That sucking noise is the 2007 forecast for investment in Newfoundland and Labrador from outside the province according to the National Bank of Canada.
New Brunswick leads all provinces with private sector investment growth expected to hit 15.7% during 2007. Much of this strength will come from utilities and manufacturing sector investments. Utilities are also a big factor in Prince Edward Island.
Check the chart in the .pdf linked above. Newfoundland and Labrador will see a decline in investment of 16.2%. Overall, the National Bank puts the investment slowdown in four provinces in a wider perspective that diminishes the impact on the country as a whole.
But if you are in this province, it's difficult to miss the hit, let alone take it.
Master Corporal Robbie Fraser faces one count of manslaughter (s. 236 of the Criminal Code of Canada) and one count of negligent performance of duty (s.124 of National Defence Act) following a Canadian Forces National Investigative Service investigation into the death of Master Corporal Jeffrey Walsh, in Afghanistan, in August 2006.
No further information on the charges was contained in the official news release.
As recently as Sunday, little information had been released on the incident.
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Update:
A new Canadian Press story with comments from MCpl Walsh's father.
In the army, it would be difficult for a "gun" to be fired inside a vehicle, as in several news stories over the past 24 hours:
The allegations are that a gun belonging to another solider [sic], Master Cpl. Robbie Fisher, somehow went off in the vehicle, and the single shot hit Walsh.
This is a rifle, specifically the C-7 (right):
This is a Canadian-manufactured version of the M-16A2. it fires a bullet that is .223 inches/5.56 millimetres in diameter. It is carried by individual soldiers and fits inside just about any vehicle.
On the other hand, this is a gun [left].
Specifically, it is the M777 155 millimetre howitzer used by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
It is worked by a crew of several soldiers and simply doesn't fit inside any existing military vehicle.
While nits are being picked, the vehicle involved could not be a Jeep, as the CityNews story quoted above calls it. The same reference appears in the Canadian Press stories on the shooting incident as well.
The Canadian Forces has not used jeeps - i.e. the military version of the World War II light utility truck - since the early 1980s. Jeep refers to the trade-marked civilian vehicle.
Canadian Press has an excellent style guide and a caps and spelling guide that deals with just these pesky details.
Too bad more people writing news - including Canadian Press - don't use it.
Premier Danny Williams has been going through a self-imposed media exile for about a month.
Russell Wangersky discussed it on Saturday in his regular Telegram column.
And you have to say, it’s probably been the right decision.
After all, in the days leading up to the blackout, things were getting, well, out of control.
The present silence is, without a doubt, an improvement over the media stylings that were taking place just before Williams departed the airwaves, when he was talking about keeping an eye on people and threatening lawsuits against anyone who would call the character of sitting politicians into question.
Sometimes, everyone has to sit back and take a deep breath, and ask whether the direction we’re taking is a fair one, whether you’re in the media or the political community or anywhere else.
The blackout ends today at 11:00 AM. The Premier will be meeting with reporters to discuss provincial ferry rates.
His scrum partner will be none other than transportation minister John Hickey. This one should be interesting for all the questions not about ferry rates.
[Alberta finance minister Lyle Oberg] says it doesn't make sense to oppose the new equalization formula when Alberta, as a wealthy province, neither gains nor loses from a payout system designed for poorer jurisdictions.
"It doesn't matter to us," Mr. Oberg said, adding later: "We also recognize that there's certainly a high chance that this is going to come in whether we say anything or not."
Well, d'uh, on all counts, he said, in recognition of Vernacular Monday.
There was never any reason for Alberta to wade into the discussion.
So now the Great Jihad for Handouts is down to Saskatchewan and Danny Williams.
Hmmm.
Something to watch for in the Globe story: a comment from Ken Boessenkool.
"It's not just a new tone, it's frankly a more sensible tone," Mr. Boessenkool said of the Alberta finance minister's position, contrasting it with that of Mr. Klein, who he said liked to "rattle the populist cage."
Mr. Boessenkool, a Conservative who has written for years on equalization, said the program is not a transfer of money to provinces such as Quebec from Alberta because it's paid for from revenue that Ottawa collects from all Canadians.
Boessenkool has considerable influence in Ottawa or, at the very least, knows which way the wind is blowing on a given file.
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Update:
There was a clue to Alberta's position in February, with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach expressing a preference for more cash flowing to provinces through transfers other than Equalization.
Just last week, on the heels of federal finance minister Jim Flaherty's visit to St. John's, Bond gave a prediction on what the feds might do, taking a cue from Ken Boessenkool's recent paper on Equalization.
This column could have been written about Newfoundland and Labrador.
