On political financing

"I am also very interested in who you are meeting with, Premier," Danny Williams said in the House of Assembly one day in 2002,

"because I think it is of interest to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. I am not as much interested in what you had for lunch as I am interested in what you had for supper last Tuesday night. Can you confirm for me, Mr. Premier, if in fact you were attending a political fundraiser in Montreal on last Tuesday, at $10,000 a table, whereby funds were raised for your political party and you were guest speaker? Were you attending that last Tuesday night in Quebec?

... can the Premier confirm for me as to whether Alcoa were at that fundraising dinner, and whether Hydro-Quebec were at that fundraising dinner, and whether Alcoa, with whom you will be entering into negotiations, paid $10,000 a table, or some amount, to listen to you speak in Montreal last Tuesday night?

Do you think it is appropriate that you should solicit and accept donations from someone with whom you are entering into negotiations to deal away the resources of this Province? Is that a conflict of interest? Do you see anything wrong with that? Because the people of Newfoundland [sic] certainly do."

Now, on a totally different matter, of no particular interest to anyone reading the above, last October, Kathy Dunderdale announced that NeWind Group Inc. had been awarded a contract to provide 25MW of wind energy to the insular power grid.

NeWind is a consortium of three firms: CHI Hydroelectric, fga Consulting Engineers Limited, and Quadratec Inc.

As a matter of interest and public record, all three companies, but especially Quadratec, have a long history of supporting the democratic process. Since 1996, Quadratec have donated at least $24,275 to the provincial Liberal party, and $13,950 to the PCs.

fga Consulting Engineers, in the same time frame, gave $7,100 to the Liberals and $8,275 to the Tories.

CHI have only made two donations. Both were in 2003, an election year, and both were to the Progressive Conservatives.

From 1996 to 2002, inclusive, Quadratec and fga gave a total of over $26,000 to the then-governing Liberals, but only $6,000 (less $25) to the then-opposition Conservatives. In each year up to 2000, the overwhelming majority of their support for the democratic process went to the Liberals; in three of those five years, 100% of that support was for the governing party.

During the Grimedämmerung years of 2001 and 2002, the companies were more even-handed in their political donations, still favouring the provincial Liberals, but just: 53% and 57% of their political contributions were Liberal in those two years, respectively. The rest went to the PCs.

In the election year of 2003, 75% of the NeWind consortium members' donations (the NeWind consortium itself has no history of donations on its own account) went to the PC party of Danny Williams. This includes the only two NL provincial political donations ever made by CHI Hydroelectric, a company whose domicile is given in the provincial electoral office documents as Montreal, Quebec.

In 2004, the Tories firmly in power, that figure was 90%.

In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, every cent of the consortium members' $4600 in political contributions went to the governing Tories.

From 2003 to 2005, inclusive, and without figures for calendar year 2006 being yet available, the NeWind consortium members donated a total of $22,500 to the Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, and $5,000 to their Liberal opponents.

None of the three have any history of contributions to any other provincial political party or candidates.

The wind is a provincial resource.