Floodgates (II)

This corner speculated, not very wildly, back on July 3:

So why the hard line against adjacency when it comes to hydro benefits?

Go ahead. Take a wild guess.

Ahem:

The local Chamber of Commerce has had an idea to form a venture capital fund using power revenue from the Exploits River rejected by government, which expropriated that energy from AbitibiBowater earlier this year.

Gerald Thompson, the acting president of the Exploits Regional Chamber of Commerce, received a letter from the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development Minister Shawn Skinner indicating government would not support the establishment of a company funded by an equity stake in profits from the hydropower now owned by Nalcor.

...

In his letter to the Chamber dated Aug. 10, Minister Skinner, who is also the head of a task force struck to deal with the fallout of the AbitibiBowater paper mill closure, said that Nalcor Energy is 100 per cent owned by all the people of the province, including those in central Newfoundland. The letter states that because of this, every citizen has an equal stake in the Churchill River, oil and gas projects and every other development in which Nalcor participates.

[h/t: Ofer Wadham]

You tell 'em, Shawn Skinnie!After all, Labrador is almost drowned by now in Hibernia oil, thanks to that cherished equal stake. You can barely walk ten feet without the waft of petro-dollars mingling with the black spruce and the black flies. And soon enough, the same principle of equality, having displaced quaint old-fashioned notions of adjacency, will mean power from the Exploits and so-called Churchill rivers will soon, equalstakefully, power the subways of St. John's.

Equality all round! Anything else would be so unequal.

But hey, while you're in the letter-writing mood, Minister — what, with the rest of your cabinet colleagues having developed a pathological aversion to the written word — perhaps you can also write to Labrador on Your Dear Premier's behalf, and explain what He meant when He said, six years ago:

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