Da Legal Stuff...
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Now, with that out of the way...Let's Web Talk.
How can anyone, especially Premier Danny Williams, watch 5,000 to 10,000 people pack themselves into the Capital hotel for a job fair held by out of province employers and not consider using every tool at their disposal to promote industrial development and keep people here? Oil may be spewing from the wells off our shores but our best and brightest are also spewing out of communities across the land and heading directly for the nearest airport.
“It’s heartbreaking”, said one job seeker at the fair. “I’ve lived here all my life but there’s just no work. If I want to feed my family I have to leave them behind.”
When you consider that according to financial analysts Newfoundland and Labrador is a hair’s breadth from being considered a so called “Have” province, the irony of the situation really hits home. There is an abundance of resources in the province, oil, minerals, timber and hydro power and so on, but none of these has translated into the kind of local jobs the province needs. The unemployment rate remains in the double digits, the highest in the nation, and people are leaving by the plane load as lights go out all along the coast.
The truth is that the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian and nobody else’s. Yes, the federal government has thrown up roadblocks to our futures. Everything from mismanagement of the fisheries to denying the province the same rights to manage it’s oil and gas as places like Alberta, but in the end it is the people of the province who have elected provincial government after provincial government, the members of which, have no vision beyond the very next election and another four year term.
When oil was discovered offshore nobody stood up to make sure that refineries and petrochemical industries were lured here. While we all know power from the Upper Churchill was whisked away through a seriously flawed deal with Quebec we still have the right to recall enough of that power annually to support at least one industrial player who could provide a few hundred badly needed jobs. Instead our government simply sells that power back to Quebec. The Lower Churchill project is now being considered for development yet the only option the Premier seems to recognize is selling the power outside the province rather than using it to attract industry here.
The list of wasted opportunities goes on and on but it’s by no means infinite. Sooner rather than later the last chance, the last resource find that can be used to help build the economy, will have been given away. We all know what will happen then. No longer will a couple of flights a day be enough to handle the mass exodus of people from this place. When that day comes the province will look a lot like a third world nation in the hours leading up to some monstrous natural disaster. Every artery, every flight and every ferry out of this place will be filled to overflowing and the entire province will become little more than a footnote to history.
Would the last person out please turn off the lights?
As a citizen of Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s difficult for me to understand the mentality of premier Danny Williams these days. Unlike people in other parts of Canada I don’t disagree with his direction on big oil or his fight with Ottawa over equalization, in fact I applaud him for it. What has me confused is how Williams can fight these battles under the umbrella of ensuring that his people gain the maximum benefit of their resources yet he sees nothing wrong with exporting power from the Lower Churchill development.
A major problem facing this province is the lack of a clean and steady supply of power. We see it in Labrador where many people use diesel generated power to light their homes. We also see it on the island of Newfoundland where much of the power produced comes from the burning of oil and where industries like Abiti Consolidated have closed their doors because of a lack of reasonably priced energy. With this reality, I have to wonder how the Premier can even consider spending billions on the last undeveloped mega-project in North America only to export that power elsewhere.
The economy of Newfoundland and Labrador is largely dependent on seasonal industry. The fisheries, tourism, logging, construction and so on may bring in revenue for a few months of the year but high unemployment rates in the province and the mass exodus of workers speaks volumes about the lack of dependable long term employment here. The only hope this province has is to attract industry and lessen its dependence on seasonal work. Smelters, mills, factories and the like are capable of providing employment that is sorely needed to stabilize and grow the economy. These industries all have one thing in common. They move where they can find a steady supply of power.
As I write this, firms like Alcoa, the world’s leading producer of aluminum, are scouring the earth looking for places to setup shop. The reason is a world wide shortage of electricity. These industrial giants are looking for a place that can provide them with the power they need to run their smelters.
When government discusses the energy capabilities of the Lower Churchill they often explain its potential by telling the public that it can supply about 1.5 million homes. This makes it sound like exporting the power is the only sensible thing to do since the province of Newfoundland and Labrador only has 500,000 people. What you don’t here them say is that this energy, if retained, has the potential to attract and supply dozens of major industries and provide thousands of high paying, long term and stable jobs for the province.
