Former business minister Paul Oram did a series of interviews when he was in Atlanta last October to attend a trade mission.
His interview on diversifying the economy is interesting mostly because Oram manages to completely cock-up just about everything.
According to Oram, the cod moratorium took place in the “early to mid-1980s”.
If you think that was a slip of the tongue consider that according to Oram, once the moratorium started, we then turned to diversifying the economy with mining for things like iron ore and uranium. Iron ore mining dates back to the 1890s, not the 1980s and as for uranium, there isn’t a functioning uranium in the province at the moment. There never has been one. There are prospects but no actual mine.
The Lower Churchill will start up within the coming year (i.e. 2009) according to Oram, even though the thing had not even started the environmental review process when he did the interview. It won’t complete the process until 2010-2011.
When asked about innovation, Oram couldn’t give an example. Instead, he talked about the difference between his department and the innovation department.
We’ll be generous and say that oram sounded like the minister of revisionist history.
Others might say he was the minister of the “Don’t know a Damn Thing” department.
Oh.
Incidentally, just count the number of times Oram says “to be honest with you.”
We assume he is being honest. It’s just that he honestly doesn’t have a clue about recent events in Newfoundland and Labrador.
-srbp-
