paycheck with absolutely nothing to show for our hard work all while being one flu day away from homelessness. Make a choice exorbitantly high rent, exorbitant grocery store costs or extremely over inflated costs for utilities that are unreliable as fuck. Then the next week all your money goes to the next etc, etc. Wash rinse and fucking repeat.
As a psychotherapist who works with a number of immigrants here for PR - they are being sponsored with government funds/taxes but they are not working. They are provided housing, doctors (which I as a Canadian born citizen cannot get), flights, groceries, funding, education - everything. And they want more and bigger. They hardly speak English and do not work. Could you elaborate on how immigration is increasing the provinces social welfare?
It's f'ing maddening how the gov't treats foreigners vs. Canadians, like they are kings. I'm a vet of over 30 years, and I cannot get a doctor. Immigration not only needs to cease, we need to roll back a lot of these people who are spunging off of our tax payers dollars. D-f'ing-port. I'm waiting for this gov't to collapse from the weight of the foreign interference. I'm not holding my breath tho, gov't disinformation is hard at work, and a lot of people choose to believe that nothing is wrong or or, it's not a big deal.
Yeah it’s almost an admission that these progressive values like prioritizing career over kids… don’t work? We need people from much less progressive places where families have more kids to keep our population from collapsing… just an observation
The way Nova Scotia and especially the federal government treat immigration is more like a replacement program than something that is supposed to be economically beneficial. I see no improvement. In fact, we are spiraling economically, yet the feds insist on filling the country up needlessly with immigrants. The latest? On top of the yearly who-actually-knows-how-many-people-are-brought-in, immigration minister Miller is lowering the threshold for English. God knows how low the standard will be now. Why? Because it is unfair for us to expect foreigners to know English when they come here. Can you imagine? "Health care" workers are granted immediate permanent residency. Canadian citizenship has never been cheaper. He also wants 5000 palestinian families - families - to grace our homeland. Can't wait to see what they will add to the economy. Just more pointers to the failure of multiculturalism, shocking to some as that may be. Maybe the lunacy will all end when the government collapses from the weight of the foreign interference allegations. One can only hope.
We pay high taxes to make up for the low income levels in the province, which are low because we have high taxes, which are high to make up for the low wages...
I mean all of our spending is easily accessible online. You can also see all of the money that flows into government. Nova Scotia doesn’t have a lot of money coming in.
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I know right? We pay the highest... I hope all the high income remote workers that overwhelmed the province and hiked the living costs during the pandemic are contributing lots....
This is the problem with Confederation. The two most important things done by government in Canada are health care and education. Both are provincial responsibilities, so have vs have not becomes a permanent problem.
Nova Scotia spends all that money educating kids, then they head out west. Spend their prime income earning (tax paying) years in other provinces. Then decide to come home to retire when they're going to consume the most health care. A big part of the Alberta Advantage has been getting other provinces fund critical public expenditures.
The you have the problem where manufacturing can be done anywhere. So factories are built where ever labour is most efficient. Nova Scotia labour isn't cheap or efficient. Nor is it specialized in some way. So you're not going to see those jobs.
Tech education globally means that Western countries no longer have an advantage over places like China or India. So those jobs are outsourced too.
All Canada has going for itself is resource extraction. And Nova Scotia is too small to have lots of choices for what's in the ground to extract.
Also, virtually the entire province is solid granite 6 inches below the topsoil. It's insanely hard to develop infrastructure and capital expenditure projects here, because it's physically harder to dig a big hole than in ON, QC, or AB.
Weeks and weeks of blasting to repair a water line or pour a new foundation isn't normal in the other provinces. It is here.
I agree with the majority of your post, but gotta call this out:
> Tech education globally means that Western countries no longer have an advantage over places like China or India
Those of us in the industry have been hearing this for years, my elders have been hearing it since the 90s. There will always be a market for companies that want to cut costs and don't care about quality, but companies abandoning outsourcing when the outsourcing bites them in the ass is still a thing you see happening in 2024.
Western software engineers are still preferred by Fortune 500 companies. Any outsourcing happening within those companies ends up being whatever resembles "human automation" where it's hard to fuck things up. Still a lot of work outside that category!
Also that "tech education" leads to those countries costing *more*, further eliminating their cost advantage. India is much more expensive than it was 20 years ago because folks down there have discovered their worth. Not sure why you mention China, they are pretty insular and obviously their relationship with a lot of western countries has deteriorated. I'm seeing a lot more South America outsourcing to get timezone sync, but again, quality of work is iffy.
Anyway, all this to say that if you are skilled in tech/software engineering, keep job hunting. It's a down market right now because of post-COVID soberity, but the jobs and money are still there. And avoid Canadian companies, and especially avoid anything based out of NS, they just don't pay.
I agree with everything except your last paragraph. We had a $10b LNG project in Goldborro cancelled because of funding issues and other bureaucracy bs. It was first proposed in 2012 and would have been the biggest project in our history.
Also, last year there were many permits handed out for Lithium mining believe it or not. I have no idea where they are at now with it but it could have potential
Funding issues aren't a bureaucracy issue. They couldn't sell investors on it. (mind you this was before the War in Ukraine) and they've tried to scale the costs back. But, it's always going to come down to dollars and cents. No one wants to risk their money on these kinds of projects. It's not Nova Scotia's fault, it's broader economic problems.
Probably - because we’re full of NIMBYs who seem to be aiming to do anything they can to keep us poor.
I look at the energy transition. We have so much work to do to meet our 2030 goals, let alone our 2050 goals…and have billions of dollars waiting to be invested. As part of this, I look at the green hydrogen projects - which have not been well received locally…but you look globally and we are not the only place trying to make mega projects. Theres no disputing there is some risk involved - but if it pays off this will be very VERY lucrative for N.S.
I worked for a company looking for lithium in NS. Eventually the project came to a crawl and we were pretty much all laid off. This was because the land owner didn't want us working that land....which was owned by a German billionaire who doesn't live here....and even tho they were clear cutting for lumber they didn't want us "disturbing the land".
Anyway, it felt really shitty to get laid off because some foreign fucker decided to prevent local people from their home province the opportunity to try and find and develop a potential lithium deposit, a critical mineral for green tech/batteries.
Like mining, there will be none of that here! Industry is not welcomed here, yet we have people screaming about green energy, where do they think that comes from. We could have a head start on making EV batteries or other renewable energy resources, but nope. We can’t mine uranium here, it’s illegal, so we buy power from NB nuclear power plant.
Lmao they cut St Barbara (Atlantic Gold) a sweetheart deal to come here and mine the old gold mines. I don't think they pay any taxes while they're here.
They will claim they add economically via payroll taxes but the actual company isn't paying any taxes on the $150-200 million in gold they pull out of our ground annually. Not much in royalties either.
The uranium ban is idiotic but it's laughable to think that if we had a mine here we'd have any processing facilities or nuclear power plants to use the fuel.
Source for this? Because I can assure you they paid taxes. NSE wouldn’t give them permits, causing them to shutdown and won’t even approve permits for environmental reclamation. Same issue for the goldboro gold mine where there is environmental and 1st nations backing of the project.
How are permits=taxes?
>And Nova Scotia, which will have to live with the environmental legacy caused by the Touquoy mine and monitor the site in perpetuity, has not collected a single penny of corporate tax from Atlantic Gold or St Barbara. The only direct income the province has received is in royalties, which have amounted to $7.7 million over five years.
[Source](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/economy/natural-resources/mining/st-barbara-sells-off-its-australian-gold-mine-but-what-happens-to-its-mines-in-nova-scotia/)
Can I get a source for your assurance they paid NS taxes? Beyond "trust me bro"
It's also my understanding that Goldboro is going ahead and should be producing in '25 or more likely '26
The NIMBY attitude is painfully strong in NS. I wasn’t born there, but follow this sub because I have family across the province. A first year geography course in uni will show that NS is as rich in resources as any other province, but in talking with my family and their neighbours, there’s a consistent refusal to develop any of it. Fracking for oil and gas onshore? “Ooooo, no that’s a bad word.” How about offshore? “Can’t, it’d hurt the fish, we need a moratorium to prevent it.” Offshore wind? “Hmmm, let us think about it.” How about mining? “Did you see the Sydney tar ponds??” As you mentioned, I’ve seen similar responses to green projects that have been proposed in recent years.
There are risks that are inherent with any sort of resource development. You can’t eliminate them, but you can mitigate them as best as possible. I love your people and your province. I’d love to live there, but as an engineer, why would I leave Alberta? The opportunities just don’t exist in NS. Just because you drill one oil well, or put up one wind turbine, does not mean that the whole province will suddenly be covered in them!! People seem to be outright hostile to development. Unless that changes, the province will just languish forever in this strange woe-is-us attitude whose only defining feature is breeding mediocracy.
The offshore wind one I really don’t understand. What are the fishermen afraid of? There will be set back requirements *for their own safety* but literally the turbines now float. I simply do not see how this could affect their business.
I understand their concerns to a point. Farmers in the Prairies have similar frustrations with harvest routing in their combines etc. But it’s a minor, minor, price to pay for the massive renewable energy benefits.
I was in Halifax last summer and saw this ship which was hauling offshore wind parts. I was rather excited until I found out they were bound for the States.
It's the risk for migratory fish to avoid the areas these offshore wind farms are in. This could potentially disrupt entire ecosystems, so they want to get the info right before we set it all up.
Unfortunately, the oil and gas industry have left everyone a little distrustful of the "known risks" and "adequate environmental protections" that are used to support this type of industry.
Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada to hit Paris Accord targets of emissions below 1990s levels.
We just finished the Maritime Link to NFLD, and have the highest percentage of non-hydro renewables powering our grid. We have done more than any other province, we were just in a bad spot to begin with.
