When Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Senator, George Baker, phoned into one of VOCM radio's call in talk shows earlier this week he stirred up a fire storm in Ottawa and raised the spirits of many nationalists in his home province.
Senator Baker told the show's host that Newfoundlanders may resort to separatism because of their treatment by the federal government. He also said that he believed his province might be better served by supporting a party similar to the Bloc Quebecois to defend its interests at the federal level.
"People will soon be advocating, you know, that we can't remain in the Confederation in which we're discriminated against and not respected," Baker said.
"How much are we going to put up with? You know, this should be reason enough to, to have a Bloc Newfoundland and Labrador running in the next election if this keeps up - and a real campaign to get them all elected."
The list of problems that have confronted Newfoundland and Labrador since entering Confederation is a long one. It includes Ottawa's continued mismanagement of a 500 year old fishery, being denied control of offshore resources the province brought into the Country in 1949, Ottawa's refusal to enforce the Constitution with regard to the Upper Churchill hydro development project in the late 1960's, the unilateral clawing back of offshore resource revenues and much much more.
It's these issues, and Ottawa's refusal to even awknowledge them, to which Mr. Baker was referring.
As a result of his comments the government of Canada did nothing to address the underlying problems but has instead demanded the Liberal party expel him from their caucus.
Outside the weekly Conservative caucus meeting, the Prime Minister's Office was distributing transcripts of the remarks and demanding Mr. Baker's ouster.
Sen. Mike Duffy is reported to have told reporters there won't be much left of Canada if people keep talking like Baker.
"There's no place for someone who holds those views in a party that purports to be in favour of national unity," said Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"You can't advocate for the creation of a Bloc Newfoundland, modelled after the separatist Bloc Quebecois, and sit in our caucus. So I don't think that should be the case in the Liberal caucus, either.
"These comments are beyond the pale, and he should be removed from their caucus."
Baker said his province contributes far more to the rest of Canada in per-capita exports than other provinces, and doesn't get the respect it deserves.
During his radio appearance Mr. Baker was asked by the host if a Newfoundland block could be effective in getting a better fiscal arrangement within Canada.
"Well, let me ask you the question: What about the Bloc Quebecois? Have they been effective? Of course they've been effective. . . . And just imagine the clout that we could present to the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada wouldn't dare to put into their budget a measure that's in there right now, stealing $1.7 billion from the people of Newfoundland and Labrador." Baker responded.
Here, here Mr. Baker!
http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/abc/home/contentposting.aspx?isfa=1&feedname=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V3&showbyline=True&date=true&newsitemid=CTVNews%2f20090304%2fstimulus_fund_090304
ReplyDeleteTell me It Ain't So Skipper, tell Me It Ain't So !!!
Holy F@%$ , "What does it take For you People To hear whats GO'in On "
It was Past Due this 60 Odd Year Patriot.
But ,realy Myles.what does it take for a people to relise that thier culture is being wipped out.
Genocide, only if we know it and allow it to happen anyway.Ask any Armenian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
Are we Doomed to Be Next !!! :(
I heard George Baker on VOCM Night Line and I nodded to the affirmative to every word hespoke to Ryan Cleary and his listening audience.
ReplyDeleteNow that is the kind of work we expect of you, and please keep it up, that is what I call working on behalf of your electorate and not yourself. We didn't hire you to just look after your own well being.
Now we want all the other Senators, Ms. Cook, Ms Cochrane, Mr. Furey, Mr. Manning, and Mr. Rompkey to do the same. We also must demand the same work ethics from the MPs whom we have elected to represent us on the Ottawa scene.
Where are the voices of the others? It is shockingly shameful that they are allowed to hide and remain silent, while being paid handsomely for it.
If they are unwilling to speak up, then we should be able to impeach them. We know that they face the wrath of Ottawa for doing so, as George Baker saw today, but that is part of the risk and it must not stop them on behalf of the welfare of our province. Not speaking up for their province is the reason why it hasn’t gotten its fair share over the years, the people we sent to Ottawa and the ones whom Ottawa appointed kept their mouths shut and didn't speak up on our behalf, but they were personally rewarded by Ottawa for doing so from the Political Patronage Toolkit.
