Verbatim

A transcript of the audio file of His Dear Voice which accompanied the on-line report which inspired a bit of negativism — or is it pessimism? — on the part of nottawa:

I also postulated about the possibility if there was ever a separate Quebec within the country, that the new nation of Quebec would then be in a position to, basically, to determine the economic direction of everything – not of everything, but most of the east of Manitoba, so, and then I went into the whole New Brunswick deal and the Upper Churchill deal. And I have to tell ya, from this audience’s perspective it was very, very well received, and a lot of eyes opened when the kind of numbers were dropped there that Newfoundland is passing over to Quebec.

Where, oh where, to begin unpacking the Crazy? Let’s start at the end and work backwards.

1. What are the numbers that “Newfoundland” [sic] is “passing over” to Quebec? Does all profit – crazy example here, let’s say the differential between what a cable company pays for programming, and what it charges its retail customers – constitute “passing over”?

2. “From this audience’s perspective”. So, He was in the audience, in addition to speaking to it? Or was He His own audience for this speech? Just how many perspectives can one man have, anyway?

3. Quebec. Too potentially separatist to be trusted with an energy deal with New Brunswick. Not too potentially separatist to beg and plead with, for five years, to be an angel investor on Our Dear Lower Churchill.

4. If separatist provinces can’t be trusted to control any of the energy industry or energy supply in the rest of Canada, then surely that puts paid to the separatist ambitions of the mystery person who polled Newfoundland – and probably Labrador – on the question of separation less than three years ago.