By Barry Stagg
April 1998
Newfoundland: McGovernment
I was having a pancake breakfast at seven o'clock in the morning in Gainesville, Florida when it hit me. The pact that the governors of Newfoundland had made with Newfoundlanders had been broken. Premier Tobin was now the biggest McPolitics franchise holder in the province. Where the voters were not franchise managers they were burger flippers or panhandlers.
I saw ordinary Floridians driving to everyday jobs in the morning mist. They were used to the bliss and goodness of the ordinary. These workers fed spiritually and literally on the goodness of work. There was a wholesomeness, a completeness that I had not seen in my part of Newfoundland since Dosco shut down the Aguathuna limestone quarry in 1965 and the American Air Force taxied out of Stephenville a year later.
Now I saw an unwritten but solemn pact with Newfoundlanders broken and abused. The dignity and worth of real work in thriving industries was replaced with the profane fakery of the service industry.
Newfoundland is now more a federal government franchise than it is an independent province. The illustration if not the illusion is most vivid at the top of the political pyramid. There is the former boy Member of Parliament from Corner Brook et al as premier in unchallenged dominion over this land. Premier Tobin is supreme in his status as the consummate Ottawa insider as he works the levers and the strings that slither in and out of Versailles on the Rideau.
After forty-nine years of Confederation, government has broken its contract with the citizens of Newfoundland in as many ways as have presented themselves from time to time. Whether it was the fishery, Labrador electricity or Grand Banks oil, government has found a way to divert the goodness and the dollars away from Newfoundlanders and their craving, their longing to go to work each day in the blessed morning mist.
There is no lull or diversion from the gale of political intent that dictates that Newfoundlanders will either serve the Crown in pay cheque style or go wanting for a job. There is nothing but the thinnest of veneers cloaking the management industries in Newfoundland. This tissue of a coat conceals the entrails of a white collar work force that makes a bureaucratic career out of telling the burger flippers where to pick up their pay. TAGS is a burger flipping contract. There is nothing at the end of that pitiful rainbow but a date with the Indian Reservation lifestyle that Ottawa has already inflicted on natives.
Burger flipping is a McJob. The assistant manager of Mc Jobs is just another flipper bought off by a few more dollars and a dribble of local prestige. The McJob managers run a little closer to the franchise holder and draw down a few more francs for their commitment to the preservation of the greasy little industry that keeps a people away from their resource birthright and a lot closer to antebellum subservience.
Of course the paper trail of the franchise game runs right through the parliamentary nests of both St. John's and Ottawa. There is nothing illegal or fraudulent about the process unless you consider the abolition of independent financial dignity to be worth a dime. Forty nine anniversaries after March 31,1949 find Newfoundland held more at the mercy of government edict and prerogative than anytime during the supposed bondage of the Commission of Government era. Simply put the province, its citizens and its resources are corporately subsumed by Ottawa.
When you think of the premier of Newfoundland, try casting his role in terms of franchise management rather than in the more traditional form of democracy, peace ,order and good government. These old-fashioned notions are apparently for romantic dreamers and masters of the art of self-delusion. The concept of masters in our own house ( a phrase not unknown to Quebec citizens) is somehow becoming treated as a hopelessly idealistic icon left over from the peace, love and understanding moans of the 1960's.
Nonsense. Newfoundlanders have a work ethic and survival instincts that are centuries older than franchise politics whether practiced by McDonalds Restaurants, Disney Corporation or our Canadian government. The trick to lasting in the face of monster storms and odious governance is to know your enemy. Respect for the power of the foe comes only after recognizing that the familiar face is not your friend after all. Newfoundlanders have long known that the benign surface of the Atlantic Ocean at rest masks a terrible power. Now is the time to recognize that the deceptive banality of Ottawa franchise politics is an even more dangerous enemy to be confronted.
Masters in our own house: a ready response to an insidious policy.