We were delighted to read the province’s recent announcement of one-time financial support for 16 non-government organizations (NGOs). Discretionary funds are invaluable for these non-profit community organizations to move forward on projects and activities, and we applaud this move.

Supporting the NGO sector is a good investment for so many reasons; the very nature of NGOs means that in addition to creating meaningful jobs, they also are tackling social, environmental or financial injustices. Many provinces have taken steps to recognize and value the contribution of this sector, and rightly so. This announcement, however, did leave us with a few questions.

In a recent op-ed piece, Economic Development and Tourism Minister Chris Palmer rightly stated ‘If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ I wholly accept this logic and thank him for opening the dialogue around this.

I, too, learned this while running my first business. I expect all business owners quickly learn the need to associate a value to things that go beyond the goods or services they have for sale. We learn to measure the cost of time, both time spent and time lost; the cost of mistakes; the value of relationships with our suppliers and the connection to our clients; the worth of a reputation. We quantify things that we’ll never need to report on our tax returns, but that we will use as filters to inform countless decisions we make all the time. After all, if we don’t measure it, we can’t manage it.

Cabinet shuffles bring with them the potential to breathe new life into a portfolio. Every department has room for more vision, and economic development in particular (one of the newly shuffled portfolios) is an area with seemingly limitless room to dive deep. The potential benefits go far beyond a possible increase in the GDP.

Closing schools is an easy fix: it’s quick, decisive and demonstrates action on a file. The flip side of course is that it’s also unimaginative and shortsighted. I’ve been pondering school closures and hub schools through an economic lens, and I wonder if the Minister of Education will sit down for coffee with the Minister responsible for economic development.

Rural PEI has been neglected and overlooked, the Bell Aliant contract serving as a powerful example of this. Our current approach to job creation tends to focus on incentivizing industry to set up shop, creating a measurable amount of new positions in one shot. It looks good on paper, and a government can state with confidence a set number of jobs created during their mandate. Whether the jobs stay or go is secondary.