aims

About 80,000 cubic meters of fresh water flows out of Canada every second and into the ocean or across the border. Taking some small part of it and selling it for a good price hardly seems high treason. After all, every barrel of oil and pound of zinc Canada produces and sells is gone forever. Yet those businesses are perfectly respectable, while realizing some economic benefit from a properly managed renewable resource like water, is today thought to be profoundly unCanadian.

More young people in Atlantic Canada dropped off the employment insurance (EI) rolls thanks to the federal government's “tightening” of the program's rules in the 1990s, according to a Halifax-based think-tank. As a result, fewer young Atlantic Canadians are choosing seasonal work in the construction, mining, fishing and forestry sectors. Increasing numbers are moving into long-term employment in the managerial, natural sciences and education sectors. And many are staying in high school or going on to post-secondary institutions.

In an op-ed piece in the National Post, AIMS Communication Director Peter Fenwick sets out the findings of the Institute's new paper on the EI reforms of the mid-1990s, Beyond a hard place. He argues that the reforms have encouraged young people in Atlantic Canada to improve their education and to choose jobs with a brighter future than seasonal work. Yet the federal government's roll-back of some of the key aspects of that earlier reform puts that progress at risk.

Employment Insurance reform encouraged education

Here is a brief overview of just some of AIMS' activities and publications for the first two weeks of October 2000

Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm has a solution to his health-care crisis — take tens of millions of dollars from Newfoundland's transfer payments and give it to Nova Scotia. A fine strategy for Nova Scotia, but something that Newfoundland Health Minister Roger Grimes might find a tad unacceptable, says Peter Fenwick in his new Telegram column.

According to a Dalhousie study Nova Scotia's health indicators are worse than those of many other provinces. That, says Dr. Hamm, means Nova Scotia should get more - up to 15 per cent more - in health-care funding from Ottawa to close the "health gap" with the rest of the country. Yet the real disease is poor management of the health-care dollars we're already spending, a fact that comes through clearly when you compare the provinces' health-care performance more carefully than the premier has done.

Former Maine International Trade Center Director Perry Newman and AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley have been discussing ways to improve trade and other links across the international border.

The Canadian aquaculture industry is trapped in a fog of confusion and needs a true champion to pilot the farms of the future onto the world stage. The conference at Brudenell River Resort sponsored by The Canadian Aquaculture Institute and AIMS brought together producers, scientists and policy-makers who were told that while phenomenal growth exists in Canada, opportunities and investment are going elsewhere because of the impediments facing domestic expansion.

Employment Insurance was initially established to support employees when they lost permanent jobs,but it has expanded to meet a myriad of ends. Increasingly it has become a system for supporting seasonal workers between highly seasonal jobs.At one point in the early 1970s workers could receive unemployment benefits after working eight to ten weeks. These benefits would then last for the rest of the year.As long as workers could get a few months work each year they could draw benefits year after year.The whole work/UI cycle was called the 10-42 syndrome.Closely identified with Atlantic Canada,it created a negative stereotype that has clung to the region ever since.