Home Affairs Minister Senator David Burch deserves credit for being the first Cabinet Minister to really address the global recession and its impact on Bermuda.

To be sure, Finance Minister Paula Cox will have plenty to say on Friday when she delivers the Budget, and has not been entirely silent before now.

But most Government commentary has been vague and has consisted mainly of platitudes along the lines of "Bermuda has gotten through past recessions, so we will get through this one", with little in the way of policy prescriptions.

So at least Sen. Burch is acknowledging that there is a problem and is saying what he is doing about it. At a time like this, his primary responsibility as the Minister in charge of Immigration and Labour Relations is to ensure that Bermudians are protected and that as employers shed jobs, Bermudians will be affected least. That was the case in the recession in the early 1990s when thousands of non-Bermudians left the Island, while unemployment among Bermudians remained fairly low, at least by global standards.

That's not to say that there was no pain, and there certainly were Bermudians out of work, but nowhere near what there would have been the case if the workforce had been 100 percent Bermudian.

The economy has changed since, with tourism, which was severely battered then, now much smaller, while international business has grown by leaps and bounds. The construction industry has also enjoyed a sustained boom, which now looks to be coming to an end.

In some ways, the greater sophistication of international business makes this recession more difficult to manage than that of the early 1990s.

In his speech to the Bermuda Public Service Union last week, Sen. Burch laid out his policy plans, but may be taking too simplistic an approach.

By essentially saying that lay-ffs should reflect the makeup of a company's workforce, he may be removing a business's ability to make the best possible decisions for its survival and future growth. Leaving aside the fact that most companies will lay-off non-Bermudians first anyway and that Government does not have that much control over lay-offs provided employment laws are adhered to, imposing a layoff ratio on a company is likely to be unworkable.

One would assume that this ratio only takes effect when a Bermudian is being laid-off, since no such matching requirement would be required when a non-Bermudian is being let go.

But, and since most Bermudian companies are relatively small, trying to adhere to a strict policy which may involve people with different skills may be difficult.

Sen. Burch has also rightly focused on the construction industry as an area of immediate concern. As this newspaper has repeatedly said, Bermuda is likely to feel the real brunt of the recession by mid-year as some of the construction projects around Hamilton begin to wrap up. There are no projects following them, and most of the proposed hotel developments are either still on the drawing board or stalled.

Sen. Burch's solution is to try to keep lesser skilled Bermudians employed by insisting that Bermuda Housing Corporation homes under construction be built using block and mortar as opposed to alternative methods like poured or prefabricated concrete which require skilled non-Bermudians.

And he said Environment Minister Glen Blakeney had agreed to reject all future building plans using alternative building plans as part of the this scheme.

On the face of it, and if preserving Bermudian jobs was the only concern, this would be a good idea. But it's not the only concern. One of Bermuda's fundamental problems before this recession was its expense and uncompetitiveness.

Forcing builders to continue to use the most expensive and inefficient form of building when there are other more efficient forms of construction available will hurt Bermuda in the long term. Training Bermudians in more alternative forms of construction so there would be no need to bring in non-Bermudians would be the better approach.

By forcing builders to use more traditional and expensive methods, Sen. Burch runs the risk of extending the recession, and surely, no one wants that.