Hollowing out (III)

"But oh!", they will protest, "things have gotten so much better under the leadership of Our Dear Premier! Avant lui, le déluge!"

But not so fast.

In twelve of the twenty Economic Zones, the three-year percentage decline in the number of business enterprises, from 2003 to 2006, was larger than the five-year decline from 1998 to 2003.

The following map is colour-coded, with shades of blue representing the Zones in which the business decline was worse in the Williams Era — remember the "Williams Effect"? — than in the last five years of the previous government. Conversely, those in shades of red represent districts in which the decline was worse under the previous five years of Liberal governments.

In the legend key, the columns are, left to right, the Economic Zone number, the five-year change under the Tobin-Grimes administrations, and the three-year change under the Williams Government:

(The St. John's area shows growth during both periods, but smaller growth during Tobin-Grimes than under Williams.)

Remember, this analysis actually contains a built-in bias that favours the economic record of the current government: five years of generally declining business enterprise numbers vs. three years (the latest three available) for the current one. Taking out this skew by using the average of the five last Liberal years and the average of the first three Williams Government years, and one more zone (Central Labrador) tilts to the worse-off-now-than-then column.