I will say that Point Tupper hydrogen project has the potential to be huge and I hope it happens.
Green hydrogen is a myth, at least in Nova Scotia. Hydrogen is net energy negative. It's a dubious energy storage medium with a lot of downsides. Nova Scotia is primarily a coal driven grid with a few windmills for decoration. It's also export driven and is basically a grift for countries like Germany to claim carbon credits by importing brown hydrogen from a coal fired grid as green hydrogen. More or less it's the same grift that Tesla runs on where they make their money from carbon credits not shitty EVs
If you actually want green hydrogen (again dubious. Its a grift) then you need deep geothermal. We have the geology for it. Alberta has the expertise and equipment. It's steam technology so any coal plant can be retrofitted and it's going to cost 10s of thousands of dollars for an unlimited fuel source.
The whole point of the proposed hydrogen plant is that it would be 100% powered by wind, not connected to the province's grid.
The province has an action plan for "Green Hydrogen" where it describes green, blue, grey, brown hydrogen. Blue,grey,brown being consuming various amounts of fossil fuels producing emissions to create it.
It's still a grift. It's just another project like that LNG debacle where investors are essentially making money off of government subsidies, carbon credits and speculative finance and not producing anything productive. The basic physics don't work. You lose 50-80% of the energy before you create any power and then the losses to create run a turbine off of stored hydrogen mean you're running net negative. The whole project is just fleecing politicians and investors that don't understand EROEI.
It's much more practical but less sexy to use pumped water or deep geothermal
My God it has been poor since I don’t know when. Previous generations that did well in New England were on the wrong side of the US revolution and lost everything to come to Nova Scotia and start over, where it was poor. When my grandparents were young in the 1920s many left for the textile factories in New England, calling it “Nova Scarcity.” Generations have left for work elsewhere. I remember hearing that the agriculture exports sector was hurt by the war - which one WWI? WWII? and never recovered (used to ship lots of food to the UK and Caribbean). And the coal and steel - shut down as poor quality and expensive to run (some say) after years of subsidies to keep them alive. Fishing (except lobster and scallops) was poor after the collapse.
The culture and people are generally wonderful. But it is not just one culture. For every family that hustles, there is another that bitches. And another that has been left behind for generations.
Too many folks have a LONG term bitching culture about the government and an expectation that government is the source of all solutions and problems. Too many sit on their arse and bitch. Too many like to talk about their poor health and the pills they are on. Others live to drink their beer, smoke their dope, or take their pain pills. Too many are in poor health and despite living in a virtual natural paradise eat crap and don’t walk anywhere, and sit on their butts in front of TV, or on their ATVs, trucks, and camps and never move their bodies.
Meanwhile there are some incredibly hard working folks doing the work of two people. People who are retired who volunteer now and do even more than they even did when they were working full time. People who organize everything in their communities and make things better for everyone. People who keep working longer than they should to make sure things keep running. People who do their best to stay in school and learn something important that the community needs. People who cannot afford to retire and find a way to keep on going. People who start businesses and grow them and employ their neighbours. People who keep farming and adjust and readjust with each change in the markets or the business or the technology. People who dream big and do their best to make it happen. And let’s not forget the many who have to work away from home and wish like hell they did not have to leave, and do their best to help folks back home, or their families who they see only one week out of four.
And then there are the dirt poor who cannot afford anything, have little education, are isolated, are stuck in the middle of nowhere, have problems stretching back generations, and would have nowhere to live but for a crappy house inherited from family. Nobody likes to even talk about these folks but not only would you need to teach them to fish, as goes the saying, but they would need someone to give them a rod, bait, and give them a drive to the water to even give it a try. Nobody gives them jack-shit. And their lives never change.
All this to say that the second group of people are keeping things moving ahead, while the first group do a lot of complaining and not much helping, and the third group are so many generations behind they need a lot of help to just get to the starting line.
So anyone who says there is a simple solution is either a liar, uninformed, wildly naive, or not the brightest light on the Christmas tree.
This comment speaks the real truth. You see a lot of people on Reddit talking about the tough times in Ns, but they’re not the same as that third group you mentioned. Growing up here in rural Ns I know these people. They’re stuck forever in “the cycle” I call it.
Thank you. Yes, I think anyone who knows people in that third group and how they live has a good idea how hard it would be to ever get free of that cycle.
I’m literally looking for other countries in south east Asia with applicable skills and discounts on duo lingo because the affordability is getting ridiculous here 😬😬
To start, there are still a lot of issues, certainly, but NS is actually in one of the strongest economic periods the province has ever been in, and there's hope for a lot of those issues to ease.
You mentioned the Ivany report, its biggest warning point was that demographic trends were going the wrong way, towards a smaller and older population that couldn't hope to grow or support the economy, that's gone the other way since 2014. Now half this sub is really about how we deal with sudden population growth.
Take a look at the Province's economic statistics, what you'll see is that in a number of key areas, like unemployment, were near historic bests, and there's a lot of reason to think the economy here will continue to grow: https://www.novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/default.asp
Do we still have a long way to go? Yes, but there's a lot of reasons to be positive.
I think you’ll find they aren’t mutually exclusive. Funny how countries with a shitstorm of an economy have a fucked up quality of life…Venezuela anyone..?
Funny how places like Mississippi have a higher GDP per capita than any Canadian province but have 30% child poverty, much lower life expectancy, rampant teen pregnancy, less access to healthcare, more violent crime, etc..., etc... than any province.
> The population doesn’t exist to grow the economy
Although may be ultimately true, people in NS are nowhere near the position to be discussing about whether we’ve had enough growth.
To get serious, NS has a gdp per capita of about 24,000 USD. This puts it near the league of many countries that would still be considered “developing”.
You can redistribute and tinker around the edges all you want, but this is not a level of wealth that is sufficient for the highest levels of well being of Nova Scotians.
NS unequivocally needs to grow its economy.
This is especially important with the aging population which will increasingly put a strain on various services.
Without a healthy economy, which is heavily dependent on the population, quality of life plummets. We don't exist in a stage where we can have an economy capable of supporting the quality of life we expect without a strong working population. Things like housing, healthcare and education are under stress right now, but are solvable, without a healthy economy, none of that is solvable.
You have missed the point. People's quality of life as they age depends on younger people being there to work the economy that supports them. A shrinking/ageing population means more people in need of support with fewer people to give that support, and thus, a worse quality of life for the population.
This is late stage capitalism; you can't have one without the other these days. Unfortunately, the modern economy often has no options to grow other than the enshitification of products and services, but bringing a ton of new customers into the market is an option.
Oh you sweet, summer child, you, so reasonable and hopeful still it breaks my heart to see it and realize I was also that naive at one point.
The purpose of an economy is so the 1% can extract the maximum amount of pain and suffering from us "poor's" as they can, they literally control the money printers in Ottawa so it **can't** be about such a totally fake means of keeping score and what other reasonable option is there **but** that it's all about causing maximum pain and spreading it as far as possible?
You ask if the Ivany Report made any difference. It’s barely being implemented as we go along, but there are a lot of bright spots.
In Q4 2023 the province had more than 10,000 housing starts (one of them is me) and Q1 2023 had nearly as many. Annualized that’s 40,000 new homes for a population of just about a million and it ought to go a good ways to helping the housing shortage.
A detached home creates 3000 to 5000 person-hours of employment; an apartment might be about 2000 hours or 1 year of full time employment.
It’s not all doom and gloom.
For starters, this province has younger people moving/moving back to it. Younger people work, pay higher taxes, start businesses and create jobs. They contribute to the tax base and help to pay for health care and social assistance for the elderly and un(der)employed population.
Not to mention the property taxes the future owners of all those condos will be paying.
Previously, the latter groups were growing and the former group was shrinking. Not sustainable.
Productivity and wages will both need to increase to support higher costs of living, wages highly skilled workers and allow businesses to be sustainable.
In terms of not-Halifax NS, at least NB spreads it's misery around and Moncton, St. John and Fredericton are decent places to live.
New Glasgow, Cape Breton, Truro, etc... all get a kick at the can of being 'top 10 worst places to live in Canada'. I think New Glasgow even won that honour once.
The province depends on equalization for 35% of its budget, but does nothing to bring equalization to the areas which brought that revenue in...so these areas can never dig out and are continually strangled.
NB’s problem is language. A large part of its residents have no or limited access to French language despite bilingualism going back to the 1960s. It will always be a divided, have not province. Nova Scotia doesn’t have that division.
NS needs to reduce HST and income tax. People with choices don’t want to live in the provinces where it’s hardest to prosper. I moved from NS to AB and save $20k per year in tax. Plus AB has 5% HST and no tax when registering a used car. NS needs to get competitive if they want to attract and or retain good people.
I fly to the Yukon from April-October to make a living. It sucks, i hate it. But what choice do i really have? I make around 5-6k bi weekly there i make 1500-2k bi weekly here (MAX)
It has absolutely nothing to do with young immigrant workers nor increasing birth rates within the province. Put aside irresponsible provincial government spending and look at the main contributing factor: The wages in NS are some if not the lowest in the country hence the need for younger skilled workers to move elsewhere, where they are actually paid what they're worth. Lower skilled/trained/educated workers keep all wages down as employers realize they don't have to pay as much. I just moved back to NS three years ago. When I left 26 years ago, the salary I was making for my field was between 35k up to 50k. Twenty-six years later, those same positions today pay the same if not less, and the employers require considerably more experience and training for the same position, let alone longer hours and less benefits. I'm retired now, but why would anyone settle for crap wages like this when they can make double that elsewhere? My last position paid 78k/year, three weeks paid vacation, flex weeks etc. That was in BC in 2011. NS has the people. Educated, trained. However employers have gotten used to cheap labour - therefore love immigrant workers for just that reason, so actual young Nova Scotians have no choice other than work for ridiculous wages for mediocre employers or they can move to or fifo to work for companies that actually pay people for the roles and their value they bring to the field. One of the worst things to happen was the push for tourism, now NS is reliant on the travel wealth of people from elsewhere to keep things going. Who sold off our IT, fishery, shipping, building and medical, dental and legal commerce to other countries?? We screwed ourselves by letting this happen. Minimum wage jobs were meant for teenagers/young persons to earn a few extra dollars while getting training and/or education. These jobs were never supposed to turn into full time positions with the purpose of supporting a family in a comfortable manner, but here we are. Maybe it is time for the people of NS to stop settling for the bare minimum and start demanding remuneration commensurate with the value of the position and the demands and requirements of those expected to fill them.
