Ball and
Coady especially resemble Valdimir and Estragon — though possibly the tramps,
Didi and Gogo, too because, like them, they seem to have no part to play.
Our play
departs from Beckett’s a little, but only because Coady can expect an appearance
from the Auditor General, just not with the package she pretends he is
carrying.
The Minister
knows he will offer no guidance on the “falsification” issue over which
Nalcor’s whistleblower has sounded the alarm. Her performance is simply the
pretense that he will.
The CBC posted a story on November 11, 2016 stating that Auditor General (A-G) Terry Paddon had “… told the media… his staff will take a look at Nalcor Energy, a review which could possibly include the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project.”
The CBC said
that the AG was “not quite clear what [he] will be looking for,” adding:
"We
will go in with as broad a thought process as possible, and sort
of look at a wide range of areas… You could look at procurement, you could
look at compensation, you could look at business processes, those sorts of
things."
Fast forward
to May 11, 2017.
Natural
Resources Minister Siobhan Coady, in another CBC article co-written by reporter
Rob Antle and Morning Show Host Anthony Germain, had the Minister on record
responding to the Nalcor whistleblower. The professional engineer had “called
for a forensic audit, to find out why early cost projections for the hydro
megaproject were “ridiculously low””.
The CBC
recorded Coady stating that government “… officials are waiting for the auditor
general to finish a broad review of Nalcor Energy first”.
“Certainly
not opposed to looking at a forensic audit,” said Coady, “… we have a lot of
questions ourselves.”
Continued the
Minister:
“We're
going to look at what the auditor general does uncover and talk to [him] at the
time, and then consider how we move [forward], what's the next steps from
there.”
Readers of WHO IS DWIGHT BALL AFRAID OF? will recall
that I recently called attention to the A-G’s vague plans and suggested
that “Coady comments transmit the unmistakable odour of delay”.
Talk about
timing…
I received
an email from Independent MHA Paul Lane on Thursday, June 8, 2017. En passant,
Mr. Lane said that he had spoken with Auditor General “Terry Paddon last week”
and “he is not looking into anything related to MF [Muskrat Falls]. He is
doing a more general look at staffing, procurement policies, etc” with respect
to Nalcor.
Making sure
that I was not giving away any confidences, I replied to Mr. Lane asking permission to
use his exchange with the A-G. I receive his approval together with the suggestion that Coady was using the
AG’s review as “the excuse to do nothing and hope it blows over”. The MHA
should be a Playwright!
Lane stated
further that he hoped that one of the reasons that the A-G is looking at Nalcor is
“because of my constant phone calls, emails, face to face meetings and the
literally hundreds of people I got to call his office, email him, etc. He
has a file 8 inches thick.”
Fair enough.
The Member had made a claim to which he is entitled.
That said, discretion is a watchword of the Auditor General
as it is of or any “oversight” institution. Equally, I am well aware that Independent
Members get the chance to share far less information than a Minister or a
Premier. As you ascend the pecking order of politicians, those in government have far more
advisors and whisperers.
Certainly,
if the A-G tells a single Member about the scope of an Audit when allegations of falsification — so serious that they may
amount to criminal fraud — are swirling around the province, you might expect that Minister Coady has made it
her business to know, too… unless she is in a far greater state of denial than
Vladimir and Estragon which, admittedly, is likely.
For the
Minister to say that she is waiting for what the Audit uncovers knowing, as she
and the Premier must, that the A-G is not looking at Muskrat Falls at all,
is tantamount to “ghosting”, as one writer said of Vladimir and Estragon as they
await the arrival of Godot.
The only other
difference is that Ball and Coady pass the time with bafflegab, rather than insults and
fitness routines — tools of dither which Beckett gave his
characters — the two politicians hopeful that a forgetful public awaits only a
reluctant summer.
Of course,
it is possible that Paul Lane didn’t actually speak with the A-G at all and that,
like Beckett’s characters, his encounter with the province’s auditor was merely
an imagining.
Far more
likely, Coady is awaiting something that will not arrive today… but surely
tomorrow!
