From the Telegram’s Saturday edition, comes a provocative idea from another opinion piece:
If Churchill Falls is the alpha and omega of provincial politics, what happens now?
How does a political culture evolve once it has reached the promised land, where have-not is no more?
Mr. Williams did not change the province’s political culture so much as he embodied it. And for the past forty years, that culture has been predicated on the politics of anticipation.
For two generations, Newfoundlanders have waited for political deliverance from the injustices of the past.
This anticipation created a political teleology so deeply ingrained that it’s hardly recognized, let alone questioned. The unspoken assumption has always been that Newfoundland and Labrador is not just a place but a time: it’s always on the cusp of going somewhere, becoming something, fighting someone.
To be a Newfoundlander is to know in your bones that the next big announcement is just around the corner, because one day the sun will surely shine.
Being Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador has meant never having to say you’re sorry, because suffering have-not status and Ottawa’s perfidy justifies doing whatever is necessary, from hauling down a national flag to slandering opponents as traitors and betrayers.
Yet if politics has meant struggle, what happens when the struggle is won?
Historian Jerry Bannister comes up with a poser.
After all, Labrador hydro-electric power is the political equivalent of paradise on Earth in Newfoundland and Labrador.
It’s something that is always just around the next bend.
It’s the better tomorrow we have to be ready for.
So what happens now that we are supposedly at that point in history?
What’s next?
- srbp -
4 comments:
I wasn't thinking of Francis Fukuyama when I wrote the piece, but your allusion to his end-of-history theory is interesting. As Luke Menand chronicled in a fascinating New Yorker article, Fukuyama has since disavowed much of his neoconservatism.
My original title was "Are We There Yet? The Politics of Anticipation after Danny Williams." Since it's not available online, I'll post a full copy at Winston Smith, in case anyone is interested. The piece started out as a review of Bill Rowe's book and then morphed several times in light of recent events. My thanks to the Telegram for agreeing to publish it.
While Albertans debate their government's Heritage Fund, they are at least having a debate about how to manage non-renewable resources. The assumption in NL seems to be that investing in the Lower Churchill will form the equivalent of a long-term Heritage Fund, but there should at least be a public debate over whether the current proposal to develop Muskrat Falls is, in fact, the best use of the province's oil revenues. Which is why Randy Simms was right to raise the questions that he did in Saturday's Telegram.
Jerry: The title seemed to me to flow logically from the one the Telly editor applied.
As it is, though, the point is still along the same lines as the one you made. Here's one observation I'd make though. In 1985, the last piece of the resource control puzzle fell into place.
yet in 2004, Danny Williams could claim - and people enthusiastically agreed - that the people of the province lacked the legal and other controls over their resources. Some academics, like Jim Feehan, for example, chime din along the same lines. people are still arguing that the equity stakes or even the recent plan to massively increase hydro rates and the public debt is about resource control.
What we seem to avoid in local politics is a discussion along the lines of what happens in Alberta and in other places.
That said, I have no doubt we will not hear an end to the political abuse of our history. memories are so short here, as Herb Pottle noted, that in all likelihood, Danny Williams could have run again on equalization offsets and people would be cheering him on as if 2005 never happened.
Here's a thought on comparing Fukuyama to Newfoundland nationalism:
While the neoconservatives' obsession with the Cold War skewed their thinking about what to do after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Newfoundland nationalists' obsession with fighting Ottawa has left them unsure about what to do after the attainment of "have" status and the prospective development of the Lower Churchill. If the former were blinded by their enmity towards the Soviets, the latter are blinded by their enmity towards Ottawa & Quebec.
It didn't take American neoconservatives very long to find new enemies to fight after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but Newfoundland nationalists will have a much harder time conjuring up new enemies. Which is why I suspect that when the plans to develop Muskrat Falls run into problems, we will again receive a steady barrage about the perfidy of Ottawa and Quebec. People tend to forget that before the rise in oil revenue, nationalist rhetoric during the Grimes administration focused repeatedly on renegotiating the Terms of Union.
That's another old chestnut, too: renegotiating the Terms of Union.
In the meantime, if you go back, I've made two points about the recent LC developments with NS. 1. The announcement appears to have been immediately a vehicle to get Danny on a Cessna to Florida conveniently. People are starting to question it in greater detail but to that extent, it did the job.
2. Let's not forget the likelihood that the financially dodgy portion of this deal is really only offset if the bigger project gets done. In that sense we could be looking at what I said last September or so, namely that this is really just another version of the 1964 ploy. They want to look like they have an alternative so that they can lure the real bride back to the bedchamber, i.e. get Quebec back to do a deal.
And that explains why the NS term sheet signing sounded like a whacky wedding reception where both the bride and the groom kept talking about the bitch who spurned the groom's advances and who is the one he really wants to get in bed with.
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