Grits’ grad subsidy won’t fix underlying issue

To the editor, I read Economic and Rural Development Minister Michel Samson’s recent letter to the editor about the provincial government’s new Graduate to Opportunity program (New incentive to hire new graduates launched, Feb. 14).

This new jobs program undermines the Ivany report’s findings and the education minister’s recent announcement on education reforms. Education Minister Karen Casey is going to overhaul education outcomes as soon as possible because education, trades knowledge and skills are the guts of new job creation in Nova Scotia — not new subsidies.

I am very disappointed by Premier Stephen McNeil’s approval of a jobs subsidy to be administered by his Department of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism.

This program will create new debt, for it is merely more of the same unaccountable, politicized spending that provincial politicians have used for years to get elected and re-elected.

Such unmeasured and underreported subsidies have always resulted in increased provincial debt, taxes on current and yet-tobe born generations, and a failure to produce the number of new market-supported jobs that politicians have forecast for Nova Scotia.

Our citizens are highly taxed. And our province is heavily indebted. Why? Well, our education system hasn’t produced the pools of knowledge and skills that employ- ers moving into higher-level applications need in order to hire in Nova Scotia. That’s why we’ve lost 20,000 mostly young potential taxpayers in the last 20 years.

For years, Nova Scotia’s measured student outcomes have shown the lack of knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for competitive, market-supported work.

Since Samson’s high-cost subsidies won’t attract employers who are upgrading their businesses or need higher levels of knowledge and skills when they are starting up, 1,000 potential taxpayers will continue to leave annually.

New subsidies won’t fix our underlying problem, which is a dearth of jobs that pay more to people who produce higher-level outcomes.

Jim Peers

Sydney