The more things change, the more they stay the same

History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it rhymes.

The pithy adage often attributed to Mark Twain, applies to almost 50 years of regional cooperation between the Council of Maritime (now Atlantic) Premiers.

Last week, after meeting with Quebec’s Francois Legault, the Atlantic premiers talked about energy and the need to build out interprovincial transmission capacity to share electricity — primarily hydro power — across Eastern Canada.

Forty years ago, their predecessors were having very similar discussions. In fact, beside a lake, beneath the trees, there might have been daffodils dancing in the breeze, when Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford and Quebec’s Rene Levesque were spotted in an animated discussion. While details of the conversation were not disclosed, the topic was power, specifically hydro power from Churchill Falls.

At that long-ago meeting on the banks of Lake Champlain in Vermont, energy was the focus. It was 1980, and the participants had just endured a second major energy crisis in less than a decade, precipitated by restricted oil production in the Middle East.

At the eighth gathering of Eastern Canadian Premiers and New England Governors the host, Vermont’s Richard Snelling, proposed a massive investment to develop the vast hydro power potential in eastern Canada, mostly in Quebec and Labrador.

American utilities would buy all the power that was surplus to Canadian needs. Some premiers, notably Peckford and P.E.I.’s Angus MacLean flagged the problem of interprovincial transmission of power, which they said would have to be resolved before such an undertaking could be considered.

Levesque wasn’t opposed to talking about it but was noncommittal about Quebec’s interest. He was, however, distinctly disinterested in anything that might threaten his province’s sweetheart deal to buy power on the cheap from Labrador’s Churchill Falls. Quebec enjoys the benefits of that deal to this day.

This time around, relations between Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball and Legault seemed warm and cordial.

The relationship between the combative Peckford and Levesque, who’d just lost Quebec’s first referendum on sovereignty and wasn’t in the mood for co-operation, were a tad strained. Peckford insisted that the 11-year-old Churchill Falls deal was an abomination that needed to be renegotiated. Levesque, with the enigmatic shrug that Canadians knew all too well, maintained that a deal was a deal.

With the Atlantic Premiers and Quebec again talking about sharing energy across the region it seems, for now anyway, the Churchill Falls deal that runs to 2041, is no longer a stumbling block.

Almost from its inception in 1972, the Council of Maritime (now Atlantic) Premiers has been preoccupied with energy. One of the earliest ideas of the council was the creation of a Maritime Energy Corporation to supply all three provinces.

In 1980, with new premiers at the table from Nova Scotia (John Buchanan) and Prince Edward Island (MacLean), that idea was scrapped, but the three provinces agreed to continue to explore avenues for co-operative energy development.

Almost 50 years on and energy remains at or near the top of the agenda at many council meetings, although for different reasons. In the early days, cost and scarcity drove the discussions. Today, the focus is clean energy.

Other priorities have waxed and waned over the years. Health care and Ottawa’s contributions to it has become a preoccupation of late. It wasn’t an issue 40 or 50 years back when Medicare was still young, as were the majority of people in Atlantic Canada.

But the council is back on another topic that was top of mind in 1980 — the unity of the federation.

Part of this year's communique from the council could have been issued by Buchanan, MacLean and New Brunswick’s Richard Hatfield 40 years ago. It said: “Premiers agree on the importance of maintaining a strong and united Canada where all Canadians, regardless of where they live, can share fully in the nation’s prosperity.”

That part about all Canadians sharing in the nation’s prosperity wouldn’t have figured in the communique of 1980. The issue then was Quebec’s place in Canada, which then-prime minister Trudeau was determined to cement in a new constitution.

Today, Prime Minister Trudeau has to deal with economic anxieties, particularly in Alberta, that threaten the fabric of the nation.

But, as you can see, the more things change, the more they stay the same.