Want amidst Plenty

• Main Author: Cadigan, Sean
• Format: Book
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Illinois Press 2017
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038174.003.0010

This chapter describes a new, highly gendered economy of boom and bust, haves and have-nots, in Canada's easternmost province, Newfoundland and Labrador. The province had long been the poor cousin of Confederation. By 2008 this all changed, as Newfoundland and Labrador became a “have province” due to the cyclical but steady rise in total oil production from the province's offshore oil wells. However, the oil boom could not transform overnight serious environmental, economic, and social problems that have been plaguing Newfoundland and Labrador since at least the 1970s. The limits of the boom are apparent from the experience of working people. Outside of the region surrounding St. John's, the provincial capital, skilled working people have continued to leave the province due to ongoing crises in the forestry and fisheries sectors. Direct employment in the oil and mining sectors is too limited to compensate. The oil boom has further contributed to a neoliberal policy of dividing unions, especially in the public sector.