It is nothing short of disloyalty to their province the way which they have ran it into the ground with no appreciable economy having being created in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador while the others thrived.
They did absolutely nothing to ensure that their province's resource base stayed at home to create a buoyant economy here, and they kept their mouths shut over the years over the hundreds and hundreds of Billions of dollars, probably a Truillion, which were doled out to the other provinces to grow their economies, while their province Newfoundland and Labrador remained the Cinderella of Confederation and received nothing.
Shame on them! They deserve to be booted out of their positions by the electorate of Newfoundland and Labrador, nothing more!
Please keep up the great work George Baker, if you do you will remain in our good graces.
By the way what a winner VOCM has snared in the name of Ryan Cleary. He is as sturdy as the Rock of Ages in his love for his province, I do not think that you will find him being roped into a political appointment, that is if he has to turn his back on his province to do so. He is so unwavering in his endeavor to get the word out there to the listening public on how poorly his province was treated by Ottawa. He is a treasure and is more valuable than the 7 MPs and 6 Senators whom we have in Ottawa.
Ryan I absolutely adore your respect for your province and its people, "Long May your big jib draw".
Good for the Senator for speaking up for his province!
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the only reason that Mike Duffy got appointed Senator by Ottawa brass in the first place was for the sole reason his nightly Mike Duffy Political Hour Show was devoted to the bashing of Premier Williams and his government. And he is still doing it, even today as a Senator. Why isn't he reprimanded?
ReplyDeleteNow just imagine a reason as fickle as that. Isn't it shocking the way Ottawa wastes our tax payers dollars? A senator’s position costs the Canadian taxpayers $144,000 annually with 60airline flights home per year and the many other perks that go along with it.
This is what it costs the Canadian taxpayers to pay a person simply because he directed his show in the manner which the top political brass wanted from Ottawa.
One guest who appeared on Mike's show one particular night, when asked to make a comment on Premier Williams retorted, in not exactly those words but the same meaning nevertheless "I thought you were NOT going to pull this trick tonight".
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador and its people have been destroyed economically by the Ottawa government and they have been maligned terribly.
Are there no Political Watchdogs overseeing the awful treatment which Canadian politicians can dole out to a province which has given so much to Canada?
There are Watchdogs for every thing else, I am astounded if there is not a Watchdog to prevent the abuse such as what the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and its people have had to endure since Prime Minister Stephen Harper emerged on the Canadian Political scene.
I'm no George Baker, I was a little too nervose Patriot, but I'm just too "MAD" too shut up about this.
ReplyDeleteWe said " No More give aways " So they turned into thieves and stole what they wanted.
C'mon Newfoundland and Labrador, they can't treat us like this, only if we allow them.
Well said ussr, on all fronts.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
M
Ussr - I haven't a clue who you are, but I am reading between the lines regarding what you could be talking about in your last post. You did a fantastic job Sir, please let it NOT BE your first and last.
ReplyDeletePractise makes perfect, you were a pro by the time it ended!
I hope that I am not too far off base on my guess.
Finaly someone has told the truth in Ottawa.
ReplyDeleteShow me where to sign up George and I'll be there. I'd love a Newfoundland and Labrador passport and our own nation back from Ottawa's clutches.
Freedom is worth far more than any token welfare Ottawa might throw our way from the crumbs on the table of confederation my friends.
I do not know if Senator George Baker reads this blog or not, but if not, and someone does, would he/she please advise him that he is a hero here today.
ReplyDeleteI have a message for Senator Baker and that is he has been deposited in the eye of an Ottawa/Newfoundland and Labrador political storm which has been brewing now since the commencement of the Prime Minister ship of Mr. Sephen Harper.
It came to a head yesterday in the Canadian Parliament when Senator Baker was targeted to be ousted from the Liberal caucus.
I want to tell Senator Baker not to drop the ball on his focus here and to use this one time privilege to keep this thing going until at least he gives the Canadian electorate an accounting of every resource item from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador's resource base which has assisted the Canada’s Manufacturing sector into becoming the shining star of central Canada.
