Don't take my word for it

From the introduction to the massive (it's larger than the 13-volume Privy Council appendix from 1927) Dorion commission report on the Labrador boundary issue. Emphasis added:

[I]l n’existe, de l’avis des commissaires, aucun recours pratique pour faire changer, par des voies judiciaires, la décision du Comité judiciaire [du conseil privé]…

L’argument le plus fort, en 1971, qui fait que la « cause » du Québec dans l’affaire du Labrador est irrémédiablement compromise, c’est le fait, peu connu semble-t-il de ceux qui préconisent le « retour du Labrador au Québec », que les gouvernement successifs du Québec ont, à divers titres et de plusieurs manières, reconnu le tracé de 1927 comme la frontière effective entre les deux provinces. Devant l’absence à toutes fins pratiques complète d’acte de juridiction posé par le Québec dans le Labrador attribué à Terre-Neuve et devant l’occupation effective de ce territoire par celle-ci, tout recours judiciaire en vue d’une révision de la décision du Comité judiciaire est absolument illusoire.

Sur un plan strictement juridique, la Loi impériale de 1949 (Union de Terre-Neuve au Canada) en conférant la forme législative à la décision de 1927 a d’ailleurs définitivement scellé le sort du Labrador, en droit strict.

[…]

Au total, [le CJCP], en 1927, n’a pas « enlevé » le Labrador au Québec ; on doit plutôt dire qu’il a confirmé judiciairement que le temps le lui avait progressivement enlevé, si l’on réfère à l’évolution juridique du territoire impliqué. Le plus décevant, pour ceux qui croient encore à la possibilité d’un hypothétique retournement des choses, aura sans doute été de constater jusqu’à quel point le gouvernement du Québec lui-même a effectivement accepté cette importante amputation, en tentant souvent de masquer cette attitude par de prudentes ouvertures.

[…]

Ni le gouvernement de Terre-Neuve ni celui du Canada n’ignorent les textes et actes qui ont progressivement compromis la position du Québec. Ce qui apparaît grave aux yeux des commissaires, c’est que les tenants d’un Labrador québécois et même la population québécoise, en général, en aient été si mal informés.

[…]

A l’heure actuelle, investir plus d’énergie dans le problème du Labrador que n’en requièrent l’amélioration du tracé et la démarcation définitive de la frontière équivaudrait à cultiver le « traumatisme du Labrador » et risquerait de faire oublier la nécessaire vigilance que devrait exercer le Québec sur les dimensions internes de l’intégrité de son territoires relativement négligées jusqu’à maintenant.

Dance to the cartographic time-warp

It’s a bloody shame that too many Newfoundlanders exhibit too much of a francophobic tendency. If the province’s population had great competence in the French language, they might do some reading and finally get over the paranoid delusion that Quebec, even if it is “out to get Labrador”, doesn’t have a shadow of a case, let alone one that is re-inforced by creative cartography. If so, then what are the implications for Saint-Pierre & Miquelon, which have, apparently, been claimed by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador (and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon?)

In the late 1960s, the Quebec government of the day appointed the Dorion Commission, la Commission d’enquête sur l’intégrité du territoire du Québec. It studied all the land and maritime boundaries of the province, but it was really little more than a colourable attempt to re-open the Labrador boundary dispute.

Dorion and his colleagues were very clear: Quebec lost in 1927. Its loss was confirmed in 1949. Quebec has no legal claim to Labrador, and does not gain one by pretending that 1927 never happened. Indeed, by its cute pretence that the watershed boundary applies in southern Labrador, Quebec is in fact giving credence to the general legal argument that led to the height of land being established as the boundary line along most of its length.

There is no Labrador boundary dispute, Tom Kierans’ vivid flashbacks to the 1960s notwithstanding. It’s baffling that the media would still, in 2005, give any credence to the supposed “dispute”, when even Jacques Parizeau, the purest and durest of les purs et les durs, has thrown in the towel.

