John Crosbie, former gauleiter of Newfoundland, and Bill Rowe, former envelope chucker and perpetual crank, are engaged in a mutual massage-fest dissecting current goings on.
Crosbie talks about a signed contractual document namely the offshore deal and why it should be a separate bill like the Real Atlantic Accord.
Simple answer, since John's memory is failing, is that the Real Accord represented some major policies that affected federal legislative jurisdiction. The bill took two full years to get through the House and Senate.
The current document is merely authority to spend money and doesn't amend any other legislation, the Accord implementation act included. Including it within C-43 is the fastest way to get it done.
Meanwhile, since John said he never turned his back on this province, I draw your attention once more to the vicious comments Mr. Bumble...err... Mr. Crosbie made in the fall of 1990 when the provincial government asked him if they might have the revenue portions of the Accord changed. Check out here and look for "John Crosbie and hand-biting".
It took a Liberal government in Ottawa (Paul Martin as finance minister and then Paul Martin as PM) to help people who Mr. Crosbie considered to be ungrateful wretches biting the hand that fed them.
Oh by the way, JC is Atlantic co-chair of the Conservative Party campaign, not the Progressive Conservative Party campaign. The latter was killed off in the Reform take-over that spawned the Harper party currently in Opposition.
Now come to think about it, that would make this John Crosbie's third political party, not counting the work he did for the anti-Confederate movement in the National Referenda.
Now it all comes back to me. Crosbie bolted from the Liberal Party after failing to win the party leadership in 1968. He then joined the Tories, became a cabinet minister, and boosted the deficit and debt to then-record heights through spending including buying up the Upper Churchill project before rushing to Ottawa in 1976.
Then he tried for the Tory leadership and hung around long enough to be a successful, albeit cranky, cabinet minister.
To paraphrase one long-time acquaintance of the former gauleiter, Crosbie has wanted to be leader of everything he has ever been part of since the Boy Scouts.
Come to think of it, ambition plus floor crossing makes Mr. Crosbie eminently qualified to comment on Ms. Stronach's recent actions. The only problem for JC is that the bricks he chucked via Bill Rowe's new show Crap Talk are likely to rebound against the glass walls of Mr. Crosbie's current abode.