The making of Danny Chavez
The following editorial is from the Telegram today. It's an interesting read for anyone trying to come to grips with why nobody in Ottawa, or outside Newfoundland and Labrador for that matter, seems to understand what all the fuss is over resource revenues in the province.
Swimming against the tide
Ottawa is a strange place: as the snow fingers down all day long, the nation's capital has a small traffic jam on its sidewalks. Not sidewalk plows, but small tractors with spinning brushes where plows should be, brushing the snow off the pavement like lint off a suit.
More than anything else, it suggests a casual dismissal of things that dare to get in the way, a kind of quick dispatch for weather that's not really appreciated in the middle of an otherwise busy day.
Welcome to the nation's capital, where it doesn't take long to discover why Newfoundland and Labrador's fight for offshore revenues is such a hard sell.
Any place you go, the questions are the same: in an office-tower boardroom, it's not long before strangers break the ice with "Is Danny Williams for real?" and "Are ordinary people really behind him?"
At a small Korean grill, over hard orange Formica tables dating back to the '60s, the questions are the same. Over kimchi - small dishes of fermented, spiced cabbage - federal civil servants have the same kind of questions: "Who is this guy?""What does he want?"And it's terribly hard to explain over the course of dinner, because there's just so much information that people outside our province haven't bothered to pick up over the past few months and years.
You can try and explain, but you can see the glaze skimming over people's eyes mere minutes in.And the media isn't helping, either. Not the Globe and Mail, not with its ads for an upcoming Report on Business Magazine. Back on page A10, next to the second half of an article about people using the Vimy Ridge war memorial as site for swingers, the ad has an angry Williams staring out of the page, his picture topped with a Communist cap and the headline "The making of Danny Chavez."
Chances are, the thing that most people will take from the ads, and maybe from the magazine itself, is the idea that we have some kind of angry near-dictator on our hands... Read Complete Article
8 comments:
Thanks Myles. I actually saw the head line and figured it was just some knitting story.
while not poignant it does highlight some of the points Wangersky made before he went of on his tangent of blaming the people of NL for all of canada's woes.
I wonder why no columnist would put his name to this piece though? Probably for the very same reasons outlined within being the views of their upalong boss and fear of reprisal.
But since this editorial is basically a admittance of defeat and acceptance of our so called "Defeatist attitude" I will try to put into point form the basic principles of the dispute.
-Harpers national party campaigned in two separate elections to exclude 100% of non-renewables from the social and health equalization transfers.
-Harper made this promise on six separate occasions in public HOC and in a campaign flyer.
-Non-Renewables weren't included in the original equalization formula.
-Alberta would still be a have not province if they had their non-renewable resource revenues clawed back.
-One of the founding principles of this federations constitution is that each provinces resources and resource revenue belong to the provinces.
-The Atlantic Accord economic development agreement wasn't a one off deal it was negotiated through three separate federal governments from Mulroney to Chretien and Martin. It was a recognition that the Supreme Kangaroo Kourt of Kanukistan with it's 3 On and 3 Qu judges out of 9 contravened the constitution when it ruled Ottawa owned and controlled all of the provinces offshore but territorial waters.
-There is a clause in the AA which states that any changes to the equalization formula will be added to the the original AA and not subtracted from nor made into a choice of either or.
-The senate which is supposed to be a body of sober second thought is nothing more than an extension of the HOC in that it does what's in the best interest of the majority of canadians be damned if it unfairly penalizes one or more of the provinces.
-NL has the most to lose from this whole affair. NS would only lose 1 billion Sk would only lose 1 billion but NL would lose at the very least 11 billion. That is why you are seeing NS getting bought of with crown share and SK dropping the constitutional challenge in favor of good relations and the promise of an injection of federal funding.
Editorials are editorials, and are never — in a professional paper, anyway — attributed to any one writer. The stand in the name of the "masthead".
Oh thanks for that firm grasp of the obvious Wallace J McLean Labrador separatist and Labrador MP Todd Russel lap dog.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2006/01/23/nf_labrador_costs_20060123.html
1) Evidently not that obvious.
2) Labrador separatist?
3) Myles, what happened to your guideline #4?
What about #4. I don't see a personal attack in the previous email.
You're comments speak to your Labrador nationalism and I, and others, have asked you to deny that you work for Todd Russell in the past, something you've never, to my knowlege, denied even in a string of emails directly with me.
Under those circumstances the previous email seems to be pretty cut and dried. Feel free to correct me.
Surely calling someone a lap dog constitutes a personal attack?
Do you really think so Babe? Lap dogs have a purpose like everything else. I used to have one of my own and I found it very therapeudic when he was around. Of course mine was a poodle, not sure what breed you're referring to.
OH ,Please.January 28, 2008 12:38 PM.Myles, I'm sure this has gone past the point of common sence .
Post your next story soon Patriot .I'm sure there is alot more then this to argue about .:)
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