Moncton is once again searching for a vision.

It’s not clear whether the search is for an architectural vision, a development vision or an economic vision. In my view, the vision should be all encompassing and start with the amalgamation of Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe.

With amalgamation, we could focus on the river as the visual centrepiece for development. That could lead to an opening of the causeway, new parkland development and perhaps a third bridge from Champlain Mall to East Gunningsville, in the Town of Riverview.

On the commercial side we’re already looking at new downtown hotels and perhaps a convention-centre. There’s talk of a football stadium. Indeed one may have been announced by the time you read this column. Maybe we should bring the Coliseum downtown. It could serve as a hockey arena, entertainment centre and a trade show facility much like the Metro Centre in downtown Halifax.

We have a beautiful train station hidden behind a tired old office building and a grungy parking lot. Maybe we should loop Main Street from Vaughn Harvey in behind Highfield Square to make the station more visible.

Maybe we should be connecting the rail line to the airport and running commuter rail cars between Salisbury, downtown Moncton, the airport and Shediac. Maybe we should move the bus terminal to the airport and bring people downtown by rail. That would make a terrific environmental statement.

A vision for Moncton should have an education and research component. Maybe we should create an education cluster with community colleges, universities and innovative research centres. Maybe we should have a school of medicine at the University of Moncton to complement its law school, business school and a school of science and engineering. Maybe we should merge the two hospitals into one super ‘bilingual’ teaching and research hospital.

A vision should celebrate the heritage of Moncton. Building codes and zoning laws should require adherence to building design themes that recognize our history but push us towards the future. At the same time we should rid the City of some of its ugly 1970s ‘box’ buildings.

Moncton needs to see itself as the business, economic and cultural centre of Atlantic Canada. We have the location but we need to upgrade the quality of our main streets and our connecting highways. We need to add bridges and overpasses at key intersections.

We need to bring architectural character to social and commercial structures like the Dieppe farmers’ market. It’s clearly a happening place but the building has no character (see the Saint John Market or Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market or Vancouver’s Granville Market). Vendors and the crush of people give life to the market. That life should be used to create a reflective architectural jewel.

All great cities have a centre and a visual focal point. Most are positioned on a great waterway, a river or a port. We have a near-dead river at our doorstep. That has to be resuscitated. We need a port. We have to link with Shediac.

We have a Main Street but it’s more like a strip mall than a city centre. We have two major retail destinations but neither throws off the visual vibrations that lift a retail complex above the sum of its parts.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re great business generators but they don’t meet the test of visionary development. We have an excellent Coliseum facility but it’s badly sited and contributes little to the commercial prosperity of downtown Moncton.

Greater Moncton has all the elements of a great city – people, culture, transportation, accessibility, a vibrant business community, central location, golf courses, recreation centres, nearby beaches, universities, hospitals, theatre, restaurants, pubs and an international airport but it has no coherent downtown. It has no cohesion as a community. The irony is that few Canadian cities have the potential of Moncton to link economic opportunity with lifestyle.

In my vision, the city should be visually defined by three things: the river front, wide boulevards and architecture. Think of it as a three sided Roman coliseum where all eyes look down on the gladiators. Development would conform to an architectural theme that would create a unique visual impression of Moncton perhaps in the image of a tiny corner of France and the UK.

Four lane boulevards would follow both sides of the river. On the north side of the boulevard, overlooking the river could be your business centre, your coliseum, your hotels and convention-centres. A second boulevard might wind in behind Highfield Square from Vaughn Harvey, then north through the bus terminal to Queen Street and east to Lewis Street before connecting with the waterfront boulevard and traveling east and south through Dieppe.

Main Street, as we know it between Lutz and Botsford should become a pedestrian walkway marked by trees, grass, cobblestone-walks, restaurants and shops. Highfield Square and adjacent buildings and parking lots should become parkland to frame the train station, perhaps with some medium rise commercial development at the eastern end of the parking lot.

A super-hospital could be built on the site of Champlain Mall and the Mall could be moved to the Dieppe Industrial Park. The Community College, Atlantic Baptist University and Mount Allison University would be sited within walking distance of the University of Moncton to create a centre of human excellence that would move Moncton (and New Brunswick) to the forefront of science and innovation.

In a perfect world, we could do all of this and more.

It would only take public will and money – the all illusive buck that makes the world turn.

Imagine what could be done with just five percent of the Iraqi reconstruction budget. Pie-in-the-sky yes but that’s how “visions” get started. Let’s get on with ours.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and business owner operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic.

