Andrew Parsons and the Liberals' Future

A solid performer leaves

Andrew Parsons told Andrew Furey he wouldn’t be running in the next election some time before Tom Osborne told Furey he was leaving politics within a couple of weeks of their meeting.

That would be February last for Osborne. Do the math on the rest. It will tell you many things about the provincial Liberals these days but do not make the mistake of confusing Parsons’ quiet announcement on the first Friday after Labour Day for the impact of his departure on the Liberals’ future.

For starters, let’s be clear that Parsons will stay on in the House of Assembly and as minister until after the next election. He just won’t run for re-election. That gives Furey plenty of stability but it has also given his team plenty of time to deal with the fall-out. They haven’t done anything with it. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

Andrew Parsons has been in the House for 13 years, roughly the same time as his father who preceded him as the Liberal member of the House of Assembly for the southwest coast district of Burgeo-LaPoile. It has been a safely Liberal seat since Confederation, either in its current version or earlier boundaries with the Pea Seas only holding the seat briefly on three occasions. The district has sent many leading Liberals to the House including Steve Neary and Roger Simmons as well as Parsons’ father Kelvin.

Andrew did not inherit the seat like you would a pair of pants just like Liberals have not won the seat by some divine blessing. He had to work to get elected and to stay there. Parsons has been working hard since winning the seat against the Pea Seas in the 2011 election as a staunch defender of the district and a solid performer for the Liberals in the House and outside it. He is naturally easy-going, likeable, frank, and loyal with solid political gut instincts. Parsons is politically sharp and he has developed his natural skills at managing political issues behind the scenes, which is where all the real work gets done.

Parsons quickly rose to everyone’s notice on the opposition benches as critic for education, health and community services, child, youth and family services, and justice as well as a deputy House leader. After the 2015 election, Parsons took on the job as attorney general and justice minister in Dwight Ball’s first cabinet. Parsons did not do flashy things that gained widespread notice but delivered on important issues within the justice portfolio like creating a pilot program to help sexual assault victims and improving civilian oversight of the police.

Like other ministers in Dwight Ball’s cabinets, Parsons found himself spending too long in one portfolio and never had the chance to gain greater experience as a minister of another department. Andrew Furey made him minister of the new department of Industry, Energy, and Technology, a sort of super-ministry of economic development. There he did the same solid job in each part of the department as he’d done in justice. He is perhaps best known for taking the lead on hydrogen development, settling it down politically from Andrew Furey’s controversial relationship with developer John Risley, and moving the initiative along across departmental lines.

This delivery thing is something the Liberals have struggled with in office and that Parsons could wrestle a big controversial project into sensible shape is a testament to his skills and the regard his colleagues have for him. Parsons also handled the media and opposition deftly and was one of the few ministers capable enough and confident enough to step outside the cheesy prepared lines handed to him by political and bureaucratic handlers and speak simply and straightforwardly about any subject.

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Andrew Parsons would have done well in any cabinet but in the post-2015 Liberals he was head and shoulders above most of his colleagues without making it obviously so. It would be a cliche to say he will leave a gap that would be hard to fill but in Parsons’ case it would be true. Tom Osborne got lots of attention when he left but while he has been worshipped politically by the post-2015 Liberals and has a record of longevity, Osborne got there by being grey, uncontroversial, and by shying away from anything that required any difficulty or risk to him politically.

Andrew Parsons goes into a group in the Liberal cabinets since 2015 that is very small and includes John Haggie, another leading cabinet performer who will also not be seeking re-election by all accounts. They are folks who carried more than their own departments and need more than just one for one replacing. Others may leave. Scott Reid, for example, passed over repeatedly for cabinet posts for no good reason, was also planning to quit politics, apparently, but his surprising appointment to the Indigenous affairs portfolio - a ghetto ministry made into a stand-alone job but controlled by others like the Premier - was clearly a sop by the Brain Trust to persuade Reid to stay.

While virtually any of the rest in the small Liberal caucus could be the next Tom Osborne, there are few besides John Abbott and Perry Trimper, another whose skill has been conspicuously wasted and who has been subjected to all sorts of political stupidity and abuse from his own leaders and their Brain Trusts, who are in the group Haggie and Parsons will leave. Abbott certainly belongs there but no one should forget the efforts from the Premier’s Office to kill him off and, as now, saddle him with troublesome portfolios but no interest in fixing the problems they expect him to make disappear. This is another of the many internal problems that keep the Liberals stuck in molasses rather than succeeding.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, political parties are at their peak when they get elected to government first. It is downhill from there, usually, and few at all and none since the turn of the century have been able to recruit new talent let alone improve and refresh themselves along the way as their predecessors managed.

