Evasive highway manoeuvres

Another excerpt from Trevor Taylor’s July 30th appearance on CBC Labrador Morning with Mike Power:

Power: Now, the Nunatsiavut Government wants a feasibility study on building a road to the North Coast. They say they got a letter from the province saying there would be no commitment on road work until Phase I was paved and Phase III built. So why make this commitment to pave the South Coast, then?

Taylor: Well, first of all, as I said earlier in the interview, there hasn’t been a commitment made. What John [Hickey] said, was that he would hope that over the course of the next 10, 15 years, that he would see all of the highway from South Coast to western Labrador with pavement, asphalt, chipseal, whatever it might be. For anybody to say that, y’know, there was a hard and fast commitment on this, no there was not. Y’know, maybe at some time in the future, I don’t know, depending on what kind of case is made, there might be something done on the North Coast. But, I mean, there is no, not that I’m aware of, anyway, anybody in government who’s willing right now to jump into doing anything on, from a road perspective, on the North Coast. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, a lot of evaluation that needs to be done.

And then Mike Power goes on to ask about ferries, leaving the audience in suspense about the premise of his original question.

Trevor Taylor, having poured cold water on John Hickey’s supposed commitment to pave anything in southern Labrador, says that no one is planning to do anything “from a road perspective” in the north.

So how about this question, expressed in trendy bureaucratese that maybe you can understand, Trevor:

You say that a case would have to be made from a case-making perspective, and that from an evaluation perspective, a lot of evaluation needs to be done.

(Bonus points for using the Official NewfoundlandLabrador National Verb Voice as well, the nice, vague, actor-less passive. Well done.)

So how about that feasibility study, then, the one that Nunatsiavut itself is willing to pay a large chunk of the costs for?

From a Trevor Taylor perspective, how about answering the question from a question-answering perspective instead of a sticking-more-knives-in-John-Hickey perspective or an evading-the-question-altogether perspective? Since no one in Nunatsiavut is asking you to actually build a road right now, but rather to merely pay a portion of the very modest costs of studying the rather abstract idea of building a north coast road eventually, from a feasibility study perspective, are you willing to do the evaluation that needs to be done, which will help make the case (or not) that, passively, needs to be made?

[On a go-forward basis — ed.]

Um, on a go-forward basis?