Atlantic Canada must be told ‘no,’ or it will continue to decline

By David MacKinnon and Marco Navarro-Genie

Even a brief glance at the economies of the Atlantic provinces in early 2016 indicates that a time of reckoning is at hand. Deficits are growing and threaten to become solvency crises. Regional outmigration has slowed down but continues. Remittances from western Canada are almost certainly falling rapidly.

For these reasons, it is time to consider how to rescue Atlantic Canada from the disastrous consequences of the large subsidies that have been provided to them for 50 years and are one of the principal causes of the difficulties currently being experienced. They are “the help that hurts” in the words of one regional commentator.

These subsidies have come in the form of equalization, benefits from Employment Insurance (EI) that are much easier to access than in other provinces, disproportionate public employment far beyond the levels required to serve local populations, and the many subsidies targeted at this region incorporated in federal oper…