Unglamorous answers

MUCH OF THE MARITIMES LIES IN economic ruins. In May, a Conference Board of Canada report gave New Brunswick and Nova Scotia a “D” grade for economic performance. Things seem to go from bad to worse.

One response to the economic crisis is to hang on desperately to dying legacy industries. The Northern Pulp Mill in Pictou County, N.S., dramatically exceeds emission limits for noxious chemicals, but the government dithers about what to do, knowing that hundreds of jobs will be lost if the mill is shut down.

And, faced with a collapsing tourist industry in the southwestern part of the province, the same government revived the Yarmouth ferry this year by lending money to the ferry’s independent operator, only to see monies that were supposed to last seven years disappear in two months as hoped-for passengers failed to show up.

Another approach to the fiscal calamity is to propose “magic bullet” solutions with a fairy-tale quality. Can the abandoned Bowater mill in Nova Scotia’s Queens County be used to develop a new method of storing energy using compressed air, a method invented and promoted by a 27-year-old PhD dropout?

Meanwhile, a low-tech and unglamorous answer to this huge problem is largely being ignored. Toronto’s Bay Street and other Canadian professional and financial centres are jammed with support staff. These employees are unhappy. They can barely afford decent housing. They face backbreaking commutes from far-off suburbs. They experience only the disadvantages of a big city – traffic, congestion, noise and a lack of civility. They don’t go to the opera. Their employers are unhappy as well, because support staff are working in very expensive office real estate, increasing overhead that otherwise would be profit for proprietors.

In an age of modern communications, many employees can work anywhere. A back office could just as easily be in Liverpool, N.S., as on Bay Street or Howe Street. Accounting clerks, paralegals, reviewers of documents, keepers of records, doers of due diligence, processors of words – all of them could do their work in a country town. An office in such a place would cost a fraction of an establishment in a big city. Employees could live a 10-minute walk from work in a spacious house that costs far less than a row house in Whitby, Ont. In the summertime, these workers could go fishing or sailing after work. Everyone – employee and employer alike – would be happy.

One Toronto law firm, Torys LLP, has adopted a version of this idea. In October, that firm will open a legal-services centre in Halifax to provide “essential corporate services, including due diligence, contract review and corporate reorganization.” The centre will be staffed with junior lawyers and, the firm insists, it will be an “innovation incubator” and not a back office. Torys says the centre will be more than a place it can send Bay Street work to be done more cheaply. But, despite the rhetoric, cutting costs has to be a major subtext.

Call it “nearshoring” or “insourcing” or whatever you like. This strategy seems to be a much better way to tackle economic and employment woes than maintaining an antiquated pulp mill spewing particulates into the atmosphere.