As a rule when you start attacking the other guy’s character or attributing motives to him, you’ve admitted you don’t have much of an argument of your own
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy went back to the line on Wednesday that critics of the Muskrat Falls project are “politically motivated” and therefore can never be satisfied.
Uh huh.
Some of the leading public critics of the provincial Conservative government’s plan are – wait for it – provincial Conservatives.
Cabot Martin was a senior policy advisor for Brian Peckford in the 1980s and before that worked for Peckford when he was energy minister in Frank Moores’ Tory administration.
Ron Penney? Tory.
John Collins? Tory finance minister once upon a time.
What they share with others of other political backgrounds and some with no partisan affiliation of any kind ever, aside from a concern for the best interests of the province and its people, is an extraordinarily rich body of personal knowledge about Hydro and the Lower Churchill from the very first talk of it down to the current day.
The signatures at the bottom of a letter in the Thursday Telegram come from people of different political backgrounds. Their common interest, aside from what’s best for the province, is assuring that this project go through due process:
A refusal to give the Public Utilities Board the time it requires is unacceptable because the validity of a proceeding that does not follow due process of law will be unreliable.
As criticism of the project mounts, as the arguments in favour of the project crumble, Jerome Kennedy wants to try and impugn the integrity not of the arguments against his project but the people presenting them.
Argumentum ad hominem.
That’s the best Kennedy’s got.
Take that for the admission of failure it is.
- srbp -
