In the Monday Question Period, finance minister Jerome Kennedy seemed to be auditioning for a role in the off-off-off-Broadway production of Spam-a-lot.
The part?
The sarcastic, arrogant French knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The following snip is at the end of series of questions in response to which Kennedy offered up - for the most part - a raft of silly, partisan jabs but not much more.
This bit is the especially silly part:
MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, I am not quite certain what the Leader of the Opposition refers to. Is she talking about retail sales or retail sales tax? Is she talking about revenues? Because last year, Mr. Speaker, the revenues in our Province broke down to - 61.8 per cent came from taxation, which included offshore oil royalties and mining royalties are 37 per cent of our revenues. There was investment; there were fees and fines, other provincial sources, and equalization and the transfers - the Canada social and health transfers.
So I am not quite certain what the hon. Leader of the Opposition is asking me, but if she asking me about retail sales, Mr. Speaker, it is expected that they will grow and they have grown 8.1 per cent, August of this year.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, we have an actual increase in housing starts. The only province in this country right now, I think, that has an increase in housing starts. We are up to 220, 298 by September.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My next question is for the Minister of Natural Resources –
MR. KENNEDY: Give up, did you?
MS JONES: Oh, not by far.
You'd almost think that Kennedy was such a pompous ass merely as a means of covering up his own inability to grasp the demands of his job.
More likely, the old boy is having a hard time coming to grips with the very serious financial mess coming next year. That mess - of course - is something the Conception Bay Screamer won't be able to blame on the previous crowd since the crowd that created the upcoming problem are his colleagues around the cabinet table.
They are the ones who grossly overspent for the past three years and built their entire on spending plan on sources of cash which were, as Kennedy admits, beyond their control.
Sucks to be Jerome, evidently. His little display in the House was a tell of the pressures he is evidently under. Gigantic pressures. The kind of pressures that make the fictitious deficit from 2004 look like a dream compared to the real deficit coming next year, even after they've trimmed and shuffled and borrowed.
But since it will be the ordinary blokes in the province who will have to pay the price for other people's folly, Jerome's evident discomfort would be so cool if only it wasn't going to hurt us.
Ron Stoppable was a genius.
-srbp-
