This week’s Windsor Lake byelection is an indicator that the full-year campaign leading up to the 2019 provincial election will feature promises, more promises and extra promises that taxes won’t go up, ratepayers won’t be burdened with the full cost of paying the $12.7-billion Muskrat Falls debt, taxes will go down and great auks will fly.
(As of this writing, Thursday at 8:32 a.m., it isn’t known whether Windsor Lake voters favoured the party that created the boondoggle, or the party that continued the boondoggle.)
But before all that happens, the political aide or hack who invented the phrase “rate mitigation” needs to be rewarded, because it is an instance of public-relations brilliance, among the best of the decade-long manipulation that has characterized the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project.
Of course, there won’t be and cannot be any kind of “mitigation” of the $12.7-billion debt. Newfoundlanders owe it, and Newfoundlanders must pay it.
Put “rate” in front of it, however, and the Newfoundland voter is transformed into a rube eagerly listening to a sales pitch about snake oil. The desire for a cure leads to a belief in a remedy. The reassuring tone of “rate mitigation” makes pain dissipate and cold sweats subside.
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What the electorate needs is a candidate brave enough to give an honest and accurate diagnosis: “The $12.7-billion debt must be paid, and Newfoundlanders must pay it, one way or another.”
Instead, more than a year away from the balloting, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are in unmitigated manipulation mode. Ratepayers won’t be stuck with the $12.7-billion bill, they say. Taxes won’t go up, they say. Move along folks. Nothing to pay here.
Anyone who believes these preposterous declarations deserves the nasty shock they will get when they find out otherwise. After the 2019 election, naturally.
The debt will be paid. You will pay it. So will your children. So will their children. It will be paid via electricity bills, or taxes, or public funds spent on Muskrat Falls instead of on other societal necessities, such as filling potholes or replacing two-century-old prisons or fixing decrepit schools.
The money must come from some combination of these sources. Saying otherwise is selling snake oil. The issue is not “if” Newfoundlanders will pay the $12.7 billion, the question is “how” they will pay.
The amount of moaning and whining in today’s public discourse is indeed disproportionate, due to the fact that only 21 per cent of the populace has a legitimate cause for complaint.
Former premier Danny Williams, the dam dreamer, had a 79 per cent approval rating among voters at the height of his popularity. To quote the late, great, unequalled Ray Guy — who had more sense in his typing fingers than an entire caucus had in their heads — Williams “was so high in the polls that he got nosebleeds.”
There were plenty of indications the Muskrat Falls project was headed for disaster, and critics loudly pointed them out long before the dam thing was approved and the first bag of cement purchased.
To the 79 per cent: shut up and pay up.
To the 21 per cent: suck it up, that’s the price of living in a democracy.
The blame was made right here. But nationalists, as is their wont, will continue to blame Ottawa, just as they have previously blamed Quebec.
A common accusation is that the federal government didn’t do “due diligence” before giving its loan guarantee. The legalese might seem impressive, but it’s irrelevant. The federal government isn’t a bank. It was politics. Go ahead and sue. How has that worked with Quebec?
There will be irony. Newfoundland, the least socialistic of the Canadian provinces, will discover that the only way to avoid impending economic ruination will be to adopt some form of the enduring Marxist principle, “from each according to their ability.”
Brian Jones is a desk editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at [email protected].
