Respect your roles

This, from Kathy Blunderdale today, is rich on seventeen different levels.

Not only is it her, and not Danny, engaged in this new front in the Holy War (if the cause is so just, why isn't Danny on the front lines, where he so loves to be?) but she comes up with this unintentionally hilarious condemnation of the Infidel Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board:

The minister said a critique by the board of the province’s decision is highly unusual and outside the board’s role as regulator.

"For the board to question our need to be provided with more information on which to base our decision on the development of a resource that belongs to the people is quite frankly inappropriate," the minister said. "The board is subject to the review of the federal and provincial ministers. The ministers are not subject to review of the board."

For the sake of argument, let's assume this is true: that the CNLOPB did something outside its role. (A big assumption: as demonstrated by the provincial government's false belief that the CNLOPB is responsible for ensuring local benefits, as amply documented over at Bond Papers, it's abundantly clear that Danny Williams, The Greatest Lawyer Ever, doesn't have the first clue about the statutory role of the Board. You would be well advised to take any provincial minister's description of the role of the board with a big fat grain of legal salt.)

Danny Williams has stepped outside his role, under his Premier's hat, as chief executive and legislator, in making determinations that only courts can make. It is not up to Danny to decide whether the Powley case applies to Labrador and the Labrador Métis. It is up to the courts. And it's not the only time Great Lawyer has gotten up on the wrong side of the courts.

It is not Danny Williams' job to determine school closures, mergers, or other such decisions. It's the job of the school boards. Did that stop Danny from stepping outside his role? Noop. Not a chance.

Danny Williams is not the administrator of the House of Assembly. Does it stop him from demanding that the legislature pledge its fealty to him? Nope. And again, nope. No way.

Any Great Lawyer — for that matter, a merely Good Lawyer, an Indifferent Lawyer, even the better part of the Incompetent Lawyers of the world — will have paid enough attention, in Consititional 1001, to know about constitutional baubles and trinkets like, oh, the separation of powers.

Or the division of powers.

But here is Great Lawyer, Premier of the Universe, a constitutional bull in a constitutional china shop. The man is risking becoming a latter-day Duplessis — you know, as in Roncarelli v. Duplessis.

One can only hope that the bull won't smash anything of real value, as measured by the standards of the emerging deep-pocket-justice on the local judicial scene, during its term in the shop: either by lucky happenstance, or because its time in the shop will be mercifully short.

But if Cathy Dunderdale is truly, honestly, concerned about actions being taken by a public actor, which are "highly unusual and outside [that actor's] role", then what in the name of all holiness is she doing in Danny Williams' cabinet?