insight & evidence
Economic policy posts by the Policy Wonks.
By Bernard F. Miller KC, ICD.D Nova Scotia recorded its best GDP growth on record in 2021 — by deliberately not focusing on GDP growth. Here is what that means for the way we measure, report, and govern economic success. In March 1968, Robert F. Kennedy stood before a crowd at the University of Kansas and delivered one of the most enduring critiques of economic measurement ever put to a...
By Bernard F. Miller KC, ICD.D Drucker saw it coming. Rajan gave us the framework. Now Musk and Trump have made the diagnosis impossible to ignore. What we are living through is not a political crisis. It is the price of a fifty-year war on community. In 1994, Peter Drucker published an essay in The Atlantic that reads today less like analysis and more like prophecy. The Age of Social...
A concept from a Harvard Business Review article transformed a stagnant professional services firm. The same logic — put the people who do the work first, and growth follows — may be exactly what Nova Scotia’s economic policy has been missing. By Bernard F. Miller KC, ICD.D | Contributing to A Better Place Sometime around 2009, I was managing partner of a law...
by Peter Nicholson This essay updates a previous update posted June 26, 2025, and a paper of the same title published by the Public Policy Forum in December 2024 ( ). EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Industrial Revolutionary makes the case that today’s unprecedented developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will drive a new era of global innovation and economic growth, comparable to the transformative shifts...
By Peter Nicholson Canada’s economy has a growth problem, and the country is finally starting to notice. As Andrew Coyne recently pointed out, Canada is no longer one of the richest countries on earth. Emphasis was added by the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers, who stated in a March 26th speech that Canada’s continuing stagnant productivity growth has become an...
Lessons for Canada from Nova Scotia’s Experience by Bernie Miller Introduction: Volkswagen and Canada’s Ambition for Leadership in the Green Economy Imagine it is late 2027 and the Volkswagen plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, funded with a $16B federal subsidy, is ready to go into production. There is a grand ceremony. Dr. Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG addresses...
By Bernie Miller Economics and public policy have lacked a unifying, people focused objective. Committing to an overriding objective of promoting opportunities for the well-being of all citizens could be our best economic development policy. This paper is intended to assimilate and generate knowledge about new ways of approaching the question of how to achieve inclusive economic growth and...
Place Based Economic Policy By Bernie Miller Developing economic policy for a region has traditionally tended to follow political, jurisdictional boundaries. Therefore, there was always a Nova Scotia economic development policy – one size fits all. If positive GDP growth were achieved overall, it would be deemed a success. More frequently, if it resulted in low overall growth, a failure. To the...
insight & evidence