It's easy to talk. People complain about governments, about this government or that government. It seems like the political landscape is changing every four years now. At least in New Brunswick you would have a new premier every four years, or we think we have a new premier in New Brunswick right now. We're not 100% sure, but we think so.
I tell you, it's a tough job being a politician. You folks know that. There are lots of pressures. With all the public communication today in the digital world, everybody has an opinion and everybody's an expert. We say public opinion becomes public policy after a while if we don't have it right.
I think it's quite important, because we see it when we go to Fredericton or to Ottawa and have a defined problem. I tell our folks, “When we go see the government, don't go in just to complain”—because everybody goes to the government, at whatever level, to complain—“Go with some concrete, well-thought-out suggestions, and say, 'Look, this is what we need to do to be competitive' or 'This is the answer.' ”
Everybody can put a political spin on it at some point. There are lots of experts on that, but how do we get the facts? When the facts are right, we'll be successful. This country is built on that.
I'm quite focused on how we help the governments. In the case of New Brunswick, provincially there has been no money. There's a big squeeze on. The bureaucracy gets cut, and when a problem arises, we don't have the resources to really be analytical about what the right thing to do would be. Things get looked at through the political lens rather than the practical lens.