Getting Attention

Well, Danny Williams, you now have my complete attention, and most of Canada's for that matter, which is proof positive, if nothing else, that a flicker of good old-fashioned patriotism is still alight deep inside our national hearts.

I don't take kindly to having my national symbol treated like an unwanted tablecloth to be folded and stuffed away in a closet, though once I calmed down and stopped turning three shades of crimson like an apoplectic chameleon on a hot plate, I started looking a little closer at the plight of Newfoundland and Labrador and this whole issue of oil revenues and equalization payments. You'd be proud of me, Danny. I even brushed up a bit on Confederation history.

That Joey Smallwood was a character, now wasn't he?

But mostly what happened is I got a serious headache trying to figure out all the clauses, subclauses, ratifications, amendments and qualifications to what essentially amounts to a hell of a lot of money flowing out of Canada and into Newfoundland.

Jeez, but you sure know how to bite the hand that feeds you.

Ah, but paternalism and "Newfie" jokes are just part of the 400-year plight of Newfoundland, aren't they? My god, but your folks are oppressed. Unwanted and rebuked by Britain, dragged kicking and screaming into Confederation by Smallwood, and then locked in a fifty-year struggle with an insensitive country for more money, more respect...and well, and more money.

And while it's become an accepted pastime up your way for premiers like yourself to jump up and down, shout, scream, and occasionally declare a national day of mourning over Ottawa's malevolence (with everyone wearing black armbands no less), you've truly outdone yourself in the chutzpah department this time around.

Now, for everyone else's benefit, Danny (though they really should know this already because it involves an awful lot of their tax dollars), let me explain that equalization in Canada is a way for the "have" provinces to give to the "have-nots" so that all provinces share the wealth and are on equal footing in terms of healthcare and education. Uncharitably referred to as "provincial welfare" in some circles, it is something with which, in principle, I agree. It is not only a reflection of a moderate and caring society, but a mechanism that can be argued reinforces it.

Of course, anything can be taken too far.

The key principle behind this whole system, which takes about three university degrees, a couple of mainframe computers, and the application of a form of advanced mathematics that no one is quite sure exists yet to figure out the details of, is that when you are a "have" you pay to the "have-nots." Newfoundland, being a career "have-not" since it entered Confederation, is for the first time in its long and tortuous life facing the possibility of being a "have."

Newfoundland has stage fright, doesn't it Danny?

You want to keep getting equalization payments, even if you become a "have," frightened of writing that first cheque and sending it the other way. Not only that, but you've actually had the gall to thumb your nose at a UN provision that demands a small percentage of offshore royalties earned on oil outside the 200-mile territorial limit to be paid to third-world "have-nots," insisting that Ottawa pay that too, after it spends the next eight years mapping out the region so you can develop it.

I won't use the cake analogy, Danny. You've already had far too much cake to bother with that one.

For a man with three degrees of your own, a self-made millionaire and entrepreneur who should be not only a beacon to others in the province but a leader in the drive to develop and foster the same spirit you possess, it amazes me that you've fallen into the same old trap of whining to Ottawa for more and more money. Newfoundland has consumed tens of billions of dollars since it entered Confederation, and has little more than a bloated civil service to show for it.

Yes, Ottawa mismanaged the fisheries, but they didn't actually go out and fish them dry themselves, now did they? Yes, Newfoundland has been dealt some seriously devastating blows economically and socially, but the mistake has always been to throw money at the problem and nothing else.

Newfoundland needs leadership, Danny, not theatrics. It's one thing to fight for your province, to fight for solutions and the money with which to achieve them. It's quite another to refuse to do what you ask others to do, namely to give to those who need it when you have it. Well, you're going to have it soon, Danny, and it's about bloody time you gave it.

Now, aren't you glad you brought all that to my attention?