Two for Friday #nlpoli

There's a long weekend coming up, so here is a simpler post.

There'll be an SRBP post on Monday but the biggie for the week should be Tuesday.  There's been so much talk about the Churchill Falls contract renewal on Thursday that we really need to take a look at Churchill Falls and compare and contrast the situation with Muskrat Falls.  Hopefully,  we can do that in one post.  If not, there'll be two back-to-back on Tuesday and Wednesday.

There are few more posts coming this fall that have been brewing for a while.  They are also related to one another, as it turns out,  although the connections might not seem obvious at first.

For those who wondered about it and who found the Zero-Based Governing post interesting,  there will be two more coming.  In the follow-up, we'll have a go at the Phase 2 part of the process for a couple of departments.  That's the more detailed functional analysis that will reveal the extent to which the number of departments as such is not an indicator of how big the government is.  After that,  a regular reader's experience in another province inspired a third post in that series that will look at the areas where federal and provincial jurisdictions overlap.

For today, though,  let's highlight some posts on other local political blogs.  labradore had a go at the electoral office on Thursday over the absolutely ludicrous amount of time they take to issue election reports.

When you've done with that,  Uncle Gnarley gnawed at Muskrat Falls and water management on Thursday as well.  Lots of detail.  Regular readers of Gnarley or here will find a lot of it very familiar but it is useful to bring it all back now and again, as Des does in fine style in this post.

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labradore's Labrador #nlpoli

For your summer reading enjoyment, here are five books on Labrador, courtesy of the always helpful Wallace McLean at labradore:

Elizabeth Goudie, Woman of Labrador

Originally published in 1973, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie's enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper's wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled her multiple roles as homemaker, doctor, cook, hunter, showmaker, and seamstress for her growing family. In the span of her eighty years, she witnessed radical changes to Labrador.

You’re definitely going to hell for that one

labradore redefines the latest officially-sanctioned terms for people who don’t swallow the official line whole.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he is definitely going to be blackballed for his latest series of posts on how local media have covered The Subject That Must Not Be Discussed.

 

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Goose and Gander, Quebec and Labrador

Let’s just imagine, dear friends, what might happen if another provincial government acted like the one in this province.

labradore does and the result would not be pretty.

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Population and the economy

labradore may do more of his own with this, but in the meantime, it’s useful to steal his observations on the most recent quarterly population statistics.

He left them at Townie Bastard’s corner. Some people, including local media, took the wrong perspective which is not surprising since the StatsCan release wasn’t very clear on what’s been happening in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Anyway, here’s Wally’s take on things. Bear in mind he accurately predicted a recession in 2008 by noting the sudden change in in-migration and hence in population that took place in mid-2007:

The population bump from in-migration happens during every recession.

Out-migration hasn't really slowed down. Actually, it hasn't slowed down at all. International migration is stable at best; the last two quarters have been slightly worse for international immigration than the same time last year.
And the imbalance of deaths over births is trending in death's favour. This was the third consecutive quarter of natural population decline (more deaths than births). Six of the last seven, and eight of the past eleven quarters have seen negative natural population change. One more quarter, and there'll have been a full year of it - the first time for any province, I believe.

The only thing that's causing population growth is net in-migration, largely driven by people moving in from Alberta and Ontario.

Two guesses as to what's driving that. First doesn't count.

Now anyone who looks at the release and stopped for a second might have noticed that the increase was only about one quarter of one percent. And if that person had clicked back to the release before, he or she might have noticed the previous quarter where population declined in Newfoundland and Labrador.

But those wider points – about persistent out-migration and the deaths/births ratio – require a level of analysis that reporters just don’t have time to do.

Sadly for the reporting world, that’s where the real story sits.

You can find it over at labradore.

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Predictable Update: You won't find the real story in a provincial government news release, as Jerome!'s effort Wednesday morning confirms.