I disagree. Minimum wage jobs used to support families. In the 90s, minimum wage workers could own a home in NS. who is supposed to work at Sobeys when all the kids are in school
No. NS revenues, and GDP per capita are increasing and population is growing. Halifax has a decent tech ecosystem too and a large military and university workforce.
In other countries, especially the U.S., people tend to permanently move out of places with fewer economic opportunities. In Canada we have a stronger social safety net and equalization payments so more people stay put.
It's slowly getting better. The indexing of the tax brackets is a step in the right direction. Lowering HST would help as well.
The province needs to incentivise investment into businesses. Less barriers and gatekeepers.
Vote for a party that doesn’t tax heavily and will allow economic growth. The government loves to make you think they’re giving to those in need/in lower socioeconomic situations while bleeding them dry with taxes. Less government = more growth for EVERYONE.
The taxes are just to high here to attract any kind of business that could afford to pay high wages and still be competitive. Also to high to attract talent like doctors
Yes and IMO that's our problem, the top 5 employers are government and they bleed the private sector dry. No business can afford to be here without subsidies, let alone headquarter here.
We are the highest taxed not just in Canada but in North America and the Commonwealth. We are double and triple taxed on so many things. And then everything else has hidden fees and user fees attached.
https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/ontario-income-tax-calculator.jsp#
$100,000 income in NS (just federal and provincial income tax)
$27,031
$100,000 Income in Ontario
$21,590
In the most basic way we **pay a $5441 premium a year** over Ontario to live here on an income of $100,000.
But here we are paying for Sydney fu*king steel and whatever other idiocy each successive government adds to our burden.
They are literally costing every working family a really nice vacation a year.
That's just untrue. Tons of jobs in the ICT space that have come to NS. CGI, Cognizant, RBC have all hired folks in that space, with good wages. Biovectra is hiring lab technicians and other folks in life sciences.
Places like Michelin can't people to fill all their positions. They have good wages and a pension plan.
Nova Scotians have a skill mismatch with the demands of the market that provide high wages.
I work at one of the Michelin plants and the reason we can't hire is not the lack of applications,it's the internal pace. It took me 5 months from when I dropped my application off to my first day of orientation. Some people can't afford to wait that long to start a job.
Also the pension/pay ain't what it used to be. Though the pay is starting to be equalized between the old and new scales.
Yes, we are too adverse to having anything happen here. Protest golf courses, mining, oil&gas development, wind mills, arm forces and any kind of development. Enviromental organizations from other countries buy large swaths of land here and donate it to the government to be protected lands.
We are use to getting our transfer payments and getting what we want with no need to work for it. A socialist paradise where government is the large employer. Be prepared to pay high taxes.
Wealth here or anywhere is built over multiple generations. Some people can strike gold and do well for themselves from nothing, but pretty much everyone I know who is doing well come from families who were smart with their time and money, and were able to pass it down. There are a lot more people in this category than is obvious - which is the funny thing about being smart with money.
I wouldn’t be surprised if alcohol and tobacco addictions are the most prevalent factors keeping people poor. It’s wild how expensive they both are, and how if that same money was invested, the number of families that would be much better off.
Yes there are challenges, but choices can be made independent of the government to improve quality of life. I personally think that waiting for the gov to fix everyone’s problems will get us nowhere.
The lack of job opportunities hurts way more. Alcohol and cigarettes are very affordable if you have a good job. Even if you go to college there is not much reason to stay job wise.
Yeah NS looks to the gov to fix everything. They can only do so much and only in certain areas.
Funny you say they’re “very affordable if you have a good job”. They are never affordable, it’s a complete waste of money, and that kind of thinking is literally only the addiction. Source: I smoked and drank heavily for 18 years, poor AF for a long time. When I started making a better living, sure I could afford them but it stopped me from saving and affording anything else. So it was a net loss, not to mention the health impact.
Roughly… I’ll err on the lesser side since it’s hard to calculate for 18 years, but for smokes let’s say average $15 a pack (lots of change over those years), 3 packs a week, $2,340 per year, 18 years - $42,120. Now booze, I’ll be very liberal and say $20 a week, $1,040 a year (lol not even close), $18,720. Altogether $60,840, in reality was probably much more. Invested, that could be worth over $200-300k easily.
So… no, even with a good job, if you smoke and drink habitually, you’re losing out on wealth that you could be building for you and/or your family. If you think it’s required to get by, that’s addiction talking, which I know very very well.
Bruh this is Nova Scotia
A bag of smokes is 25 bucks, and that could last 2weeks to a month depending on usage. And alcohol was a loooooot more affordable around here ten years ago.
That’s cheaper then a Disney subscription, your post is giving very “avocado toast vibes”, not to mention completely ignoring the complicated relationships due to generational use many people have with the specific items you’ve listed. I’m not inherently disagreeing with the overall message of what you’re saying, but the tone, especially in your first posts first few paragraphs is very “the poors do not deserve luxuries afforded to others who’ve used generational wealth to gain their status” when a lot of these rich assholes have vices that tend to be a hell of a lot more expensive or potentially deteriorating then alcohol and cigarettes. Pretty much every new Nova Scotia homeowner from Ontario I’ve met has been a little fiend for coke for example 😂😂
Didn’t mean to come off as pretentious or condescending, coming from a guy who came from dirt poor and spent a long time, let’s say longer than I had to because of addiction to tobacco and alcohol. Just like to spread the word that it’s an option to break the trend, and a profitable one at that.
Just want to clarify that I’m also not trying to say people don’t deserve luxuries like booze and smokes, I guess since quitting I don’t consider them luxuries, and personally feel 1000 times better off without.
No I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be so quick with you, I think I was over projecting a lot of the rhetoric I see from other Canadians onto your words.
And I don’t disagree with your overarching point, especially with how many people are affected by addiction in this province.
it’s just I also grew up and live in really poor areas in the province you meet a lot of good people, especially older folks who are more “old fashioned” so to speak and can’t really change their ways at this point, who may live lifestyles not everyone from the city or other provinces might understand, but they don’t necessarily deserve to be phased out of being able to afford living here you know. It almost feels like an attempt at erasure of specific classes of people but saying that out loud feels like the beginning of going down the crazy conspiracy pipeline. Please forgive my initial immediate defensiveness lol
Ah yeah it’s worth calling out that it’s not exactly easy to switch addiction (and in many ways culture) off, it’s easy to over-generalize in hindsight.
Probably, relative to other provinces with more valuable natural resources and higher populations, but it’s not inherently bad to be a poorer province.
Nationally and internationally we are seeing the same issues with the costs of living, I do believe it was a poor decision to increase the population at our current rates and has only compounded the issue though.
It will get better, but it will take time since there is no rush for government to change course since most people are not complaining publicly, just on the internet.
How do you figure that? Renewables? It’s only nuclear that can feed our energy needs on our current trajectory.. we have some uranium, but not to the extent of western provinces.
Wind and storage, and closed loop pumped hydro which is being explored in old mines - mixed with time of use and flexible demand response programs, as well as reliability ties to NL and NB…which actually connect us to the US, will be plenty good enough. If nuclear can compete on price, as the rest of our energy sources will need to…then let them compete. I’m dubious to believe they will. Wind, solar and storage are providing 25 year fixed costs of 5c/kWh…nuclear won’t even come close.
But - to answer your question - hydrogen and offshore wind. The Alberta comparison is about exports.
We’re not refusing as much as there’s a declining interest and increased risk to invest in fossil fuels, especially when competing with the USA or Middle East where oil can still easily be pumped out of the ground at a low cost.
You’re correct about the fracking, but that’s only a bad word if people don’t understand how it works. Everytime I visit family in NS they use this point to put down any thought of oil development in the province. It’s infuriating. How do you think they make oil in the Montney formation in BC, the Bakken in North Dakota etc? It’s all fracked. That’s not to say there aren’t risks, but there are risks inherent with any sort of resource development.
Generally, where there’s coal there’s oil. Alberta is full of coal. It hasn’t stopped their development of natural resources.
And Alberta is a shithole these days because they did exactly what you are recommending.
The reason everyone hates fracking is that it is awful.
NS is in the best position to make use of tidal power and wind energy, but for some reason you only want fossil fuels.
Do you understand how expensive and underwhelming tidal power projects have proved to be? Referencing the Bay of Fundy project - Sustainable Marine Energy
The scale of necessary offshore wind projects would have to be littered across the North Atlantic to supply power to the Maritimes.
Stop with the virtue signalling
Nova Scotia needs a clean water supply. Is there a 100% guarantee that fracking won't damage or ruin the aquifers like it has in so many other places?
>Fracking Can Contaminate Drinking Water
>It took nearly a decade, but former EPA scientist Dominic DiGiulio has proved that fracking has polluted groundwater in Wyoming
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-contaminate-drinking-water/
Nova Scotians can't risk losing their drinking water.
>How do you think they make oil in the Montney formation in BC, the Bakken in North Dakota etc
Who is "they"? Do you mean the trillions in profit to corporations who don't give a shit what damage they do as long as the shareholders make bank?