No, the cutesy Quebec map thingy is not the product of some conspiracy to undo what the Privy Council did in 1927. It is the result of a Quebec government cartography policy, which leads to maps like this.

Would that the province which Labrador is actually in would adopt such a policy. Then we might see the last of maps like this.

After all, if those Quebec maps which claim Labrador strengthen Quebec’s claim, then there must also be legal implications of those Newfoundland and Whatchamacallit maps which ignore Labrador or treat it as something other than the integral part of the province that Danny Williams says we are. They must, if you accept the Kierans theory, weaken Labrador as a legally integral part of Newfoundland and Labrador.

And would that Newfoundland nationalists would broaden their narrow minds long enough to get at least as torn up about their own government’s and society’s attitudes towards Labrador, as they are about Quebec’s. If they want to start changing those attitudes, they should start at home.

Oh, and Brian Peckford: you’re not a lawyer. It shows. Your government talked to Quebec in the 1970s and 1980s, when their maps were often even more extreme. If you don’t like implications, then shut up.

Proposal would skip more than Quebec

Rob Antle reports in today's St. John's Telegram:

Proposal would skip Quebec [link won't work for very long]

A joint venture owned 50-50 by energy firms in British Columbia and Maine is proposing an alternative sub-sea and land-based route for Lower Churchill power to the United States... The firm would run a line from dam locations east across Labrador. A sub-sea, high-voltage cable would cross onto the island of Newfoundland north of the Strait of Belle Isle, then traverse over land to the south coast. ... [Paul] Manson [of Sea Breeze Power] said that would allow Labrador power to be used in Newfoundland, and would also allow for the development of "stranded potential" for wind power on the island.

[...]

"Routing through Newfoundland would give access to inexpensive power to the people of Newfoundland, and provide a very good base for attracting business to that area, much the same way that inexpensive power in British Columbia and Quebec has benefited those economies," Manson said.

What about the communities — a majority of them, with a majority of the Labrador population — which rely, in whole or in part, on diesel generation for their power supply?

Is Labrador electricity only being used "in the province" when it has been successfully exported for use in Newfoundland?

Do any of the twenty-five proposals now under consideration involve relieving Labrador, especially coastal Labrador, of its dependence on expensive diesel generation or — irony or ironies — the importation of power from the Hydro-Quebec plant at Robertson Lake?

Canada Day

The inhabitants of this country are dissatisfied with the present state of things and are anxious, according to my knowledge, hardly without exception, that this country should be held to constitute part of Canada rather than Newfoundland. — Malcolm McLean, Kenemich, 19 July 1921.

According to our information, the inhabitants of Lake Melville and the Hamilton Inlet are without a single exception that we have heard of most anxious that Labrador should be held to constitute part of the Dominion of Canada. — Thomas Lea Blake, Joseph Michelin and Amon Chaulk, Lake Melville, July 1921.

There is a complete unanimity of sentiment amongst the natives of the coast and the interior inhabitants with whom I come into contact, in favour of Canada having jurisdiction over the whole of this country. The natives of the coast have never had representation in the Newfoundland legislature even though Newfoundland received from them a considerable revenue by way of customs duties. — John Blackhall, Rigolet, July 1921.

Moreover, [local residents] are greatly dissatisfied with what Newfoundland has done and, more particularly, left undone on the Labrador coast and earnestly hope that Labrador will be held to form part of Canada. — John Michelin and John Blake, Grand Village, 18 July 1921.

To the best of my knowledge every one of the Natives living in this Country earnestly wishes that this will be held to be Canadian territory. They say, "We do not think anything worse could happen to us than to be put under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland." — Raoul Thevenet, North West River, 21 July 1921.

The whole of the Resident People of the Labrador Coast feel, I think, that conditions would be much better for them, if the Coast was under Canadian rule. — Ralph Parsons, St. John's, 28 October 1921.

The Labrador natives would seem to welcome annexation to Canada. — Rev. Henry Gordon, Cartwright, 10 November 1922.