An early Groundhog Day

You ever have one of those days where you wake up, and it's like you're re-living the same day over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?

Today is one of those days. From the Ministry of Truth:

Just Wait Ten Years From Now
January 28, 2007

The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is promising compatriots who've moved to Alberta that in about 10 years, they'll have an economy worth coming home to.

Danny Williams spoke yesterday at a 15-dollar-a-head meet and greet for Newfoundland's expatriates in Fort McMurray. Appealing directly to about 150 of his compatriots working in the city, Williams said he knows some will remain in Fort McMurray for the rest of their lives because their family is there. But for others who want to go home, he said his job is to boost Newfoundland's economy so they can get the kind of jobs they have in Alberta.

Brian Peckford couldn't have said it any better himself: "One day, the sun will shine, and 'have-not' will be no more."

"One day."

"Ten years from now."

It might have been Crosbie who complained about the tendency of Newfoundland politicians to fall into "El Dorado" syndrome: hold out the hope of some future megaproject, however mythical, that would embarrass a sheikh; that the current megaproject, or artist's sketch, would be "the one to save us."

They also used to say "Cape St. Mary's Pays For All."

"Ten years from now" is conveniently beyond Danny's personal event-horizon. By choice or by other circumstances — remember, on her way out the door, Margaret Thatcher famously, and bittersweetly, quipped, "It's a funny old world." — this will be long after Danny Williams isn't there to kick around anymore.

Playing out the "have not will be no more" is a cynical and cynicizing game even at the best of times.

These are not the best of times.

In about six weeks, the 2006 census figures will come down. The numbers are going to go off like a bomb on the local political scene. And the province does not have the luxury of Danny's self-established timeline of ten years to start mitigating the trends that those statistics will lay bare.