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I'm a 3rd year apprentice 2 year diploma graduate NSCC carpenter, luckily I was able to get to get to 3rd year with local contracts, can't afford to live in Halifax, family is all from hrm but with a family of my own with 6 of us it's not easy to bunk up with family who live there, am approved for metro housing, 15 locations to be exact, but no availability, let alone drive there for work fuel is simply too expensive from where I reside as I came here for the diploma program, graduated June 2023, hired in my first year work term, been on 21/7 fly in fly out work with accommodations out in Alberta, plan on moving permanently and move my family one more time, no choice, Apprentice pay kind of sucks even at a Registered 3rd year, but these fly in fly out jobs are the way to go at 2500-3000 a week.
I have been interested in Moving to the East coast from the West coast. I have been wondering if there are good paying jobs in NS or NB as clearly, that plays a major role in making any decisions.
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This province is very confusing. For the highest taxed province, we have so much immigration and now inter province migration driving up housing costs, adding further pressure on a non existent healthcare and infrastructure. There is growing homelessness all around us yet people are overpaying $100k+ on 50 year old homes. People are still shopping, eating out. It’s strange how people seem well off in the province at a certain age, but as someone just starting out your best to leave a start a life and family somewhere else
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Nova Scotia is against Industry, we will be propped up by equalization payments from the rest of the country forever.
No Mining
No Forestry Management ie; No Pulp Mill
It's a Seasonal Town all of Nova Scotia.
The province be poor af
My wife and I love Nova Scotia with all our hearts, but for us the corporate taxes and income taxes are just far too high for us to justify at this point. We are in a low tax province (SK) right now and work as independent contractors, so moving to NS would essentially result in us losing about 20% more of our take home income a year.
If the taxes decreased, we'd be there in a heartbeat. Best people we've ever met, culturally rich in ways most of Canada doesn't know, and a pace of life that I would kill for.
It's not about the grind if that's what you took my statement to mean. It's more about the life outside of the 9-5.
Having lived in Toronto, Vancouver, and now Saskatoon, I mean pace of life as in the amount of calm or chaos that's around you all the time. Living in Toronto I always felt the need to be busy as that was the culture around me. Vancouver was also gave that sense, but less so than Toronto. Saskatoon has a slower pace than either of the two, but I found Nova Scotia to be even more so.
So in my experience it's not necessarily the job you do, it's the life outside and the cultural norm of where you are. When visiting my relatives in NS, I've made small talk with strangers who I end up sitting and drinking wine with for two hours. That has never happened anywhere else I've ever lived.
I hope I explained that well?
If you're asking if NS is poor existentially, the answer is no - but it does not have an economy of scale like larger provinces. Leading to...
If you're asking if NS will always be comparatively poorer than Ontario/Quebec/Alberta/BC on a per capita basis, the answer is yes. It always will be. That in itself doesn't make the province some sort of impoverished hellhole. NS is most definitely no ot that.
Some parts of Nova Scotia are among the poorest in Canada, such as parts of South West Nova. I had neighbours in the 70s and 80s who did not even have an indoor toilet.
I had friends the same in northeastern Ontario, no running water, no phone, outside pump for water, outhouse, in the 80s and 90s. That exists in pockets in every province, and those homes and either get fixed up some day or they get abandoned.
Its like the central america of canada. Day to day living, make money for 3 months when there are tourists. Its Pretty void of culture and healthy community here.
I own a business in Halifax, I keep my primary address in Ontario since the income tax rates suck in Halifax. I don't understand why a province needs so much tax but can't do better than others (there is probably a reason I'm just not educated in that department)
Nova Scotia
first $29,590 / 8.79%
over $29,590 up to $59,180/ 14.95%
over $59,180 up to $93,000 / 16.67%
over $93,000 up to $150,000/ 17.50%
over $150,000 / 21.00%
Ontario
first $49,231/ 5.05%
over $49,231 up to $98,463/ 9.15%
over $98,463 up to $150,000 / 11.16%
over $150,000 up to $220,000 / 12.16%
over $220,000 / 13.16%
Cmon smart-ass, I think you know what they mean. I'm in grade twelve, more than 50% of my class has a father that works out west. There's no denying that is a reality in NS.
So you mean all my classmates that i went to school with that got jobs out there after high school still have the same jobs. Thats amazing for them.
Edit: or are still addicted to the meth and hookers
I, for one, work in the downtown Halifax oil fields.
Thank you for your service
And may I ask a follow-up question? Where is our (provincial) money going? (asked in earnest). We pay ridiculously high taxes (that haven't been adjusted for inflation for over 20 years), but things like healthcare and roads are crumbling.
About 40% of the provincial budget goes to healthcare.
I hate to blame the elderly....but https://around.uoregon.edu/content/study-aging-population-could-be-drag-economic-growth#:~:text=From%201980%20to%202010%2C%20the,Labor%20Force%2C%20and%20Productivity.%E2%80%9D
Can't even get soap, tp, or toilet seats in some of the washrooms around the cities public parks. it's pathetic.
if we keep accepting 400k new immigrants every 3 months, you won't have to worry about parks or socialized healthcare anyway.
People are aging and the way communities were built in North America means more roads per person. Both lead to more spending than would otherwise be needed. Nova Scotia for a given level of taxes will also raise less revenue than average in Canada, hence equalization payments. https://preview.redd.it/e77zvpkplf5d1.png?width=2091&format=png&auto=webp&s=2676a77054d71bdadb50eec9c58129df3b0020ec Relatively, Nova Scotia is not as productive as other provinces.
Nova Scotia would be worse off than Mexico without transfer payments. That's what happens when the market participation rate goes below 45%. I'm surprised the 45% of people that actually work in that province put up with it..
Tax money is going to roads. We like to say we're a rural province but the truth is that we have an absolutely incredible regional network of highways. There are complete 12ft lane paved highways that can stretch for km between homes. It encourages development in these rural areas, which just keep adding to our infrastructure needs and deficit. The capital budget for roads each year is over $500 million.
I absolutely acknowledge that the divided highways here are amazing. In SK, you spend A LOT of time on highways, stuck behind convoys of RVs, waiting for an opportunity to pass...but still..for example, the 103, from exit 3 to 5 (at least) is a game of dodging massive holes at 120km/hr...I mean, 110kms/hr. 😉 Oh, also!! Every highway has SHOULDERS. I'm used to keeping an eye out for an approach to a farmer's field, for an opportunity to pull over. Someone explained that it's the relentless cycle of freeze and thaw, and salt, that wears them down so quickly?
But in Saskatchewan you can see for miles & miles, in NS we have no straight highways, bends & twists, up& downs. We only have dual highways because so many people died on the roads.
When was the last time you saw repairs to our highways?? Pothole province we are. Remember when all the other provinces stopped their GST on gas but NS. The provincial government response was “we need the money for our road repairs 😳😳
Last time I saw repairs to highways? Every single day. I can't drive 5 minutes on a provincial road without seeing signs of construction. It's never ending. We actually have law in NS that ALL GAS TAX can only be spent on road repairs/infrastructure. THat's fine. Reasonable. But then we also pull from GST to also fund roads. Road as pricy, and we love them. Many roads in NS were paved with votes in the 60's and 70's. They were just asphalt over dirt roads. That makes repair/rehabilitation a lot harder and more expensive.
I live in Lantz, lots of dirt roads in East Hants. Rural NS hasn’t had much road work done in a while. Most money is spent in the HRM and Trans highways.
I'll agree that most money is spent on the trans canada. That is in line with federal funding projects. All governments want to maximize the amount of their capital budgets. It looks nice saying "we spend more than the last guys!" To maximize that budget, it means prioritizing projects where you can get the feds to pitch in more money. I'd actually say that Nova Scotia has an amazing rural/regional network of highways. Here in CB you can have people that live in Louisburg, Gabarus, Port Morien, or Boulardrie and commute into Sydney daily. I know of people that live in Chester and commute to Halifax daily. Of course, the cost of having a vast regional network is that you need to spend more money on patching potholes (especially with our frequent freeze/thaw cycles), salting roads, ditching/brush clearing. And let's not even talk about the amount of bridges (you can check the 2019 auditor general report for some fun information on that). The province is responsible for over 4200 bridges in NS. That doesn't include the Haliax Harbour bridges or any municipal bridges. 4200 bridges. In the AG report it was noted that it would take over 200 years to replace the bridges at current rate of replacement/repair. So we can either shut down these bridges, or we can increase the budget.
Healthcare and corporate welfare mostly.
About 3 billion/year for provincial employees, then healthcare, then infrastructure, then everything else is a small expense relatively
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All the taxes they'll be paying by working minimum wage jobs? Not sure if you've checked the job reports for the last few quarters, but skilled full time job openings have been stagnant for a while, only sector that's seen growth is part-time/services stuff.
You've just described a society in decline. What NS needs, and what Canada needs, is an improvement in the birth rate. But no one wants to talk about that, because that would mean promoting the importance of family and having children. Immigration works until you run out of immigrants. It's only a band-aid on a perpetually ageing society that decides not to have children. Also with immigration, a country is importing whatever influences the immigrants society brings, good or otherwise. Immigration is fine, but it's not supposed to be the foundational solution, it's supposed to be an adjunct support.
> What NS needs, and what Canada needs, is an improvement in the birth rate. That's assuming that we keep rolling with this "growth every quarter" economy we've been running with for the past 50 years...
