Stainless Steele - Atlantic Business Magazine

PUBLIC POLICY
Stainless
Steele
Nova Scotia’s money man
says his government won’t
lose sight of balanced budget
in its quest for re-election
By Stephen Kimber
“It’s a great day to be a Jets fan,” Graham
Steele beams. It’s shortly before 8 a.m. and
– if this is February 24th – we must be at the
Holiday Inn in Stellarton.
Steele, Nova Scotia’s finance minister, has
come here for a breakfast meeting with the
New Glasgow-Pictou County Chamber of
Commerce. It’s the sixth of nine “dialogue
sessions,” 15 “stakeholder meetings” and
three community group gatherings he is
staging as he criss-crosses the province,
asking Nova Scotians for their input in the
lead-up to his next provincial budget April 3.
Last night at the hotel, Steele did four local
media interviews. Later this morning, on
his way to Port Hawkesbury for a luncheon
session with the Strait Area Chamber of
Commerce, he’ll stop in at CJFX-FM radio in
Antigonish for a sit-down interview with its
news director.
Though the real subjects of all these
sessions are the still-woeful-but-becomingless-so state of the province’s finances
and the important question of how best to
38 | ATLANTIC BUSINESS MAGAZINE | May/June 2012
bring the fiscal state “back to balance” and
better, Graham Steele can’t help but begin
this morning by crowing that his beloved
Winnipeg Jets had squeezed past the Tampa
Bay Lightning the night before, keeping
their flickering NHL playoff hopes alive.
Steele, a Winnipeg native, was a hockeycrazed kid back in the 1970s during the Jets
previous NHL incarnation. When a local
radio station staged a sports trivia contest in
which the prizes were tickets to upcoming
games, Steele would plant himself by the
telephone, surrounded by his collection of
hockey trivia books, and eagerly wait for the
announcer to ask a question. He won so often
he eventually had to disguise his voice and
use other people’s names when he called.
Steele doesn’t mention his trivia prowess
this morning, but few among the three
dozen local business and community leaders
attending would probably be surprised.
There is a nerdy, earnest yet cheerful
obsessiveness to Steele. And he is clearly the
smartest person in any room he is in.
“I’m not here to make a speech,” he says,
easily shifting gears to the matter at hand.
“I’m here to hear what you have to say.”
But then, of course, he makes a speech; his
promised 15-minute Powerpoint presentation
“to lay the groundwork” stretches into 30.
There is a lot to say.
When Nova Scotia’s New Democratic
Party swept into office in June 2009 – the
first time the NDP had ever formed any
sort of government in Atlantic Canada,
let alone won a majority – there were great
expectations, many of them created by party
leader Darrell Dexter’s rosy, read-my-lips,
new-programs-balanced-budget-no-taxincreases mantra. There were just as many
trepidations, fueled not only by exactly
those promises but also, in some quarters,
by the stunning reality that conservative,
mainstream Nova Scotians had actually
elected a “socialist” government.
Once in office, however, the new NDP
government didn’t simply do a 180-degree
turn on the economic promises it had
PORT OF HALIFAX (N.S.)
out “something
he could
with
campaigned on; it threw in a couple of double
THOUGH
BORN
AND
in Winnipeg
2010 cargo:
over
9.5 RAISED
million metric
tonnes, comprised
primarily ofpractical”
containerized
cargo do
(seafood,
two
undergraduate
degrees.
Law school
–
back flips for good measure.
of Scottish
immigrant
parents, Steele
saysHalifax
newsprint,
clothing, manufactured
goods).
handled
435,461 TEUs
(twenty-foot
equivalent
units)formative
in 2010, and
has the capacity
for 1.4 millionwhere
TEUs.he
There
is room
to his
expand
to a 2.5-million
could
follow
fascination
with
The new government – like new
his most
experiences
came during
capacity if needed. father’s year-long
what he calls the “laws of government” –
governments of every stripe these days –
his TEU
pharmacy-professor
seemed an ideal fit. He considered schools
immediately commissioned a consultant’s
sabbaticals
– to Switzerland when he was
Main clients: Twenty-one container shipping lines call here: ACL, AFL, China Shipping, CMA CGM,
in Toronto
and
Halifax,
Dalhousie
report to show how badly the previous
in grade
four
and
North
Carolina
in
grade
COSCO, Eimskip, Hanjin, Hapag Lloyd, K Line, Maersk,
Melfi,
Mitsui
OSK,choosing
Nirint, NSCSA,
NYK,
in Ming
largeand
measure
because “I’d never been
administration had mangled the province’s
11. Discovering
a Europe
where Wilhelmsen,
everyone Yang
Oceanex, OOCL,
TMSI, Wallenius
Zim.