I want him to speak of the 'fish quotas' which were traded off for the International Trade Sector, and which assisted the Manufacturing and Agriculture industries in Canada in a humongous way.
I want him to speak about the Iron Ore which enabled the auto industry to go gangbusters.
I want him to speak of the Upper Churchill hydro electric energy for which Quebec receives $2 Billion per year of revenue and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador receives less than $50 Million, barely enough to run the project, simply because Ottawa would not intervene on our province’s behalf with Quebec, so as to guarantee our province the same right as every other province within Canada had, at the time, that being the right to wheel its energy across a neighbouring province's border.
I want him to speak of the Voisey's Bay Nickel, which never would have been developed unless it wasn't destined for the two Canadian provinces, which were dying economically without a source of Nickel ore, those towns who had life breathe into them were Sudbury, Ontario and Thompson, Manitoba, and finally I want him to talk about the Conventional Oil, which goes to Halifax, Nova Scotia and Saint John, New Brunswick for refining, while not one barrel of that clean oil can be refined in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador until Nova Scotia and New Brunswick say that they are over-saturated. I want him to remind Ottawa that Ottawa receives more from our Oil Resource than does the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
And, oh yes, we cannot forget our most precious resource of all, our human resource which had to migrate out of their own province to find jobs, and get this, to work their own resources in the other parts of Canada which were the recipient of our natural resources, all the while they were being belittled by the Canadian people who looked down on them as beggars. One Canadian Premier utter the statement to them "Go home you Eastern Bastards Go Home".
Those same Canadians had no clue what the province of Newfoundland and Labrador had been contributing hugely to the Canadian Nation. Everything was kept non-transparent by Ottawa and given that aspect why should they have known?
Ottawa decides the overall Canadian economy and where things will be placed such as car plants, smelters, oil refineries, so the province of Newfoundland and Labrador had no say in the matter. It and its people were victims of the Ottawa government.
And finally I would like to see the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador, John Crosbie, a very capable politician, who is very well versed on the Free Trade Movement, to throw off the shackles of the Lieutenant Governor role, just temporarily and support his colleague Senator George Baker, in getting the message out there to the Canadian electorate that the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has been shafted ECONOMICALLY by the country of Canada.
Also I want to see all the other Newfoundland and Labrador Senators and MPs band together with Senator Baker and Mr. Crosibe and take a stance once in their lives on getting a better deal for it.
And finally I want every Newfoundlander and Labradorian to open their mouths and be heard loud and clear that the treatment their province has been on the receiving end of by Ottawa for 60 years must stop. We want EQUALITY in Canada.
The BQ has only been successful because they are financed by the Gov't of Canada. It was this financing Flaherty wanted to change in the Fiscal update last fall. This financing of regional parties is a scandalous waste of money with negative retrn on investment and will lead to the ruin of this country.
ReplyDeleteI am satisfied if the majority in a province decides to separate or even to be represented by special members. I am not too happy to have to fund them also.
The Canadian government is robbing this place blnd and killing our culture.
ReplyDeleteWake up!
It doesnt matter what party is in power or who is leading it. They all pander to the voters in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC.
We need our own NL party and we need to make sure it gets elected. Barring that we need to get the hell out before there's nothing left to survive on
F%&K this is crazy, why have we putting up with this for so long?
The Bloc has had the moral authority to call a referendum pretty much since their inception but they can't! No federal political party can call a referendum. Only provincial parties can call a referendum and the Party Quebecois PQ was a distant third in Quebec until Harper came on the scene with his continual campaigning. It's called the clarity act.
ReplyDeleteIt's been tried several times and everyone knows exactly what I'm saying is true but because the systemically flawed political system of conflict of interest works for the two principals they don't want it to change.
What do you think Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords were about?
As for NL continually complaining maybe just maybe it is because we have reason to complain and the majority just doesn't listen because it doesn't affect them.
Just take the seal hunt as an example do you really think the majority of canadians support the seal hunt or for that matter even understand it or anything to do with the fishery. I doubt the majority of canadians have ever even seen the ocean seeing as the majority of the population lives in the interior.
