Is Newfoundland and Labrador having a consequential moment?

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in Newfoundland and Labrador in recent months and I think the province really is at an inflection point. You could argue this about much of Canada but I think NL more that most.

NL was the youngest province in Canada in the 1970s, now it is the oldest (measured by median age). NL is the only province in Canada where the population in 2023 is roughly the same as sit was in the mid 1970s. The situation outside the St. John’s area is even more pronounced and 40-50% of people collect EI each year. So, it has a demographic challenge.

But in the past few years, the province has proven it can attract newcomers. I believe that better alignment, increasing use of the college and university as a conduit for newcomers and significant investments in settlement and integration could ensure people moving to the Rock will stay and put down roots.

There is potential to attract a next generation round of investment in the offshore oil and gas industry. There is fierce competition around the world for investment in the sector as countries like Norway, the US and the UK all vie to produce the oil and gas the world will need in the next decades even as overall demand declines. NL oil is expensive to extract but stable and relatively low in GHG emissions. We need to try and ensure it is competitive with Norway, et. al. In Canada, only Alberta is as reliant on oil and gas as a share of GDP and royalty/tax revenue.

Alberta is trying to diversify by going after data centres, movie production, more agriculture, etc. NL needs to do the same.

No other place in North America is as windy. NL could harness that wind for many uses from green hydrogen to data centres to clean energy-based manufacturing. There are encouraging signs on this front. For those who are pushing back I will cite again Portugal and its 5,500 wind turbines (I asked ChatGPT) on a land area about the size of Newfoundland (excl. Labrador). Portugal has 11 million residents, a growing tourism industry, etc. Imagine if we were able to deploy 2,000-3,000 turbines - far less than Portugal? A huge driver of economic growth in the years ahead.

If we don’t see population growth, if the offshore industry withers and if we can’t harness the wind, I’m not sure about the future of the province. Sure there are very encouraging signs in the IT sector - new startups, growth in jobs (with a little recent blip), etc.

But without population growth, tourism will decline, new industries will not have the workers to start and even existing industries will suffer as there will not be talent. According to Statistics Canada, 87,500 NLers aged 55 and older earned employment income in 2022 - 31 percent of all employment income earners in the province. They will be retiring in the near future and there not nearly enough young people joining the workforce.

Again, the impacts will be worse outside of St. John’s. Between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s, Premier Joey Smallwood closed 250 small outports. We could be looking at another round.

Normally it can be hard to know if you are in a consequential moment. Newfoundland and Labrador had one in 1949 (joined Canada), when the cod fishery was closed in the early 1990s and certainly another in the late 1990s when Hibernia started up. I think the province is in another one right now.

The next 3-5 years should be among the most interesting the province’s history.

There are lots of good folks working on the aforementioned opportunities. I hope there is the political and public will to get it done.