It’s tempting to look at the problems with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project as being unique to one province.
The project, being overseen by provincial Crown corporation Nalcor Energy, is massively overbudget and off schedule.
But to understand why someone outside the province should pay attention to the fiasco, it’s worth considering a few samples from the report of a public inquiry that examined how the province got into the mess in the first place.
“There is also no doubt that government of Newfoundland and Labrador politicians and officials must be faulted for failing to provide a reasonable level of oversight of Nalcor, for placing an unjustified amount of trust and blind faith in that corporation, and for the naivety that they demonstrated in accepting, without a comprehensive independent review, Nalcor’s …cost estimates, schedule and risks.”
And there’s this: “Nalcor officials knew that the government of Newfoundland and Labrador officials and politicians who worked on the project were considerably over their heads and unqualified to evaluate cost estimates, schedule and risk. Nalcor officials took full advantage of this serious and glaring weakness when they should have recognized that this imposed on them an even greater duty to ensure that the government of Newfoundland and Labrador was fully informed and understood the cost estimates, schedule and risk.”
Contrast that with this statement from then-premier Kathy Dunderdale on Dec. 5, 2012: “Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that this is not only a good project; it is a thoroughly researched, analyzed and studied project that enables the people of the province to enjoy a vast array of far-reaching benefits. Companies whose reputations would suffer in the global market if they perform substandard or biased work have all agreed with Nalcor: that the Muskrat Falls project is based on solid ground financially as well as in concept design and engineering, Mr. Speaker.”
…to understand why someone outside the province should pay attention to the fiasco, it’s worth considering a few samples from the report of a public inquiry that examined how the province got into the mess in the first place.
Or this: “Successes do not just happen, Mr. Speaker. They are engineered in a series of well-planned steps — first, in recognizing the opportunity, and then acting deliberately to turn that opportunity to your advantage. You build your team. You gather information. You do your homework. You make connections. You run the numbers. You do everything you need to do to move forward with the advantages of knowledge and strength, and when you are confident the opportunity is worth seizing, you make your move.”
Fine words; the problem is, none of that really happened. More to the point, it’s overwhelming proof that talk is cheap, and that politicians’ talk is even cheaper. (Dunderdale later admitted that her only experience building anything was the construction of a house — which also went overbudget.)
What everyone should realize from this provincial disaster is that being elected as a politician does not guarantee a person any specific skill beyond politics.
It does, however, give them the tools and the platform to spread half-truths and self-aggrandizing blather.
Some will even quite willingly use their political powers to destroy the reputations of concerned citizens, as clearly happened in Newfoundland, where people with expertise were dismissed as naysayers and traitors.
Others will go as far as to recommend that citizens who raise questions be dismissed from their jobs.
Particularly galling in this case is that those who had asked questions based on reasoned, thorough research were publicly and callously dismissed by politicians who, it turns out, had done none of their own.
And that’s something that can, and does, happen in every single province in this country.
There’s a Muskrat Falls waiting for anyone who thinks they don’t have to pay attention to politics, and that everything will work out just fine.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire publications across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky
