SIGNS OF THE TIMES

By Barry Stagg

March 1997

CHURCHILL FALLS: NO PLACE FOR THE ME GENERATION

Churchill Falls is an old battle. Its roots go back to the English conquest of the French in Canada and travel on up through history. The 1927 court decision giving Labrador to Newfoundland and depriving Canada of Labrador is a major touchpoint. October 1966 is the next pivotal point when Premier Joe Smallwood sold all of Churchill Falls output at the Quebec border.

The tumultuous flower-power sixties gave way to the disco seventies and the Me generation eighties and now the nasty nineties. All of these little cliches link us to the present misery. All throughout these years the Churchill Falls power contract with its clauses making Quebec law applicable has plagued Newfoundland and rewarded the Province of Quebec with windfall riches. More than a few pennies worth of those windfall profits have gone to prop up the nausea of the separatist cause in Quebec.

Newfoundland, through its present Premier, has made another pitch for the overthrow of the Churchill Falls contract. The initial exhilaration of the move now wears off and the naysayers point to the looming hulk of that unassailable Quebec-based contract. It is after all the Quebec base of that contract that has kept Newfoundland from nationalizing Churchill Falls and vaporizing the deal once and for all. It was in 1984 that the Supreme Court of Canada handed down the final word on the contract. It ruled that the Government of Newfoundland and Newfoundland's parliamentarians, those being the members of the Provincial House of Assembly, could not legislate that contract out of existence because the contract was Quebec-based. Once again the clever bludgeons of the Quebec negotiators of the sixties came back to haunt Newfoundland with the painful truth.

Now there are worry-warts surfacing wondering just what business Newfoundland has in trying to break the sacred words of a contract. Sometimes it seems that naysayers of that ilk would have indicted Abraham Lincoln for daring to overthrow the American slave laws. After all many an American state legislature had iron-clad and widely popular slavery laws before the American Civil War made the enslavement of blacks illegal.

So what is there to be done? Are we all to affect an air of resigned middle-aged indifference and sadly nod our heads in the realization that we Newfoundlanders are honour bound to put up with the Churchill Falls contract until its bitter end. Do we follow in the pitiful footsteps of Joe Smallwood who signed the deal for the greater good of Canada and in the spirit of glorious sacrifice for Newfoundland. The answer to the question depends on your perch.

Those selfish products of the Me generation who are scared stiff that their precious mutual funds may dwindle into oblivion if there is social and political upheaval in Canada will want peace at any cost. They will absolutely want peace in our time or at least until they cash in their investments. Likewise those who are relying on the stability of the government pension system will not want Newfoundland warriors throwing the whole Canadian nation into turmoil over something petty like the permanent prosperity of Newfoundland.

On the other hand there are those who realize quite simply that nothing comes without a fight. The whole weight of political and economic power was brought to bear on Joe Smallwood in 1966 in order to persuade him to approve the Churchill Falls contract. Those sorts of deals which are in the mould of "offers you cannot refuse" must be met with a policy of defiance and political force rather than altruistic deference. If the stock markets of Toronto and Montreal and the cozy nest-eggs of the white-collar welfare class become "unstable" then that is a price that will have to be paid.

The Me generation developed on a foundation of selfishness and contentment with one's own station in life regardless of the way in which it was achieved. Wealth is one commodity that the Me generation covets but stability and political quiet are two other assets they favour as well. The profoundly dishonoured ethos of "peace in our time" that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sought in his initial timid confrontations with Adolph Hitler gives an appropriate ambience to the present domestic problem.

In Churchill Falls we need actions by warriors not smug inaction by self-serving appeasers.


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