The eagle eyed nottawa picked up on something in a column by Michael Johansen at the Telegram.
It’s a reference to a cash payment due to the Innu of Labrador as part of the land claims deal they approved in a recent referendum. Johansen refers to it this way: “the Innu would be paid $2 million within days as compensation for damage caused to them by the original Churchill Falls development.”
Nottawa points out that:
Payments - particularly those to be made within days - to groups or individuals contingent on their voting a certain way are generally frowned upon. In most cases, they're outright illegal.
Would no one be troubled, or at least curious enough to enquire if in the next election, I went knocking on doors with a campaign slogan like "Ten Grand In The Hand"?
Now if you look at the terms of the draft agreement released in 2008, the compensation payment is $2.0 million annually until 2041. The payments start “upon ratification and execution of the” impacts and benefits agreement.
There’s no reference in the early draft to the money being compensation or anything of the sort.
“Compensation” came up in the news release the provincial government issued when it released the draft agreement. It’s in the quote from no less a person than Premier Danny Williams. He said the agreement included “redress on the upper Churchill hydroelectric development.”
A couple of paragraphs later, the magic word appears:
The agreement also provides compensation to the Labrador Innu for impacts associated with the Churchill Falls development. This settles the outstanding grievance of Innu Nation with respect to damages suffered to Innu lands and properties as a result of the flooding caused by the upper Churchill River development in the 1960s.
Now you wouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to connect up the payment set out in the agreement and the references to compensation in the official government statements in 2008. From the comment you get what the intention of the payment is, even if the agreement itself doesn’t state what the money is for.
But whether the idea of connecting acceptance of an agreement on a wide range of issues with a payment to redress a grievance causes very serious legal problems is another matter entirely.
That matter is serious, as nottawa is suggesting.
It is so serious, in fact, that someone needs to clarify this, sooner rather than later.
- srbp -
2 comments:
Not sure we see this in the same light.
There's nothing wrong with compensation. It's a good thing. And there's nothing wrong with voting on its acceptance - that's a key part of having aboriginal communities make their own decisions.
What appears different in this case is the "within days" amounts to be paid out to individuals.
If there's a precedent for that anywhere else in the country, I'd love to see it.
I think we are pretty much on the same page.
I may have gone a bit beyond your post by making clear:
a. what was in the original agreement;
b. where the words "compensation" and "redress" appeared in the 2008 announcements, and,
c. in the larger context why this issue needs to get cleared up very quickly.
As I understand it, compensation as such, would not normally be contingent on the aggrieved party accepting a wider agreement on other, unrelated or tangentially related issues.
Compensation for a grievance is something that stands alone.
So that is one aspect of the possible issue here.
The other one is the tie, alleged tie or perceived tie between a yes vote and cash. Vote "yes" and you get cash "within days". With a no vote you get diddly squat, presumably, even though the cash they are talking about has been characterised as "compensation" or "redress".
My title put a word on what could be going on here, what might be perceived as going on here. The conditional language in the title and in the post should convey the point that this is potentially a very serious issue but not a direct accusation.
There's just something fishy smelling at this point.
Frankly there shouldn't be. Even if MF doesn't go through, this agreement is a milestone in provincial history. It should be as pristine as the river water. One thing that would help is if the final and complete agreement were made public, right now.
As for MF itself, all three parties now essentially back the plan to raise electricity rates and saddle the public with debt. Rejection of the deal isn't an option regardless of what happens in October.
But that, as they say, is another story.
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