Sticks and stones: NAFTA edition

Danny Chavez?

Danny Arafat?

How about the Cuckoo of Corner Brook?

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The notional national media

Go to the Globe and Mail website.

Try and find a story from the February 11 edition by Rheal Seguin on a supposed border flap between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.

You’ll to look a bit.  For some reason a story that was prominent is now buried away on the “Others” page instead of on the national politics section where it was.

The story is bogus.  There is no border dispute.  The matter was settled in 1927 and the Romaine river hydro-electric project isn’t even close to the 1927 boundary.  This is another of those Sasquatch hunter things about the Labrador border:  people keep hunting because they know it’s there but the only “proof” turns out to be fiction.

That’s because the border controversy, like the Sasquatch, is made up.

And the story is one of the problems when you drop into Newfoundland and Labrador every once in a while rather than pay attention to what is going on here on a regular basis.

You wind up hunting Sasquatch instead of looking at the case of a real undefined border – this one in the Gulf of St. Lawrence – which is impeding exploration for and development of oil and gas resources.

Meanwhile over at the National Post, a editorial on the latest federal transfer racket contains an astonishing amount of stuff that is not true.

Now Mr. Williams and his government have calculated that switching to the new formula would be better for the coming fiscal year — netting Newfoundland’s treasury and extra $1.3-billion to $1.6-billion — so they want to switch. However, in January’s budget, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty eliminated that option.

Not so.

The amounts quoted were totals over three years, not one.

More importantly they are estimates.

The only figure that seems to be plausibly correct is about $400 million that won’t flow in 2009 but even that is based on:

1. Estimates. 
2. Projections based on current knowledge instead of the actual financial situation in February 2010 when Newfoundland and Labrador will chose which of two Equalization options it will pick for 2009.
3. A set of choices that wouldn’t have existed at all if the current provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador had gotten its way at any point in the recent past.

The National Post editorialist didn’t stop with those untruths.  It went farther with other things it actually labelled as true when they aren’t:

It’s true Mr. Flaherty and the Harper government eliminated the switching option without first consulting their colleagues in the Williams government. It is also true that this policy change only affects Newfoundland, even though the province is not singled out by name. And it is true the Harper government is tired of Mr. Williams and the constant bashing they take from him, all of which could lead to the conclusion that this is what Mr. Williams claims — an act of vengeance aimed at him and his province.

1. It’s not really clear that the feds didn’t consult.  The provincial officials knew something was up in November last year.  What happened after that is a bit murky.
2. The policy change affects all provinces receiving Equalization and provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador that are still affected by the program.  Ontario and Quebec aren’t going to draw as much from the federal teat as they would have under the program from 2008.  That’s been covered in other conventional news media.  Heck.  The changes are being made expressly to limit the impact on the program of having Ontario now drawing Equalization.

Now that last part – about being tired of the tirades  - is probably true. It’s quite the stretch though to go from that to suggest that this was a policy designed to screw over one province when the facts – as previously reported – show something else.

The relationship between the current provincial administration and the federal government – irrespective of political stripe – is dysfunctional.  It got that way as the result of a lot of hard work after 2003.  The dysfunction may be deliberate or it may be an accidental by-product of old-fashioned political posturing. That part doesn’t matter.  The fact is the dysfunction exists.

It can only change if the people  - it takes two to tango - who are causing or contributing to the dysfunction change their behaviour.

That change isn’t helped by newspapers that are notionally national printing bogus information as if it were fact.

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Williams "a bumptuous blowhard"

The National Post weighs in:

Even if Mr. Williams disagrees with all this, he is at the very least guilty of coming off as a bumptious blowhard. It is unusual enough for a provincial premier to campaign against a sitting federal government (most confine themselves to championing federal candidates from their own party within their province), but it is unprecedented for a premier to advocate nationally for the defeat of a government in Ottawa of his own party.

This is not a sign of how bad the Harper government has treated Newfoundland. Rather, Mr. Williams’ latest outrageous proposals are a sign that he has become a captive to his own bluster. He has gone to this well so often, that each dip must be bigger and splashier than they last, until now he has no credibility left.