Smallwood lasted 23 years recruiting and pushing and even in the election that was his high-water mark, Smallwood brought in Clyde Wells, John Crosbie, and Alex Hickman as new ministers. The Pea Seas got through two elections in 1972 and 1975 with solid cabinets full of smart, capable politicians under Frank Moores before Brian Peckford and his team took the party to greater heights in 1979 and the early 1980s. The Liberals in 1993 were arguably a better bunch than the 1989 version, which itself was a feat given the number of veteran politicians and people with doctoral degrees in that ‘89 Class and in 1996, the Liberals changed party leaders and brought in another batch of capable politicians and leaders including Judy Foote and Julie Bettney.

Danny Williams’ Pea Seas had some solid performers in the 2003 cabinet but, with the exception of Tom Marshall who went on to show off his considerable political skill as Premier, the best quickly disappeared as a result of Williams’ out-of-control ego and impeccably awful managerial skills. With the exception of Jerome Kennedy, later elections turned up no new faces with any talent beyond that of self-preservation and self-aggrandisement. Steve K*nt and Darin Luther King - both of whom have glommed onto the Poilievre party in hopes of bigger things - are the poster children for the Pea Sea poverty under Williams and his hand-picked successor, Kathy Dunderdale. Ross Wiseman and perhaps Keith Hutchings might be the exceptions although neither had Kennedy’s brain and his aggressive determination.

Others in the Liberal Party used Andrew Furey to carry their personal hopes and ambitions and in practice he has delivered on none of them, including whatever hopes he had of his own. Furey brought no new talent with him as Tobin did despite comparable excitement inside Liberal circles and delivered on none of whatever people thought he might do. As you already know, Team Furey got John Abbott despite their best efforts to kill him off. John Hogan, the other newly-elected Liberal in 2021’s near disaster, is capable enough but he has gone to health not because he did a sterling job in justice but because Furey loyalist Hogan sharted himself into a political mess and Furey’s Brain Trust weren’t ready for Osborn’s departure despite months of warning. A couple of weeks later, they’d cobbled together a cabinet shuffle that was typically words on a page but showing no signs of substance or bigger plan. They left Hogan in health because they had no one else to take the job and the stink in the justice department had lessened. As you will see from Wednesday’s column, Team Furey is doing no better with health now than before but that is another tale for another day.

There is no sign that the Liberals have anything more coming that will break the pattern for the election Andrew Furey has already wants but has postponed a few times already. Ersatz rural economic development guru Rob Greenwood and his boy Fred are literally making up something as they go, but no one has any idea what it might be least of all Rob and Fred. This is very much on-brand for Team Furey. More on the economic development games in a future column.

Meanwhile, there are no candidates rushing forward to take up the opportunities coming from the vacancies created by what are by any measure merely the natural comings and goings of politics. Nor is anyone seeing an opportunity to take out a Pea Sea here or there. There is no sense of optimism for the future among the Liberals and it shows. The result is we can expect Jamie Korab - the candidate who fell into the Liberal lap to replace Tom Osborne - to get to cabinet much faster than anyone else. Ken MacDonald will also go into cabinet if he can manage to beat Barry Petten and the Liberals get re-elected but that is a lot of ifs. All together, this is yet more evidence of how much the post-2015 Liberals feel and act like the post-2010 Pea Seas who preceded them: out of energy and ideas but managed to cling to office. That gives us now 15 years of this sort of thing and across the province it shows.

Andrew Parsons will land well, eventually, no matter what he does. He’s earned the right to spend more time with his family and not have it be a cliche. God knows he spent 13 years working in Sin Jawns and driving between Deer Lake and Port aux Basques when he could. Politics takes its toll on families and the slogging back and forth on the highway, the time away from a young family all have wrecked more marriages. That Andrew and his wife Erin came through not only that but her illness in one piece says all you’d need to know about them. On top of that, Parsons has shown the skills and abilities that should make him an attractive hire. If nothing else, Parsons can go back to practising law.

The Liberals will find it hard to replace him.

The province will find it hard to replace him.

It will show.

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