Peckford puts sweet reason up front in resource pitch
Ian Mulgrew
May 18, 1984
P.4
VANCOUVER - Brian Peckford, the Newfoundland Premier from Whitbourne, stabs an unlit cigar at a reporter and says he is just misunderstood, misrepresented and a victim of circumstances.
The national press maligns him, he laments, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, ''in his Machiavellian way," tries to distort his positions.
If only Canadians could hear, the former English teacher adds, the facts would speak for themselves. ''Newfoundlanders aren't greedy and selfish, wanting all of the offshore resource wealth for themselves," he says, throwing out once again the moderate, reasonable pitch he has recently added to his repertoire.
It is an approach he has assumed since he began a cross-country tour to plead his ''moral case" and arouse public sympathy for Canada's youngest province in its battles with Quebec, over hydroelectric power generated in Labrador, and with Ottawa, over the Hibernia oil fields.
Scratch the veneer and you will find the same irascible, tough-talking politician who burst on the national scene in 1979, publicly agreeing with Rene Levesque and vociferously attacking Mr. Trudeau.
Asked why different versions of the cause of the breakdown in talks on offshore resources have come from him and federal Energy Minister Jean Chretien, Mr. Peckford shakes his head and blames Ottawa. ''In one scenario, the guy (Mr. Chretien) was just lying to us. He was devious and getting us into a pressure cooker and getting us in so far that it would be impossible for us to get out and we would sign a bad deal.
The other scenario is that he earnestly and sincerely came to the table . . . and the rug was hauled out from under him." Defeated in both the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and the Supreme Court of Canada, Mr. Peckford says he has decided to take his case to the court of public opinion. He may have lost the legal right to claim the resources, but he remains committed to achieving de facto ownership -
control of the development. ''It's time for the rest of Canada to get exercised and force Quebec and the federal Government to treat us fairly," he says in a shirt-sleeved interview in his hotel room.
The federal Government has given control of resource development in the North to aboriginal peoples, and Mr. Peckford says there is no reason the nearly 600,000 people of Newfoundland should be treated differently.
And here in the other bookend of the country, as he calls it, where unemployment is also in double digits, where the resource industries are struggling and where a similar offshore oil boom is talked about, he is preaching to the converted.
Radio hot-line shows open their lines and the response is inevitable: ''Way to go Brian. We should tie a bloody big noose around Ontario and Quebec and string them up." Mr. Peckford says people misunderstood Newfoundland's aspirations because they were being articulated when the country was embroiled in a bitter debate over the Constitution and when central Canadian fears were most palpable about losing control of the country to resource-rich provinces such as Alberta.
He says the size of the bounty discovered under the ocean also exacerbated concerns over a power shift.
As the central provinces were given large tracts of land and resources in 1912, and as Alberta was given jurisdiction over its resources in 1930, so Newfoundland should be given the Hibernia oil, he says. ''It's a myth that they have agreed to share revenues with us. That's a factual inaccuracy." Under the pact offered Newfoundland, he
says, the province would have a veto that could delay up to six months a federal decision. But the revenue-sharing provisions, Mr. Peckford says, would leave the province no better off. ''Every time you create a dollar (in oil revenue) you lose one in equalization (payments from Ottawa)." The province, he says, wants the federal Government to phase out equalization payments over a period of many years rather than stop them immediately.
It wants a management board with three federal representatives, three provincial members and an independent chairman. National self-sufficiency and security of supply would give the federal Government's wishes more weight, but once such priorities had been achieved, Newfoundland's management decisions would prevail.
The province also wants the equalization payments - which total some $500-million to $600-million a year, he says - maintained in addition to the offshore revenue. ''We need to catch up. We have 23 per cent unemployment, the lowest level of public services, the highest taxes." More money would flow to the province until services and conditions reached the Canadian average.
Comparing the country to a family, he sketches an analogy. The federal Government gives one person $500 in welfare, he begins. Later, that person has a chance to earn $300, but the federal Government says that if he does, then he will receive only $200 in welfare. ''You're still only getting $500 a year; you're no better off. So you say to yourself, 'Why . . . am I going through all this working in my back garden to bring in this $300 a year if I am still going to get the $500 if I don't?' " Questioned about the aptness of the analogy, Mr. Peckford says that, the way the equalization system works, ''we don't have any chance to put our people meaningfully to work and to create wealth the way the other provinces have done since 1867. ''Isn't it
realistic for a province to have the opportunity with resources that are close to them and that they brought to the country . . . to develop those resources and (direct) some of that wealth into an industrial infrastructure that therefore makes Canada better off?
''We brought them into the country, legal interpretation notwithstanding," he says, ignoring the Supreme and Newfoundland court decisions. ''The Canadian Government just gave 16,000 square miles to the people of the Western Arctic because they live closest to the resources and they should have some say, and they don't have provincial status and (have) no legal grounds for that land. Alberta had no legal jurisdiction over resources . . . (and) neither did Quebec or Ontario. . . . If you do it for one province, you should do it for another, salt water notwithstanding." And in case you missed the point, he insists on making it clear: ''We owned the resources before we joined Confederation. The Supreme Court of Canada has no business saying who owned the mineral resources of the continental shelf before Confederation. That is an adjudication for the International Court at The Hague." If Ottawa followed his plan, the Newfoundland Premier says the day would come when Newfoundland would become a have province and would contribute to the rest of the country. ''That's the reason for the tour. It's a campaign of understanding. . . Surely that's all common sense?"
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