A week has passed since it was announced that the Irving Shipyard in Halifax has been awarded a lucrative $25 billion shipbuilding contract to build combat ships for the federal government.
The money hasn't started flowing yet and the first of the combat ships are still years away, but the Halifax shipyard and the city itself are already beginning to change.
There are early signs of an economic boom in Halifax as many local car dealers, realtors and restaurateurs say their businesses have been picking up over the past week, and it all has to do with confidence in a brighter future.
"We're the first to feel a recession and we're the first to feel when things get a little better because so much of what we do is based on consumers willing to open their wallets and spend money," says Luc Erjavec, a spokesman for the Canadian Restaurant Association.
Tamara Barker is a realtor and a homebuilder in the Halifax area and she says roughly 100 people tour her model home every weekend. But this weekend she noticed a change in people's attitudes. While many people who visited open homes in the past were simply thinking about buying, Barker says people have been jumping into action since the shipbuilding announcement was made.
"They're handing me over their information," says Barker. "They're saying ‘we're ready. We're done. Let's do it.'"
And if people are anxious to buy, contractors are anxious to build.
"People who are away now, who lived here, are phoning builders saying ‘I want to come back. What about building? Where can I build? Do you have the land?'" says Paul Pettipas, a spokesman with the Nova Scotia Home Builders' Association.
"I had another builder that said he had the best open house in his model home this weekend. He said ‘I didn't see traffic this much for the last six months.'"
Car dealers say traffic is already increasing at local dealerships and market studies say the shipbuilding contract could spike car sales by 750 each year.
"Saturday we had a tremendous day for car sales," says Fred MacNeil, president of Steele Auto Group. "We also had a flyer come out in the newspaper so part of it could be the paper; part of it could be the psychology that we had the contract."
But whether sales are up for food, homes, or cars, local business owners say it's all due to consumer confidence in a place where there hasn't been much for quite some time.
And it's not limited to Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Chambers of Commerce says it has been hearing from other chambers throughout Atlantic Canada, and they too are excited about what the future holds.
"They want to know what it means to me," says Nancy Conrad, a spokeswoman for the Nova Scotia Chambers of Commerce. "How can I get prepared? What are the benefits that I can take advantage of?
A group that will likely benefit from the shipbuilding contract is students at the Nova Scotia Community College.
Don Bureaux is the president of NSCC and he says he's now trying to determine which programs he will need to expand. He also says he has been taking hundreds of phone calls from prospective students.
"We've had a large increase, if you will, in the number of people inquiring about job prospects and what types of training should people be taking to position themselves for this project," says Bureaux.
He says that most of the calls are inquiries about trades and technology, but he's quick to point out that Irving says the labour market will need much more than that.
An economic boom could mean that jobs will open up right across the board, in all professions.
CTV News spoke with Amita McNeil, who takes health information management at NSCC, and while her program may not have anything to do with shipbuilding, she is hoping the contract will help her secure a job in our region too.
"It's more promising for us, as health information management people, that there will be jobs for us here in Nova Scotia without us looking anywhere else," says McNeil. "This is a big, big thing for us."
"Other projects we've had in Nova Scotia, you've got that boom and bust," says Pettipas. "Now you're dealing with an incredibly good company, Irving, it's a 30-year project and there's a lot of money involved."
While some people are already looking to the future, others say it's still too early to tell how the shipbuilding contract will impact our region. But at $25 billion over the next 30 years, many are hoping the positive effects we are seeing already will continue long after we start building the ships.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell
