The Wasteland

Most interesting today to hear Marilyn from Monkstown on Backtalk today, spontaneously calling in to spontaneously pick up on the line that has been spontaneously promoted by several other spontaneous callers in recent days.

These callers, of which Marilyn from Monkstown (who called in totally spontaneously and without prompting on the part of anyone) is merely the latest, praise up the action being taken by one of Her Majesty’s Ministers as he or she waltzes into town, into a district which the governing party doesn’t currently hold, to put out some political fire or another… PC candidate in tow.

Most interesting, that.

It’s the latest iteration of the line that was first field-driven out on the west coast by Leo Bruce, PC nomination contestant in Bay of Islands, whose mission in political life is — and these are his words — to deliver his district from the “wasteland of the Opposition benches in the House of Assembly”.

Mr. Bruce has said that “the people of the Bay of Islands have paid the price for the past four years.”

And what has that price been paid for? Well, for the unpardonable sin of not voting for Danny Williams.

Which brings us round to Marilyn from Monkstown, who said today, in a call to VOCM made of her own initiative, that for four years, her MHA – that would be Percy Barrett, who is not a Tory – has been unable to deliver on the Monkstown highway issue. But there’s hope: John Hickey is no longer saying no to Monkstown.

Or, expressed another way, Percy Barrett’s district has been punished for the same crime as the good people of the Bay of Islands.

And, to avoid the wishy-washiness of the passive voice, the government and party of Danny Williams, its would-be candidates, and its shills, now freely admit: Danny Williams Administration’s modus operandi, Danny Williams’ new way of politics, for the past four years, has been to deliberately punish opposition districts for the political ThoughtCrime of being opposition districts.

This is the necessary implication of Leo Bruce saying that opposition is a “wasteland”, and that his would-be constituents “have paid the price” for not voting Tory. The Tories, after all, have been the ones in the position of doling out prices these past few years.

This is the necessary implication of Marilyn from Monkstown freely admitting that her district’s needs have been sidelined for the past four years because their MHA is a Liberal. Four the past four years, successive Ministers of Transportation, who have all said no to Monkstown in succession, have been Tories.

The further implication is that, if re-elected, Danny and his party will do it for another four years. (Just how will he reward everyone if he sweeps all 48?)

And lest anyone think this is reading too much into such statements, remember, there is ample empirical evidence to back up what the Progressive – one shudders to call such blatant, Smallwoodesque, Duplessiste political tactics “Progressive” – Conservatives are now trotting out as reasons to vote for them. And since the last discussion of victors doling out spoils, there have been more examples of the practice.

This is the updated chart of Provincial Roads Improvement Program funding announced so far this year, by provincial electoral district, handily colour-coded. And that’s just one program, if a highly-visible and heavily-publicized one.


Check your calendar. This is the 21st century. This carrot-and-stick politicking is being carried out a vast scale, on the public dime. Yet not only is virtually no one questioning the 19th-century spoils and patronage system of government and politics that still obtains in Canada’s Newest, Coolest, Province... that system is still being practiced, openly, notoriously, with no sense of shame or conscience.

Not even after this.

So give Leo Bruce credit for being right on one thing. There is a political wasteland, alright.

All forty-eight districts are a wasteland for anyone with moral and modern views of what politics is and should be.

After four years of Danny Williams has anything changed in the way politics is conducted?

Or, more precisely, has anything changed for the better?