Open Letter to Premier Dunderdale

Open Letter To: Premier Kathy Dunderdale
Premier of Newfoundland & Labrador

cc. Minister Shawn Skinner
Minister of Natural Resources

cc. Multiple media, MPs and concerned individuals

May 13, 2011

Premier Dunderdale:

In November of 2008 the provincial government, under then Premier Danny Williams, made a submission to the environmental joint review panel evaluating the Romaine Complex Hydroelectric project in Quebec.

At about that time I personally sent you an email, in your capacity as Minister of Natural Resources, asking about our province’s position on the project and on our government’s exclusion from the environmental assessment process. It was in response to my correspondence that you made me aware of the submission to the panel and, as I did at the time, I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank you for your direct and timely response.

I believe the submission, which encompassed many topics including environmental concerns, discrepancies in the maps provided to the panel among other issues was the appropriate direction to take at the time. I also believe the submission addressed many of the concerns a lot of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have with the project.

2.5 years have passed since that submission and I’m sure many in the province are interested in what has happend since that time.

As I understand it, the environmental assessment process is now complete and work is advancing steadily on the Romaine project. I would like to know what the joint review panel’s responses were to the province’s 2008 submission.

Specifically I am interested in detailed information on the panel’s responses to all of the concerns expressed.

In addition I hope you can provide a clear picture of where we now stand with respect to retaining complete provincial control over the headwaters as outlined in the submission and copied here.

(Begin copy of pertinent section from original panel submission)

Finally, the Province wishes to take the opportunity to re-affirm its water rights in the portion of the Romaine River watershed on Newfoundland and Labrador lands. The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and its Minister responsible for water resources, without compensation to the proponent, shall not be restricted to:

• use water of Romaine River watershed on, in, under, or flowing through or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands for purposes related to management, research, protection and conservation of water resources, aquatic life and aquatic habitat;

• establish standards and measures for the protection of water resources on, in, under, or flowing through or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands;

• use water or authorize the use of water on, in, under, or flowing through or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands for the purpose of fighting fires;

• establish flood control measures, develop flood plain management strategies and designate flood risk zones with respect to water resources flowing on, in, through, under or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands;

• carry out or authorize hydrologic data collection and hydrologic research with respect to water resources on, in, under, or flowing through or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands; and

• use water or authorize the use of water on, in, under, or flowing through or adjacent to the Newfoundland and Labrador – Québec boundary on Labrador lands for any other beneficial purpose that is in the Government’s interest and the other residents of Labrador.
(End copy from original panel submission)

I trust that your office, or that of the Minister of Natural Resources, is able to provide copies of any documents issued by the review panel in reference to the province’s submission along with information on any actions the panel took on those concerns.

If no responses were forthcoming and no action was taken by the panel I would like to know what other steps the provincial government has taken or is now pursuing to ensure that our rights are protected in regard to this project and to our provincial border with Quebec.

I’m sure you will recall, though many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may not, that in 1976 the government of Newfoundland and Labrador attempted to buy back 800,000 kilowatts of Churchill Falls power at a reasonable price for use (through sub-sea cable) on the island portion of the province.

In response to this request Hydro- Quebec demanded that we sell Quebec between 7,000 & 10,000 square miles of southern Labrador or, barring that, pay 10 times the amount the utility was paying our province for that same power. By all accounts, at the time, the provincial government refused both of these less than generous offers.

The reason Hydro-Quebec and the Quebec government so desperately wanted that territory is because headwaters are located in Labrador and without complete control of those waters development on the rivers could not move forward. It’s no doubt difficult to secure investment and financing, due to the uncontrollable risk, when you don’t control all the source of the water used to generate the power.

This has me wondering what might have changed since that time.

Why, in the opinion of your government, does Quebec have enough comfort with the future of those headwaters to proceed on downstream developments in 2011 when they did not do so in 1976? What guarantees must they believe they have, from Ottawa, the province or elsewhere, in order to invest billions if they cannot control the future of those waters?

I look forward to your timely response and once again I thank-you for your many past responses to my queries on several issues of importance to everyone in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Sincerely,

Myles Higgins

NL's Access to Quebec Hydro Grid Raising Questions

Nearly two weeks ago Newfoundland and Labrador Premier, Danny Williams, stood in the House of Assembly and made an announcement touted by papers across Canada as a turning point for his province.

