A few hundred people, maybe a few thousand people might turn out on Friday for a rally to support Premier Danny Williams in his latest racket with people no from Newfoundland and Labrador.Well, that's what some will be doing.
Others - the ones who read the initial mission statement for the rally over at according2.ca - will be fighting for Newfoundland and Labrador's rightful place in the Canadian budgetary process.
In the revised version, the rally-goers will be there "to illustrate...that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians speak with one voice...to express our mutual disgust with Prime Minister Harper’s broken written commitment to exclude non-renewable natural resource revenues from the equalization formula."
Whatever the reason, people will show up. How many is a crap shoot.But does every Newfoundlander and Labradorian actually want 100% exclusion of non-renewable resources?
That wasn't the policy of the provincial government in the much vaunted letters to the federal party leaders last year.
Interestingly enough, it also wasn't the recommendation made by a panel appointed by the Council of the Federation, of which Premier Danny Williams is the current chair.
Quoi? sez you.
Well, read on to find this recommendation found in all its glory on page 87 of the report (March 2006):
The Panel recommends that the Equalization program be based on a ten-province standard and comprehensive revenue coverage with inclusion of 100 percent of natural resource revenues.Now this gets a bit odd when one considers that Premier Danny Williams himself endorsed the 100% inclusion of resource revenues in the Equalization formula. He is on the public record endorsing that position.
The Council paper linked above actually includes an estimate of the financial impacts in a given fiscal year of a variety of options ranging from zero percent inclusion all the way to 100% inclusion.
Yet, only a year later, Premier Danny Williams could tell Jeff Gilhooley that the Equalization formula with 50% inclusion of non-renewables with a cap was a case of federal bureaucrats convincing "weak-kneed" federal politicians to shaft Newfoundland and Labrador.
Hmmm.
Makes you wonder.
-srbp-