By Barry Stagg
January 1995
ICELAND
In late November W5 had an excellent documentary on CTV regarding the contrast between the Iceland fishing industry and that of Newfoundland. There were numerous interviews with fishermen, economists, politicians and plain ordinary citizens of Iceland by W5 host Eric Malling. What struck me most in this excellent and insightful documentary was the vivid contrast between the unemployment insurance plans of the nation of Iceland and the former nation of Newfoundland. Simply put Iceland has an unemployment insurance program that is a plan of last resort where it is virtually immoral to look to unemployment insurance benefits unless you have explored all other avenues of income including moving to where ever jobs exist. The contrasts to Newfoundland are obvious. The program stated that the Newfoundland fishery produces $78 million dollars of income and fishermen receive $119 million dollars in U.I.C. payments on an annual basis. Is there more to be said?
What does remain to be spoken about are the explanations for this terrible distinction between these two island nations. I cannot resist using the term nation for Newfoundland in this fishing industry context. My apologies to all federalists. My own explanation, which is not offered as an apology, is that national economic policy, and particularly the senseless pumping of government grant money into Newfoundland in the past forty years has produced a predictable dependency upon government grants. No matter where citizens live in this world, free money will always be accepted by many. There are many virtuous folks who will turn away grants out of hand but they are in the minority.Their numbers decrease day by day as their friends are able to purchase and maintain the shiny baubles of North American consumerism with these wonderful grant/benefit cheques.
There are only radical solutions to this "grant" problem. The grants must be reduced to the benefit level now enjoyed by the Icelandic citizens. Unemployment insurance benefits must become an income source of last resort and it must not be left to the virtue and economic morality of people to determine whether or not an individual will accept these payments. Government policy must dictate that only the truly needy will be funded under unemployment insurance and guaranteed income programs. Everybody else in any depressed industry, be it the fishery, mining or automobile manufacture, will have to fend for themselves and make the best of the available employment in this country.
Newfoundlanders will truthfully assert that the spirit of self sufficiency is not dead at all among Newfoundlanders both at home and living elsewhere. It has been sorely tested by the reservation style "grant pipeline" which Uncle Ottawa built into the province in the Smallwood era and which has been amply lubricated by the various federal commissars who have masqueraded as Federal M.P.'s in Newfoundland throughout the various parliaments. Gentlemen like Don Jamieson, John Crosbie and the present title holder Brian Tobin have tended their respective watches at the grant faucets. That blind, stupid and malicious money line has done everything possible to contribute to social decay and economic stagnation in Newfoundland. Once the industries of the province stood on the threshold of national and international success. Now the province teeters on the brink of bankruptcy because the natural laws of finance and economics have been so distorted and perverted by the happy- go- lucky vomiting of federal government money into the province since 1949.
I felt compelled to lend my opinions to W5 on their comment line which they offer at the end of each program. I am not certain whether they absorbed my rather windy comments on their voice mail apparatus but I offered much the same suggestions as I offered here. One further point that I did make concerned the poignant closing comments of the Icelandic economist who was chosen to end the program with words that in effect stated that only real jobs creating real wealth and product matter to the nation of Iceland. My imagination was spurred by the use of the term " nation" in this context. It reminded me that after World War II Newfoundland and Iceland were two very similar nations representing North Atlantic island countries both dependent upon the fishery and both brimming with economic success brought on by a vast infusion of military activity during World War II. Both Newfoundland and Iceland were vital strategic outposts for the Allies during the Battle of the Atlantic and throughout the War. However, Joe Smallwood defeated Peter Cashin in the Confederation debates and we had Confederation in 1949. There the paths of Iceland and Newfoundland diverge.
Iceland for the past fifty years has been able to implement its own national policy. The policy relating to the fishing industry makes sense for Iceland and preserves the integrity of the industry. The idea of throwing tax money at the flagging sectors of the Icelandic fishery is totally irrational in the minds of Icelanders. In Newfoundland that is a standard economic tactic implemented unilaterally by Ottawa. That tells the story. The ghost of Peter Cashin could justifiably have come knocking on Eric Malling's door at the conclusion of that program. So much could have been explained by that lost battle in 1948 when Newfoundland nationhood was sent bag, baggage and fishing industry on to Uncle Ottawa.
There are realities that must be lived with in 1995. One reality is that Newfoundland is part of a federation where national fisheries policy and national economic policy are decided on the banks of the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. That is economic reality but it does not justify the continuation of an economic policy for the province that seems hell bent on making Newfoundland into the first non- native reservation in Canada.
Maybe the attitude of the Crown toward Newfoundlanders is not so different now from what it was back centuries ago when the British Navy had precise instructions to blow illegal settlers off the rocks to enforce compliance with British Law. Those who settled did so illegally and maybe all these centuries later the attitude of the Crown toward Newfoundlanders is not unlike the attitude toward native aborigines. I have often thought that Newfoundlanders of European ancestry have a legitimate claim to white aboriginal status based on our unregulated and virtually tribal migration across the Atlantic Ocean from the fishing villages of Britain and France to the crags and coves of Newfoundland. What could be the motto for the aboriginal nation of Newfoundland? Possibly "free, proud and poor?"
Malling paints a bleak and disturbing picture of Newfoundland. The problems are real and the practical solutions are hard and painful. The independent spirit and self reliance of every Newfoundlander will provide the only useful tools with which to pull back from the abyss of reservation economics.