A classic Telegram editorial, your humble e-scribbler once wrote, consists of a summary of an issue concluding with a blinding insight into the completely frigging obvious.
Such is the Saturday Telegram offering, this time on the latest fisheries report unveiled and summarily rejected on Friday by fisheries minister Clyde Jackman:
Something has to be done. It may end up being a half-measure, or even less. But the sheer size of the problem is now abundantly clear. And for the industry, it has to be terrifying.
Four phrases.
Four penetrating insights into what is obvious to even the most casual observer of the fishery over the past 30 years.
That closing paragraph is right up there with Clyde Jackman’s claim on Friday that the MOU process was not a waste as everyone now had a detailed description of how bad things are.
Who didn’t know that already?
Well, besides Clyde Jackman, evidently.
To be fair to both Jackman and the Telegram editorialist, though, they really are just a reflection of the fundamental problem that has plagued the fishery in this province since 1949. People know what needs to be done to turn the fishery into an industry that is sustainable and relatively prosperous. People in the current cabinet know. People in past cabinets have known. Those who know and who are willing to do it are hampered by those who know nothing and others who vigorously oppose any changes at all.
In the meantime, the only people suffering are the people in the industry. Eventually time will take care of them. Clyde Jackman kept mentioning that last Friday. He really didn’t need to.
Everyone knows it.
- srbp -