Consultancy Former officials contracted by current government to seek out opportunities

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Reid Southwick
Telegraph-Journal

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Brian Freeman knows how to attract investment.

He headed up the former McKenna government's call centre attraction bonanza in the early 1990s. Under his watch, 35 call centres opened their offices in the province within just a few years.

Today, Freeman is a partner with the Fredericton firm Roc Consulting Group, working alongside other business development executives, some of whom also worked under McKenna's strategy to usher in tens of thousands of new jobs in the call centre sector.

These executives, whose experiences span both private- and public-sector work, are now back with the government to attract new business to the province.

Roc Consulting has been given a six-month contract from Business New Brunswick and the Regional Development Corporation, under the current Shawn Graham government, to generate leads for new investment.

"We want to put together a good target list of companies where we have a clear competitive advantage to attract them here," said Freeman, a former executive with information technology firm CGI Inc.

The consulting team is expected to dip into their extensive business development experiences and industry contacts in a bid to build the province's economic base. Their targets include back-office operations and data centres for United States firms looking to outsource parts of their business.

The government did not respond to requests for the value of the contract.

Freeman said New Brunswick is still unable to compete on labour costs with other jurisdictions, namely those in the emerging economies of India and China. But he said the quality of the province's workforce and particularly their information technology expertise are major selling points.

"What the health authorities have done around tele-health shows that kind of strength," said Freeman. "This is about finding the companies that want to be next to that kind of brain power."

Potential target jurisdictions south of the border include California and New York, where the costs of doing business are much higher, said consultant Mike MacBride, a former economic development director with the province and senior consultant with Grant Thornton LLP.

"New Brunswick can be more competitive in terms of the cost of doing business versus New York or California," said MacBride. "So we can then target some of those more expensive environments in terms of interesting business to move north."

Roc Consulting is mandated to drum up business for geographies across the province, though the northern region will receive special attention, given the uncertain economic climate there, said government spokesman Andrew Holland.

"There is a lot of potential in the north, particularly in the renewable energy sector," said Freeman. "They have some good wind sites and some potential for biomass energy, so we're looking at what kinds of opportunities we can bring to the north."