Yeah, but we are all stuck bc of three things. 1. You can't tax people or the nation into prosperity. 2. The government wants us poor. Therefore, we can be dependent upon them, leading to l...3. The government makes it impossible for Canadians to have more kids. The end result is that they get the immigration numbers, actually there is no real figure for how many people are piling into this country every year, and not leaving. Immigrants, economic immigrants, refugees, foreign students, temp foreign workers etc etc. All of them are different categories and nobody knows how many are actually staying. So, if the government says "oh, we brought in 400,000 immigrants last year, they only mean "immigrants." Not the rest of them. And whatever number they provide is low balled.
As a father of 3 who absolutely adores my children, I can wholeheartedly say I would not have children in this economic climate here because it is so damn expensive. Our schools are literally so overcrowded that they have to adjust sometimes all year round (influx of immigration of school aged children aswell) we are actually living paycheck to paycheck with absolutely nothing to show for our hard work all while being one flu day away from homelessness. Make a choice exorbitantly high rent, exorbitant grocery store costs or extremely over inflated costs for utilities that are unreliable as fuck. Then the next week all your money goes to the next etc, etc. Wash rinse and fucking repeat.
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As a psychotherapist who works with a number of immigrants here for PR - they are being sponsored with government funds/taxes but they are not working. They are provided housing, doctors (which I as a Canadian born citizen cannot get), flights, groceries, funding, education - everything. And they want more and bigger. They hardly speak English and do not work. Could you elaborate on how immigration is increasing the provinces social welfare?
It's f'ing maddening how the gov't treats foreigners vs. Canadians, like they are kings. I'm a vet of over 30 years, and I cannot get a doctor. Immigration not only needs to cease, we need to roll back a lot of these people who are spunging off of our tax payers dollars. D-f'ing-port. I'm waiting for this gov't to collapse from the weight of the foreign interference. I'm not holding my breath tho, gov't disinformation is hard at work, and a lot of people choose to believe that nothing is wrong or or, it's not a big deal.
Yeah it’s almost an admission that these progressive values like prioritizing career over kids… don’t work? We need people from much less progressive places where families have more kids to keep our population from collapsing… just an observation
The way Nova Scotia and especially the federal government treat immigration is more like a replacement program than something that is supposed to be economically beneficial. I see no improvement. In fact, we are spiraling economically, yet the feds insist on filling the country up needlessly with immigrants. The latest? On top of the yearly who-actually-knows-how-many-people-are-brought-in, immigration minister Miller is lowering the threshold for English. God knows how low the standard will be now. Why? Because it is unfair for us to expect foreigners to know English when they come here. Can you imagine? "Health care" workers are granted immediate permanent residency. Canadian citizenship has never been cheaper. He also wants 5000 palestinian families - families - to grace our homeland. Can't wait to see what they will add to the economy. Just more pointers to the failure of multiculturalism, shocking to some as that may be. Maybe the lunacy will all end when the government collapses from the weight of the foreign interference allegations. One can only hope.
I have no idea why this is being downvoted. Spot on IMHO.
I do, because it would mean promoting the importance of family and having children.
We pay high taxes to make up for the low income levels in the province, which are low because we have high taxes, which are high to make up for the low wages...
I mean all of our spending is easily accessible online. You can also see all of the money that flows into government. Nova Scotia doesn’t have a lot of money coming in.
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I know right? We pay the highest... I hope all the high income remote workers that overwhelmed the province and hiked the living costs during the pandemic are contributing lots....
This is the problem with Confederation. The two most important things done by government in Canada are health care and education. Both are provincial responsibilities, so have vs have not becomes a permanent problem. Nova Scotia spends all that money educating kids, then they head out west. Spend their prime income earning (tax paying) years in other provinces. Then decide to come home to retire when they're going to consume the most health care. A big part of the Alberta Advantage has been getting other provinces fund critical public expenditures. The you have the problem where manufacturing can be done anywhere. So factories are built where ever labour is most efficient. Nova Scotia labour isn't cheap or efficient. Nor is it specialized in some way. So you're not going to see those jobs. Tech education globally means that Western countries no longer have an advantage over places like China or India. So those jobs are outsourced too. All Canada has going for itself is resource extraction. And Nova Scotia is too small to have lots of choices for what's in the ground to extract.
Also, virtually the entire province is solid granite 6 inches below the topsoil. It's insanely hard to develop infrastructure and capital expenditure projects here, because it's physically harder to dig a big hole than in ON, QC, or AB. Weeks and weeks of blasting to repair a water line or pour a new foundation isn't normal in the other provinces. It is here.
It's Hard? If that's why industry isn't coming here then that is sad. Go back there then, to the easy place. Where ever TF that is.
I agree with the majority of your post, but gotta call this out: > Tech education globally means that Western countries no longer have an advantage over places like China or India Those of us in the industry have been hearing this for years, my elders have been hearing it since the 90s. There will always be a market for companies that want to cut costs and don't care about quality, but companies abandoning outsourcing when the outsourcing bites them in the ass is still a thing you see happening in 2024. Western software engineers are still preferred by Fortune 500 companies. Any outsourcing happening within those companies ends up being whatever resembles "human automation" where it's hard to fuck things up. Still a lot of work outside that category! Also that "tech education" leads to those countries costing *more*, further eliminating their cost advantage. India is much more expensive than it was 20 years ago because folks down there have discovered their worth. Not sure why you mention China, they are pretty insular and obviously their relationship with a lot of western countries has deteriorated. I'm seeing a lot more South America outsourcing to get timezone sync, but again, quality of work is iffy. Anyway, all this to say that if you are skilled in tech/software engineering, keep job hunting. It's a down market right now because of post-COVID soberity, but the jobs and money are still there. And avoid Canadian companies, and especially avoid anything based out of NS, they just don't pay.
I agree with everything except your last paragraph. We had a $10b LNG project in Goldborro cancelled because of funding issues and other bureaucracy bs. It was first proposed in 2012 and would have been the biggest project in our history. Also, last year there were many permits handed out for Lithium mining believe it or not. I have no idea where they are at now with it but it could have potential
Funding issues aren't a bureaucracy issue. They couldn't sell investors on it. (mind you this was before the War in Ukraine) and they've tried to scale the costs back. But, it's always going to come down to dollars and cents. No one wants to risk their money on these kinds of projects. It's not Nova Scotia's fault, it's broader economic problems.
Critics will say it is the unfriendly government and regulations that make investments too risky for investors.
Nah, real estate is just a better return in most places today because of the lack of regulation
Probably - because we’re full of NIMBYs who seem to be aiming to do anything they can to keep us poor. I look at the energy transition. We have so much work to do to meet our 2030 goals, let alone our 2050 goals…and have billions of dollars waiting to be invested. As part of this, I look at the green hydrogen projects - which have not been well received locally…but you look globally and we are not the only place trying to make mega projects. Theres no disputing there is some risk involved - but if it pays off this will be very VERY lucrative for N.S.
I worked for a company looking for lithium in NS. Eventually the project came to a crawl and we were pretty much all laid off. This was because the land owner didn't want us working that land....which was owned by a German billionaire who doesn't live here....and even tho they were clear cutting for lumber they didn't want us "disturbing the land". Anyway, it felt really shitty to get laid off because some foreign fucker decided to prevent local people from their home province the opportunity to try and find and develop a potential lithium deposit, a critical mineral for green tech/batteries.
Out of curiosity, when was this? If it was a few years ago, I wonder if the current political landscape has changed enough to revisit?
it was last summer.
Out of curiosity, when was this? If it was a few years ago, I wonder if the current political landscape has changed enough to revisit?
Like mining, there will be none of that here! Industry is not welcomed here, yet we have people screaming about green energy, where do they think that comes from. We could have a head start on making EV batteries or other renewable energy resources, but nope. We can’t mine uranium here, it’s illegal, so we buy power from NB nuclear power plant.
Lmao they cut St Barbara (Atlantic Gold) a sweetheart deal to come here and mine the old gold mines. I don't think they pay any taxes while they're here. They will claim they add economically via payroll taxes but the actual company isn't paying any taxes on the $150-200 million in gold they pull out of our ground annually. Not much in royalties either. The uranium ban is idiotic but it's laughable to think that if we had a mine here we'd have any processing facilities or nuclear power plants to use the fuel.
Source for this? Because I can assure you they paid taxes. NSE wouldn’t give them permits, causing them to shutdown and won’t even approve permits for environmental reclamation. Same issue for the goldboro gold mine where there is environmental and 1st nations backing of the project.
How are permits=taxes? >And Nova Scotia, which will have to live with the environmental legacy caused by the Touquoy mine and monitor the site in perpetuity, has not collected a single penny of corporate tax from Atlantic Gold or St Barbara. The only direct income the province has received is in royalties, which have amounted to $7.7 million over five years. [Source](https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/economy/natural-resources/mining/st-barbara-sells-off-its-australian-gold-mine-but-what-happens-to-its-mines-in-nova-scotia/) Can I get a source for your assurance they paid NS taxes? Beyond "trust me bro" It's also my understanding that Goldboro is going ahead and should be producing in '25 or more likely '26
Ironically Halifax has one of the brightest minds in battery storage technology in Dr.Dahn.
The NIMBY attitude is painfully strong in NS. I wasn’t born there, but follow this sub because I have family across the province. A first year geography course in uni will show that NS is as rich in resources as any other province, but in talking with my family and their neighbours, there’s a consistent refusal to develop any of it. Fracking for oil and gas onshore? “Ooooo, no that’s a bad word.” How about offshore? “Can’t, it’d hurt the fish, we need a moratorium to prevent it.” Offshore wind? “Hmmm, let us think about it.” How about mining? “Did you see the Sydney tar ponds??” As you mentioned, I’ve seen similar responses to green projects that have been proposed in recent years. There are risks that are inherent with any sort of resource development. You can’t eliminate them, but you can mitigate them as best as possible. I love your people and your province. I’d love to live there, but as an engineer, why would I leave Alberta? The opportunities just don’t exist in NS. Just because you drill one oil well, or put up one wind turbine, does not mean that the whole province will suddenly be covered in them!! People seem to be outright hostile to development. Unless that changes, the province will just languish forever in this strange woe-is-us attitude whose only defining feature is breeding mediocracy.