Nearly eight weeks ago, Canadians elected, albeit tentatively a Conservative Government.

Early stumbles by the Party’s leadership in respect to Cabinet appointments and ethics commissioners have caused some to believe that life for this government may be shorter than longer.

The result is that a plethora of potential leadership candidates for the Opposition Liberals are dipping their feet in the water to determine what kind of support they might have at a leadership convention expected some time this fall or early in 2007. They range from former Ontario NDP Premier Bob Ray to new-borns from the Progressive Conservative Party to a dozen or so Liberal members of Parliament.

Mr. Harper’s Afghanistan trip earlier this week, complete with photo-ops was designed to lift him above the pedantic of domestic affairs and to generate support for Canada’s military and humanitarian role in that far away land. It ignored the fact Canada went to Afghanistan as a sop to the Americans for not joining their invasion of Iraq.

Regardless of the reason for going, the legitimacy of Canada’s “mission” seems to have proven itself even if there is no reasonable expectation of success in the near term. That does not mean that members of Parliament should be denied the right to debate the merits of a long-term stay in Afghanistan (Harper).

The positive images created by the Afghan trip served Mr. Harper well but he still has to deal with the domestic realities of childcare, the incremental commercialization of healthcare in Quebec and Alberta, the financing of GST cuts, resolution of the so-called fiscal imbalance with the provinces and other hot-button issues. Unfortunately, his clampdown on public communications by bureaucrats and cabinet ministers, as reported two days ago appears the antithesis of his Afghan media success.

A minority government has no control over its future.

Even with an agenda, reliance on opposition parties (particularly the Bloc Quebecois) for survival is no guarantee of continued existence. The Liberals need at least a year to sort out their policies, future vision and leadership so they are not likely to force an early election unless forced to on a matter of principle.

In the event of an early election, the Liberals would be leaderless. Paul Martin has ruled out a comeback so interim leader Bill Graham would be in the driver’s seat. It’s unlikely the Party could win with Graham but there are precedents for the election of a leaderless party.

The national media has identified fifteen potential leadership candidates for the Liberal Party. Doug Fisher, Senior Parliamentary Analyst and Journalist for the Sun Newspaper Group ranks fourteen of the potential candidates on the basis of age, intelligence, education, linguistic fluency, political experience and record of accomplishment. He puts Michael Ignatieff (Harvard academic) at the top and opines that Frank McKenna and John Manley would be number two and three respectively if they reversed themselves and entered the race.

In Fisher’s ranking, there was one Atlantic Canadian and that was local MP, Dominic LeBlanc.

Fisher ranked him thirteenth out of fourteen (does not include McKenna or Manley). While Fisher acknowledges LeBlanc’s credentials in terms of age, good looks, French/English proficiency and political experience he pans him for a lack of “heft and craft”. That may be a little harsh.

Mr. Leblanc has been an excellent Member of Parliament for Beausejour. He’s done much to improve Canada’s Employment Insurance Program and helped steer significant economic development to his riding of Beausejour. He has served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defense.

I’m told he did an outstanding job as Assistant House Leader during Paul Martin’s tenure as Prime Minister. But none of this makes him a national figure and none of this gives us a glimpse into his character or the strength and development of his ideas.

There is no question he has the intellectual, academic and personal credentials to one day become a national leader but today, he’s largely an unknown. There are some who are pushing him hard to be a candidate for the leadership but I would advise him to wait. He has family responsibilities that will tie him to New Brunswick for the next few years. He needs time to grow his political experience, time to crystallize the ideas that would form the basis for his vision of Canada.

Dominic LeBlanc has been handed a wonderful opportunity. In the next Parliament, he will be the Opposition critic for International Trade. That position will provide him with the chance to become expert on international trade issues and export development.

It will give him a first hand view of the issues surrounding the softwood lumber dispute and the challenges of border crossing. It will pit him head to head with one of the most powerful ministers in Stephen Harper’s cabinet. It will give him a chance to earn the credentials that a few short years in Parliament have not given him.

Mr. LeBlanc has the chutzpah to one day become Prime Minister of Canada. He has the intelligence, the personality, the age, the language proficiency and the political savvy that Canadians would want in their Prime Minister but he needs to develop and hone his ideas and he needs to prove his fettle under fire before Canadians will give him the chance.

