After a rocky year in office beset by scandals and accusations of incompetence, Liberal premier Dwight Ball finally is setting an agenda for tackling the systemic economic problems that face Newfoundland and Labrador.

In early October, Ball – who is facing a leadership review this month – hosted a forum called The Way Forward that laid out broad objectives for his government’s current term in office.

Perhaps to counterbalance the shock of $1 billion in service cuts announced earlier this year, one of those objectives will be cuts designed to make government departments “flatter and leaner,” resulting in a 20% reduction in the number of government boards and agencies by 2020. Whether this policy will result in large-scale public-sector layoffs still is not clear, but few people will be surprised if that happens.

Ball, who promised better industrial diversification while campaigning last year, says his government’s focus will be on key sectors. This includes making the province a preferred location for oil and gas development and encouraging mining activity through promotional campaigns and enhancing digitization of survey data.

Ball’s government also will establish what he calls a Major Projects Unit, to co-ordinate major natural resources and business projects. How this will be different from the largely unsuccessful attempts by previous administrations remains unanswered. Other key priorities include increasing food self-sufficiency to at least 20% by 2022 and boosting timber harvesting by a similar factor over the next five years.

Tourism, which has been a bright spot in an otherwise difficult year, is another major focus. A tourism product development plan will be released soon, with the ambitious goal of doubling resident and non-resident visitor spending by 2020.

Health-care spending remains a concern: Newfoundland and Labrador trails all other provinces in key health indicators, including obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption, chronic ailments and poor diet. Funding will be directed toward promoting better lifestyle choices in the schools; however, beyond this and a greater focus on addictions, few other measures have been disclosed that will address the critical problem of ballooning health-care costs directly.

However, Grieg NL Seafarms Ltd., a subsidiary of Grieg Seafood ASA of Norway, is hiring more than 320 people for a salmon farm in Marystown, on Placentia Bay. That’s welcome news for a community hit hard by the closure of a major fish-processing plant and the mothballing of the town’s shipyard. And the oil industry also received a boost this autumn: ExxonMobil Corp. says it will drill as many as 35 exploration wells.

So, the province’s fortunes look more positive than when Ball tabled a spring budget all about cuts – including shuttering more than half the public libraries to save less than $1 million. Dialling back on eating and drinking might be easier with something to read.

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