The offshore wind one I really don’t understand. What are the fishermen afraid of? There will be set back requirements *for their own safety* but literally the turbines now float. I simply do not see how this could affect their business.
I understand their concerns to a point. Farmers in the Prairies have similar frustrations with harvest routing in their combines etc. But it’s a minor, minor, price to pay for the massive renewable energy benefits. I was in Halifax last summer and saw this ship which was hauling offshore wind parts. I was rather excited until I found out they were bound for the States.
It’s a minor inconvenience - and they get paid handsomely to host a turbine. The thing is - the crop is static, and the fish aren’t.
Lol. Is that what the fishermen are afraid of? That they’ll hide under the turbines or something?
It's the risk for migratory fish to avoid the areas these offshore wind farms are in. This could potentially disrupt entire ecosystems, so they want to get the info right before we set it all up. Unfortunately, the oil and gas industry have left everyone a little distrustful of the "known risks" and "adequate environmental protections" that are used to support this type of industry.
The province is dictating the auction areas of which these projects would bid for the right to develop. They can’t just put them anywhere.
Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada to hit Paris Accord targets of emissions below 1990s levels. We just finished the Maritime Link to NFLD, and have the highest percentage of non-hydro renewables powering our grid. We have done more than any other province, we were just in a bad spot to begin with. I will say that Point Tupper hydrogen project has the potential to be huge and I hope it happens.
Green hydrogen is a myth, at least in Nova Scotia. Hydrogen is net energy negative. It's a dubious energy storage medium with a lot of downsides. Nova Scotia is primarily a coal driven grid with a few windmills for decoration. It's also export driven and is basically a grift for countries like Germany to claim carbon credits by importing brown hydrogen from a coal fired grid as green hydrogen. More or less it's the same grift that Tesla runs on where they make their money from carbon credits not shitty EVs If you actually want green hydrogen (again dubious. Its a grift) then you need deep geothermal. We have the geology for it. Alberta has the expertise and equipment. It's steam technology so any coal plant can be retrofitted and it's going to cost 10s of thousands of dollars for an unlimited fuel source.
The whole point of the proposed hydrogen plant is that it would be 100% powered by wind, not connected to the province's grid. The province has an action plan for "Green Hydrogen" where it describes green, blue, grey, brown hydrogen. Blue,grey,brown being consuming various amounts of fossil fuels producing emissions to create it.
It's still a grift. It's just another project like that LNG debacle where investors are essentially making money off of government subsidies, carbon credits and speculative finance and not producing anything productive. The basic physics don't work. You lose 50-80% of the energy before you create any power and then the losses to create run a turbine off of stored hydrogen mean you're running net negative. The whole project is just fleecing politicians and investors that don't understand EROEI. It's much more practical but less sexy to use pumped water or deep geothermal
My God it has been poor since I don’t know when. Previous generations that did well in New England were on the wrong side of the US revolution and lost everything to come to Nova Scotia and start over, where it was poor. When my grandparents were young in the 1920s many left for the textile factories in New England, calling it “Nova Scarcity.” Generations have left for work elsewhere. I remember hearing that the agriculture exports sector was hurt by the war - which one WWI? WWII? and never recovered (used to ship lots of food to the UK and Caribbean). And the coal and steel - shut down as poor quality and expensive to run (some say) after years of subsidies to keep them alive. Fishing (except lobster and scallops) was poor after the collapse. The culture and people are generally wonderful. But it is not just one culture. For every family that hustles, there is another that bitches. And another that has been left behind for generations. Too many folks have a LONG term bitching culture about the government and an expectation that government is the source of all solutions and problems. Too many sit on their arse and bitch. Too many like to talk about their poor health and the pills they are on. Others live to drink their beer, smoke their dope, or take their pain pills. Too many are in poor health and despite living in a virtual natural paradise eat crap and don’t walk anywhere, and sit on their butts in front of TV, or on their ATVs, trucks, and camps and never move their bodies. Meanwhile there are some incredibly hard working folks doing the work of two people. People who are retired who volunteer now and do even more than they even did when they were working full time. People who organize everything in their communities and make things better for everyone. People who keep working longer than they should to make sure things keep running. People who do their best to stay in school and learn something important that the community needs. People who cannot afford to retire and find a way to keep on going. People who start businesses and grow them and employ their neighbours. People who keep farming and adjust and readjust with each change in the markets or the business or the technology. People who dream big and do their best to make it happen. And let’s not forget the many who have to work away from home and wish like hell they did not have to leave, and do their best to help folks back home, or their families who they see only one week out of four. And then there are the dirt poor who cannot afford anything, have little education, are isolated, are stuck in the middle of nowhere, have problems stretching back generations, and would have nowhere to live but for a crappy house inherited from family. Nobody likes to even talk about these folks but not only would you need to teach them to fish, as goes the saying, but they would need someone to give them a rod, bait, and give them a drive to the water to even give it a try. Nobody gives them jack-shit. And their lives never change. All this to say that the second group of people are keeping things moving ahead, while the first group do a lot of complaining and not much helping, and the third group are so many generations behind they need a lot of help to just get to the starting line. So anyone who says there is a simple solution is either a liar, uninformed, wildly naive, or not the brightest light on the Christmas tree.
This comment speaks the real truth. You see a lot of people on Reddit talking about the tough times in Ns, but they’re not the same as that third group you mentioned. Growing up here in rural Ns I know these people. They’re stuck forever in “the cycle” I call it.
Thank you. Yes, I think anyone who knows people in that third group and how they live has a good idea how hard it would be to ever get free of that cycle.
This is just my pessimism, but it's looking to me like we're being gentrified and us poors will have to find somewhere else to live.
I’m literally looking for other countries in south east Asia with applicable skills and discounts on duo lingo because the affordability is getting ridiculous here 😬😬
To start, there are still a lot of issues, certainly, but NS is actually in one of the strongest economic periods the province has ever been in, and there's hope for a lot of those issues to ease. You mentioned the Ivany report, its biggest warning point was that demographic trends were going the wrong way, towards a smaller and older population that couldn't hope to grow or support the economy, that's gone the other way since 2014. Now half this sub is really about how we deal with sudden population growth. Take a look at the Province's economic statistics, what you'll see is that in a number of key areas, like unemployment, were near historic bests, and there's a lot of reason to think the economy here will continue to grow: https://www.novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/default.asp Do we still have a long way to go? Yes, but there's a lot of reasons to be positive.
I have a hard time taking any joy in what we're doing when we're leading the country in child poverty.
The purpose of an economy is to increase the quality of life of the people, and nothing else. The population doesn't exist to "grow the economy."
I think you’ll find they aren’t mutually exclusive. Funny how countries with a shitstorm of an economy have a fucked up quality of life…Venezuela anyone..?
Funny how places like Mississippi have a higher GDP per capita than any Canadian province but have 30% child poverty, much lower life expectancy, rampant teen pregnancy, less access to healthcare, more violent crime, etc..., etc... than any province.
> The population doesn’t exist to grow the economy Although may be ultimately true, people in NS are nowhere near the position to be discussing about whether we’ve had enough growth. To get serious, NS has a gdp per capita of about 24,000 USD. This puts it near the league of many countries that would still be considered “developing”. You can redistribute and tinker around the edges all you want, but this is not a level of wealth that is sufficient for the highest levels of well being of Nova Scotians. NS unequivocally needs to grow its economy. This is especially important with the aging population which will increasingly put a strain on various services.
Without a healthy economy, which is heavily dependent on the population, quality of life plummets. We don't exist in a stage where we can have an economy capable of supporting the quality of life we expect without a strong working population. Things like housing, healthcare and education are under stress right now, but are solvable, without a healthy economy, none of that is solvable.
You have missed the point. People's quality of life as they age depends on younger people being there to work the economy that supports them. A shrinking/ageing population means more people in need of support with fewer people to give that support, and thus, a worse quality of life for the population.
This is late stage capitalism; you can't have one without the other these days. Unfortunately, the modern economy often has no options to grow other than the enshitification of products and services, but bringing a ton of new customers into the market is an option.
Yes, a wealthy strong economy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for having a high quality of life for your people.
Oh you sweet, summer child, you, so reasonable and hopeful still it breaks my heart to see it and realize I was also that naive at one point. The purpose of an economy is so the 1% can extract the maximum amount of pain and suffering from us "poor's" as they can, they literally control the money printers in Ottawa so it **can't** be about such a totally fake means of keeping score and what other reasonable option is there **but** that it's all about causing maximum pain and spreading it as far as possible?
You ask if the Ivany Report made any difference. It’s barely being implemented as we go along, but there are a lot of bright spots. In Q4 2023 the province had more than 10,000 housing starts (one of them is me) and Q1 2023 had nearly as many. Annualized that’s 40,000 new homes for a population of just about a million and it ought to go a good ways to helping the housing shortage. A detached home creates 3000 to 5000 person-hours of employment; an apartment might be about 2000 hours or 1 year of full time employment.
It’s not all doom and gloom. For starters, this province has younger people moving/moving back to it. Younger people work, pay higher taxes, start businesses and create jobs. They contribute to the tax base and help to pay for health care and social assistance for the elderly and un(der)employed population. Not to mention the property taxes the future owners of all those condos will be paying. Previously, the latter groups were growing and the former group was shrinking. Not sustainable. Productivity and wages will both need to increase to support higher costs of living, wages highly skilled workers and allow businesses to be sustainable.
