So Maclean’s magazine has touched quite a nerve in New Brunswick.

The national weekly this month published an article with the apocalyptic title, “Can anything save New Brunswick?”

As expected, it catalogued a litany of problems, from the aging population to French-English friction to an economy that’s “in free fall.”

And as expected, New Brunswickers reacted to the article with indignation, expressed pointedly in traditional and social media. “New Brunswick’s economy isn’t in ‘free fall.’ It’s in transition,” countered the online business publication Huddle. It highlighted that entrepreneurship is accelerating to replace the traditional resource-based jobs.

I guess the biggest question I have is why Maclean’s narrowed its focus to New Brunswick. Most of the problems highlighted so painfully in the article apply to the entire region. Let’s just consider employment.

According to Statistics Canada, here are the data on changes in the number of jobs in the four Atlantic Provinces in the 12 months to February: Newfoundland and Labrador, down 4,200; New Brunswick, down 6,000; Nova Scotia, down 2,700; and Prince Edward Island, down 2,200.

So the Atlantic Provinces shed 15,100 in one year. In that same time span, Alberta shed 21,900. And we all know how bad things are in Alberta. But consider this. Atlantic Canada has 56 percent the population of Alberta, yet we’ve lost 70 percent as many jobs as the western province. Yes, Atlantic Canada lost jobs at a faster rate than Alberta in the past year.

So can entrepreneurship compensate for these losses in Atlantic Canada in the long-term? If the answer is yes, it will take a while.

Last year there were about 3300 people working in the startup space – the portion of the entrepreneurship community that develops innovative products. The number has been growing by about 15 percent, or 500 jobs, a year. Even if the total entrepreneurship community is far, far largest than the startup segment, it’s not going to replace the loss of 15,000 jobs in a year.

And failures are always a risk in entrepreneurship and sometimes the companies that go under can be significant employers.

I’m not a huge fan of the Maclean’s article. (What the hell is an economy “in free fall”, anyway? It might apply to Venezuela, but not New Brunswick.)

But is contains some painful truths. There are a lot of great things happening in entrepreneurship in the region. It is probably the most promising aspect of economic development right now. But it has to go hand in hand with other aspects of the economy, such as fiscal discipline by government, attraction of immigrants, improved education (especially in maths, science and technology and improved productivity.

But for all the positives on entrepreneurship, the impact of home-grown businesses is not going to offset the forces acting against for a few years at least.