The mainstream media and the Premier have since waxed eloquently about how Newfoundland and Labrador’s new ability to wheel hydro power through Quebec to American markets may herald the dawn of a new day.

The problem is that it actually means nothing of the sort.

Yes, Quebec has refused to allow just such an arrangement in the past but what does it really mean for the future of Newfoundland and Labrador or its ability to reach markets with the proposed Lower Churchill development?

It means absolutely nothing from that perspective which is why I find myself quite puzzled by the Premier’s apparent elation over the event.

The timing and tone of Premier Williams “ground breaking”, “turning point” announcement earlier this month, simply because Quebec will allow a token amount of power to be transmitted on their under utilized grid, has my gut telling me to be wary.

In order to wheel the more than 3000 megawatts to be generated by the Lower Churchill across Quebec a great deal of new capacity would have to be added to the grid and, just as in the past, every Newfoundlander and Labradorian knows, or should know, that Quebec has no plans to allow anyone other than themselves to build new transmission infrastructure inside their “nation” unless they own, control and reap the profits from it.

Over capacity is one thing. New capacity is something else all together.

Newfoundland and Labrador can kick and scream all it wants. Danny Williams can blow a gasket, grow a new one and blow that. The Canadian Constitution can be quoted chapter and verse on this issue (which supports Newfoundland and Labrador’s ability to access markets) and it can be proclaimed from the highest mountains but in the end Ottawa, as it always does, will acquiesce to the demands and desires of vote rich Quebec. Newfoundland and Labrador be damned.

None of that does, or should, come as a surprise to anyone living in Newfoundland and Labrador for more than five minutes. What has come as a bit of a shock is Danny Williams apparent need to “spin” the Province’s ability to export a paltry 200 megawatts of power, with Quebec’s blessing, as some sort of major breakthrough.

It’s more than a little odd to this observer that the Premier would be touting this as a victory and claiming it bodes well for future developments when that clearly isn’t the case.

Has political expediency and the need to “play well at home” trumped reality for yet another of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Premiers?

Has Premier Williams been listening to his own publicity team for so long now that he’s actually started to believe them?

Don’t get me wrong, on the whole I like what the Premier has done over the past couple of terms and I’ve been happy to back him on the issues he’s been strong enough to take a stand on, but this one has me baffled.

Why would the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador consider it a shining moment for his Province simply because Quebec made a token gesture at a time when they plan to develop a multi-billion dollar hydro project just outside the Labrador border?

Ever since that border was defined in 1927 Quebec has disputed its exact location.

Did Quebec really turn a page with this recent announcement or is Premier Charest hoping Premier Williams won’t make too much fuss about the fact that one of the grey areas in the 1927 border decision just happens to contain the headwaters that will feed Quebec’s massive Romaine hydro project?

As has often been said, “He who controls the headwaters controls the project.”

Recently I requested specific clarification from the government of Newfoundland and Labrador concerning the border and its relationship to the headwaters of the Romaine River. To an untrained eye, which I am not ashamed to say I have, it’s debatable as to which Province can stake claim to those waters.

To date there has been no response but I continue to wait (im)patiently.

When it comes to the “big” announcement a couple of weeks ago I’m not accusing anyone of anything underhanded but I certainly have questions.

In 2005 Professors Feehan and Baker released a research paper on the Upper Churchill renewal clause. That paper contained previously unknown evidence pointing to the use of coercion and inside information as the means by which Newfoundland and Labrador was forced into signing the disastrous Upper Churchill contract. It concluded that a legal challenge could be made.

Since that time the Williams’ government has never openly discussed those findings or pursued a legal challenge to the contract. Instead, the provincial government later released the Province’s long term energy plan. A document that makes no mention of attempts to rectify the Upper Churchill debacle and contains a plan that extends until 2041, the same year the contract will have run its entire course (without challenge).

In 2008 the Williams government quietly sent a letter to the joint Quebec/Federal panel reviewing the environmental impacts of the Romaine hydro project. The letter expressed concern about the misrepresentation of the Southern Labrador border on maps being used for the process. It made no mention of any concern with Quebec pushing ahead on a project that might depend on headwaters inside Labrador.

