SIGNS OF THE TIMES

By Barry Stagg

February 1999

NEWFOUNDLAND: THE PEOPLE AND THE GOVERNMENT

A sure sign of a poor state is when the people identify the land and the resources as being theirs collectively. They rue the poor profits that they are able to communally extract from the land.

When the land and its resources are plentiful and profitable, people stop identifying directly with this community property and begin to think of resources as tools by which people privately make work and profit.

The distinction is not a terribly exotic or intellectual one. The plain, ordinary contrast between Newfoundland and Ontario makes the point precisely. Ontarioites, living in the land of plenty, think of their resources and the industries lying on the land as means to make a private living and private profit. In Newfoundland, the main resources are government controlled, examples being Churchill Falls electricity, Hibernia oil and Voisey Bay heavy metal. There are similar resource bases in Ontario but the overall private industrial presence in that province overwhelms Ontario's need for the success of government- based projects. In Newfoundland, the opposite is obviously the case.

It is not my purpose in this column to merely state the obvious. What I am pointing out is that the sentiment of dependency upon communal industrial success is caused by the lack of local industrial success in the first place. This means simply that while Newfoundland is frustrated in its communal efforts to establish and maintain profitable industries, the people will continue to look to government as a source of practical and daily sustenance. It is not that attitude that is corrosive socially, rather, it is the underlying foundation of industrial underdevelopment. When underdevelopment of local industry is no longer the case, such as with the oil industry, then Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders will be able to revel in the sense of local, well earned prosperity that now pervades the province of Alberta, for example.

Let us not forget that Alberta, prior to the arrival of the petrochemical industries, was very much dependent on agriculture in much the same way that Newfoundland was dependent on the fishery.

Premier Tobin in one of a series of profiles of provincial premiers done by the National Post made a comment that he did not wish the Newfoundland government to be, in effect, a security guard protecting the province's natural resources for large multinational corporations such as Inco. This is a laudable goal but one that underlines the unpleasant reality that even now, in 1999, Newfoundland's chances at industrial success are dependent upon the government wrestling with a large corporation. Things are no different, in that sense, than when Premier Smallwood wrestled unsuccessfully with Brinco and the Quebec government over Churchill Falls hydroelectricity some thirty-five years ago. A more recent wrestling match that resolved into a tie or draw for Newfoundland was that of Premier Peckford with the federal government over the Hibernia oilfields.

Of course, successful wrestling by government with large corporations and other larger governments such as the governments in Ottawa and Quebec City must occur before Newfoundland can achieve the industrial status of Alberta or Ontario. The "revolution between the ears" that Premier Peckford advocated in the 1970's and 80's is one that can only take place after these basic industries of oil, electricity, heavy metals and yes, the fishery are able to develop into full industrial bloom. In that sense the principles that seem to guide Premier Tobin are indistinguishable from those that guided his political opposite but philosophical soul brother, Brian Peckford, twenty years ago. As citizens we must be eternally vigilant over their political pursuits.


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