The handful of people who pay close attention to
politics in Newfoundland and Labrador are probably scratching the barely-healed-over
scabs on their head in the latest round of bewilderment.
Tory leader Ches Crosbie announced last week he had
named a philosophy professor at Memorial University to head up a task force of
people he didn’t name - because he hasn’t figured out who they are - to develop
a strategy to combat climate change. Philosophers
are widely known for their skills at developing effective public policy, by the
way.
Anyway, Crosbie announced his latest policy brainstorm
the week of a global protest for action against climate change so Ches’ finally
honed political nerves were probably jangling hard enough to make him spit out
a hasty announcement.
If that wasn’t obviously funny enough, the punch line
to this own-goal of a joke was delivered, appropriately enough, by Crosbie himself.
You see Ches has spent his time as leader of the local
blue team viciously fighting *against*a measure that would help fight climate
change. Not only that, but Crosbie started out his tirade against the fight
against climate change by encouraging the Premier to join with Doug Ford in the
philosophical fight against those people Ches has now decided to cuddle up
with.
- Ball Government Should Join Challenge of Federal Carbon Tax, Says Crosbie
- Ball Liberals Consent to Carbon Tax Will Hurt Consumers Without Helping the Environment: Petten
- Time to Halt Secret Carbon-Tax Plans: Petten
- Ball Liberals Standing by Job-Killing Carbon Tax
- HONESTY ON JOB-KILLING LIBERAL CARBON TAX
- New Carbon Tax Coming – But No Answers
- Liberals for Carbon Tax Majority Oppose Carbon Tax; Where's the Plan?
- Premier Fueling Uncertainty in Oil Industry, Providing No Answers on Carbon Tax
- Did the Liberals Saddle Taxpayers with the Burden of Paying Husky’s Carbon Tax on the West White Rose Extension?
- Federal and Atlantic Canadian Official Opposition Leaders Oppose Trudeau's Carbon Tax
- Liberals' Talk of Making Gas Tax Permanent to Meet Carbon Tax Obligations is Concerning
- Liberals' Carbon Tax a Factor as North Atlantic Cuts Jobs
Lucky 13.
Doesn’t count all the other times Crosbie slammed the
fight against climate change in interviews, speeches, and visits to coffee
shops during the recent provincial election campaign.
But you see the disconnect there, right?
Ches wasn’t the only politician who left people
scratching heads recently.
The politicians running the Innu Nation made one of
the most serious accusations they could against any person. They said that Perry Trimper - a cabinet
minister at the time - was a racist. They released an audio tape of Trimper talking
to someone about a request by an official of the Innu Nation organization that
the government pay for translation services for Innu people dealing with the
government.
Trimper hasn’t been very popular among the Sheshatshiu
Innu but you’d think that something as serious as being a racist might have
prompted a bit of publicity before now.
Maybe even a call to the Premier.
But this was a message left for a guy who about driving
licences. The government provides
translation for other services, like health care, but driving licences was
important enough for the Innu Nation to attack Trimper directly with arguably
one of the most if not the most serious charge they could make short of
something criminal.
But if they were waiting for something big enough and
they thought the tape did it, they still didn’t actually say what they were
upset about besides the accusation that Trimper was a racist. Once Trimper resigned from cabinet, they
stopped short of looking for his resignation. So being a racist was a disqualification from
cabinet but not the House of Assembly.
And when the Premier walked out of a meeting last
Monday with the Innu Grand Chief, he waved a piece of paper that committed
government to set up a committee and to move a little faster on some
issues
related to the Innu land claim.
Problem solved.
Except that aside from the fact it doesn’t appear Innu
leaders had a purpose in going after Trimper beyond going after Trimper, they
had a chance to get just about anything they wanted.
So they settled for a committee and a promise to do
something that wasn’t really defined.
Now a committee is what government does when it wants
to make it look like something is going on when it isn’t. Setting up a
committee is literally the very least thing government can do short of doing
nothing at all.
And a pledge to move a file a little faster on
something as complex as land claims is almost laughable. Innu leaders may be rightly frustrated with
the delay in negotiating their claim. The federal government accepted the Innu claim
for negotiation in 1978. The Innu Nation
signed a framework agreement for land claims talks in 1996 and by 2011, there
was an agreement-in-principle among the federal and provincial governments and
the Innu Nation.
But they didn’t get a pledge for an immediate
resumption of talks, a target date for the next round of meetings or anything
of the sorts.
They didn’t even get a commitment to have the government
pay Dominick Riche for translating driving tests for Innu people looking for a
driving licence.
The Innu leadership called Perry Trimper a racist, every reporter in sight and all their editors
substituted assumptions and trite
comparisons for facts, Trimper went
out the door of cabinet as the new Newfoundland and Labrador synonym for George
Wallace, and all the Innu leadership got
in exchange was a committee and a weak-assed promise.
You see the disconnect there.
If you don’t, just read this post again until you
start to see it.
And whatever you do, stop scratching your head and let
it heal because, God knows, the disconnects don’t stop in Newfoundland and
Labrador politics and the cut on your head is just gonna get infected.
-srbp-