to this part of the country.” His plan, he
finances, creating the mess they were left
didn’t speak English and a North Carolina
Two 70-acre
terminals
as well asadmits,
bulk, breakbulk
terminals
withget
laydown
was to and
get ro/ro
his degree
and
out,
to clean up and, of course, forcing them to
thatFacilities:
wasn’t anything
likecontainer
Manitoba
“opened
areas capable of handling any type of cargo. By 2012, the Port of Halifax will have seven super poston
his
way
to
a
successful
career
somewhere
declare all previous promises null and void.
my panamax
eyes to the
world,”
and
encouraged
his
cranes and deep berths to accommodate the largest ships afloat.
else. He even did an internship at Blake,
The consultants obliged, concluding that,
love of travel.
Future
plans:in
“The
in place
as a keyaNorth
American
Casselsthe&port
Graydon,
powerful
Bay gateway
Street
if nothing changed, the province was on a
His
interest
thefundamentals
wider worldare
was
also to advance
and we
to work
our partners
law firm. to see that vision through to the end.”
collision course with reality. By 2012-13, the
stoked
by will
a continue
Winnipeg
Freewith
Press
paper and stakeholders
– Michele Peveril, spokesperson, Halifax Port Corporation.
But somewhere along the line, he met a
annual deficit would be an unsustainable
route; he says he “managed to read the
fellow student, Tilly Pillay, a South African$1.5 billion while long-term debt would top
whole paper” each day while he folded
born woman whose family had moved to
out at a future-defying $17 billion.
copies for home delivery.
PORT OF BELLEDUNE (N.B.)
Nova Scotia when she was nine. They fell
A follow-up report by a blue-ribbon
”I’m not sure I can explain why now,” he
in love and decided to make Halifax home.
panel
of economic
experts
recommended
allows
with a smile,
the young
Graham
2010 cargo:
total tonnage
was 2.15
million metric tonnes,
comprised
of bulk but
commodities
(such
as
coal, zinc,
wood pellets,
etc.), liquid
and project cargo.
Today, he and Pillay – who practices law
the
government
commit
to bulk
completely
Steele also became a Young Liberal.
with the province’s Justice Department –
eliminating its annual deficits by 2012-13
“Somewhere,” he even has a John Turner
Main clients: NB Power and Xstrata Zinc as well as tenants such as Shaw Resources, S&B Minerals
have two children.
and
“implement
Youth T-shirt from the party’s June 1984
and Groupe
Savoie. tax increases, introduce
“Nova Scotia,” Steele likes to point out,
significant spending restraint measures and
leadership convention.
Modern
equipment:
Eastern growth
Canada Stevedores,
terminal
operators,
consistently
politician-like, “is the place I chose to live.”
focus
more
on economic
to achieve one of Belledune’s
But by then,
he was
on his way
to Oxford
invests
in new equipment, including reach stackers, 150University
tonne capacity
speed
But he didn’t choose what he saw as Nova
this
goal.”
forcrawler
two cranes
yearsandinhighThatcherconveyors.
Scotia’s peculiar brand of “tribal politics.
The man Premier Darrell Dexter charged
era England as a Rhodes Scholar, where
People here voted Liberal or Conservative,
with
PaulBelledune
“Dr. No”Port
Martin
to his
his focusthewould
not benext
on topolitics
with
Futureplaying
plans: “The
Authority
has just increased
land available
or on the
not because of ideas but because of the way
genial,
Jean
Guy”
a partisan
“P”
on new
loftier
ideas We
about
terminalsoptimistic
by 100 per cent;
there“Regular
is now a total
of 88 acres
available as
wellbut
as two
terminals.
plan to usewas
the Graham
new terminals,
the new modular fabrication
facility and be
anpublic
anchoraffairs.”
of the economy in
in which their parents voted, and that went
Chretien
Steele.
