Lela and Francois and Seamus and Dave and Andy
Some odds and ends from the week in politics in NL
Lela Evans crossed the floor on Tuesday moving from the Orange outfit back to the Blue bunch. The Red rabble was never an option for her.
Buzzing followed among the political bees. The usual academic suspect turned up at the CBC Content Assembly Facility to give all the officially approved icons and incantations of Canadian political science, which is the equivalent of feeling the naturally occurring bumps on skulls to explain illness or putting leeches to the body politic to balance political humors. Humorous in one sense but not laughable for anyone looking to the quackery with the misguided belief it will explain what’s going on.
Lela’s story is really quite simple: elected as a Pea Sea in 2019 and again in 2021, she left the Pea Sea caucus for vague reasons in late 2022, sat on the opposition benches with no party affiliation, and then joined the NDP in the spring of 2022 for equally vague reasons. Blue to nothing to Orange and now back to Blue.
Lela wants to get re-elected and as much as she might feel some sort of kinship with Dippers, the reality the party has nothing to help her get re-elected. No money. No party workers. Nothing. Aside from a seat in Sin Jawns and the union stronghold of Labrador West, there is no Dipper party to speak of anywhere else in Newfoundland and Labrador.
This sort of party shifting is normal in Newfoundland and Labrador politics, where there is typically these days no differences among the parties in philosophy. Since 1855, Newfoundland and Labrador politicians have been somewhat generous in their affections, favouring one party or another as the fortunes or one or another shifted. This was especially true in the 1920s as the country staggered towards the collapse of self-government. One finance minister introduced his budget for the government, resigned, crossed the floor, and then voted against his own budget.
Danny Williams was arguably the first NDP Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and he relied on huge support from Dipper union leaders and ordinary voters, as well ass the official party to put through his nutty nutty nut bar agenda for things like Muskrat Falls. Darren Luther King - that’s Doctor King to you - is a better example. The former Pea Sea cabinet minister found a better-paying gig outside politics running a trade union but more recently he’s been sniffing around for a federal political opportunity. He is back with the Blue Team, officially now that the polls changed but before that, Liberals will tell you King was quietly asking if they might welcome him just like they did that other Pea Sea, Bill Matthews.
So, there’s nothing odd about Lela’s latest leap if you actually know what’s going on. Easy to understand and no one ought to make any judgments about it or Evans, least of all the Dippers whose long-time local rep was a big fan of Danny Williams when he was running things here and has since gone on to a gig running a big union that is pretty much a Liberal Party branch plant. Oh yeah. And then there was Ryan Cleary who was a Pea Sea who got elected for the Dippers then bolted back to the Pea Seas and ended up his political career talking to himself in bus shelters in Airport Heights.
In Halifax, Andrew Furey reportedly told Francois Legault it’s time to put money on the table for a new deal on Churchill Falls and Gull Island.
For those who may have fallen asleep since Legault’s trip to St. John’s in 2023, that’s exactly what Furey told the Quebec Premier then and has repeated a couple of times.
So, nothing’s changed.
There’s no deal.
And not much likelihood of one any time soon.
Not long after Furey swooned at Legault’s offer in 2023, Legault’s popularity tanked and with that flushed any hope of a deal no matter how much Andrew was willing to give away. Any deal that looked good for Quebec would look bad in Newfoundland and Labrador and, in the current climate, anything that wasn’t identical to the 1969 contract would be a give-away in Quebec for Legault as well.
For Andrew, the problem rests in the general misunderstanding about what has been going on in Labrador since the 1960s. Both his own obvious misunderstanding of things and the general misunderstanding of what’s going on with electricity - even allowing for his Genius Committee of electricity advisors - meant that any deal would look like a give-away.
Plus Furey’s lack of any political influence or persuasive power means even the best possible deal would be rejected by most people in Newfoundland and Labrador. Andrew announcing Jesus was back would be dismissed, mocked, or ignored by most even if the Son of God Himself were standing right next to Furey working miracles all the while Andrew read from the teleprompter.
To confirm how badly things are going in Labrador for Andrew Furey on the electricity front, talks with the Innu for extra compensation for the deal they signed with Danny Williams fell apart and the Innu and now headed back to court. They don’t have much of a chance since the problem they have is not with the deal but with themselves and their lawyers. After all, they are the ones who did not understand that a deal that tied Innu cash to electricity sales meant the Innu would get more money if the price went up and less if the price went down.
Check Monday’s column for more on this latest news about the talks with Quebec and on the recent rate increase for August.
Seamus O’Regan won’t be in cabinet anymore. He’ll be leaving politics whenever the next federal election appears.
