If the hot
summer sun is making you testy, you’ll get no shade from the Government’s Oversight
Committee on Muskrat Falls.
The
Committee released its first Report last Thursday, July 31st.
Partisans
will say Muskrat critics can find nothing right in this project; I suggest the latter profess the hope they are wrong.
But, hope has a spiritual undertone; a large construction project is a
purely commercial undertaking, one to which hope is supplanted with
solid planning, analysis and oversight, too.
On March 26,
2014, following Tom Marshall’s establishment of the bureaucratic oversight committee,
I wrote a post entitled: WHY MUSKRAT OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE IS A FARCE. It noted: “… the Premier eschewed demands for
project reviews when he was both Minister of Finance and Natural Resources. He
supported Premier Dunderdale’s position on ‘oversight’ even as he watched his
colleague, Jerome Kennedy, bolt the Cabinet over the issue.”
Given Marshall's long held refusal to acknowledge the importance of oversight, it was difficult to see how a Committee, one not independent of government, could effectively function.
Given Marshall's long held refusal to acknowledge the importance of oversight, it was difficult to see how a Committee, one not independent of government, could effectively function.