“government
and
northern
Newwell.
Brunswick” – Jenna Doucet, director of marketing,
Belledune
Port Authority.
back generations.”
He chose
In 1986,
he returned
to Canada to figure
A
B
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52-member legislature. “There was room for
ideas in the NDP,” Steele explains, insisting
he isn’t “highly partisan, though I can be
when I have to.”
Stephen McNeil chuckles when I quote
Steele’s words to him. “I apologize for
laughing,” Nova Scotia’s Liberal opposition
leader says. “But Graham was highly partisan
in opposition and he’s just as partisan now
that he’s in government.”
As a corporate lawyer in the early nineties,
however, Steele managed to keep his political
involvement low key, even lower after he
joined the provincial Workers’ Compensation
Board as an in-house lawyer in 1994. The last
thing the Board – which was trying to cleanse
its reputation as a refuge for patronage
appointees Job
– needed
was for one of its key
1911-145A
staff toFilebeName
seen1911-145A
as a partisan.
Atlantic Business Journal 4.625x7.125
But
after Steele returned to school for his
Last Modified BW.indd
master
of law degree in 1997, he ramped up
Prev. Users 2-6-2012 2:57 PM
his political activities, campaigning openly
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came within one seat of forming a
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behind-the-scene party jobs, including one
Fonts & Placed
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as director of research.
Steele,
who had
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the
course
work
for
his
master’s
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but not his thesis and had “run out of
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Eileen
O’Connell
died of breast cancer,
Steele won her seat in a bye-election.
Initially, he admits, “I didn’t like
campaigning. I felt like I was bothering
people.” But he soon realized “nothing that
happens on the doorstep is personal. Was
the person indifferent? Were they angry?
You leave the doorstep with a useful piece
of information. Now, it’s one of my favourite
parts of the job. There’s no better way to
spend time.”
Which is one reason why – after he was
appointed finance minister in 2009 – he
was keen to shake up what he saw as an
entrenched pre-budget non-consultation
consultation process. “The minister would
receive six or so interest groups, and then
make a few speeches to the larger chambers
of commerce and call that consultation,”
he explains. “I wanted to do something
different.”
Steele acknowledges there was resistance
– “I shouldn’t say that” – from within the
finance department bureaucracy to his idea
for broader consultation. But he is quick to
describe that first year’s road show, during
which he met with 19 different groups from
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“was about people, about who they knew.
There wasn’t a single word about ideas. I just
sat there for an hour and said not a single
word.”
But as he eventually settled into life in
Nova Scotia in the early 1990s – Steele had
joined Stewart McKelvey, the city’s largest
corporate law firm – he realized he needed
an outlet for his own ideas about government
and public policy. He remembers getting
a flyer in his mailbox one day from his
district’s freshly elected NDP MLA, Robert
Chisholm, announcing a party meeting.
Steele went and, in 1991, joined the NDP. At
the time, the party held just three seats in the
Setup
An incident early in his time in Halifax
helped cement his aversion both to old-style
politics and also to the province’s old-line
political parties. To help make law school
ends meet, Steele had taken a position as a
residence don at the nearby University of
King’s College. One day, the university’s
then-president, John Godfrey, invited
Steele (whose time as a Rhodes Scholar had
given him a certain campus cachet) to the
president’s lodge to chat informally with
two of the province’s best known political
partisans, former Tory MP George Cooper
and soon-to-be Liberal MP Mary Clancy.
“The whole conversation,” Steele recalls,
“
and even hosted a province-wide video
conference session with Acadians, as “the
single best, most enjoyable part of my job and
the part of which I am proudest. I heard from
groups that were never heard before instead
of the same people all the time. It widened
the democratic process.”
Not everyone agrees.
Liberal Opposition leader Stephen
McNeil, for example, who has spoken to
many of the same groups as Steele (he was
scheduled to address the New GlasgowPictou County Chamber the month after the
finance minister) describes Steele’s traveling
road show as a “charade,” based from its
beginnings on contrived numbers and a false
premise designed to lead to a pre-determined
conclusion. “It was, ‘Pick your poison.
Which programs do you want me to cut? Or
which taxes do you want me to increase?’
The government’s real budget plan was set
long before most of those consultations took
place.”
Even some on the left tend to agree.
