NL Government Cancels "Have" Status Celebrations
Premier Danny Williams announced today that plans to celebrate the Province’s “Have” status, on March 31st of this year, have been cancelled.
Publicly the Premier stated that the decision to cancel the celebration was made because the Province did not want to be seen as throwing a party at a time when the economy is in such bad shape and while all parts of Canada are suffering.
I don’t disagree with the move but I’d argue that the reasons behind the decision were not as simple as was presented.
Personally I’m quite pleased that the Provincial government has had second thoughts about this. From the start the timing was troublesome.
No doubt the festivities were planned to coincide with the beginning of the new Provincial fiscal year but the date chosen would also have placed that party on the calendar at the same time as the 60th anniversary of Newfoundland and Labrador’s entry into confederation. Not a date everyone in this Province would choose to mark as a joyous occasion.
The fact that the “Have” status celebration would have happened on that particular anniversary, whether coincidental or not, would no doubt have been portrayed in the National media as either Newfoundland and Labrador “mocking” the troubles in the rest of Canada or as the people of Newfoundland and Labrador happily celebrating how much the love being a part of Canada.
Neither of which would necessarily be factual, but then again when has the national media let the facts stand in the way of a story?
Thankfully a wise decision was made to cancel an event that would have accomplished nothing except to provided fodder for renewed attacks on this Province or, worse still, given the impression that we were celebrating 60 years of lost freedom.
3 comments:
I guess it wouldn't look good us
Having our cake and eating it too!
Cake being a METAPHOR for our Non-Renewable resource revenues.
The Supreme Court of Canada basically said that the 'only' reason the off-shore could be considered to be owned by Canada is because of third-party international law. The court actually said that the status of these resources is very much in the hands of NL. They demonstrated their meaning by saying, and I paraphrase, 'not-with-standing international laws, NL brought those resources into Canada, and NL can take them back out'.
So in response to this the Atlantic Accord compromise was reached. In that deal the rest of Canada gets to suck the teat of yet more of our resources. Harper has twice unilaterally violated that compromise agreement in order to suck a little more out of NL's share. Talk about bumming off the poor!
Democratic Discrimination that’s what The Canadian Confederation is by all of the national PUPPET parties of the Upper/Lower Canada majority against the minority provinces in there never ending quest for power.
“It's the political system stupid! “ changing the national PROXY parties won’t change anything
Can you believe it, now the Globe and Mail is spreading a conspiracy theory that the Williams government planned to have Abitibi shut down so they could expropriate the power and use it to fuel Vale Inco's smelter in Long Harbour.
These guys are too much.
Never mind that the contract with Vale Inco was signed by Roger Grimes about 7 years ago. It was that deal that called for the smelter so they must believe that 7 years before Abitibi even talked about closing the Grimes government planned it as well and now, 3 admisintrations later Williams is carrying out the dastardly plot.
I guess they couldn't get the province to back down over the expropriation so they figure they'll attack from another angle and make it look like some big secret plot.
These guys are too much.
The Mop and Pail!! My god, seems like they'll hire anyone off the street to write articles. Does the editor even read them?
Typical of the conservative mouthpiece that they are. The comments posted at the end of the article are typical of the intellectual giants that read the swill.
Those comments, and others, have actually driven me start my own blog, after years of reading it's time to start blogging. I think we should all do what we can to add our voice to the cause.
http://www.starrigansdroke.blogspot.com
I'm not the wordsmith that Myles is but we all have experiences we need to share with our people.
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