As the Globe and Mail editorial crowd display once again their profound and abiding ignorance of anything outside the small confines of their office and their skulls, let us notice on this American Thanksgiving that Danny Williams’ political successor can thank him for exactly nothing.
Williams announced last week not just his political obituary but the obituary of his successor.
His successor has only two choices.
The stupid choice is to carry forward with a deal that would, for example, allow Hydro-Quebec to scarf up 49% of the Lower Churchill and at the same time control all the export of power through Nova Scotia in a way that it cannot in Quebec. What’s more, the deal is a financial mess that promises to beggar the provincial coffers and the pocketbooks of the average Newfoundlander and Labradorian. Self-imposed desperation drove BRINCO to a disaster in 1969. So too has self-imposed desperation driven Danny Williams’ term sheet.
In the sensible choice, the deal dies. The only problem is that in killing it, one must go back to do the sort of deal that makes financial sense: wheeling the power through Quebec. On his way out, though, Williams has not only scorched the Earth across that border but sewn the ground with salt and infected it with a pestilence such that anyone going near it would catch the political equivalent of Ebola and AIDS in one.
People thought Brian Tobin shagged Roger Grimes on Voisey’s Bay and the Lower Churchill. At least Tobin left Grimes with a chance. Grimes wound up negotiating two deals, both of which will stand up to scrutiny for the tremendous benefits they did bring - in one case – and would have brought – in the other case - the latter being scuttled own by political conniving and perfidy.
No sir.
There are poisoned chalices and then there is the cup Danny Williams passed today.
- srbp -