The province’s finance minister says reliance on oil for the province’s revenues has dropped from close to 30 per cent to less than 15 per cent in the last five years.

Tom Osborne claims the province’s population is stronger today than what was predicted in 2015. He says the province is outperforming in a number of areas like employment numbers and capital investment.

With that, Osborne says those numbers show that they are diversifying the economy and creating jobs.

Osborne says if they hadn’t, the numbers would’ve been closer to, or worse than what was projected in 2015.

He says those projections included two major projects that haven’t yet fully materialized and haven’t seen employment, including Bay du Nord.

Osborne says the focus to diversify is on aquaculture, agriculture, the tech sector, mining the future, the film and television industry and the aerospace industry.