TIME TO REFLECT ON THE SEVERANCE ISSUE: WHOSE FAULT IS IT REALLY?

In the media frenzy over how Premier Dwight Ball handled Ed Martin’s $1.4 million severance, the spotlight on the real culprits seems to have been switched off.

It is obvious that Ball and his Natural Resources Minister have become embroiled in a web of untruths to extricate themselves from the political fallout of the debacle.

But in the race to parse who said what, to whom and when, the public and the media have forgotten, that beneath all the lies and half-truths, is the realty that Ed Martin used the Crown Corporation he led, helped by compliant friends on the Board of Directors, to enrich himself.

While a more savvy Premier would have dealt with the issue - and Ed Martin - differently it was, nevertheless, the responsibility of the Board, too, to protect the public interest. 

But nowhere in the confused and often sorry narrative of a failed CEO, an amateur Premier and his featherweight Minister, is there a single shred of evidence that the Board did anything except facilitate a scandalous ransacking of the public purse as it headed out of Dodge.

NALCOR’S NATTERING NEANDERTHAL

The last straw for an angry public was former Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s boldfaced support for Nalcor following the January 2014 ‘black-outs’, an event now inscribed in history as Dark NL.

Dunderdale played defense for three years in an effort to bolster Muskrat Falls.  She explained Nalcor’s secrecy as a triumph of transparency though it was anything but.  Her abuse of the PUB process and fumbling of basic facts about the project constituted a gross subversion of the truth.

Her integrity in tatters, Premier Dunderdale was forced to resign.

Against this background Ken Marshall, the new Chairman of the Nalcor Board, still thought it a great idea to publish a piece in the Weekend Telegram entitled "Responsible development and oversight go hand in hand".  In  content and style it is reminiscent of Dunderdale.

His exhibition of uncommonly bad judgement could only have been exhibited because he is assured impunity by a timid and ineffective Premier Tom Marshall.  But it speaks volumes of Ed Martin, too, without whose permission the item would not have been submitted for publication. 

How far does Nalcor’s arrogance extend?  How impervious to a soured public can they be?  Is there no rehabilitation for Nalcor’s nattering Neanderthals?    Perhaps they confuse morons and electrons.