The public still
awaits one signal the Liberals have the capacity for leadership.
The recent
Speech from the Throne represents the third specific occasion of missed
opportunity; the other two include an appropriate response to the Fiscal Update
and revelations by the Premier, in February, of trouble in the long term bond
market.
The Throne
Speech is more than just ceremony signalling a new Session of the House of
Assembly. The symbolism incorporates a
purpose that exceeds any ritualistic merit.
This should have
seemed fortuitous to a new government promising “real change”.
A Throne Speech
is expected to reflect the public policy direction, specifically the
legislative agenda, of the government. But it need not. Precisely because it has
no defined specifications, an enterprising and creative political leadership
will lever the pageantry to profile election themes and to describe the basis
of major initiatives, not just those legislative, it is planning.
But, most of
all, while the Budget should constitute the financial equivalent of the
pharmacist’s prescription, the Throne Speech should act as a holistic
examination and diagnosis of the political corpus.
The last Throne
Speech of the previous Tory Government constituted a series of disparate lines
rendered from each Department, strung together with the finesse of a chainsaw.
It spoke to the boredom incited by the exercise; it held a surfeit of words and
repetition. The overabundance of
secondary issues left no room for either context or an overarching theme.
The Throne
Speech of the new Government is certainly more elegantly written but its
content is similar, and it suffers from a lack of strategic focus.
While
recognizing that the Province has a serious fiscal situation, it seems incapable
of describing what the cost will be on our society, how much will have to be
forfeited to correct the problem.
It is fine
for the Government to claim it will “restore Openness, Transparency and
Accountability; Build a Stronger, Smarter Economy; Improve Health and
Healthcare; Support Safe and Sustainable Communities; and Invest in Our Future
Through Education”.
But how are
those lofty goals accomplished when $8 billion is being spent against $6
billion of revenue, not counting Capital Account and the overruns on Muskrat
Falls?
How can
Government offer more when, a few lines later, it states: “decisive actions
will be implemented with Budget 2016 this spring followed by…” medium and long
term actions…” In plain English, that means cuts.
Platitudes
come easy to politicians; sharing bad news not quite so much.
When the
Government is facing the most serious fiscal crisis since Confederation, and a
bond market eyeing the place as a failed demi-state, is there not a time to
square an unwarranted sense of expectation with the reality of what we can
afford? Why would the Government not set the ground work for the nastiness yet
to be imposed unless, like the Tories, it hopes to kick that “can” further down
the road?
How can the
public not maintain its well-entrenched sense of entitlement if mention of unsustainable
debt and improvements to programs and services are spoken without acknowledgement
of conflict?
The Speech
notes that the Government is “pleased to say the public have responded in a
productive and real way” to ideas for trimming expenses and raising revenues. But
aren’t those initiatives only supposed to impact someone else?
In the
current milieu, in addition to offering an appraisal of our impending era of
wrenching change, the Premier should have insisted that the Throne Speech
describe the evolution and extent of the crisis, and exposed how it is the
Tories placed a whole society in peril. Such an expose is needed less to give
sanction to the Tories, though that would be proper, than as a warning to
future governments.
This
unfortunate omission is one historians will find baffling, given the size of
the current financial mess.
That said,
what is wrong with a new Government differentiating itself from the old one?
Shouldn’t it
also set out its own philosophical basis for the key policy changes necessary
to brand the new government? Isn’t such an approach still good politics?
Any new
government should want to give affirmation to the institutional and community
leadership, including the Caucus and the media, that the people’s faith is well
placed, that the Government has brains, ideas, and a plan that reflects the
current social and economic imperative.
This Throne
Speech did not accomplish any such objective. Aside from the fiscal crisis, the
Province is facing a demographic crisis of no small proportion, too; one that
is eroding the very face of rural Newfoundland and Labrador daily. Yet, the
best the Government can do is mention that the problem exists.
Like the
Tories, it can’t seem to understand that the financial crisis is occurring in
conjunction with a demographic crisis and an emerging unemployment crisis, too.
Are not local airports feeling a hollow wind coming out of Western Canada? Aren't two of three mega projects coming to and end?
Government’s
job is to help the public prepare for a day of reckoning, not to candy coat the
inevitable with some undefined promise of a “new approach”. Couldn’t it, at
least, have informed us where impending higher taxes and double the cost of
electricity fits with higher unemployment? Or, how those higher input costs
will dampen efforts at diversification?
“There is a
new day dawning” might have constituted a more honest preface to the Throne Speech.
Likely around
August of this year, some of the largest topside modules ever constructed, about
three times those built for the Hibernia platform, will enter Bull Arm from
South Korea, for mating with
the Hebron GBS. It will dawn on the whole prescient lot, who facilitated a
decade of unmitigated madness, to ask if the locals could have done more of
that work; why the mega projects weren’t staged.
But such questions do not fit with a narrative that contemplates a return of high oil
prices, following which the good times will roll again. I fear that is what holds
this Government back from considering a far broader, if more painful, plan for
change.
Yes. Easy is
alluring!
Still, common
sense, minimally, should have counselled His Honor to state the Government is committed
to review the mandate given Nalcor together with the intention to redesign the
entire cockamamie energy warehouse concept, before it breaks us; if it hasn’t
already.
The Province
stands on the precipice of financial failure, one deepened by Muskrat and other
schemes demanding equity and replacing public services with risk.
The Ball
Government seems too fresh, too naïve, to know it will incite civil strife if the
folly of the Oracle of Galway is fed by the anguish of layoffs and reduced
services, including health care. The Throne Speech did not connect the dots to
the dangerous brew now on boil. For Premier Ball, that education may come too
late.
The Speech
From the Throne was an Address suitable, notwithstanding its shortcomings, for ‘normal’
times.
Except those
are not normal times.
The realty
that faces Newfoundland and Labrador should have been described, and the Throne
Speech should have been inscribed, with a forcefulness and a clarity understood
as readily on Maxse Street as on Bay Street.
This was truly its biggest failing.
Likely, this
young Liberal Government that will yet make the best students for all-day
kindergarten.
