There is no greater fraud than an assurance not kept

“We will not develop the Lower Churchill unless the primary beneficiaries are Labradorians. You have my assurance on that.”

That was PC Party Leader Danny Williams, on September 30, 2003, speaking in Happy Valley-Goose Bay during that fall’s provincial general election.

This past week, with the late-Friday release of the EIS documentation for the Other Shoe of the so-called Lower Churchill project, we can see Danny wasn’t blowing smoke.

Sure, 800MW of power, with the possible addition of another 1000MW down the road, will be transmitted south from Gull Island to St. John’s. And sure, the EIS documentation for the so-called Lower Churchill itself only contemplates transmission within Labrador to a point where the juice can be pumped out the Hydro-Quebec grid.

But none of that is to say Labrador and Labradorians won’t benefit. No sir. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You see, down in beautiful Forteau Bay, the region will gain another tourist attraction, one which will replace the stunning scenery at Forteau Point, which has to be sacrificed, ripped up, excavated in the name of progress for the province.

Watch for land values on the east side of the bay, in English Point or L’anse Amour, to suddenly spike, as B&Bs and hotels pop up to take advantage of the stunning sight, the spectacular view to the west, of the muscular V-shaped aluminum towers marching like giants across the glacial-erratic-strewn tuckamore landscape, and the submarine power line carving through the surreal cambrian and precambrian geology in its plunge to the bottom of the Strait of Belle Isle and the twinkling lights of Flowers Cove beyond..

Gaze in awe at the megaproject, the marvel of modern engineering, the grand imperial concept of Smallwood and Rothschild achieved at last; the 800 megawatts, maybe a thousand, of HVDC current, coursing and humming its way over, under, through and past Labrador on its way to the province.

Imagine, along with the electricity itself, the revenues which will figuratively flow along that line, all the way from the wilds of central Labrador, from an artificial lake — the Williams Reservoir perhaps — many times the size of Sandy Pond, and many times further away; then stepped down at Soldier Pond and transmitted thence directly to the Finance Department in Confederation Building for re-transmission all across the province, for all kinds of provincial purposes.

Meanwhile, a couple miles further east at Point Amour, the noble lighthouse, built by the pre-Confederation Province of Canada, will continue to blink out its warning to mariners as it has since 1857; its oil and paraffin long since replaced by electricity from the diesel plant at L’anse au Loup, or purchased from Hydro-Quebec, off the transmission line built to service the coastal communities of the Lower North Shore with power generated at Robertson Lake.

Marvel at the sight. The tourists surely will.

And ponder that imponderable question, of how, in what parallel universe, in what twisted and delusional frame of mind, does this arrangement constitute Labradorians being “the primary beneficiaries”.