Should we be talking about the St. John's-Halifax thing?

Miller Ayre lays out a lot of figures and statistics in his new report on the Hebron megaproject, but one set, mentioned right at the beginning, leapt out at me.

"The province represents less than 30 per cent of the population of Atlantic Canada," Ayre wrote. "But in 2011 it accounted for more than 60 per cent of the total value of major investments planned or underway in the region."

Let those numbers sink in. We don't have a third of the region's population, and yet we have the majority of the capital investment, even if it's just for one calendar year.

Hmm, I thought. Should we be thinking about the province's place in Atlantic Canada? More precisely, do we need to talk about the stature of St. John's, especially as opposed to Halifax?

Let's not get carried away. I'm not saying that St. John's now has an unbeatable claim to be the economic if not the political heart of Atlantic Canada.

The two cities have been rivals for decades. I know some older residents who still seem to get a sour taste in their mouths as they recall those early years of Confederation, and learning that a lot of the real power they felt was being sapped away was not going to Ottawa, but instead to Nova Scotia.

Relations may have softened over the years, but surely every St. John's mayor since 1949 has had to grin and bear that awkward feeling of being the poor cousin to Halifax.

But the sands have been shifting for a while now — since 1997, to be precise, when oil started being pumped at the Hibernia platform.

There's definitely been the sense that St. John's is on a roll since then. New subdivisions are being built, the downtown is a beehive of shops and new workers, and council has had a few hundred million dollars in development projects brought before it in the last few years. (Don't forget that a whopping estimate of $5 billion has been put on the value of what will be built on the lands that Danny Williams wants to develop south of Mount Pearl.)

The comparison struck home when I was in downtown Halifax last year, and saw large vacancy signs that, to be blunt, shocked me. Yes, it seemed that commercial hubs had been shifting around the city (Spring Garden Road seems to be booming) but Barrington Street had clearly lost some of its zip.

Friends in the oil business bristle when they hear Halifax described as the regional hub for oil and gas. "Well, gas and gas is more accurate," one of them told me a while back.

Halifax is growing, too, by the way. The latest census found that the city's metro region grew by about 4.7 cent in the last five years.

St. John's, though, leaped by 8.8 per cent, a sign of a significantly more robust economy.

But there's no mistaking the fact that Halifax is significantly bigger. The population in the greater Halifax area is 390,328, the most recent census told us. That, to put it another way, is three quarters of the population of Newfoundland and Labrador.

As well, things are going to pick up in Halifax, and dramatically so. The Irving Shipyard was awarded a $25 billion shipbuilding in contract in November, and that news had an immediate effect on a local economy that's been waiting for a boost.

Icy signals

Contrast that with the signals coming from Confederation Building. Since January, both Finance Minster Tom Marshall and Premier Kathy Dunderdale have been warning people to hold their horses, that revenues were tighter, that program expansions are off the table. Marshall just this week told a business breakfast that the provincial economy is actually going to shrink this year.

For its part, St. John's does not seem so gloomy at all, to judge from the obvious markers. The St. John's Board of Trade's latest members survey, for instance, showed that 95 per cent found that economic conditions were either "good" or "excellent," and nearly all said they were doing better now than last year.

So, St. John's is not poised to overtake Halifax any time soon, but it's certainly got grounds to rethink its place — and not just in Atlantic Canada. (Incidentally, the folks at 22 Minutes tapped into that old St. John's vs. Halifax inferiority complex this very week, during a hilarious sketch called Real Housewives of Town. Take a minute to have a chuckle.)

Poor cousin? That description no longer seems to fit.