The reaction,
last week, to Nalcor CEO Ed Martin’s announcement that another $800 million had
been lathered on to the Muskrat Falls project attracted some interesting
reactions from provincial politicians; in another case there was no response at
all.
Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians seemed to take the news with typical equanimity.
There were
no street protests, no calls for Martin’s resignation (though there ought to
have been), no demands for the Government to resign.
Public quiescence was maintained possibly
because Nalcor still has cash flow; Newfoundland Power will send the bills
later.
Still, an
additional $800 million is a staggering sum.
The new total is $8.33 billion when interest during construction on
the new overage is included; that is slightly higher than the $8.19 billion
I had reported in my last missive (having been corrected by a ‘qualified’
economist).
Speaking of
which…we haven’t hear from Dr. Wade Locke. Locke is the MUN Economist, who
proclaimed to a capacity crowd filling the Inco Centre, he approved of the
Project.
But, it was the
warning he left with an audience in Norman’s Cove, a few days later, that some
remember. Locke is reported to have
stated, if the Muskrat Falls Project exceeds $8 billion it will cease to be the
lowest cost option.
It is
unlikely the folks in that small community found the dismal science enlivened
by the perennial fog that hangs over the isthmus; away from the din and roar of
oil sated St. John’s, and the profundities of the Board of Trade, he may have
found that rural folk can be counted on to give discerning clarity to arrant
nonsense.
At $8.33
billion, I thought the Professor might take the opportunity and recant early,
in advance of the more ghastly numbers to come. Not a chance. Locke is quieter
than a Nalcor Consultant with the summer off.
Other politicians
were at the ready to fill any void of Dr. Locke’s making.
Liberal
critic Andrew Parsons suggested he is worried about the Project’s mounting
construction costs.
“We’ve
always known this was an expensive project,” he told reporters. “And what we
have here now is an extremely expensive project.”
The Liberal
Opposition has always approached opposition to the Muskrat Falls project with the
ambivalence of a tire kicker. It has
always preferred to attack fringe issues, like transparency and ‘oversight’, without
ever condemning the project. The
Liberals never could muster the leadership to counsel against Muskrat’s risks or
its dodgy economics when there was still an opportunity to kill it.
Insiders in
the Liberal Party like former Nalcor Director, now MHA, Cathy Bennett and
policy peon, Dean MacDonald, lent no backbone to Dwight Ball; not that he was
inclined to warn Danny’s boys of public risk for private benefit. Many of the people who attended the recent
Liberal Fundraising Dinner would not be happy with more than feint criticism of
the project.
If Ball were
able to say: ‘I told you not to do this’, he might now be enjoying the status
of one with real moral authority heading into the next election. But he can claim only the same boast as the
NDP. That’s not much.
MHA George
Murphy described the announcement as "unsettling". The PUB should have been able to do its work, he declared. The
NDP, too, would now like to sermonize, but like the Liberals, it was not
prepared to go to the wall against Muskrat or for the PUB. It is tough to go against the tide of Union
interests or when there exists strong public support of a bad idea. Leaders
choose to lead or to follow.
The public is
never wrong and it does not reward followers; which brings me to Premier Tom Marshall. He had a comment on Ed Martin’s Muskrat
Eulogy, too. Having been warned long ago
of the cost overruns by Vale and by other megaprojects, the Premier decided
they could now be used as ‘benchmarks’.
“I look at
some of the other projects,” Marshall said. “I’m very comfortable. I look at
what’s happening with Vale and their project, and with Hebron.”
Like falling
objects, look out for a changing narrative on Muskrat Falls.
Pretty soon
most people, including the Liberals (after the next election) and the NDP, will be totally against it. Take note: they always were!
