Ryan Cleary interlined

More quality journalism from Ryan Cleary's Newfoundland Weekly Separatist:

Talk of separation — well, maybe not outright talk, whispers more like it — borders on blasphemous in certain quarters around this place.

It also jumps the border from "blasphemous" to "obligatory, in others.

Many of the Terms of Union are also ridiculous (except for the part about margarine, of course, the local bread spread had to be protected come hell or high water).

Which Terms of Union are ridiculous?

All that’s water under the Confederation bridge. (Notice how PEI got one — a Confederation Bridge — and the Strait of Belle Isle didn’t.

Notice how the Strait of Belle Isle is twice as deep at its shallowest point, as the Northumberland Strait is at its deepest, and wider, and traversed by icebergs as well as mere ice floes? Or how the Premier's vanity pre-feasibility study into a fixed link crossing shot down the bridge option at thirty paces? Or how PEI's Confederation Bridge was not a condition of its entry into Confederation? Or how there's nothing stopping a third-party commercial outfit from proposing, planning, and building a Strait of Belle Isle crossing, other than the horribly inconvenient fact that, unlike the PEI bridge, it doesn't make economic sense?

But then Labrador should have a road sometime this century so it will all work out in the end.

It should, but it won't as long as the provincial government of the province of which Labrador is a part keeps shirking its responsibility to Labrador in all other areas of provincial legislative competence besides tax and royalty collection. The provincial government has been outspent nine to one on the Trans-Labrador Highway, such as it exists, to date.

Where is Ryan Cleary's righteous indignation?

But ask yourself this: has Confederation been good for Newfoundland and Labrador?

Yes. Next question!

And DFO has stood in the way of the fish coming back, according to Etchegary anyway.

According to Etchegary?! Man, that's rich on seventeen different levels.

Simple … because they prevent journalists like me from doing my job.

Any similarity between the Independent and journalism is purely coincidental...

here’s what I propose: let’s give Canada five years to turn things around or we take a vote to separate. I’ll outline the terms and conditions over the next few months (suggestions are more than appreciated) and we’ll see what happens from there. Wild isn’t it, how a Newfoundlander can be a Canadian and a separatist at the same time?

Un couteau sur la gorge... I think the appropriate translation would be "A knife to da t'roat". Or, given the venerable tradition of Newfoundland crypto-separatism, has this already become "A never-ending visit to the dentist?"

Can we all play at that game? You know, perhaps it's time to give Danny "I'll recognize the Labrador Métis/practise what we preach/primary beneficiaries of the Lower Churchill/independent advice on the Labrador coastal service" Williams, and his government, disons, two years, to turn things around at the intraprovincial level...