A panel featuring politicians, business leaders and economists agreed that geopolitical turbulence is driving multiple challenges for Bermuda, while offering differing views on what to do about it.

The discussion, the centrepiece of the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting yesterday at the Hamilton Princess and Beach Club, addressed labour shortages, inflation, supply-chain vulnerabilities, housing pressures and tourism.

Marico Thomas, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said geopolitics showed up in everything from the cost of food and energy, and shipping surcharges, to global capital flows, healthcare supplies, housing challenges, and tourism.

“That impacts every sector in the room,” he told the audience, “from small business to international business.

“Here is the part we need to be most honest about — it is not temporary, it’s going to be ongoing.”

The other panellists were Jason Hayward, Minister of Economy and Labour; Douglas De Couto, the Shadow Minister of Finance; Craig Simmons, former senior economics lecturer at Bermuda College; Collin Anderson, director of policy and regulation at the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers; and Stefano Moritsch, geopolitics lead at KPMG.

With many struggling to make ends meet, Mr Simmons expressed the need for more social connectedness, posing a provocative question.

“How do we connect people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder with ‘you people’? I’m thinking most of you guys are higher up the socioeconomic ladder.

“Traditionally, ‘you people’ tend to connect your children with ‘you people’. At Bermuda College, we tend to have an abundance of people from down the socioeconomic ladder.

“One of the things we doing with Abir and ILS Bermuda is to connect people going to college with people like you.”

Through internships, scholarships and conference attendance, these efforts were aimed at giving students the tools and connections they needed to survive in the international business sector. Social connectedness, he said, was key to social mobility.

“Those are things that not just Government, but ‘you people’ can do to help level the playing field,” Mr Simmons said. “People in international business making a median salary of more than $170,000 a year — that’s ‘you people’ — the only way you can continue to enjoy that lifestyle is if people at the bottom believe that the system isn’t rigged against them.

“They have to believe that the system is fair and my fear is that they will see this game as one they can’t win. We can’t let that happen.”

Mr Anderson said from an IB perspective, a pathway for local talent to get into the workforce — through internships, scholarships and educational support — was essential.

“On the other side, there also has to be an efficient process for us to bring in the talent we need,” Mr Anderson added.

Seventy per cent of the 2,200-strong workforce of Abir’s 37 member companies were local, he added.

“Are we going to get to 99 per cent?” Mr Anderson added. “Is that realistic? We run global businesses and we have to be globally competitive and we have to access the very best talent we can.”

IB, like other sectors such as healthcare, needed to import skilled labour, he said, adding: “I think there are things we can do to ease frictions in getting the people we need here more efficiently.”

A question from the audience raised the issue of whether Bermuda — because of its shrinking population and limited options for long-term residency rights — was in danger of being a “country of expats”.

Mr Hayward said: “I think you’ve seen us amend our immigration laws to be more flexible on permanent residency and residential certificate holders, so we have made a shift in that direction.

“We do have a demographic challenge in Bermuda. We can take a number of approaches — to be less open to immigration, or to understand that in order to have a sustainable economy, there needs to be a mixed-policy approach.

“So, we’ve made provisions to ensure some people can have long-term residency in Bermuda, while also, as much as we can, trying to reduce some of the costs associated with living in Bermuda, so it’s more favourable for them to raise families.”

Mr De Couto said it was important to recognise that culture was not static.

“People washed up here on their way to somewhere else, then we had people who were brought here against their will,” Mr De Couto said. “We had people who came for economic opportunity and people who were given unfair economic opportunity over people who were already here.

“We still have people coming here for economic opportunity, and what is Bermudian is different for all those people.

“We are shrinking, the born-Bermudian population is shrinking. We can’t lock it in amber and say ‘that’s what it is’. We’ve got to evolve. While protecting what is Bermudian, we have to be open-minded about what it could be.”