Could have, but hasn't been. Yet.
So much of what has been going on in this province since 2001 (That's right - Grimes and Williams are on the same wavelength) harkens back to the very darkest days of the 1980s, yet not a single politician seems to be able to break out of the public policy cycle that has held this province back.
In the fishery, the offshore and just about every other sector of the economy, the dominant thinking is the same sort of thing we have tried before with a stunning lack of success.
And, as in Nova Scotia, the young people of Newfoundland and Labrador are packing up and heading to somewhere else.
The 2006 census data is being released on Tuesday.
In anticipation of the complete data being release in the coming months, here is a simple table comprising population figures for Newfoundland and Labrador over the past 15 years. The source is Statistics Canada.
The year before the cod moratorium was announced there were 568, 474 people living in Newfoundland and Labrador. Within five years, the population had declined by 17,000.
With the end of federal income supports for those involved in the groundfish fishery, the population dwindled rapidly. By 2001, there were 512, 930 in the province.
The population showed a net gain over the next three years, with an estimated 514,209 people living here in July 2004.
Between July 1, 2005 and July 1, 2006, however the population showed a net decline of 4,185 people. While there are many causes for the change in population, declining economic prospects in Newfoundland in the fishery and with the slowdown in the offshore undoubtedly accelerated outmigration.
Thanks for linking my site on your blog. My name is Gerry Carew and I created the website www.broadcasttherock.com one more correction to your post The Danny Williams and Andy Wells videos were shot by me and my company www.thevideoman.ca I volunteered to do this for them so that they would have a record of these very interesting shows. I posted them on my website because I knew they would be popular and I hope they get lots of hits to their site from my intiative.
If you don't mind correcting that I would appreciate it.
No Gerry, I don't mind at all. Thanks for the information. In the meantime, I would suggest if anyone has more information, then by all means add it to the comments section of the Argentia post.
...Rhetorically at least, there has been good mileage to be made in Newfoundland politics by charging governments past and present with having sold the country down the river and by challenging the legitimacy of allegedly perfidious agreements. At one level, indeed, Newfoundland history is a record of attempts to undo the past. If foreign bogeyman can be made part of the story all the better, although the greatest loathing in this particular tradition is perhaps reserved for local politicians who are believed to have aided or engineered the betrayal of their own people. In St. John's especially, a paranoid outlook in such matters has, going back to the nineteenth century, never been far below the surface. In sum, the scapegoat, either at home or from abroad, has figured prominently in Newfoundland political history.
The Canadian War Museum will continue with an exhibit that, in part, notes the ongoing controversy over the Allied bombing campaign against German civilian targets during the Second World War.
In response to complaints from veterans groups, including the Royal Canadian Legion, the museum asked prominent historians to review the exhibit and offer comment. The Museum has not released the commentaries but a spokesman for the museum said the historians viewed the exhibit as "accurate and balanced."
Two of the historians did suggest that the panel in question could be removed since it was "unnecessary."
"Mass bomber raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life," the disputed panel reads. "The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."
The Legion, meanwhile, is looking to the senate committee on veterans affairs to conduct an inquiry into the exhibit. It is also continuing a boycott of the museum that began in 2005.
The controversy is reminiscent of complaints about a CBC series, The valour and the horror and its episode on Bomber Command, entitled "Death by moonlight."
The series attracted criticism from historians including Dr. Jack Granatstein. The series was also the subject of a senate committee review.
Sinc eopening in 2005, the new museum has also been the subject of controversy over its protrayal of Canada's military heritage and the design of the building.
Oddly enough, Dr. Dean Oliver, the War Museum's director of exhibits but who at the time was teaching at Carlton University, was critical of the Valour and the Horror. Oliver is a graduate of Memorial University and York University.
The following came in response to the post on the Argentia implosion in 1999:
The video of the demolition of the building in Argentia was not shot and edited by the company that did the demolition.
It was shot and edited by Tristram Clark and Ray Fennelly for an early Newfoundland online video site, www.cfog.net. I think it also appeared at www.thetelegram.com as part of a daily video feature called Newfoundland Today.
Tristram also recorded and edited the Danny Williams and Andy Wells performances at the Big Brothers benefit which is also streaming at the broadcast on the rock site.
Credit where credit is due. They did an awesome job.
This past week, Moscow police found the body of Ivan Safranov in the courtyard outside his apartment.
It looked like he had jumped, an apparent suicide.
Friends and co-workers suspect Safranov is just the latest in a series murders targeting journalists who cover stories sensitive to the Russian government or the Russian mafia.
Safranov a former army colonel, worked for Kommersant.
