07 February 2006

The old school fish minister

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians heard this evening from the new federal fisheries minister, Loyola Hearn, courtesy of two interviews with local television news.

Among the words of wisdom from Hearn:

1. Moving immediately to take custodial management of the nose and tail of the Grand banks means start having meetings with officials.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are likely to find out - as predicted - that Hearn will be following the old school of politics from which he comes and which Bill Rowe, Hearn's' radio call-in show buddy, said in Hearn's defence today: it's easy to say things when you are in Opposition.

Put another way, it's about saying one thing to get elected and doing something else once in the job.

2. On the difficult job of managing fish quotas and tackling the overcapacity in the province's fish processing sector: Hearn believes in spreading the resource to benefit the most people, not employing the number of people the resource can actually sustain.

That's the same philosophy Hearn's been supporting since he first got into politics almost 25 years ago.

It's the philosophy that helped get the province's fish sector into the mess it's already in.

Lot's of people who supported Hearn are going to find out what the Bond Papers has been saying all along.