As for a solution Equality for all of the members of the federation is the only solution because anything less would only address the symptoms when the real root cause of the woes of NL or for that matter any of the minority provinces in this phoney federation is their lack of equality with the majority provinces and that has led to the Tyranny of the majority by all of the national PROXY governing parties and opposition PROXY parties.
EQUALITY OR EXIT!
Just ask yourself what do you think the party line of all of the national parties is?
To win and in order to win they all need to appease or please the majority and where does the majority live? 66% live in Ontario and Quebec, or conversely 50% or so live in the three major urban cities.
A triple E senate and equality in the Supreme Kangaroo court of canada versus 3 judges from ON and 3 from Qu and 3 from the colonies. Which NL has never had one in it's 60 years in this empire of upper and lower canada.
EQUALITY OR EXIT!
If you want to contact your NL senators their email address's are
bakerg@sen.parl.gc.ca, cochre@sen.parl.gc.ca, cookj@sen.parl.gc.ca, fureyg@sen.parl.gc.ca, rompkw@sen.parl.gc.ca, ManniF@sen.parl.gc.ca
March 04, 2009 10:21 PM,
ReplyDeleteNo Sir ,as a matter of fact you are right on the money :)
I see that you are a censor, how sad. I posted a very passionate retort to your position and you have not posted it. Well then, your Newfoundland mates will be pi$$ed when they find out that they live in a confined province.
ReplyDeleteOh, could that freedom be how they feel, when they come out to the WEST? The West wants you and them,in our country!
Get a grip Web Talk, please let these guys/gals know the whole story? This is not right what you are doing!
What I'm doing is more right than anything we've ever experienced in Canada Bec.
ReplyDeleteYour posts were not posted for reasons other than your position on the situation.
By the way, we all know we live in a "confined province" and isn't that the problem?
Bec said...
ReplyDeleteI see that you are a censor, how sad. I posted a very passionate retort to your position and you have not posted it. Well then, your Newfoundland mates will be pi$$ed when they find out that they live in a confined province. Oh, could that freedom be how they feel, when they come out to the WEST? The West wants you and them, in our country! Get a grip Web Talk, please let these guys/gals know the whole story? This is not right what you are doing!
March 07, 2009 9:35 PM
OH my God . Here we Go Folks it’s Captain Canada come to save the country from 60 years of Bondage and lie’s. And ,he thinks that we are not getting the truth. OH sad he’s come to save all us inept poor Newfie’s. Well Patriot, lets allow Canada to have some Canadain Content.You can even appoint me to be Newfoundlands and Labradors version of the CRTC, so here we go. You want Canadain conyent folks I purpose something from the national post. See I’m fair ,it’s not even from the Globe and mail,which we all know hates our province greatly. Here you go Bec, and welcome to Canuckistan……………………………………..
Colby Cosh on Canada's biggest mistake: Newfoundland
Posted: April 10, 2008, 4:11 PM by Marni Soupcoff
Colby Cosh
Don’t take this too seriously, but I think it’s possible to argue that the worst political mistake in Canadian history can be summed up in one word: Newfoundland.
Adding a 10th province to Confederation in 1949 was, of course, not Canada’s error alone: It required mutual acts on the part of what were then routinely referred to as “our two countries.” But Canada had turned its back on Newfoundland in times of fiscal trouble for its sister Dominion before, and might have done so again if not for the triumphalist postwar mood. The celebrations that followed, in which Canadians hailed the addition of a new time zone with Soviet-style bigger-must-be-better glee, now seem like a last reflex of imperialism, driven by the esthetics of mapmaking as much as anything.
Whose interests were served by the merger of Canada and Newfoundland? The smaller (but senior) partner is still debating the question.
Newfoundlanders often ponder that alternate world in which they drove the “Canadian wolf” from the door. The bitter truth is that those who came closest to being right about joining Confederation in the referendum fight of 1948 turned out to be the most extreme, most paranoid of the anti-federates. They said that Confederation would lead to an exodus of Newfoundland’s young and most talented. They said that Ottawa would run the cod fishery short-sightedly and perhaps destroy it. They said, long before Churchill Falls, that joining Confederation would leave Newfoundland at the mercy of French-Canadian interests. Can history offer any retort?