With Seamus, like with pretty well any politician, there’s always a point after which their departure is a question of when not if and Seamus passed that point a while ago. It is tiresime living in Toronto and representing a riding where you used to live. You are always on an airplane and as a federal cabinet minister your time away from everyone you love in your life can seem endless. It is wearying.
And it is even more wearying when, as in recent months, the people you helped out in the provincial government, the guy with whom you cosplayed Bobby Kennedy to his Jack, turns his back on you.
Yes, Seamus’ three-page good-bye message to his constituents has a couple of jarringly wrong references. This government Seamus was part of did not do more financially for Newfoundland and Labrador than any other. Brian Mulroney nailed that one down and it’s hard to surpass both the political control and the cash that goes with the offshore.
The money Seamus mentioned is not small, though, and both the intent behind the help and the generosity of it ought not be ignored. Seamus and his colleagues can be proud of their feck even while their political cousins were unashamedly feckless. Seamus could have all too easily told them off in his good-bye and many would have agreed with him. But Seamus is not so small and petty a man. He is leaving with dignity and grace. He is leaving politics having done not merely his best but a fine job that few could equal in what is always a thankless business.
From one of his constituents and from someone who has known him for a long while, here’s a heartfelt and enduring thanks and with it every good wish for peace, love, and a long and happy life as far the feck away from politics as he can get.
British Columbia Premier Dave Eby didn’t say at any point during this newser in Halifax that he agreed with what Andrew Furey is suing the federal government over. That’s likely because Dave cannot figure it out any more than Andrew Furey can.
But all the same, Dave is willing to throw some money into a legal fight against Ottawa if it might net him some cash. His bunch will intervene in the case here and they might launch their own lawsuit in British Columbia.
Right off the bat, none of the news reports from anywhere clearly explained that simple point. And, as Eby spent a ton of time whining about cash given to Ontario that was *not* Equalization or anything like it, Dave is talking more about his own next election campaign, not the Furey legal case. And frankly, since Furey’s law suit is a re-election stunt too, that’s the only thing they have in common.
VOCM came closest when it quoted Furey as noting that “they don’t align on some of those specific issues” but the two provinces “agree on the nature of the lawsuit in that there should be protection of equivalent services across the country,” according to Furey.
Leave aside a transcribing mistake: it should be provision not protection. The two provinces don’t agree and actually in his remarks in Halifax Eby pointedly attacked Furey and his province, although not by name.
“We feel that's unreasonable for B.C. taxpayers to be sending money to the federal government to be distributed to (have-not) provinces like Ontario through the equalization program, which is part of our constitution.”
Dave doesn’t support Equalization full stop because money goes from his province to welfare bums in places like Ontario and… *checks notes*… Newfoundland and Labrador, which this year qualified for a couple of hundred million bucks from the federal government under the Equalization program.
It gets worse.
Furey said it was unfair that thanks to Equalization, Ontario could do surgeries like hip replacements cheaper than the government could in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“If you look at healthcare,” Furey said, “the sector that I come from, there's no way you can tell me there's the same cost per unit to do a hip replacement in downtown Toronto, not to pick on Ontario by any stretch, as it is in St. Anthony.”
Whoa, Andy. Might want to do a fact check now and again.
Newfoundland and Labrador pays *less* than Ontario for hip jobs. Not more. That's the opposite of what Furey claimed.
D’oh
The Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) pays a doctor $972 bucks for doing a “total hip replacement with takedown of fusion” (R553). The Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Care Commission bill codes and payments aren’t online (hello transparency!) but a “total hip arthroplasty” will get a doctor $825, with the possibility of a couple of add-ons.
We’d have to do a more detailed comparison as there are lots of other potential costs but notice Furey also picked a really false comparison. Apples to apples would be Furey in St. John’s compared to a doctor in Toronto. Pick a comparably remote location in Northern Ontario and that’s a fair comparison to St. Anthony. You see larger, busier hospitals can do work more cheaply simply because they have more through-put. It’s like anything and much of the cost of health in this province has to do with the non-political drivers for having so many hospitals and major care centres where there isn't the through put.
But generally, there’s no incentive in the government system in any province anyway for anyone to actually be efficient and conscious of cost. As Furey’s last budget showed, politicians are willing to borrow and borrow and borrow no matter how much of the budget health care costs simply because it’s not politically popular to do anything else. Ontario has opened up the opportunity to deliver more care in the private sector but in this province, there are too many vested interests in the bureaucracy and unions to do anything but make the hugely inefficient and ineffective government-controlled system bigger and more expensive without improving health outcomes.
If this mess ever gets to court, the federal lawyers will have an easy ride without even breaking a sweat.
That’s it for the week.
See you on Monday for a look at hydro development in Labrador and what we’ll be paying on the island from here on out for electricity.