Yes, exporting Lower Churchill power will put millions into provincial coffers but if the current cycle of out-migration continues and if unemployment rates remain at a nation wide high, what good will it do? On the other hand, using the power to attract industry to the province would increase the industrial and personal tax base dramatically which would increase provincial revenues as well. I ask you, if you had a car but no job, would you sell it for a quick buck or would you put a taxi sign on the roof and make a steady income from it? It looks like Danny has decided to put the for sale sign in the window without even considering the options.
Hi folks, Below is a great article by Averill Baker issued today. Enjoy.
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”
Averill Baker
The Nor'wester
They are dirty rotten scoundrels in the tradition of the two con men in that 1988 movie.
The scoundrels are in this case our politicians, and other so-called fisheries experts, who declared publicly that they support bottom dragging on the high seas.
These scoundrels now include our MP’s and even some of our own cabinet ministers in this province who displayed their ignorance in public pronouncements that if the United Nations banned bottom dragging on the high seas that Canada would then be forced to ban it inside 200 miles.
What a stretch. What a display of unmitigated stupidity. Or, if they knew the difference, what a lie they told and are allowed to continue to tell by our publicly funded CBC media.
In my first year at law school I learned enough about the Law of the Sea to know that a coastal state has absolute jurisdiction within 200 miles. You don’t have to go to law school to learn that. All you need is an ability to read or to listen. Perhaps therein lies the problem - our representatives may either be totally illiterate or refuse to listen to the truth, or both.
What we have here is an intentional obstruction of the truth by those in power who have now intentionally turned the tables into a discussion of what would happen inside 200 miles if it were outside 200 miles.
I even heard a fisherman on CBC national radio claim that a lot of the fish processed in Newfoundland comes from draggers, so he was against the ban. The poor unfortunate fisherman actually thought that what was under discussion was a ban inside 200 miles. The host of the national show also didn’t know the difference. It is behavior like this by the CBC that makes people want to take away that one billion dollar-a-year subsidy taxpayers give to the CBC. On issues like this, the CBC has a job to do and they have failed miserably because they are just too lazy to do some investigative reporting or at least try to be impartial.
So what is the answer – do we just grin and bear it? Do we bow to the lies and deception of those in power who want to continue the destruction of our natural resources?
There are 17 foreign nations out there bottom dragging, and Canada is not one of them, ripping the daylights out of the spawning grounds of our Groundfish on our Continental Shelf outside 200 miles and we have a bunch of people in power who think more about those foreigners than they do their own people.
Maybe they just don’t know the difference. Maybe our Ministers of Fisheries take their advice from their deputy ministers. In Ottawa the deputy minister is the same person who holds the job of president of NAFO. In St. John’s the deputy minister is a member of the board of Directors of the Fisheries Council of Canada and a well-known delegate to and supporter of NAFO. I found it strange that Tom Rideout, when he first heard of Canada’s position stated publicly that it sounded rather strange but later in a prepared release said that he supported Canada’s position. I bet he checked with his deputy minister.
The Fisheries Council of Canada declared their support for Canada’s position saying that a Decima poll showed that 87% of Canadians did not support a ban on bottom dragging. I do not believe that Canadians are that stupid and I publicly challenge them to produce that poll.
I don’t believe they can produce it because I don’t believe it exists.
One thing should be pointed out in this discussion and that is the use of the term “bottom trawling”. I spend a lot of my time defending fishermen in court and if there is one thing that I learned over the years it was never to be opposed to trawls. Ordinary fishermen used trawls – a long line with hooks attached close to the bottom – to catch fish. It is the best fishing method known to man – a baited hook. That is why the scoundrels call it bottom trawling and not bottom dragging which is what is really happening on the high seas.
So, in this discussion, you will note that I use the words “bottom dragging” and not the words used by those who seek to mask their outrageously destructive methods of dragging the ocean floor.
And don’t let anyone tell you that Canada does this on the high seas – we do not. We have only shrimp draggers, limited to 65-feet long by law, who drag in defined areas of the bottom that amount to a needlepoint on a large map inside our 200-mile limit. We do not own any of those 100 large draggers five times 65-feet long who drag every day of the year on our continental shelf outside 200 miles – all because we have a government in Ottawa who care more about foreigners than they do about Newfoundlanders or the resources of the ocean.