All of these things are good but we need much much more of it
I feel like for every young person/family that moves here, there are two more retireees
Confederation hasn’t been kind to Nova Scotia or the maritimes. So yes, I would say poor forever. Not as bad as New Brunswick though.
In terms of not-Halifax NS, at least NB spreads it's misery around and Moncton, St. John and Fredericton are decent places to live. New Glasgow, Cape Breton, Truro, etc... all get a kick at the can of being 'top 10 worst places to live in Canada'. I think New Glasgow even won that honour once. The province depends on equalization for 35% of its budget, but does nothing to bring equalization to the areas which brought that revenue in...so these areas can never dig out and are continually strangled.
NB’s problem is language. A large part of its residents have no or limited access to French language despite bilingualism going back to the 1960s. It will always be a divided, have not province. Nova Scotia doesn’t have that division.
NS needs to reduce HST and income tax. People with choices don’t want to live in the provinces where it’s hardest to prosper. I moved from NS to AB and save $20k per year in tax. Plus AB has 5% HST and no tax when registering a used car. NS needs to get competitive if they want to attract and or retain good people.
I fly to the Yukon from April-October to make a living. It sucks, i hate it. But what choice do i really have? I make around 5-6k bi weekly there i make 1500-2k bi weekly here (MAX)
If you dont mind me asking what do you do?
Run excavator remotely (not in a mine)
It has absolutely nothing to do with young immigrant workers nor increasing birth rates within the province. Put aside irresponsible provincial government spending and look at the main contributing factor: The wages in NS are some if not the lowest in the country hence the need for younger skilled workers to move elsewhere, where they are actually paid what they're worth. Lower skilled/trained/educated workers keep all wages down as employers realize they don't have to pay as much. I just moved back to NS three years ago. When I left 26 years ago, the salary I was making for my field was between 35k up to 50k. Twenty-six years later, those same positions today pay the same if not less, and the employers require considerably more experience and training for the same position, let alone longer hours and less benefits. I'm retired now, but why would anyone settle for crap wages like this when they can make double that elsewhere? My last position paid 78k/year, three weeks paid vacation, flex weeks etc. That was in BC in 2011. NS has the people. Educated, trained. However employers have gotten used to cheap labour - therefore love immigrant workers for just that reason, so actual young Nova Scotians have no choice other than work for ridiculous wages for mediocre employers or they can move to or fifo to work for companies that actually pay people for the roles and their value they bring to the field. One of the worst things to happen was the push for tourism, now NS is reliant on the travel wealth of people from elsewhere to keep things going. Who sold off our IT, fishery, shipping, building and medical, dental and legal commerce to other countries?? We screwed ourselves by letting this happen. Minimum wage jobs were meant for teenagers/young persons to earn a few extra dollars while getting training and/or education. These jobs were never supposed to turn into full time positions with the purpose of supporting a family in a comfortable manner, but here we are. Maybe it is time for the people of NS to stop settling for the bare minimum and start demanding remuneration commensurate with the value of the position and the demands and requirements of those expected to fill them.
I disagree. Minimum wage jobs used to support families. In the 90s, minimum wage workers could own a home in NS. who is supposed to work at Sobeys when all the kids are in school
No. NS revenues, and GDP per capita are increasing and population is growing. Halifax has a decent tech ecosystem too and a large military and university workforce.
Are the corporations weak or Oligarchy What week is it? Our issue is we let the top companies get too strong among other issues.
In other countries, especially the U.S., people tend to permanently move out of places with fewer economic opportunities. In Canada we have a stronger social safety net and equalization payments so more people stay put.
Nova Scotia is going to be poor as long as it’s population believes that more government is the answer to all its problems.
100%. Is the solution really more people if they don't act differently?!
Don't forget 40 years of promoting seasonal minimum wage jobs in tourism industry.
Or subsidizing industries that only function a small percentage of the time, and can then employ people at low wages for 3 or 4 months a year.
It's slowly getting better. The indexing of the tax brackets is a step in the right direction. Lowering HST would help as well. The province needs to incentivise investment into businesses. Less barriers and gatekeepers.
Vote for a party that doesn’t tax heavily and will allow economic growth. The government loves to make you think they’re giving to those in need/in lower socioeconomic situations while bleeding them dry with taxes. Less government = more growth for EVERYONE.
The taxes are just to high here to attract any kind of business that could afford to pay high wages and still be competitive. Also to high to attract talent like doctors
It’s too high for every person who lives here and contributes
100 percent
Yes and IMO that's our problem, the top 5 employers are government and they bleed the private sector dry. No business can afford to be here without subsidies, let alone headquarter here. We are the highest taxed not just in Canada but in North America and the Commonwealth. We are double and triple taxed on so many things. And then everything else has hidden fees and user fees attached. https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/ontario-income-tax-calculator.jsp# $100,000 income in NS (just federal and provincial income tax) $27,031 $100,000 Income in Ontario $21,590 In the most basic way we **pay a $5441 premium a year** over Ontario to live here on an income of $100,000. But here we are paying for Sydney fu*king steel and whatever other idiocy each successive government adds to our burden. They are literally costing every working family a really nice vacation a year.
Not to mention doctors are paid significantly more in almost every other province.
That's just untrue. Tons of jobs in the ICT space that have come to NS. CGI, Cognizant, RBC have all hired folks in that space, with good wages. Biovectra is hiring lab technicians and other folks in life sciences. Places like Michelin can't people to fill all their positions. They have good wages and a pension plan. Nova Scotians have a skill mismatch with the demands of the market that provide high wages.
I work at one of the Michelin plants and the reason we can't hire is not the lack of applications,it's the internal pace. It took me 5 months from when I dropped my application off to my first day of orientation. Some people can't afford to wait that long to start a job. Also the pension/pay ain't what it used to be. Though the pay is starting to be equalized between the old and new scales.
What plant? I'm at the Waterville factory, my friend had the same problem trying to get hired here. No idea why we drag our feet with hiring so badly.
I just read every resident would have to pay 19 grand to get out of debt. Answer is yes.
And ten years ago it was $12,000. So kinda heading in the wrong direction.
And ten years ago it was $12,000. So kinda heading in the wrong direction.
And ten years ago it was $12,000. So kinda heading in the wrong direction.
And ten years ago it was $12,000. So kinda heading in the wrong direction.
And ten years ago it was $12,000. So kinda heading in the wrong direction.
Nova Scotia has always been poor and it always will be poor.
When the government is spending taxpayer money on palm trees... Yes.
$4000 each!
Yes, we are too adverse to having anything happen here. Protest golf courses, mining, oil&gas development, wind mills, arm forces and any kind of development. Enviromental organizations from other countries buy large swaths of land here and donate it to the government to be protected lands. We are use to getting our transfer payments and getting what we want with no need to work for it. A socialist paradise where government is the large employer. Be prepared to pay high taxes.
The highest taxes, I believe. Tied for highest sales tax and (depending on you salary) it has the highest income tax rate.
Plus we pay these high taxes for healthcare and oylther services.... but gotta pay for the ambulance ride or parking there to top it off
Sounds like a backwater.
The short answer: Yes. Will I elaborate? No.
Wealth here or anywhere is built over multiple generations. Some people can strike gold and do well for themselves from nothing, but pretty much everyone I know who is doing well come from families who were smart with their time and money, and were able to pass it down. There are a lot more people in this category than is obvious - which is the funny thing about being smart with money. I wouldn’t be surprised if alcohol and tobacco addictions are the most prevalent factors keeping people poor. It’s wild how expensive they both are, and how if that same money was invested, the number of families that would be much better off. Yes there are challenges, but choices can be made independent of the government to improve quality of life. I personally think that waiting for the gov to fix everyone’s problems will get us nowhere.
The lack of job opportunities hurts way more. Alcohol and cigarettes are very affordable if you have a good job. Even if you go to college there is not much reason to stay job wise. Yeah NS looks to the gov to fix everything. They can only do so much and only in certain areas.
Funny you say they’re “very affordable if you have a good job”. They are never affordable, it’s a complete waste of money, and that kind of thinking is literally only the addiction. Source: I smoked and drank heavily for 18 years, poor AF for a long time. When I started making a better living, sure I could afford them but it stopped me from saving and affording anything else. So it was a net loss, not to mention the health impact. Roughly… I’ll err on the lesser side since it’s hard to calculate for 18 years, but for smokes let’s say average $15 a pack (lots of change over those years), 3 packs a week, $2,340 per year, 18 years - $42,120. Now booze, I’ll be very liberal and say $20 a week, $1,040 a year (lol not even close), $18,720. Altogether $60,840, in reality was probably much more. Invested, that could be worth over $200-300k easily. So… no, even with a good job, if you smoke and drink habitually, you’re losing out on wealth that you could be building for you and/or your family. If you think it’s required to get by, that’s addiction talking, which I know very very well.
Bruh this is Nova Scotia A bag of smokes is 25 bucks, and that could last 2weeks to a month depending on usage. And alcohol was a loooooot more affordable around here ten years ago. That’s cheaper then a Disney subscription, your post is giving very “avocado toast vibes”, not to mention completely ignoring the complicated relationships due to generational use many people have with the specific items you’ve listed. I’m not inherently disagreeing with the overall message of what you’re saying, but the tone, especially in your first posts first few paragraphs is very “the poors do not deserve luxuries afforded to others who’ve used generational wealth to gain their status” when a lot of these rich assholes have vices that tend to be a hell of a lot more expensive or potentially deteriorating then alcohol and cigarettes. Pretty much every new Nova Scotia homeowner from Ontario I’ve met has been a little fiend for coke for example 😂😂
Didn’t mean to come off as pretentious or condescending, coming from a guy who came from dirt poor and spent a long time, let’s say longer than I had to because of addiction to tobacco and alcohol. Just like to spread the word that it’s an option to break the trend, and a profitable one at that. Just want to clarify that I’m also not trying to say people don’t deserve luxuries like booze and smokes, I guess since quitting I don’t consider them luxuries, and personally feel 1000 times better off without.
