Political Double Speak

Out-migration is a term to which we’ve become accustomed in Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s a simple benign sounding little word that refers to people leaving the province to live and work in other parts of Canada. It’s a sanitized and passionless political term used by governments and the media alike to identify a situation without the need to ever speak of the sickening realities of what it really means.

In reality the term out-migration is comparable to accidentally dropping a 500 pound bomb on a crowded marketplace, killing a hundred people, and referring to the result as “collateral damage”. It’s like accidentally shooting 20 members of your own military force and reporting the event as a “friendly fire” incident. Either way you slice it, it's a way of sanitizing a terrible and ugly truth that nobody wants to think about. Sanitize all you want, in the end the bodies still exist and the mourning goes on.

You may be wondering how I can equate something like out-migration to such horrific events, but there isn’t a great deal of difference. Of course what’s happening in Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t the kind of bloody horrific death we see in a war torn country, but it is death without doubt. In fact, in some ways it may even be worse because instead of individual deaths, out-migration represents the slow and lingering death of an entire culture and its people.

Make no mistake, what’s happening right now in Newfoundland and Labrador is far from passionless and to sanitize it in any way is sickening. There was a time when men (and to a lesser degree women) left the Province to find seasonal work. They would often return to their homes for the remainder of the year, perhaps to fish or hunt. Such is the life of an island community. Over the decades this trend continued, but each year more and more of our people settled in the larger centers and never came back.

It started as a slight trickle, but has gained in momentum until we have reached a time in our history when the process has begun spiraling out of control. The unfortunate thing is that we have all become so accustomed to it that nobody is standing up and taking notice of what’s really happening. These days there seem to be more people leaving than staying and what was once a trickle has become a tidal wave before our very eyes.

The people leaving are our young, educated and family oriented people. The same people who are needed to sustain our Province. They leave behind them grandparents who will not see their grandchildren grown up. They leave behind countless parents, siblings and extended family and friends who may or may never see them again. That’s the human impact here.

On the more practical side of things, statistics already show that the average age of Newfoundland and Labrador’s population is increasing rapidly. How quickly will those numbers begin to climb if the bleeding away or the youth isn’t quelled?

We are caught on a treadmill to nowhere. A vicious cycle or domino effect is taking place right here and right now. Simply put governments and provinces need revenue to survive. They need it for everything from infrastructure to job creation to health care to schools and on and on and on. Like it or not, a large part of that revenue comes as a direct result of you and me working, living and paying taxes in the Province. If we reach a point where so many of our youth leave that the majority of our people are retired, where will that revenue base come from?

What about federal transfers which are largely based on population density. Every time an individual leaves the province thousands of dollars in federal funding leaves right along with them. Every time 2 or 3 or 4 people leave, 2 or 3 or 4 times that amount disappears. As less and less money is available for infrastructure and services, less and less jobs are created. This in turn leads to more and more people leaving which once again leads to less and less funding and the cycle continues to grow by feeding upon itself at an ever increasing rate. I believe this is what we are seeing right now in Newfoundland and Labrador and unless something is done we, as a people, will cease to exist.

It’s a simple equation really. If you have more people leaving the province than entering it and more people entering their final years than being born, then a culture cannot survive and will die as surely as if a bomb was dropped directly into the heart of its territory. It may not be a violent death but it’s a death none the less.

“Friendly Fire”, “Collateral damage” or “Out-migration” are all handy terms that help soften the blow of something terrible and horrific. They are terms intended to comfort those directly touched by tragedy, sanitize the event by making it more palatable and distance those responsible for its happening. In all three situations the use of these terms also serve to leave the public in a state of mind where nobody gets angry enough to stand up and do something to stop the carnage and that in itself is a tragedy.