The pro-Confederation forces, for their part, promised that a “yes” to Canada would bring a wave of social programs and debt relief — and that prediction, too, was borne out. Union led to immediate improvements in Newfoundland’s infrastructure and in the social indicators, like tuberculosis, that played such a role in shaming the province into voting the way it did.
But other North Atlantic countries have prospered far more in the meantime. Confederation’s net fiscal contribution to Newfoundland since 1949 comes to at least $80-billion in today’s money. For that kind of cash, one would have thought the whole province could have been paved with gold; doing so might not have been as wasteful, on the whole, as the economic policies pursued by Premier Joey Smallwood (who rode the referendum victory to unchecked lifelong power) and his successors.
Mere numbers do not sum up the price that the other nine provinces have borne. The presence of Newfoundland in Confederation was the main reason that Ottawa, under the influence of cabinet secretary-turned-MP Jack Pickersgill, brought self-employed fishermen under the unemployment insurance program in 1957. Pickersgill knew doing so would secure Liberal fortunes in Newfoundland for a long time, and his time as a civil servant had taught him that sheer dumb stubbornness would succeed in overcoming the opposition of the bureaucracy, which objected that “insurance” was by definition supposed to be for unforeseen labour-market shocks, not for predictable annual periods of slackness.
The economic disorder resulting from the concession of this principle spread to all of the Atlantic provinces. In the meantime, the question of offshore oil revenues has added another layer of chaos to equalization, which was introduced the same year (and which thus compounded the regional-welfare effects of expanded UI). Newfoundland is understandably reluctant to allow the clawback of revenues it would have enjoyed as a matter of right as an independent state, but that leaves other provinces wondering why they get a raw deal when they trade in nonrenewable assets for cash.
Before 1949, Canada already had problems reconciling the uniqueness of Quebec with the principle of equal treatment for the provinces. Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation has multiplied those problems — while at the same time setting an awkward moral precedent for Quebec to secede on a 50%-plus-one referendum vote. (If a nation can extinguish its statehood forever upon the slenderest of majorities, surely one can be
broken up the same way?) The Canadian wolf got its meal — and it’s had a tummyache ever since.
ColbyCosh@gmail.com
OK but if that wasn’t enough , here is what some of your Mainland breather feel about it, and I would like everyone to note, that not one voice stood up for our province staying in this country, and you think that “YOU” and your comments are going to change MY MIND ,with your reasoning. Here were a sample of what things said folks about our contribution to Canada .
by ebt
Apr 11 200812:18 PM
Very well said.
I'd just say that the negative consequences have been almost entirely borne by Canada, not by the rest of us. Indeed we've poured money there, but it would be naive to think that the money would not…..
by ebt
Apr 12 20085:07 PM
I find it hard to believe that ore is actually shipped from Labrador to Thompson for smelting. I wonder if this commenter knows where Thompson is? It's not exactly a suburb of Toronto. Are there any grounds for believing that anything is smelted at Thompson that isn't dug out of the ground there?
by Nessie93
Apr 12 2008
7:11 PM
ebt - I wish I could say that it isn't so, but unfortunately it is.
Below is a copy of what you can find on Wipedia, but the province of Newfoundland and Labrador will, I am sure, gladly provide a copy of the Vosiey's Bay Contract to you in which you will find that the Nickel Ore, one of the richest sources in the world gets shipped to Sudbury, Ontario and Thompson, Manitoba from Voisey’s Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador..
Ok and you want us too listen too more hate spew from your filthy Canadain lips. We have never, and I mean never been accepted by Canada. And, you want Patriot to allow you too come here so we can take some more of your filthy lie’s.
Is thiere not one spot, not one frigg’in spot on this entire net where we can share our thoughts in private.
The “ Confederates” hang out over at the Teleagram bud. Where do we have.
Good call Patriot, send the Filthy Canadain Wolf to the garbage bin with his mindless education.
“REPUBLIC OF”