We sometimes forget that very busy, serious,
intelligent and talented citizens head out each day to work, to volunteer and,
in a variety of ways, to enable others in the search of self-improvement. In so doing, they enrich our Province and
each of us, personally. Many, and
especially, the writer whose email I am publishing today, have spent a
lifetime sharing their enormous talents.
They eschew publicity, unless it is essential to their mission. They
work hard and their dedication often goes unheralded; they keep an ear to
government and politics, but their time only goes so far.
While music, art and education underpin our way of
life there are many facets that make a society whole, that make it strong. Likely, the dedicated citizens, to whom I
refer, share a frustration that overwhelms and they have to say what’s on their
mind.
No name is ascribed but one incredibly talented and
generous citizen expressed himself recently, this time with an uncharacteristic
disregard for timbre.
TO: Des Sullivan
Like most people in this province, I tried to keep
an open mind on this project when it was first touted, although I had
instinctive misgivings because of the way it was being promoted and the
heavy-handed third-world approach by both government and Nalcor. Never any
answers to the real questions being asked; legislative over-riding of the vital
role of the PUB; misleading statements about "revenue" when we all
know that consumer charges for an energy monopoly do not
constitute "revenue" to the province, but a disguised form of
taxation of a captive public with no assurance of external
revenue through exports or even industrial usage; character assassination of
critics; no proven demand for power (1%?); potential giveaway to Alderon;
changing rationale (we will sell to the U.S.; we won't sell to the U.S.; we
have power to sell; we need all the power for our own industrial
development;) etc. etc.
The whole thing smells like last summer's fish, and
looks like a bureaucratic boondoggle being ram-rodded through a political
giveaway of biblical proportions. It makes the much-abused Upper Churchill
deal look like a godsend; at least that project provided a lot of
construction jobs, built a town where some 600 people have lived and worked for
the past half-century with all the economic spin-off to the province which
that implies, and actually pays some money into our coffers each year (not
nearly enough, to be sure, but at least we're not paying off a 10-12
billion dollar debt which will be the case with Muskrat! The people
of Newfoundland & Labrador would be up in arms if it weren't for their
religious worship of Danny Williams, who can do no wrong because he owns the
Ice Caps, and if he's for Muskrat then it must be all right (Alderon and Brian
Tobin notwithstanding!)
I didn't mean to rant in sending you this note,
so I apologize. But I am angry that my own questions have never been
answered, and that we seem to be hell-bent-for-leather on the road to financial
disaster after finally becoming the "have" province which Brian Peckford
predicted three decades ago.
The Upper Churchill deal was hailed unanimously by
all parties in the House of Assembly in the 1960s, there was NO dissenting
voice in the province, or in the media, despite all the brilliant lawyers
we had living here who later became born-again evangelists of escalator
clauses. Now there is a roiling sea of criticism and dissent, amazingly in
a non-partisan environment. When I see the well-researched, thoughtful essays
of John Collins, Cabot Martin, Dave Vardy, Ron Penney, Des Sullivan and so
many knowledgeable citizens, I cannot believe that government is not at least
re-thinking their position and, at least, allowing the PUB to do its work
as the public guardian it is mandated to be. Democracy?
We live in perilous times, indeed.
Regards,