The letter was sent to the review panel without any fanfare, publicity or notification of the media. It was only through a chance discovery but one local reporter that the letter ever became public knowledge in the first place.

Why was so little concern expressed about the project and the headwaters and and why was the letter sent so quietly?

In recent months Premier Williams has publicly stated on several occasions that he has no concern with Quebec’s Romaine River hydro development. How can this be the case given our history?

After being fleeced for decades on the Upper Churchill, if the Romaine’s headwaters are indeed inside Newfoundland and Labrador territory doesn’t that mean that Newfoundland and Labrador should have a stake in the project?

Does the lack of concern mean the provincial government simply plans to let Quebec push forward with no financial benefit accruing to Newfoundland and Labrador from what amounts to yet another of its extremely valuable natural resources?

If so, why would anyone do that?

Could it be that the “token gesture” made by Quebec in allowing a small amount of power to be sold through its grid was a down payment to the Provincial government on a promise to support the Lower Churchill development once the Romaine has been completed?

If so, is a promise like that worth the paper it could never actually be written on?

These are questions that need to be answered.

There may indeed be very rational and reasonable responses to each of them but they need to be asked and answered.

I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I can’t help it. The celebratory position taken by Premier Williams, not to mention the copious level of high praise, encouragement, kudos and smiley faced pats on the back flowing like sweet molasses from the national media over what amounts to a mundane non-event, has me wanting those answers sooner rather than later.

Through the Looking Glass - A Constitutional Crisis in the Making

Much has been discussed in Newfoundland and Labrador in the past day or two about a potentially flammable situation developing between Quebec, Newfoundland & Labrador and the federal government over claims by Quebec that a large portion of Labrador rests inside its provincial border.

There appears to be a lot of misinformation of the facts being put before the public by some media outlets, either innocently or intentionally, so in an effort to summarize the reality of the situation, here are the facts as they currently stand:

More than a week ago reporter, Rob Antle, with the newspaper “The Telegram” wrote a story about an impending border dispute between Newfoundland & Labrador and Quebec. He was not informed by any official source in government but uncovered the situation himself.

Earlier this week the Globe and Mail ran a front page story highlighting the same situation.

Here it is in a nutshell.

Quebec Hydro, an arm of the Quebec provincial government, in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Environment, is in the midst of an environmental assessment before breaking ground on a major hydro development on Romaine River which, along with four other rivers, spans the border between the two provinces.

All “official” maps of the area that were supplied by Quebec, and accepted by the joint committee wrongly depict a large portion of Labrador, containing the head waters of all of those rivers, including the Romaine, as being fully within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec.

The article in the Globe & Mail pointed out that by accepting those maps for the environmental assessment the federal government was implicitly accepting Quebec’s claims that it controls a section of Labrador as well as the head waters of the rivers they plan to exploit for a massive power generation project.

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador was not invited to participate in the review process and only found out about the situation months later.

Upon learning of the situation back in November, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador submitted a six page document, plus maps, that did little more than point out the problem at hand and express displeasure with the process underway.

No demands to cease the process were made.

As far as anyone can tell no further actions have been taken or are planned.

Officials at the Ministry of the Environment told the Globe & Mail that any territorial dispute is a matter for the provinces to resolve.

This is not correct.

The border in question was clearly identified and ruled upon in 1927 by the Kings Privy Council in England, long before Newfoundland and Labrador ever became a Canadian province.

It was a ruling that both Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador (a separate Dominion) accepted, both being Nations constitutionally ruled by the British North America Act at the time.

That 1927 border ruling was also clearly reiterated and agreed upon in the first two paragraphs of the Terms of Union by which Newfoundland and Labrador entered Canada. It is now tied to the Canadian Constitution making it a Constitutional issue.

Quebec never signed onto the Canadian Constitution and it has never accepted the 1927 Privy Council border decision.

For years Quebec’s maps, be they tourist, topographical, mineral exploration, election riding or any other form, have depicted its unsubstantiated claims to Southern Labrador.