“We certainly had a serious and engaged
exchange with the minister, and various
officials within the finance department,”
explains Christine Saulnier of the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning
think tank whose “alternate budget”
champions targeted spending and a longer
time frame to balance the budget. “I think he
[Steele] listened, but has framed the problem
and the solutions in a way that precludes our
proposals.”
Perhaps surprisingly, given initial
expectations, business has been happiest
with Steele. When the NDP was first
elected, allows Valerie Payn, the president
of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce,
“some people were quaking in their boots.”
But, she says, business has been generally
satisfied with the NDP’s performance so far,
particularly with Graham Steele.
“Actually, he’s been quite good,” says Payn,
who has worked with finance ministers
from all parties during her 20 years at the
I didn’t like campaigning. I felt like I was
bothering people.” But he soon realized
“nothing that happens on the doorstep
is personal. Was the person indifferent?
Were they angry? You leave the doorstep
with a useful piece of information. Now,
it’s one of my favourite parts of the job.
There’s no better way to spend time.
”
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16 | ATLANTIC BUSINESS MAGAZINE | January/February 2012
plans? If you ask Steele to name one new,
innovative
idea Communications
he picked up during
plorenet
Inc.,the
a
consultation
process,
he demurs.company,
“It’s not
Woodstock,
N.B.-based
aboutsent
coming
up withonsome
one has
ViaSat-1
its idea
way no
aboard
a
ever
heard
of,”
he
tells
me.
“It’s
about
giving
Proton rocket from a site in Kazakhstan
people
the October.
chance to A
be second
heard, tolaunch
be part is
of
this
past
the process.”
already
planned. Together, these satellites
also, to be allow
fair, about
the
willIt isreportedly
for shaping
previously
debate.
unavailable
speed and bandwidth to rural,
remote areas of Canada.
According to Industry Canada, roughly
“THIS
THEofTHIRD
YEAR of
our four-year
94
perIScent
Canadian
households
in
‘Back had
to access
Balance’
program,” connections
Steele tells
2009
to broadband
his local terrestrial
business audience
thisBut
morning,
through
networks.
while
“and the
third were
year that
been remote
back to
urban
centres
wellI’ve
served,
Pictou County
as part were
of our
sections
of the country
not.pre-budget
Today, as
consultations.”
much
as 22 per cent of rural households
year, broadband
in addition connectivity
to the face-to-face
areThis
without
and
the
benefits
provides.
sessions,
theitfinance
department has gone
According
study you-be-theby SANE
online
with toana recent
interactive,
Consulting
Inc., an
Alberta-based
system
finance-minister
website
(backtobalance.ca)
analysis
network
engineering
that allows and
voters to
tinker with
everything
firm:
“High-speed
broadband
lays the
from lowering
the HST
to cutting payments
foundation
increasing taxes
productivity
to doctors for
to increasing
on the
and
stimulating
economic
wealthy
– and see
instantlydevelopment.”
the impact on
report
“With
theMoreover,
province’s the
bottom
line. states,
By budget
day,
better
connectedness,
people
have budget
better
3:57
thePMsite
had received 575
website
access
to distant friends and family, more
submissions.
education
andyear
work
and start
oftenwith
the
“The first
weoptions
said, ‘let’s
on-demand
nature
of
broadband
allows
the facts,’” Steele explains. “We said to
people
better
take
control
ofLet’s
their lives,
people, to
‘Look,
this
can’t
go on.
look at
to
and Where’s
play according
to their own
thework
options.
the consensus?’”
That
schedules.”
shaped the province’s own plan to eliminate
humble
theFrom
deficitits
in four
years, home
which isinon rural
track
New
Brunswick,
Xplorenet
has broadly
been
and which
Steele claims
is still
quietly
cornering
the market
forquestions
remote
supported
by the public.
The key
connectivity
in
recent
years,
having
for this year, he says to his audience
this
purchased
100
per
cent
of
the
Canadian
morning: “Should we continue to stick to the
capacity
ofwhat
something
called the Ka band.
plan? And
comes after?”
