Anyone who still doubts that the Muskrat Falls Inquiry is a waste of $33 million need only ponder the performance of lawyers Tom Williams, Erin Best and Dan Simmons.
Apparently, according to the lawyerly way of looking at things, if you’re not an expert on something, you should just shut up and let the experts handle it.
Such an approach is fine when it comes to, say, heart surgery or intercontinental flight, but in politics, the concept of “expertise” is as slippery as a wet muskrat.
With all due respect to the public inquiry and its 3 million documents, the Muskrat Falls controversy has always been about two things: politics and basic economics.
You don’t need to be an expert in either of those subjects to offer intelligent, reasonable and valid criticism of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project. In fact, a handful of the province’s citizenry have been doing exactly that since about 2009, and since then their number has grown to almost 500,000.
So, it was disconcerting to see David Vardy and Ron Penney — two articulate opponents of the Big Land Boondoggle — castigated and belittled for their alleged lack of expertise.
Vardy is a former chairman of the Public Utilities Board. Penney is a former provincial deputy minister and City of St. John’s solicitor. They are among the founders of the Concerned Citizens Coalition, which has standing at the inquiry.
And yet, because they lack expertise in engineering, audits, natural gas production, megaproject development or, specifically, the Upper Churchill contract, the lawyers deemed their views and input essentially worthless.
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This means, of course, that any opinions you have about the Muskrat Falls project are about as valuable as that bit you neglected to pick up at the doggie park.
Best represents former premier Kathy Dunderdale.
Williams represents a collection of former Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers and premiers, including Danny Williams and Paul Davis.
Simmons represents Nalcor Energy, a Crown corporation immune to criticism from anyone who isn’t an expert on how to blow $12.7 billion.
The public has been reminded time and again that the Commission of Inquiry Respecting the Muskrat Falls Project is not a court of law.
It was surprising, therefore, that Commissioner Richard LeBlanc let the lawyers demean the witnesses to the extent they did.
After all, Vardy and Penney weren’t testifying about DNA samples that might send some skeet to the slammer. They were talking about public policy, which is every citizen’s right — unless, we now know, you try to exercise that right during a public inquiry.
Money well spent
Some will say this sorry charade is actually proof of the inquiry’s value, and it is worth the relatively paltry $33 million to have the decrepit drama on display.
It was indeed worth the price of admission to watch a quartet of former Nalcor Energy board members admit they hadn’t seen such and such a report, they couldn’t remember, they weren’t aware, etc. Risk assessment? What risk assessment?
There, for Newfoundlanders’ viewing pleasure, were some of the people who were supposed to oversee the wise expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars … the Four Horsemen of the Hydro-Apocalypse.
But I digress. Let’s heed legal advice, and leave biblical predictions to the experts.
Andy Wells — former St. John’s mayor, former Public Utilities Board chairman and famed dog walker — accurately summed it up, probably loudly, when he told reporters that the lawyers’ tactics were an attempt “to invalidate the great work” of Vardy and Penney, as well as their fellow Falls fighter Uncle Gnarley, a.k.a. Des Sullivan.
Those three guys probably know more about Muskrat Falls than do all the premiers combined — past and present. There is no expertise upon which to base such a suggestion. It doesn’t matter. The lawyers overlooked and ignored an important fact about politics and public policy: often, the experts are wrong and the non-experts are right.
Brian Jones is an expert desk editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at [email protected].
