One day

"One day the sun will shine and have-not will be no more," said Brian Peckford in 1982.

And when that day came, Danny Williams said:

"This is a very proud day for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, I can tell you. We received information today from the federal government at the finance ministers' meeting that as a result of changes in the figures that as of today — which is a notification — but effectively this year Newfoundland and Labrador is now a have province. That's a momentous day for the people of this province.

"For 60 years we've been part of the great Canadian federation and we have been recipients of equalization payments from the Canadian government. Over the years we have been ridiculed for that. At times times we've been presented as the poor cousins in Canada. Now we can hold our heads high and feel very good about it … I consider it to be a very significant day for all the people of the province and I want to share this moment with them."

"The Canadian government," he says, as if it was the government of another country.

And it's kinda hard to have been recipients of equalization for 60 years, when this is 2008, and the program only began in 1957.

So, will anyone ask Danny: if today "we can hold our heads high and feel very good about it", why, oh why, has Danny's very reason for being for the past five years been to maximize both the duration and the amount of equalization payments in the first place?

Heck, why has (virtually) no one asked that question in the past five years?