In What
an interview
with
CBCtempted
last fall,
comes after, onethe
is also
to
company
CEO
John
Maduri
said,
“By
ask, for Graham Steele, now Nova Scotia’s
the end of 2012, we’re going to be in a
most powerful politician after Darrell Dexter?
position to say that 100 per cent of Canada
Does he have higher political ambitions,
is covered with fast, reliable, high-quality
perhaps to be premier himself? His answer
broadband.”
is quick – and clear. “I know myself and I’m
The satellite launch coincided with
not capable of political leadership, the kind
Xplorenet’s completion of a 4G ground
of leadership that articulates a vision and can
station near Fort McMurray, Alberta.
inspire people,” he tells me later. “My ability
“As Europe, the U.K. and the U.S. have
is to work in a supporting role to those true
shown, the only practical way to get
political leaders and help them achieve that
real broadband to everyone, regardless
vision.”
of
location, is via satellite,” said senior
Which is whatBill
he’sMacdonald.
doing today. “And 4G
vice-president
Standing
in
front
of hisinaudience
satellite is a game-changer
terms ofthis
its
morning
wearing
a
wireless
headset
ability to deliver speed and capacity.”
microphone, Steele, more professor
than
—Alec Bruce
politician, employs a series of colorful
X
Halifax: 422-6290 Moncton: 855-0855
Toll Free 1-800-667-8468
Canadian
Condominium
Institute
Xplorenet
your facts.” promises satellite
The larger
perhaps is, did the
launch
will question
bring internet
consultations
change
any
of Steele’s budget
service down to earth
charts and graphs to highlight his own
government’s successes at managing
expenditures – there is no mention of his
own party’s previous election promises – and
lay out what he sees as the possibilities and
perils moving forward.
Steele’s success can be measured in many
ways, not least by the fact he’s managed to
increase the province’s HST by two per cent,
impose across-the-board budget cuts on
school boards, rein in spending by health
districts and hold most public sector wage
increases to one per cent – without provoking
the kind of public outrage one might have
expected. So far, at least.
Graham Steele has, without question,
shaped the debate.
At the same time, thanks to a combination
of cutting departmental spending and the
good fortune of continuing low interest
rates, he’s managed to reduce – shades of
Paul Martin – this year’s projected deficit
of $390 million to “only” $261 million. The
goal continues to be to balance the budget in
2013-14.
Which will, of course, just happen to
coincide with the end of the NDP’s first
mandate.
That is the inevitable point where a
government’s policy of restraint inevitably
meets a political party’s prospects for reelection. Nova Scotia’s NDP government
wouldn’t be the first to squander four years
of belt tightening and budget balancing in an
orgy of pre-election spending.
Graham Steele is careful when I ask if
that will happen with his government. “It’s
an interesting question,” he allows. “And I
guess the proof will be in the pudding. But
I don’t think so.”
He says the fact most Nova Scotians have
bought into his government’s back to balance
plan for the past three years means they
“would look dimly on a government that does
one thing for three years and then changes
course in the fourth year. You can earn more
respect by being steady, meaning being
steady all the time; thoughtful, meaning
thoughtful all the time; and disciplined,
meaning being disciplined all the time.”
If his colleagues do become tempted
to begin paving everything that moves,
he adds, “all they need to do is remember
what happened to the last government in
Nova Scotia.” That Tory government lost
office in spite of attempting to “put icing
on everyone’s cake [in the 2009 election]. If
that method worked, they would have been
returned to office with a huge majority. But
they weren’t – because that’s not what people
Get
No matter what – no matter where.
want, not what they expect from us.”
The proof will be in the pudding. And the
icing.
ON APRIL 2, 2012, the night before Graham
Steele was to deliver his budget, Premier
Darrell Dexter pre-empted his finance
minister with the good news that, starting
in July 2014, the province would begin
rolling back the much-loathed two per cent
increase in the HST it had tacked on in
2010.
The next day, Steele formally announced
the province was already doing so well he
had been able to lard in some immediate,
if modest tax relief. His budget increased
non-refundable personal income tax credits,
hiked the affordable living tax credit, cut the
small business tax rate and eliminated the
large corporations tax. Steele even slightly
reduced a previously announced three per
cent reduction in health care spending.
And this year’s projected $211-million
deficit, he said, is still on track to become
a $15-million surplus next year. “With
continued discipline on the spending front,
some improvements in revenues, and
smart, sensible decisions, we’re on target.”
Icing with your pudding? | ABM
to
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