And if that wasn't enough, there's Don Martin's take:

Of course, there's a wingnut factor to be factored into any Williams damage assessments.

This is, after all, the premier who yanked down Canadian flags in protest, howled at Paul Martin with identical vitriol and stormed out of his first First Ministers conference with little provocation.

Williams makes the point that Newfoundland is on the verge of achieving economic independence, an overdue prosperity from offshore oil that could be short-lived.

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Is the goal a 1948 do-over referendum?

The National Post this Easter weekend contains a little profile of Premier Danny Williams.

There are a few factual errors, but nothing that undermines the core point of the piece. Overall, there is a summary of the current state of the erstwhile nation of Dannyland. The picture isn't good. There's no way to make it good and it is the branding of this province as Dannyland that ultimately undermines whatever the triffid logo thing could possibly do.

A look at Newfoundland's history through a local lens explains why Mr. Williams' attacks on big business and Ottawa play so well around the kitchen tables of Gander and Corner Brook. Dragged into Confederation by the narrowest margin, the formerly independent colony has been rewarded with collapsed cod stocks, a hydro deal that virtually donates electricity to Quebec (which resells it to Americans for a tidy profit), two generations of talented young people decamping for work in Alberta and elsewhere, and the largest per capita debt and highest unemployment in Canada.

Cynics outside the province might suggest Newfoundlanders had something to do with bad economic planning, but locally, says Mr. [John] Crosbie, the feeling is "we're always being outsmarted and done in by mainlanders."

Since this piece was written by a mainlander, he can be forgiven for assuming every single person on what the Post calls The Rock - a word destined to join the other "n" word on the list of banned ethnic slurs - buys into the nationalist mythology on which the latest caudillo thrives.

Rick Mercer, no longer living here, can also be forgiven for mistaking the appearance of near-unanimity back home as a sign that there is, in fact, near unanimous agreement with the Premier's goals even if there is a quibble about tactics. If we define the goal as motherhood and blueberry duff, then that would be true.

But it isn't the goal and so there are growing questions that run deeper than the correctness of the Premier's rant-du-jour. What exactly is this "fair share" Williams keeps talking about? What would a better deal on oil or Confederation look like so we can help spot it when it shows up? Williams himself apparently has no idea and so Newfoundlanders and Labradorians increasingly wonder what he is up to.

Is he planning to create the climate in which the fall election will turn into a referendum on Confederation? Is the first townie premier to run the place since well before the townies put 'er up on the rocks in 1934 going to take give the nationalist townies a do-over on the 1948 referendum? Only his man in the Blue Line cab likely knows for sure.

Since we are on the subject of wider goals, Offal News returns to that issue today. The cause is confirmation from the oil industry that there are no talks going on with the provincial government regarding Hebron. It isn't like Simon Lono has said that before, and been right. it is that Williams has suggsted there were talks going on - yet again - and yet again, the facts are something else.

Once you are done there, take a glance at nottawa. Mark Watton notes - riffing on the Post piece - that Williams makes much of the idea that he is on a self-less mission of good, that he doesn't need the job of Premier because he is independently wealthy.

nottawa points out that anywhere else in the a country a federal politician who tried the same sanctimonious, self-serving line on the press gallery, they would - to use a local phrase - have his guts for garters. He's absolutely correct.

What the Post doesn't say, though, likely because of their interview subjects, is that the demagogues of post-Confederation Newfoundland all wound up chased from office in some measure of public disrepute. At the risk of blasphemy, the same people who threw palm fronds to line the path of their newest saviour were among the first to line his via dolorosa and jeer.

Smallwood.

Peckford.

Tobin.

It is a short list, distinguished by nothing else if only by the volume of spittle ejected by anyone mentioning their name these days.

Danny Williams knows it.

That's one of the reasons why he reputedly detests the comparisons to people like Smallwood.

That's why - only three years into his mandate, Williams has already announced he'll be packing it in soon. That's why he is hunting for some sort of legacy, some sort of brand, other than the one he has already claimed for himself.

It's too late of course.

On this Easter weekend, and in the religion of Newfoundland politics, we need only wonder who will be playing the role of Barabas in the latest version of the pageant.