Oh, come on

Some politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador are determined to find a "dispute" over the Labrador boundary, even where there is none.

From the proceedings of the Bow-Wow Parliament, Conservative vs. Liberal, December 14, 1999:

MR. OTTENHEIMER: I know [the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs] is on top of his job, so therefore he must be aware of a new glossy brochure called The Territory and a new map of Quebec, produced by the Government of Quebec, which includes a large part of southern Labrador in the Province of Quebec.

Has the government protested this claim on our territory directly to Quebec and to the Government of Canada? I would ask the minister to table those letters protesting this act, along with the responses from both Quebec and Ottawa.

MR. NOEL: Come up to the office and I will discuss it with you any time.

As the member well knows, the border between Quebec and Newfoundland is recognized by both provinces. We are content with the level of recognition that exits. Obviously from time to time some questions are raised by particular individuals. I am not specifically aware of the one that the member raises today. I will look into it and have a further answer for him in the near future.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Following Question Period, I will be pleased to show both a map and brochure, one dated 1998, one dated 1999, both official government documents which make quite clearly the point that I raised earlier. It is a serious matter, I say, Mr. Minister. Quebec is building a legal case by openly claiming ownership of our territory. Every time our government fails to reject and protest Quebec’s claims, we build credibility for their case. Some court, somewhere, some time, may be influenced by the history of Quebec’s persistence in claiming our land and our failure to do anything about it.

I ask the minister: Why are you so silent, as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs? Why are you and why is this government afraid to stand up to the Province of Quebec?

MR. NOEL: Mr. Speaker, our Province has not been silent on this issue when it has been necessary to be vocal, but we do not feel that it is necessary to be very vocal at this particular time because we think that the border is recognized by all Canadians, by the Government of Quebec. I think the Premier of Quebec, just a few days ago, indicated that the border between his province and our Province is not in question.

There is no serious disagreement about that border. From time to time the question is raised by various interests. From time to time we see certain publications that we would prefer would be printed other than they are; but, if we at any time feel that there is a serious issue that has to be dealt with, it will be dealt with. At the present moment we are quite content with the recognition of the boundary that exists in the country.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: I say to the minister, he should really treat this issue much more seriously. Both of these official documents clearly speak for themselves. How can this government keep on doing business with a province that claims our territory, does not recognize our laws, has captured almost all of the benefits from our resources in Labrador, and uses its overwhelming influence in Ottawa to deny federal support for our rights and interests as a Province? How do you continue to do business in this manner, Mr. Minister?

MR. NOEL: Mr. Speaker, I think that recent events will indicate that the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is doing excellent business with the Province of Quebec. We do not feel that there is any credible question raised about the border. I will look into the couple of specific instances that the member has cited -

AN HON. MEMBER: Just to satisfy his mind.

MR. NOEL: - to satisfy his mind and to make sure that he has a peaceful and happy Christmas.

From the proceedings of the Bow-Wow Parliament, Liberal vs. Conservative, May 24, 2011:

MS JONES: The other thing, Mr. Speaker, that the government has not been very proactive on is with regard to the boundary issue between Quebec and Labrador. This is very important, and maybe many members here do not think it is all that important, because like I said on the mining stuff in Western Labrador, when you are out of sight you are out of mind. Mr. Speaker, it is an important issue, the boundary issue, and Quebec continues to take in regions of the southern regions of Labrador on all of their mapping and all of the publications and all of the work that they do, without even a word from the government opposite. To me it is disrespectful that they continue to do it.

Now, either the Premier or the government has absolutely no clout and no respect at all inside of the Quebec government or they are not pushing the issue. I do not know which it is, but I think we need to clarify those boundaries and we need to ensure that they stop using them, because the headlands for a lot of those rivers, Mr. Speaker, in Quebec is actually in Labrador. It is actually in the areas that they are taking in. So is a lot of the mineral resource that we are developing now, and one of these days there is going to be an issue.

I think the issue needs to be on the record today by the government dismissing, Mr. Speaker, that boundary, dismissing it and talking to the Quebec government about it. Not like the government is doing, not like the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is doing, ignoring it, thinking it is insignificant and it does not mean anything. One of these days, Mr. Speaker, we could have some real problems on our hands and we will have all of these cases where Quebec has used this boundary with no disclaimer from the Newfoundland and Labrador government because you guys do not think it is an important issue and that the mapping needs to be detailed. That is exactly what you are saying: it is a non-issue. Mr. Speaker, they do not even take it seriously.

