New Brunswick

New Brunswick demonstrates how bilingualism shapes economic geography. The only officially bilingual Canadian province, it splits between Anglophone south (Saint John, Fredericton) and Francophone north (Moncton's Acadian communities). This linguistic division creates parallel institutional networks—education, media, services—that complicate regional coordination while enabling connections to both English and French markets.

Traditional resource industries have declined. Forestry, once dominant, contracted as pulp and paper demand fell; fisheries face quota pressures and climate shifts; mining provides localized employment. Irving Oil's refinery at Saint John—Canada's largest—processes imported crude for regional distribution, an anomaly in a country that otherwise exports petroleum. The port of Saint John offers year-round ice-free Atlantic access.

Population stagnation poses the fundamental challenge. Young people emigrate toward Ontario and Alberta opportunities; those who remain age in place. Health care costs rise while the tax base contracts. The province experiments with immigration recruitment and entrepreneurship programs to reverse demographic decline, but reversing decades of out-migration requires economic opportunities that current industries cannot generate at sufficient scale.