Newfoundland & Labrador

Newfoundland and Labrador Opinion

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BOB WAKEHAM: What would the premier say to the Newfoundlanders hoping for a Churchill Falls cash influx?

Many struggling Newfoundlanders were counting on the funds from a Churchill Falls deal to help improve NL - but they'll have to keep waiting

There’s a good chance that the most common query heard throughout homes in Newfoundland last Tuesday evening was something along the lines of “so whatdaya make of it all?”

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Because there was, indeed, a great deal of “it all” to be publicly consumed, understood, and questioned after the government’s Independent Review Panel gave a slightly qualified thumbs down to the Upper Churchill MOU between Newfoundland and Quebec.

It was a verdict applauded, not surprisingly, by Premier Tony Wakeham — the three-person committee who wrote the report, after all, were his boys — but a verdict, nevertheless, that leaves apparent squeeze room for a renegotiated agreement.

With me so far? Well, if you are, thanks for your tolerance, because I’m not so sure that I was able to grasp much of the thrust of the committee’s report, and what it all means for this debt-ridden place of habitation where the half-million-plus of us, the unwashed, reside.

The bulk of the population, I would suggest, was also left largely unenlightened by Wakeham (no relation, I hasten to point out, once again) and the platitudes churned out by his speech writers last week.

What about the people of NL who are suffering now?

I wish a reporter or two had asked Wakeham what he would say to the thousands of his constituents without doctors or having to wait as long as 17 hours in blocked emergency........

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