Industry

There’s a particular energy on a downtown street in New Brunswick when the leaves turn. The patios haven’t quite come in yet, the string lights are still up, and the sidewalks fill with people carrying coffees, tote bags, and the first hints of holiday shopping lists.

New Brunswick has escalated its response to U.S. tariffs by keeping American liquor off store shelves until tariffs ease and, starting October 1, banning American goods and services from provincial contracts over $5 million, a rule that also binds Canadian suppliers.

Right now, across Carleton and Victoria counties, harvesters are rumbling through the fields of western New Brunswick, pulling this year’s potato crop out of the ground one row at a time.

If your N.B. Power bill has felt heavier lately, you’re not imagining it. Between a rate increase that landed this spring and the extra load air conditioners and fans put on your meter in the heat, this summer’s bills are stacking two cost pressures on top of each other.

There’s a quiet kind of irony in standing in a New Brunswick grocery store, picking up a bag of imported potatoes, and walking right past a wall of products grown, brewed, smoked, or stitched within an hour’s drive of your house.

New Brunswick has always asked young people to love it enough to stay. It may finally be reaching the point where it has to start making a serious case for why they should.

The financial squeeze is real, but so is the ingenuity of people finding ways around it. Whether you’re driving across town with a bag of takeout or editing a client’s blog post from your kitchen table at 9 p.m., Fredericton residents are proving that a little creativity can go a long way when the cost of living climbs.