It was nice to see that the work that Sir John Swan and I did in 2012 was recalled and remembered.

Way back then, we both knew and understood that residential population had fallen and that this was a major driver of Bermuda’s then four-year-old recession.

Now four years farther on, the machinery of government has finally admitted that in 2014, at a government-reported count of 61,777, Bermuda’s ResPop had declined and was less than the ResPop counted in Census 2000.

But Bermuda and the machinery of government had then spent six years either denying or not understanding the impact and importance of such a loss.

That six-year denial couples with a still widespread lack of, and clear understanding of, exactly how Bermuda’s 21st-century economy actually works.

It presents and creates the existing problem: how does anyone explain to the average Bermudian, who is fully aware that there is significant unemployment among his fellow Bermudians, that Bermuda must import additional people.

Explaining the need to import business residents has not been undertaken by the machinery of government. It is a task that was first undertaken by Sir John and I, but with limited access to the public, and in the short time available, we were able only to scratch the surface of that massive, difficult and incredibly important subject.

At regular intervals, in my Bernews columns, I have revisited, explained and re-explained the ResPop issue.

The Pathways to Status initiative, with its dipping into the deeply emotional issue of the grant of the right to vote, needed to have been preceded by a huge public awareness and public feedback-seeking programme that ought to have begun, at the least, in 2013.

That did not happen.

The cascading effect of the surrounding of Parliament by a 95 per cent black group, a counterdemonstration by a 95 per cent white group, the resignation of a Cabinet minister, the e-mail from a disgruntled Member of Parliament, the just happened resignation from the party whip of a prominent One Bermuda Alliance member and the rumour of more waiting on the fringes is the sad result of not paying heed to the warnings that Sir John and I first set out — together — four years ago.

If anyone wants to fix things now, they need to move at the speed and with the impact of a lightning bolt.

Larry Burchall, one of Bermuda’s foremost thinkers on the economy, is a regular columnist for Bernews