Ashley Fitzpatrick’s Jan. 12 article “Rethinking relocation” quotes Premier Dwight Ball as saying that he wanted to put the $70 million a year that the province spends on ferry services into context.
He went on to point out that $70 million a year is also the amount spent on roads and another $70 million a year on snowclearing.
But how does our road, our ferries and our snowclearing costs look in a larger, more relevant context?
Every year since 2012, and even more so since Ball took office, the province/Nalcor has been spending on average more than $2 billion ($2,000 million) a year on a Muskrat Falls boondoggle — almost 30 times as much as we spend on roads (or ferries).
Or to put the “context” another way, it would take more than 180 years to spend as much on roads, on ferries or on snowclearing to equal the amount that Nalcor has spent on Muskrat madness since 2012.
Furthermore, it has also been said that once Muskrat comes on stream ratepayers/taxpayers will have to pay an additional $800 million a year, every year, just to cover the operating and debt servicing cost for government’s continuing Muskrat madness — for power that we do not need.
So Premier Ball, lead by example.
Until you show us that your government can walk the talk,stop lecturing about the cost of ferry and other essential services.
Stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Remove what we do not need — the unneeded yoke that is Muskrat.
Maurice E. Adams
Paradise
Letter: Let’s talk about all those billions spent on Muskrat Falls
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