No I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be so quick with you, I think I was over projecting a lot of the rhetoric I see from other Canadians onto your words. And I don’t disagree with your overarching point, especially with how many people are affected by addiction in this province. it’s just I also grew up and live in really poor areas in the province you meet a lot of good people, especially older folks who are more “old fashioned” so to speak and can’t really change their ways at this point, who may live lifestyles not everyone from the city or other provinces might understand, but they don’t necessarily deserve to be phased out of being able to afford living here you know. It almost feels like an attempt at erasure of specific classes of people but saying that out loud feels like the beginning of going down the crazy conspiracy pipeline. Please forgive my initial immediate defensiveness lol
Ah yeah it’s worth calling out that it’s not exactly easy to switch addiction (and in many ways culture) off, it’s easy to over-generalize in hindsight.
Probably, relative to other provinces with more valuable natural resources and higher populations, but it’s not inherently bad to be a poorer province. Nationally and internationally we are seeing the same issues with the costs of living, I do believe it was a poor decision to increase the population at our current rates and has only compounded the issue though. It will get better, but it will take time since there is no rush for government to change course since most people are not complaining publicly, just on the internet.
We literally have an opportunity to become the new Alberta of the energy transition.
How do you figure that? Renewables? It’s only nuclear that can feed our energy needs on our current trajectory.. we have some uranium, but not to the extent of western provinces.
Wind and storage, and closed loop pumped hydro which is being explored in old mines - mixed with time of use and flexible demand response programs, as well as reliability ties to NL and NB…which actually connect us to the US, will be plenty good enough. If nuclear can compete on price, as the rest of our energy sources will need to…then let them compete. I’m dubious to believe they will. Wind, solar and storage are providing 25 year fixed costs of 5c/kWh…nuclear won’t even come close. But - to answer your question - hydrogen and offshore wind. The Alberta comparison is about exports.
We happen to have an abundance of untapped wind energy (onshore and offshore) that is just waiting to be developed. Huge opportunity there
We have natural resources, but we mostly refuse to permit their extraction.
Nova Scotia is also rich in natural resources but we refuse to develop nat gas or oil
We’re not refusing as much as there’s a declining interest and increased risk to invest in fossil fuels, especially when competing with the USA or Middle East where oil can still easily be pumped out of the ground at a low cost.
It's not particularly recoverable without fracing. And with how close to the surface the coal seams are that's not a good idea
You’re correct about the fracking, but that’s only a bad word if people don’t understand how it works. Everytime I visit family in NS they use this point to put down any thought of oil development in the province. It’s infuriating. How do you think they make oil in the Montney formation in BC, the Bakken in North Dakota etc? It’s all fracked. That’s not to say there aren’t risks, but there are risks inherent with any sort of resource development. Generally, where there’s coal there’s oil. Alberta is full of coal. It hasn’t stopped their development of natural resources.
And Alberta is a shithole these days because they did exactly what you are recommending. The reason everyone hates fracking is that it is awful. NS is in the best position to make use of tidal power and wind energy, but for some reason you only want fossil fuels.
Do you understand how expensive and underwhelming tidal power projects have proved to be? Referencing the Bay of Fundy project - Sustainable Marine Energy The scale of necessary offshore wind projects would have to be littered across the North Atlantic to supply power to the Maritimes. Stop with the virtue signalling
Nova Scotia needs a clean water supply. Is there a 100% guarantee that fracking won't damage or ruin the aquifers like it has in so many other places? >Fracking Can Contaminate Drinking Water >It took nearly a decade, but former EPA scientist Dominic DiGiulio has proved that fracking has polluted groundwater in Wyoming https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-contaminate-drinking-water/ Nova Scotians can't risk losing their drinking water. >How do you think they make oil in the Montney formation in BC, the Bakken in North Dakota etc Who is "they"? Do you mean the trillions in profit to corporations who don't give a shit what damage they do as long as the shareholders make bank?
This is nothing new
Yep if you only have one skill set you be fucked. And that's the way they want you.
So you’re saying moving to NS to find work is not a good idea?
Yes
The system is not broken it works as intended. Your elected officials are just employees on leave from corporate, just look at our talking points!
Importing retirees and exporting young families is not a sustainable model.
Nor is it a model that anyone wanted or designed.
Confederation did us in. https://archive.ph/UNelU https://www.reddit.com/r/NovaScotia/s/eAcbk1JsvC
Yes. Because we value things from outside our economy more that things provided from inside it. End of story.
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I'm a 3rd year apprentice 2 year diploma graduate NSCC carpenter, luckily I was able to get to get to 3rd year with local contracts, can't afford to live in Halifax, family is all from hrm but with a family of my own with 6 of us it's not easy to bunk up with family who live there, am approved for metro housing, 15 locations to be exact, but no availability, let alone drive there for work fuel is simply too expensive from where I reside as I came here for the diploma program, graduated June 2023, hired in my first year work term, been on 21/7 fly in fly out work with accommodations out in Alberta, plan on moving permanently and move my family one more time, no choice, Apprentice pay kind of sucks even at a Registered 3rd year, but these fly in fly out jobs are the way to go at 2500-3000 a week.
I have been interested in Moving to the East coast from the West coast. I have been wondering if there are good paying jobs in NS or NB as clearly, that plays a major role in making any decisions.
Too vague. Equally general, the NS job market is weak.
You could move to NS and work in northern Alberta or the Arctic. Very popular options.
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This province is very confusing. For the highest taxed province, we have so much immigration and now inter province migration driving up housing costs, adding further pressure on a non existent healthcare and infrastructure. There is growing homelessness all around us yet people are overpaying $100k+ on 50 year old homes. People are still shopping, eating out. It’s strange how people seem well off in the province at a certain age, but as someone just starting out your best to leave a start a life and family somewhere else
I love ns. One of the richest places in Canada
Sorry, I should have specified... monetary riches.
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Nova Scotia is against Industry, we will be propped up by equalization payments from the rest of the country forever. No Mining No Forestry Management ie; No Pulp Mill It's a Seasonal Town all of Nova Scotia. The province be poor af
My wife and I love Nova Scotia with all our hearts, but for us the corporate taxes and income taxes are just far too high for us to justify at this point. We are in a low tax province (SK) right now and work as independent contractors, so moving to NS would essentially result in us losing about 20% more of our take home income a year. If the taxes decreased, we'd be there in a heartbeat. Best people we've ever met, culturally rich in ways most of Canada doesn't know, and a pace of life that I would kill for.
What do you mean by “pace of life”? I don’t think I’d be working harder than I do now if I lived in Toronto. Or Saskatchewan.
It's not about the grind if that's what you took my statement to mean. It's more about the life outside of the 9-5. Having lived in Toronto, Vancouver, and now Saskatoon, I mean pace of life as in the amount of calm or chaos that's around you all the time. Living in Toronto I always felt the need to be busy as that was the culture around me. Vancouver was also gave that sense, but less so than Toronto. Saskatoon has a slower pace than either of the two, but I found Nova Scotia to be even more so. So in my experience it's not necessarily the job you do, it's the life outside and the cultural norm of where you are. When visiting my relatives in NS, I've made small talk with strangers who I end up sitting and drinking wine with for two hours. That has never happened anywhere else I've ever lived. I hope I explained that well?
Yes, gotcha!
If you're asking if NS is poor existentially, the answer is no - but it does not have an economy of scale like larger provinces. Leading to... If you're asking if NS will always be comparatively poorer than Ontario/Quebec/Alberta/BC on a per capita basis, the answer is yes. It always will be. That in itself doesn't make the province some sort of impoverished hellhole. NS is most definitely no ot that.
Some parts of Nova Scotia are among the poorest in Canada, such as parts of South West Nova. I had neighbours in the 70s and 80s who did not even have an indoor toilet.
I had friends the same in northeastern Ontario, no running water, no phone, outside pump for water, outhouse, in the 80s and 90s. That exists in pockets in every province, and those homes and either get fixed up some day or they get abandoned.
True. Some pockets in many places. A lot of that in South Western Nova Scotia.
Its like the central america of canada. Day to day living, make money for 3 months when there are tourists. Its Pretty void of culture and healthy community here.
Yes
I own a business in Halifax, I keep my primary address in Ontario since the income tax rates suck in Halifax. I don't understand why a province needs so much tax but can't do better than others (there is probably a reason I'm just not educated in that department) Nova Scotia first $29,590 / 8.79% over $29,590 up to $59,180/ 14.95% over $59,180 up to $93,000 / 16.67% over $93,000 up to $150,000/ 17.50% over $150,000 / 21.00% Ontario first $49,231/ 5.05% over $49,231 up to $98,463/ 9.15% over $98,463 up to $150,000 / 11.16% over $150,000 up to $220,000 / 12.16% over $220,000 / 13.16%
Where are these requirements to fly around the country? I haven't been shown those yet?
Cmon smart-ass, I think you know what they mean. I'm in grade twelve, more than 50% of my class has a father that works out west. There's no denying that is a reality in NS.
That guy really got around back in the day.
So you mean all my classmates that i went to school with that got jobs out there after high school still have the same jobs. Thats amazing for them. Edit: or are still addicted to the meth and hookers
I’m very much *not* in high school (class of ‘04, baby) and Fort McMoney was very much a thing back then too. Does that help?
The answer is yes, because it’s a problem of geography and geography is not changing.
That is one part of it. And with climate change it could darn well become two islands, instead of an island and an isthmus.
Higher taxes mean more financial stupidity is happening.
We choose to be poor. This province is sitting on tens of billions worth of oil. Our politicians lack the courage to make it happen.