Industry minister Trevor Taylor is excited about 18 local companies going to a forum next week designed to highlight procurement opportunities in the Alberta energy boom.
NOIA started working on this project last summer in the wake of the Hebron collapse.
Search in vain for any acknowledgement of the supply and service sector's local association work on this file.
That's okay. People in the industry know what is happening.
Head over to Offal News, if you don't already as a matter of course, and check out Simon Lono's latest observations on the Hickey affray with Roger Grimes.
Lono draws in a West Wing episode which is always cool. Lono demonstrates he has a .44 Magnum mind in a .357 world. Read toward the end and you'll see the bit where that happens.
Lono could have been quoting Harry Callahan: "A man's got know his limitations."
Corporal Kevin Megeney'sremains are on the way home from Afghanistan.
The investigation is continuing into his death and into another death in August that resulted from a gunshot wound. In the August case, the military investigation has reportedly ruled out foul play, suicide or enemy action. Odds are good this latest one will head to the same conclusion.
But here's a pet peeve from the media coverage, where Corporal Megeney is referred to repeatedly as a "reservist". maybe more than once your humble e-scribbler has let that word slip from his own lips or typed them onto a page somewhere.
No more.
There's something about that word that just doesn't sit right.
The fact that Corporal Megeney volunteered on a part-time basis to serve in the army doesn't make him any different from the person who opted to volunteer for full-time service.
There's a tendency - and it may still come from the military as well - to consider the reserve component of the Canadian Forces as a haven for lesser beings compared to their Regular Force counterparts.
Their liability was supposedly different. They could opt not to show up. Blah. Blah. Blah. You hear them all. Maybe things have changed in the past six years but for a long time there was an attitude toward Reserve Force soldiers. They were reserve, as in hold-back, or even slack.
It's time to adjust that attitude.
Kevin Megeney did his job.
He worked hard at it.
He showed skill and ability.
When the chance came, he volunteered to go to Afghanistan where others didn't.
Now he's dead.
Grieve him.
But Corporal Megeney was never a reservist.
He was a soldier.
Whenever we speak of someone like Kevin Megeney, let's just call them by the simple name they deserve.
Over at Broadcast the Rock, someone has done the great service of posting two clips from a celebrity fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters in 2000.
It's a great organization and local celebrities should be commended for putting in considerable effort to let people have a whoop or, in one case, a serious laugh at their expense.
But still.
Ya can't help but wonder where these guys are now.
Well, actually, they have become best buds, apparently with one - who later become Premier - giving the other one a nice appointment at the province's offshore regulatory board. About a year or so after this event, the guy doing Mambo #5, took over as leader of the Progressive Conservatives and later defeated Roger Grimes in the 2003 general election.
So for your Friday enjoyment here is Andy Wells demonstrating why he went into politics and not music, and Danny Williams doing his version of Mambo #5.
From John Gushue's ...dot dot dot a video of the demolition of the old combined bachelor quarters at Argentia, in November 1999. Warning: the video is on autoplay, meaning that when you click the link the video will start right away.
John introduces a new website called Broadcast the Rock, a video sharing service of the type that have been springing up everywhere in the past few years.
Here's the youtube.com version:
Your humble e-scribbler worked on the project.
The Argentia Hilton was a multi-story building at the old United States naval facility that, at the time it was built, was reputedly the tallest building in the province. It housed single soldiers, sailors and airmen and some transient personnel travelling through Argentia without families. There as also a medical facility there, a barber shop and other similar offices.
The Q, as it was known, was such a large building that the most effective way to demolish it was by implosion. That's a technique that involves planting explosives at key parts of the building structure and detonating them in a planned sequence.
In this case, the company with the site clean-up contract decided to do something spectacular with what turned out to be the last implosion anywhere on the planet in 1999. They hired Prime Communications and your humble scribe started working with that company about a week or two before the implosion project.
The demolition was used a fundraiser for the local health authority. Tickets were sold with the winner getting the privilege of pushing the big red button - literally - that triggered the explosives. They hired a company to set the charges but they also rigged pyrotechnics to add to the visuals. The large red bursts are five gallon canisters of gasoline with squibs attached. They had nothing to do with the demolition, rather they created the visuals that gave the crowd reaction you can hear on part of the video.
Watch the video a couple of times and you will notice the multiple camera angles involved. The company set up a series of remotely operated cameras aimed at the building from various angles to get this edited version so you can see what happened from the various perspectives.
The event was a huge success. The amount raised ran into the thousands and the lucky button-pusher was a 12 year old boy. He was beside himself with excitement. The weather was a bit chilly on that November day but a few thousand people turned out for the show.
Various versions of the video turned up around the world on year-end highlights reels.
