As we told you on Monday, the ever attentive labradore caught Kathy Dunderdale in a pretty outrageous comment last week on the impact the federal budget would have on the province.
‘Not much’ was the thrust of her comment.
And it was pretty much her comment to the Telegram’s James Macleod. Here is the quote:
"We've got about 600 federal jobs here in the province," she said.
"If the cuts are going to be about five or six per cent, then that'll translate into between 20 and 30 jobs for us."
You see there are actually about 7400 federal employees in the province. Cuts of five percent would work out to be a heckuva lot more than 20 or 30.
Well, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael put the question to the Premier in the House of Assembly on Monday, as any opposition politician worth her salt would do:
How could she have been so wrong about the number of people working for one of the biggest employers in this Province?
It’s a good question.
To her credit, Kathy Dunderdale fessed up:
Mr. Speaker, I take full responsibility for the miscommunication. It was entirely mine. I meant to say 6,000, between 250 and 300. I omitted a very important zero in all of those numbers; the fault was mine, not the newspapers.
Unfortunately, Lorraine dropped it at that point and went for some questions about Muskrat Falls and the PUB. She might have had more fun poking at just how the Premier could make such a monumental screw up.
After all, if the Premier could be so completely out to lunch on the impact of the federal budget on the provincial economy, and well, like she’s been wrong like that more than a few times before, maybe her assurances about Muskrat Falls are equally reliable.
There are many ways to skin a muskrat, grasshopper.
- srbp -