Cf.: In which Dave Denine (of all people) nails it

In which Dave Denine (of all people) nails it

Meanwhile, in a stunning development, Minister of Something Dave Denine actually gets it right on the imaginary Labrador boundary dispute:

Denine added the Labrador boundary established in 1927 was incorporated into the terms of union when this province entered Confederation in 1949.

“We go by that. There’s no change in our boundary,” he said. “Even Quebec’s own Dorion Commission in 1971 confirmed that.”

On the other hand, it's a rather depressing commentary on the state of the local media that the tin-foil hattery imaginary boundary dispute, and not the linking of Labrador and Newfoundland to the rest of Canada via two new or significantly improved surface transportation routes, which has huge economic implications, is their takeaway story out of Quebec's Plan nord.

A logo? Really?

In the beginning

Lost amid the usual tinfoil hattery and paranoid chattery about the “Laurentide Accord” a rather important point that the tinfoil hatters and paranoid chatters would do well to take note of. Annex 1, setting out the “area subject to the agreement” starts the definition of the “area” with the words:

Beginning on the boundary between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador at the ordinary low water line

Catch that? Repeat:

Beginning on the boundary between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador at the ordinary low water line

Quebec is a party, and hardly for the first time, to a document which expressly recognizes the interprovincial Labrador boundary. What ever will the mythmongers do now?

Put up or shut up 2010

A year ago today, this corner threw out a challenge both to certain delusional people in Quebec who believe that Quebec has some kind of claim to Labrador north of the 52nd parallel and south of the watershed line, and to certain delusional people in Newfoundland who believe the aforemendtioned deluded twits in Quebec:

Put up or shut up.

In the face of an affront to Quebec’s imagined territorial claim, exactly nothing happened – just as it always does.

However, an imaginary, utterly hypothetical hydro-electric transmission line is one thing.

An actual, honest-to-goodness physical incursion is quite another.

And guess what? We finally have one to bring the idiotic “border dispute” out of the realm of the hypothetical and into the practical.

In December, Phase III of the Trans-Labrador Highway was officially opened, although finishing touches remain to be done. This map shows the route followed by the TLH from Happy Valley-Goose Bay (upper left corner) to Paradise Junction, where it joins the coastal Labrador segment (upper right corner). The astronomical portions of the Labrador boundary are visible at bottom (the 52nd parallel and the Blanc Sablon meridian line) with land on the Quebec side of the border shown blank. Map scale is approximately four pixels to the kilometre.

For a variety of reasons, the very southernmost of the potential Phase III routings ended up being selected for construction — not least of which, the fact that this route is the one which touches least on the Eagle River watershed. However, in order to avoid the Eagle River basin, which is on the Labrador side of the drainage divide, the highway, of necessity, has to cross into a neighbouring watershed.

In this case, that means the St. Augustine, one of the five major rivers which rise in Labrador but flow south to the North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Labrador portion of the St. Augustine and its tributaries are traced on this map in orange.

At least at this map scale, it would appear that the TLH also crosses, if only for a very short distance, the watershed of the Mecatina (blue) near its crest with the Eagle. It may also touch ever so lightly on the uppermost portion of the St. Paul drainage basin (yellow) near its triple point with the Paradise and Eagle Rivers which flow northeast into Sandwich Bay. (The other two major rivers and basins, the Natashquan and Romaine, lie well south and west of the Trans-Labrador Highway.)

In other words, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador has built a highway — an honest-to-goodness physical, tangible thingamajig — on what is, according to the conspiracy theorists and nationalist wingnuts, land which Quebec either claims or already has rights to.

Watch now for Quebec do even more of what it always does: exactly nothing.

Assistance is so appropriate

The provincial crown-corporation energy company decides to build a hydro plant in the remote northern wilderness. In order to get that power to market, they plan to build a long transmission line from the plant to their preferred tie-in point.

The proposed line takes as straight a course as the topography will allow as it leaves the plant, and as straight a course as possible as it approaches the tie-in. But in the middle, there’s a bit of a problem.

There’s this funny piece of territory that the provincial government in question doesn’t actually have jurisdiction over. It is the lawful jurisdiction of another government altogether. In fact, the land in question has been out of the province’s jurisdiction for a long time, and since well before it drew up its latest plan to connect a remote hydro plant to an urban energy market.

