First, the headline:
'Can't constantly turn to government': premierAnd the relevant bits (with emphasis added)...
"Everybody in this province can't constantly turn to government and say, 'you fix it. You subsidize it.' We can't pay people to work. We can't pay people to live in communities in this province," she said.The missing adjective in the Premier's comments is that everybody can't constantly turn to the provincial government.
In Marystown - the part of the province Dunderdale is originally from - she laid a lot of the blame at the feet of the union, which rejected a plan to keep the plant open earlier this year.
Union members voted against a plan to keep the plant open for 18 weeks per year for the next three years.
"Eighteen weeks' work opposed to no weeks work - that's what people have got to ask themselves now," Dunderdale said.
In other words - what the Premier is saying is precisely what provincial governments for decades have cited as the guiding principle for the processing sector in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is, the provincial government can't "pay people to live in communities in this province" but if only those uncooperative bastards in community x and y would've taken eighteen weeks work (for EI purposes) we could have put Ottawa on the hook and "constantly turned" to that government to "pay people to live in communities in this province" instead.
As long as this mentality drives fishery policy in our province, absolutely nothing will change.
1 comments:
Mark...successive provincial governments have been in collusion with Ottawa for decades, employing the EI system to subsidize the fishery. Neither of them made the strategic investments necessary for the long-term viability of the fishery, although I blame Ottawa first, since they had ultimate responsibility for the effective management of the resource.
It is most unfortunate that they allowed, with the silent concent of the province, this once-great resource to become the employer of last resort. They allowed the product to be depleted and nearly destroyed and now we are left with a huge challenge.
The province's obsession with big oil and Danny's legacy, the ill-conceived Muskrat Falls project, led it to abandon the rural parts of the province in terms of developing any kind of sustainable economy. Sure, they are throwing money at certain areas but there is no strategy to their efforts. This has led to barely perceptible outcomes and has had minimal impact. All rural areas are left to wonder about is, "Who's next?"
I don't know if it too late for the fishery, and I hope not, but the lack of direction by both levels of government is frightening. It will be death by a thousand cuts and many communities are perilously close right now.
Cyril Rogers
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