Good faith and expensive mistakes

It’s easy to understand that new provincial Progressive Conservative leader Ches Crosbie wants to distance himself and his party from Muskrat Falls. It’s easy to understand, but if voters have any collective memory whatsoever, it should be very hard to do.

Why? Because at the very beginning of the project, when they were in power, the Tories were warned about the risk of pretty much every single thing that has since gone wrong with the project. The Tories blithely went ahead anyway. Crosbie now admits that mistakes were made. “My response to that is, look, PCS are like everybody else in this world: we’re only human. If mistakes were made — and we’ll let the inquiry tell us about that — we are only human and we just have to take the approach that that was then, and this is now.”

Crosbie argues that the Tories followed the best information available at the time.

“If it turns out to be wrong advice, then all I can say is we acted in good faith.”

What the Tories did not do, apparently, was to consider what could happen if the assumptions that were the basic underpinnings of the project were wrong. What if oil prices were to fall, undercutting both electricity prices and our ability to pay for the project? What if the demand for electricity didn’t rise in the way the Tory forecasts suggested it would? What if the project went over budget and was hugely delayed?

All of those questions were asked of the government of the day, rejected outright, and every single one of those chickens have come home to roost.

If you really want to make your breakfast lurch in your gut, take a read of Hansard, the record of the House of Assembly, from that period in time.

When questions were address, answers like this one from then-premier Kathy Dunderdale were the norm: “Mr. Speaker, we have spent ten years planning this project. Nalcor knows of which it speaks, so does the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker. Muskrat Falls is a good project for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.” End of story. And that’s just one day selected at random.

The very next day?

“Our population is growing again, Mr. Speaker, our economy is booming, people have disposable income, they are buying things like big screen TVS. … There are wonderful things happening in this Province and we will need power.”

Sure, maybe words like those will be forgot by voters.

The problem for every politician involved — Tory and Liberal alike — is that as soon as Muskrat Falls is completed, residents of the island are going to be reminded every single month about just what an expensive mistake it was.

When they get their power bills.