Greene report smacks of Thatcherism

The Greene report (The Big Reset) is to be commended for suggesting concrete plans for diversifying the economy and transitioning to a postoil Newfoundland and Labrador. Everyone agrees that something must be done.

However, the devil is in the details. Should anything like these recommendations be pursued, it will seal Newfoundland and Labrador’s fate as nothing more than a resource outpost of Canada, with a steadily dwindling population and a small polytech that used to be a major comprehensive university.

No one doubts that we are in a dire financial situation. But we are not facing bankruptcy. Newfoundland and Labrador is not a business in competition with Quebec, Ontario, etc., and Canada cannot let it “fail.” What we are talking about is the degree of dependence of N.L. on federal funds. If our situation gets so bad that Canada has to take ownership of all public enterprises and social programs in N.L., then we will be the most impoverished of all provinces. But we won’t be bankrupt.

The Greene report’s proposed austerity measures are the opposite of the pandemic-recovery trend in the world today. Faced with an unprecedented modern economic contraction, the most successful strategy pursued by governments is to flood their economies with stimulus funds, not slash programs and privatize. We need imagination, not Thatcherism.

A 30 per cent cut to Memorial University’s budget is proposed, which is to be offset by the tripling of tuition. Who will pay $12,000 a year to study at MUN? Maybe a few oceanographers with a guaranteed spot in the oil and gas industry, which Greene, in contradiction of the consensus of climatologists, sees as flourishing until 2060. And does anyone remember that MUN had its budget cut by 11.6 per cent before the pandemic? The faculty of humanities and social sciences is shrinking as the university tries to balance its budget through attrition. There is no question that this policy of slow starvation has diminished the quality of many of our once world-class academic programs.

Then there is the astonishing proposal for more hydro dams on the already besieged Churchill River. Leaving aside the inanity of yet another mega-project in Labrador (when we shall be paying for Muskrat Falls for the rest of my young son’s life), we need to stop talking about hydro-electrical dams as “green” energy. No environmentalist who knows the industry describes huge dams as green or environmentally sustainable. Just ask the Innu and Inuit who can no longer eat fish and seal from the vast and once fertile Lake Melville. Mega dams are violent alterations of the landscape and they do, in fact, emit greenhouse gasses. They irreversibly alter habitats and have countless adverse effects on ecosystems. For example, dams prevent the huge spike of nutrient-rich spring runoffs that would otherwise go into the ocean, and thus starve the plankton. We’re stuck with Muskrat Falls, and let us by all means make a virtue of necessity and produce hydrogen from the overabundance of electricity that no one wants to buy from us. But for heaven’s sake, no more.

A good environmental plan for N.L. should be up to date with recent environmental science. And it should not separate the greening of the economy from infrastructure investment, which the Biden administration has compellingly demonstrated must include social programs.

It is hard to shake the impression that the environmental recommendations in this report are nothing but greenwashing meant to soften the blow of the new-liberalism motivating the committee.

If Premier Andrew Furey would like to convince us that he did not have this report in his back pocket when he called his shotgun pandemic election, he should reject it as a whole and start from scratch.

Sean J. Mcgrath, professor, Department of Philosophy, Memorial University Co-director, For a New Earth http://foranewearth.org/ Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada