[someone123]

Relative figures like that are extremely misleading. There are constant fluctuations month to month and they give you no information when it comes to the starting point.

If city A goes from $100M of construction to $50M it is down 50%. If city B goes from $5M to $10M it's up by 100%.

There are some problems in Halifax (anti-development regulation, botched immigration) but the economic fundamentals seem pretty good. Employment in Halifax grew by 2.6% from 2006-2007, for example. That either will tend to mean equivalent population growth or greater per capita wealth.