It might be helpful if Dominic could spend a few years under the tutelage of people like Bill Graham or Michael Ignatieff (Harvard professor, world-class journalist and potential leadership candidate) before he jumps into the leadership ring. At the very least, he needs to surround himself with modern day, liberal policy wonks to help him work through his ideas.

Doug Fisher may have done LeBlanc a service by giving him pause to reflect on his “heft and his craft”.

In the recent federal election, the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper said in its platform document that “A Conservative government will, in conjunction with the provinces allow for a mix of public and private healthcare delivery, as long as health care remains publicly funded and universally accessible.”

In June 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on private health insurance in Quebec. In a 4-3 ruling, the high court struck down Quebec’s ban on private health insurance for medically necessary services, saying the ban violated guarantees of life and personal security under the Quebec Charter of Rights.

The 1984 Canada Health Act, passed unanimously by Parliament, sets out the conditions that permit federal transfers of healthcare funds to the provinces. The terms include no extra billing for insured health services, no user fees, portability within Canada and access to all medically necessary services provided by hospitals and doctors without financial or other barriers to access.

In accordance with the Act, each province or territory is required to operate a not-for-profit public insurance plan to fund healthcare services. The Act requires dollar-for-dollar penalties if a province or territory should allow extra billing or user charges. The intent is to maintain national healthcare standards and to ensure universal access to health care services.

Under the Canadian Constitution, health care is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. The provinces have the sole constitutional right to make laws regarding health care. Federal participation stems from its spending power and the billions of dollars the Government of Canada contributes every year to provincial health care programs.

In early February, the Quebec Government introduced healthcare reform proposals in response to the Supreme Court decision on private health insurance. The proposals would maintain public sector financing of the healthcare system but open the door to private funding and private sector service delivery. Doctors could work in the private sector but they would have to first remove themselves from the public system.

The Quebec Government’s insurance plan would pay for patients to have surgery in private clinics in the province or anywhere in North America if the public system could not accommodate their needs within six to nine months of a specialist’s diagnosis. Stephen Harper has endorsed this proposal and has suggested that it become a model for all of Canada.

Two weeks following the Quebec proposals, Ralph Klein, Premier of Alberta introduced a third option for Alberta. The Klein option would permit doctors to work in both the public and the private healthcare system. It would permit private financing of non-government delivery of services. People would be allowed to pay for faster access to essential services.

Picture this scenario: a surgeon who works four hours a day in the public system takes the afternoon off to perform surgeries in a private clinic or in a section of the hospital reserved for private practice. In the morning, he or she would treat patients who are at the back end of a year long waiting list. In the afternoon, he or she would treat patients who had been on the waiting list for just a few weeks.

The condition of morning patients, hobbled by a twelve month (more or less) waiting period would likely have deteriorated from the time of diagnosis to operation. The condition of afternoon patients would be much better because the wait from diagnosis to treatment would be much shorter – the likely result: fewer complications, better outcomes and shorter recovery times for the afternoon patients.

Good news for those who can afford to pay. Good news for the doctors who can charge a premium for their afternoon services.

The Alberta model would create a two-tier revenue stream for the doctors and a two-tier delivery system for patients. People with money could jump the waiting queue for surgical procedures. People dependent on the public system would be relegated to long-term waiting periods for surgical procedures.

If the Klein option becomes reality, the Canada Health Act would penalize Alberta by holding back federal healthcare funding but the oil-rich province could afford the loss. New Brunswick could not.

If Alberta defies the Canada Health Act and sets up its two-tiered system, the Province will require more doctors and nurses. When you siphon off publicly paid practitioners to a private system, even if it’s only part time, you reduce the numbers available to the public system.

If that happened in Alberta, it would trigger a major out-of-province recruitment program. Imagine an Alberta doctor/nurse crusade in Atlantic Canada promising major increases in personal income if they would move to Alberta. The invitation would be hard to resist, especially for youngest and brightest.

The implications for New Brunswick would be profound.

The Province already faces doctor/nurse shortages. A drain of medical professionals to Alberta would compound the problem in spades.

To give him his due, Klein’s ‘Third Way’ appears better than the ‘U.S. Way’ where some forty million people have no health coverage but if the Alberta proposal should become reality, it could be the first step in moving Canada towards the U.S. model.

The Quebec approach may be even more threatening because Klein’s frontal attack on the Canada Health Act will likely be rejected by Albertans for its impudence while the Quebec approach flies quietly under the protective radar of the Canada Health Act.

In my view Quebec’s proposal is regressive and would set the stage for the incremental commercialization of healthcare, a step that could eventually put our most talented healthcare professionals and their services out of reach for a significant number of Canadians.

The Harper pretense that Quebec’s proposal is okay because it conforms technically to the Canada Health Act is misleading and dangerous.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and business owner operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic.

Prior to the last federal election, the Government of Canada signed five year agreements with all ten provinces that would see the investment of $1 billion a year in early learning and childcare.

Under these agreements, the provinces would invest the federal money in regulated, early learning and childcare programs for children under the age of six. The principle requirement was that investments meet the test of quality, universality, accessibility and development.

During the election campaign, the new Conservative Party promised to scrap the program and replace it with a $1,200 a year payment to parents with children under the age of six. In Canada, it’s estimated there are more than 2 million children under the age of six so the annual cost of such a program, not including administration will be at least $2.4 billion a year less the tax recovered from higher income families. That’s more than double the cost of the former government’s program.

The issue is not so much cost but value for money. The Liberal program, which is still promoted by most provincial premiers except in New Brunswick would see our provincial governments invest money in early learning programs, staff training and improved daycare facilities. The objective would be to ensure that parents can access high quality, safe, affordable child care and early learning programs.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports the average cost of day care in the United States in a range from $90 to $125 a week depending on family income. Canada doesn’t report on the same basis but Stats Canada estimates the average expenditure for child care services in 1999 at $2,515 a year. Based on prior year rates of increase, we could assume those costs would be in the $3,000 range today.

Now here’s the kicker. According to Stats Canada, more than half of Canadian families purchase some sort of child care service but only a quarter of that number are in a daycare centre. That’s roughly 250,000 children.

Logic would suggest that access to child care and early childhood learning is restricted by economic circumstance and/or lack of quality daycare spaces. That being the case, we have to wonder if a $1,200 a year payment to parents will lead to an increase in the number of daycare spaces and/or make early childhood learning more affordable.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Children indicates there are significant differences in daycare enrollment numbers by province. For example in Quebec where the Province provides a $5 a day per child subsidy to daycare centres, 41% of children are enrolled in daycare whereas in Saskatchewan only 10% of children attend a daycare centre. It’s 19% in Ontario and 22% in New Brunswick. It seems clear that there is some relationship between daycare enrollment and government intervention.

There is also a relationship between the education of the mother and the likelihood of daycare attendance. Results from the National Longitudinal Survey indicate that mothers who complete high school or attend college or university are more likely to enroll their children in early childhood programs than mothers who have not completed high school.

Children who have an early exposure to books and reading are twice as likely to perform mathematical tasks, recognize geometric shapes and understand simple concepts of time. This is true regardless of the mother’s education or household income.

Other studies suggest that children who are enrolled in early childhood programs get a head start in school when compared to youngsters who stay at home with a parent or relative. Children who attend early childhood programs perform better in mathematics and writing and generally achieve higher overall academic results than children who do not participate in early learning programs.

More than 60% of adults in New Brunswick are functionally illiterate. That is the highest rate of illiteracy in Canada. People with low literacy skills have the highest rates of school drop-out and the highest rates of unemployment. People, who have difficulty reading, spend up to four times as much time in hospitals as those who don’t have difficulty reading.

To break the cycle of illiteracy and early school drop-outs in New Brunswick, we have to change the way in which we introduce our children to learning. In most cases, that will require an out- of- home, structured environment with uniform standards and regulatory oversight. It’s not likely to happen if we simply send cheques to the parents of children under the age of six.

Investing that money in accessible early learning programs makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than paying stay-at-home-moms to stay at home. Quality daycare with trained staff can add to a child’s quality of life. It should not be viewed as replacement for a loving home environment but rather as an extended nurturing environment where children have the opportunity to learn, to explore and to gain self-confidence.

The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that 45% of new jobs that will be created in Canada this decade will require at least 16 years of formal education. That eliminates high-school drop-outs. That eliminates college and university drop-outs. If early childhood learning programs increase the odds of graduation then we have to demand access to early childhood learning programs now.

There is strong evidence that outside learning, at an early age and under the guidance of trained workers can produce much higher levels of academic and literacy skill than the average home environment.

There is no evidence to support the notion that publicly funded cash payments to parents will improve the academic performance of their children or increase their children’s’ levels of literacy.

Everyone in Canada has a stake in the difference.