The province in question has plenty of its own crown land on which it can build the transmission line, but avoiding the jurisdictional line and a sort of “trespass” onto the other government’s land means taking a detour. So the proposed power line has to do a dog-leg, and skirt the boundaries of that bit of off-limits real estate without actually crossing it.

According to the Williams Principle of 2009, this means that the provincial government building the transmission line is entitled to compensation from the government that has the gall, the audacity, the nerve to maintain, for complex historical reasons, jurisdiction over the land in question. Or, as the Rhodes Scholar and Great Lawyer put it, more eloquently than this corner ever could:

We are going to go around it. We are not going through it, and on that basis we think it’d be appropriate for the federal government to provide some assistance.

Oh, wait – you still think this is another post about the Gros Morne/Lower Churchill issue?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s actually a post about the La Romaine project, where the transmission line from the La Romaine 3 and La Romaine 4 stations would tie into the Montagnais post on the existing transmission line coming out of Churchill Falls.


As this map [source .pdf] shows, the bee-line route is rudely interrupted by that little niggly bit of interior Labrador that has the geopolitical temerity to be inside the Atlantic watershed, but south of the 52nd parallel (green circle.) And so, notwithstanding the myth that Quebec doesn’t recognize the Labrador boundary, Hydro-Quebec has had to plan its power line around a jurisidictional line on a map.

In other words, Hydro-Quebec is going to go around Labrador. They are not going through it, and on that basis it’d be appropriate for the Danny Williams-Government to provide some assistance. Right?

Dave Denine, you can expect that phone call soon from Thierry Vandal.

Of course, this is a ludicrous suggestion. The two situations are nothing alike.

After all, the dogleg involved in the La Romaine case, unlike the Gros Morne problem, actually makes Hydro-Quebec’s power line longer than it otherwise might be, whereas Danny Williams wants compensation for the stupid federal stupid national stupid park that makes his power line shorter.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1809

Speaking of anniversaries of important legal and political developments which happened in late March:

The Newfoundland Act, 1809

49 Geo. III Cap. 27 (Imp.)

An Act for establishing Courts of Judicature in the Island of Newfoundland and the Islands adjacent; and for re-annexing Part of the Coast of Labrador and the Islands lying on the said Coast to the Government of Newfoundland.

[30th March 1809.]

Re-annexing Part of the Coast of Labrador and the Islands lying on the said Coast to the Government of Newfoundland.

XIV. And whereas His Majesty by His Proclamation of the Seventh Day of October One thousand seven hundred and sixty three, was pleased to declare that he had put the Coast of Labrador from the River Saint John to Hudson's Streights, with the Islands of Anticosti and Madelaine, and all other smaller Islands lying on the said Coast, under the Care and Inspection of the Governor of Newfoundland:

And whereas by an Act passed in the Fourteenth Year of the Reign of His present Majesty, intituled, An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America, all such Territories, Islands and Countries, as since the Tenth Day of February One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three had been made part of the Government of Newfoundland, were, during His Majesty's Pleasure, annexed to and made Part of the Province of Quebec, as created by the said Proclamation:

And whereas in pursuance of an Act passed in the Thirty-first Year of His present Majesty's Reign, intituled, An Act to repeal certain Parts of an Act, passed in the Fourteenth Year of His Majesty's Reign, intituled, "An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of Quebec in North America," and to make further Provision for the Government of the said Province, the said Province of Quebec was divided into Two Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the latter including the Parts of the Coast of Labrador and the said Islands so formerly annexed to the Government of Newfoundland:

And whereas it is expedient that the said Coast of Labrador, and the adjacent Islands (except the Islands of Madelaine) should be re-annexed to the Government of Newfoundland;

Be it therefore enacted, That such Parts of the Coast of Labrador from the River Saint John to Hudson's Streights and the said Island of Anticosti, and all other smaller Islands so annexed to the Government of Newfoundland by the said Proclamation of the Seventh Day of October One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three, (except the said Islands of Madelaine) shall be separated from the said Government of Lower Canada, and be again re-annexed to the Government of Newfoundland; any thing in the said Act passed in the Thirty-first Year of His present Majesty's Reign, or any other Act, to the contrary notwithstanding.