ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Former Public Utilities Board (PUB) chairman Andy Wells isn’t surprised by the Muskrat Falls Inquiry report and says any politician who supported the project should be stripped of their pensions.
“Not because I have such brilliant insight, but it was clear as the hearings proceeded what happened and what was going on,” Wells said of the report, which was publicly released Tuesday.
“It’s an outrage, we have wasted in my view $14 billion. … It’s shameful what has happened. There is no other way around it.”
Wells said if the PUB had been able to do its job properly — the report slammed the fact that the PUB oversight was removed — there was zero chance the project would have been approved.
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“The project would have been dead in the water. The whole thing is a waste of money,” Wells said.
“What we have to face is we have wasted $14 billion and we still need 400-600 megawatts of reliable electricity. That’s what we got and none of the politicians will take responsibility. They should resign in shame, hand in the keys to their offices (and say), ‘We have failed,’” he said.
As for the Muskrat Falls fiasco being handed to the police, Wells said he doesn’t have much faith in public institutions, but the matter needs to be pursued.
“To forgive and forget, that is crap,” he said.
Wells suggested an expert criminal lawyer be brought in to determine how a case could be prosecuted.
“To forgive and forget, that is crap." — Andy Wells
While Premier Dwight Ball had mentioned Tuesday referring the report to police, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said Tuesday afternoon that while it is aware of the release of Commissioner Richard LeBlanc's report pertaining to Muskrat Falls, it had not yet received the document for review.
The RCMP didn’t have information on it, either.
A number of other people involved in the Muskrat Falls Inquiry were contacted by The Telegram for reaction to the report, but indicated they needed to review the report before commenting, while others couldn’t be reached. Those included former premiers Kathy Dunderdale and Tom Marshall, Ed Martin, Tom Williams — the lawyer representing a group of former government officials — and consumer advocate Dennis Browne.
Progressive Conservative Leader Ches Crosbie commented on issues raised in the report about his party’s history with the project.
“We have to digest findings in the report and its recommendations and we have to get to work implementing them and not repeating mistakes of the past,” he said.
“The relationship anyone in my caucus has with this project is tenuous in the extreme. One member, for example, was a junior cabinet minister, came along long after the whole thing was launched. So, our association with it, really, except in terms of the name PC, is very remote. I, myself, had nothing to do with it. I was one of those lawyers that signed a letter back in 2012 demanding that the government submit the project to a proper examination by the Public Utilities Board, with cross-examination, expert witnesses, and a business case thoroughly evaluated — which happens to be recommendation Number 2 in the report. I was very cautious about the project, unlike some people on the other side of the House, and thought it should be examined much more carefully.
“What I think is that people are much less interested in pointing fingers of blame and much more interested in how we’re going to deal with the rate mitigation problem.”
NDP Leader Alison Coffin said the report was more than she expected.
“(The report’s findings) are egregious. They are disturbing. There are some findings in there that we all ought to be very, very upset about,” Coffin said. “Lack of oversight, responsibility, not sharing information: all of the things that we’ve all been saying. There’s been a problem with this. The findings certainly solidify what we had been suspecting all along.”
Coffin said she looks forward to police reviewing the report.