Reports are now surfacing from long time political figures that at least twice in the past several decades the Quebec government has tried to quietly coerce or maneuver a Newfoundland and Labrador Premier into handing over the region to them.

With this in mind the actions of Quebec and acceptance of them by Federal Officials, who are proceeding with the environmental process in spite of the facts, have led to a great deal of concern among the general population in Newfoundland and Labrador. Yet Premier Williams and his government, as well as Federal MPs are oddly silent on the issue.

Since the dispute became public knowledge, neither the Premier nor anyone else in his government have issued any kind of official statement addressing the concerns of the people or outlining what they intend to do to protect the province’s territorial boundary.

In such a tension filled situation rumors and speculation often fill the void when facts are not available. Premier Williams is not known as the sort of man who sits quietly by when major issues arise so his silence on this file has led to widespread speculation that perhaps something unsavory is happening behind closed doors while the citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador are being kept in the dark.

They worry that the environmental process is due to be completed in just two weeks and if something is not done to address the issue quickly it may be too late.

If one nation attempted to unilaterally take control of territory that was part of another it would be considered an act of war. Taken in that context, Quebec cannot be allowed to proceed with what amounts to an overt act of aggression against Newfoundland and Labrador

NL Challenges Qubec over Provincial Border

A document has been filed by the Newfoundland and Labrador government with the joint environmental review panel assessing a Quebec Hydro plan to develop three new projects on the Romaine River.

The documents identifies the provinces concerns with the process and the maps being used in the process which depict the head waters of the Romaine River as being inside the province of Quebec. The document was filed on November 27th 2008 but only came to light this week when it was discovered by local media.

A number of times in the past I’ve raised the issue of the Quebec government’s insistence that a large swath of the Labrador portion of Newfoundland and Labrador actually belong to them.

Maps displaying portions of Labrador as belonging to that province have been in wide spread use in Quebec for decades and are still in use today.

Not only are official Quebec provincial maps depicting a part of Southern Labrador as falling under Quebec jurisdiction but in addition to official electoral boundaries maps, tourist maps, mineral claims maps and those produced by Quebec Hydro including the erroneous border, Official Canadian Armed Forces maps depicting the Quebec patrol area now include that area of Labrador as well.

This ongoing attempt by Quebec to claim territory clearly belonging to Newfoundland and Labrador has been a concern for this writer for some time. I know that I, and others, have brought it directly to the attention of the Newfoundland and Labrador government on several occasions.

I don’t know how others have faired when it comes to getting any kind of response from official channels but I can tell you that I’ve had no response at all.

I’ve always felt that this problem is one of those “sleeper” issues that nobody in power seems to be concerned about but which can, and probably will, turn out to be much larger and far more important than most people realize.

Perhaps that concern is about to be confirmed. Only time will tell.

In the submission the government of Newfoundland and Labrador claims the border is “invalidly depicted”, and expresses deep “concern” about not being consulted by either Hydro-Quebec, the government of Quebec or the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency over the issue.

Among other concerns, including the depiction of a non-existent maritime boundary drawn through the Strait of Bell Isle, the submission also notes, "…the headwaters and entire watersheds of the Romaine and the four other major Quebec North Shore rivers appear, incorrectly, to be within Quebec."The submission by the Province requests that these inaccuracies be addressed before any assessment is completed and that issues related to potential environmental impacts inside Labrador be fully addressed.

The document officially presented on behalf of the government of Newfoundland and Labrador appears to be a major departure from its past practice of ignoring Quebec’s boundary claims and is in direct contrast to Premier William’s comments just over two years ago.

At that time Mr. Williams told the St. John’s Telegram, “I don't even understand why it's being raised ... the boundary is not an issue for us. Every so often it will come up on a Quebec map showing the border being wrong, but from our perspective it's not a concern.”"I wouldn't even raise it - by just raising it, with all due respect, even doing articles on it just acknowledges maybe there is an issue here, in the minds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians."

This about face begs the question, why has Premier Williams, long viewed as standing up for his province, as ensuring “no more giveaways” and who has nurtured an image throughout Canada that he is willing to take on the biggest of the big, not more proactive on this issue?

It also begs the question of whether or not the government of Newfoundland and Labrador is finally challenging Quebec over this issue at the request of the Premier or in spite of him.