This week, things are different.
Now the Premier has decided that this two-bit outfit is peachy keen. In the House of Assembly on Monday, she thought the Center’s rankings for the province were just wonderful:
Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador was the first Province in this country to introduce legislation on access to information. We were rated number one in the country. The Centre for Law and Democracy does rankings of provinces that have this legislation, Mr. Speaker. Five provinces and the federal government have this legislation. Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador is ranked second in the country, next to BC, on openness and access to information in this Province. [emphasis added]And once Bill 29 comes along, the rankings are still wonderful, according to the Premier:
Mr. Speaker, all I can say to the Leader of the Third Party through you is wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Mr. Speaker, this is spin coming from the Leader of the Third Party. She says: You have the ranking of second highest in the country before the amendments – no, after the amendments, Mr. Speaker. When your first piece of information is wrong, you can pretty much assume, Mr. Speaker, that the rest of it is wrong as well.Just to be sure, the Premier’s communications director tweeted her boss’ comments.
For those who may have forgotten, the rest of the country didn’t rank too well on the Center for Law and Democracy’s assessment of access to information laws. Newfoundland and Labrador’s ranking is now worse than it was before - rather than better - but Kathy Dunderdale is still happy with that.
Leave aside the massive flip flop in attitude from one week to the next. That’s bad enough. Let’s just focus on what the Premier thinks is the way to think about adopting an access law that is demonstrably worse than the one we had before.
We were good. Rather than get better. Kathy Dunderdale and her pals made it worse.
So in her view, we should note our new position and think something along these lines: we don’t suck as much as the rest of the country.
Umm.
Ok.
Maybe this strikes you then: we’re the second least miserable province when it comes letting people find out what their government is up to.
It’s like the two political commentators a few years ago who were talking on the Ceeb about allegations that a cabinet minister and his staff and family had taken bribes. Even if the allegations were true, concluded the brain trust, we were nowhere near as corrupt as that crowd in Nova Scotia. Slap that on a tee shirt and we’ll make a fortune.
Well friends, if Kathy Dunderdale’s take on things is your idea of visionary leadership, then you have your champion. We don’t strive to be the best. We strive to be relatively less backward-assed than the others. Just thinking about our province that way sends shivers down your spine, doesn’t it?
Regular readers will find in Kathy’s attitude a familiar notion. Her crowd used it a couple of weeks ago when Corporate Research Associates released their latest poll results. On the same day, Angus-Reid released a poll that showed as many people liked Dunderdale’s leadership as didn’t like it.
Her polling numbers have plummeted across the board over the past few months, but her own fan club was keen to play up the positives. Highest rated of all Atlantic Canadian premiers, they said on Open Line and on da Twitter. Yes friends, as your humble e-scribbler noted, that’s like saying Kathy doesn’t suck as much as Darrel Dexter or that fella Alward in New Brunswick. we do not measure ourselves against the best and aim to capture that crown. we are just content not to stink up the joint too badly.
And just for extra burst if humour, Kathy Dunderdale decided to try and insult Lorraine Michael’s grasp of facts and detail.
You could not – repeat N-O-T – make this stuff up.
And she and her associates think that this is the stuff of genius.
*sigh*
-srbp-