Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are growing sadly too familiar with incompetent legislators who sign documents without reading them.
In the case of natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, they also know she has some difficulty with information. Google is a concept she never mastered in another portfolio as she insisted her officials would "do the due diligence piece".
Now in what may turn out to be another pissing match between this administration and someone else, Dunderdale has issued a news release and taken exception to the publication on Thursday of documents by the offshore regulatory board related to Hibernia South.
Dunderdale has a right to be embarrassed. Documents released show the inherent falsehood in many of Dunderdale's claims when she vetoed the Hibernia South project conditional approval. It's never nice to have your incompetence displayed in such an open and unequivocal fashion.
For example, Dunderdale claimed the Board's decision removed the province's ability to look after its financial interests. Not true, as the official Decision demonstrates in remarkably plain English. The project could proceed - if and only if - the provincial government was satisfied on matters related to royalties. Similar safeguards existed on benefits and two other issues affecting the long-term exploitation of the Hibernia field.
Dunderdale's veto letter, by contrast was poorly written and highly repetitive. Dunderdale's letter-writer(s) appeared to be grasping for any available excuse to justify a decision taken many months before by her boss.
It is highly unusual for a regulatory board to release information in this way.
However, both Dunderdale and her boss have consistently attacked the competence of the 60 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians protecting the interests of the province at the offshore Board. Their morale has suffered solely as a result of the ignorant comments directed at them either directly or indirectly by the Premier.
In her rejection letter, Dunderdale impugned the Board itself. The Board had little choice but to demonstrate that Dunderdale's attacks on its competence and actions were utterly without merit. The Board released information that might otherwise have been withheld to avoid a repetition of the sorry display of political games played by a former Premier and his energy minister over the Terra Nova project. At that time, Brian Tobin and Chuck Furey blamed the offshore board for decisions they sanctioned.
Bond Papers will have a lengthier post on this issue over the weekend. The only thing Dunderdale made clear in her letter released today, is that she needs to read her own documents rather than affixing her signature to letters dictated for her by others.