One thing about John Risley: He's never boring. Over 35 years, he has built a fishery company, Clearwater Seafoods, through some stormy times, including, most recently, a refinancing breakdown spurred by the credit crunch. The crisis was resolved when two federal Crown corporations and the Nova Scotia government stepped up with critical loans. Now, he must also do business with Nova Scotia's newly elected NDP government. Through it all, Mr. Risley remains a forceful commentator on public policy, including the state of health care in Atlantic Canada.
W hat will an NDP government in Nova Scotia mean for you ?
The new premier-elect, Darrell Dexter, seems to be quite intelligent, a good listener. He seems to understand now is not the time for all sorts of expensive new socially oriented programs. I am comforted by that.
But I'm not sure what sort of bench strength there is in the NDP. Because they have never been in government, there is nobody with any experience.
My other concern is the kind of thing that [U.S. President Barack] Obama has brought to his administration – silly pieces of legislation arising out of obligations to those people who supported you for a very long time. The union movement in Nova Scotia has been behind the NDP for decades and decades. You worry about the extent they will want to change labour legislation and make it more expensive to do business in Nova Scotia.
W ould that change your operations ?
To the extent it made it more expensive to do business in Nova Scotia. We would have to reflect on it and say: “What can we do to remove the number of jobs we have in Nova Scotia, either by transplanting them to somewhere else or replacing them with technology?”
I don't want people to think that's a threat and I hope there is going to be an opportunity to sit down and work with this chap and his government. Let's have a reasonable discussion.
Business has done well under NDP provincial governments elsewhere, and I think everybody has learned, including [former Ontario premier] Bob Rae from his own mistakes. Hopefully Darrell Dexter will have learned as well.
W hat would you advise the new Nova Scotia premier ?
We've got to hit the nail on the head and we've got to start with those areas that will bite us the hardest. Health care is a terrible problem – in Nova Scotia, as elsewhere. It is the largest part of the budget, it is growing faster than any other area, and it is going to eat us alive. We need the political will to stand up and say we cannot continue to do what we have been doing. We've got to have some changes here.
We're going to keep the universality aspect absolutely sacrosanct. But we have to figure out how to do business more efficiently and get more value for money.
A t the recent East Coast Connected summit in Toronto, you had some examples .
On the preventive side, we can do some simple things. Why don't we have a more broad-based nutritional education program in schools when we have huge obesity and diabetes problems in the population? Why are we selling junk food in hospital cafeterias? Why can you go into a hospital cafeteria and buy French-fried potatoes? It's ridiculous, crazy, we've got to stop it.
You shouldn't be able to buy soft drinks in hospitals. Or if you do, tax them, and take the tax revenue and buy down the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables.
I s the rising Canadian dollar devastating for you ?
The first problem is that in this credit environment, it is more difficult to hedge. Banks are making it more expensive and imposing much more rigid conditions. So your ability to protect yourself from these movements in foreign exchange are more expensive and/or less available – and for small companies, almost not available.
The second problem is the pace of change. The moves we've seen over the last couple of months have been tremendous, from a low of $1.30 Canadian [per U.S. dollar] to a high of $1.08. That speed is dramatic with such huge movements. It is almost impossible to react in the marketplace and keep up with that pace of change.
