New Brunswick head of government Blaine Higgs
Economy
As of October 2017, seasonally adjusted employment is 73,400 for the goods-producing sector and 280,900 for the services-producing sector. Those in the goods-producing industries are mostly employed in manufacturing or construction, while those in services work in social assistance, trades, and health care. A large portion of the economy is controlled by the Irving Group of Companies, which consists of the holdings of the family of K. C. Irving. The companies have significant holdings in agriculture, forestry, food processing, freight transport (including railways and trucking), media, oil, and shipbuilding.The United States is the province's largest export market, accounting for 92% of a foreign trade valued in 2014 at almost $13 billion, with refined petroleum making up 63% of that, followed by seafood products, pulp, paper and sawmill products and non-metallic minerals (chiefly potash). The value of exports, mostly to the United States, was $1.6 billion in 2016. About half of that came from lobster. Other products include salmon, crab, and herring. In 2015, spending on non-resident tourism in New Brunswick was $441 million, which provided $87 million in tax revenue.The influence of the Irving family (owners of Canada's largest refinery, vast farms and forest estates, newspapers, numerous sawmills and paper mills, a fleet of boats and trucks, or a rail network) on New Brunswick is such that the province is sometimes described as being subject to a form of economic feudalism. In 2016, the 200 or so companies it controls gave it about $10 billion in capital.The group's activities are supported by the authorities through numerous tax exemptions and the payment of subsidies, notably through the Renewable Energy Purchase Program for Large Industry. The province has also progressively handed over the management of the public sector forestry assets to the Irving Group, regularly lowering standards. In 2014, the latter reduced the size of buffer zones between forests and human settlements, allowed more clear-cutting, increased the planned production volume and reduced the proportion of protected areas from 31% to 22%.The family owns all of the province's English-language newspapers. It also owns several local radio and television stations. For academic Alain Deneault, "the conflicts of interest that arise from this situation seem caricatural: the group's media essentially echo the positions of the Irving family in all the fields of social and industrial life in which it is involved." The information transmitted by the group and disseminated by the press is sometimes questioned (notably in the fall of 2018, during an explosion at the Saint John refinery), but few public officials, professors and members of parliament carry denunciations, as the family's financial contributions to universities and political parties provide it with leverage.Biologists, academics and Eilish Cleary, the province's former head of public health, have reported being subjected to intense pressure (including dismissal in Cleary's case) while analyzing the impact of the company's pesticides and its opaque forest management. Since the 1970s, every premier in the province has been elected with the support of Irving. Blaine Higgs, premier since November 2018, is a former executive of the group. According to journalist Michel Cormier: "We might be able to win an election without Irving's tacit support, but we could hardly aspire to power if he decided to openly oppose it."
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