Furey's Guarantee to John Risley

Premier reveals much in a few words

TL. DR: John Risley and Brendan Paddick have a guarantee from Andrew Furey that the provincial government will buy out their megaproject if it fails. He told reporters about the bail-out scheme during recent interviews, likely by accident. Furey also claimed there was no public money in the project or any others that might come under the new wind policy. That’s not true as you’ll see. We’ll start with something else to get you warmed up.

Close up to show the books, carefully placed behind the chair.

In one of the posed pictures at year-end of the carefully constructed image that is Andrew Furey, someone plunked four books behind him. You can make out two of the titles.

One is Against the tide, Doug House’s memoir of his time in government in the 1990s. It’s a book you should read for a bunch of reasons. In this case, it was a curious choice given that the subject of the book - changing government and government policy - is precisely the opposite of what Andrew Furey is really about.

Furey likes to pretend he is an agent of not mere change but the multi-syllabic synonym transformation. Furey actually doesn’t go against the way things are. He runs along with the crowd. He is a manager, not a leader. Keep ‘er on this track kinda guy. Not a wheel-hard-over change direction type. He just likes to talk about doing something else.

Change is a plain word.

People get that it is about being different tomorrow than you are today.

It’s a powerful word precisely because most people know what it means.

Transformation isn’t a common word. Even people who grew up on stories about cars that change into powerful alien machines might not really get the idea that it is about nothing more complicated than permanent change of any kind, not just the ability to change from a robot to a car or an airplane and then back again.

But transformation *sounds* like something special. You can puff up when you say it. Wave your arms around for greater effect.

It is a poser word.

Action people use action words. Do- words.

Leaders use words people know, like “change”, when they want to talk about making things different and better and make sure people understand what they mean.

Other people pick words like transformation because it goes with the furniture.