It’s ‘hard, hard times’ in Newfoundland
It was 87 years ago and under pressure of entering full bankruptcy that Newfoundland became the first of the British Empire’s “Dominions” to give up its autonomy and to abandon self-government. As a consequence, for 15 years the former country was administered by a commission, relieved of that embarrassment only by (narrowly) voting to join the Confederation of Canada in 1949.
Thursday of this week, Dame Moya Greene, appointed by Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey to oversee a report on the province’s financial status and to make recommendations, gave her reply. After scanning several articles on its themes and contents, the echoes from 1934 are impossible to ignore. Not that there will be another surrender of constitutional status. But that might be the only drastic step that is avoided. Everything else, to quote the premier, “is on the table.” He may not have, when he first uttered that phrase, known how deadly accurate he was speaking. In Newfoundland now, everything is on the table.
The report has a very great deal in it. And all of it is hard. The first point I would like to make is that the sweep, depth and power of its recommendations are the measure of the crisis to which it attempts to respond.
Newfoundland is gutted. It is on the splitting table. If — to change the metaphor only slightly — it does not chop all future budgets for years to come, decimate public services, and bend to the imperatives of the financial markets, its situation is desperate. I cannot think of a more devastating moment in Newfoundland public affairs since the collapse of the cod fishery.
I think it’s very much worth noting that some of the impact of the fishery collapse was disguised or muffled because close to that time Alberta was beginning its boom. Alberta then offered at least some relief.
The numbers of Newfoundlanders who went from the province during that hard time found in Fort Mac not only employment, but very fine-paying employment. They in turn fired up the hurting Newfoundland economy. Also, at the time, Newfoundland’s offshore industry was in brighter days than now. Offshore here, oil out West saw all sorts of spinoffs in hospitality, restaurants, tourism and the arts.
Those conditions are long over. The numerous jobs out West are no more. Our own offshore is stilled or worse. The great chain of outports, Newfoundland’s definitional emblem, diminishes by the day. The province’s population has been shrinking, and it is, critically, younger Newfoundlanders who are leaving or have left. Naturally, of those left behind, more are elderly, with all the implications that carries for already burdened health-care services. The one refinery we had, Come by Chance, is closed down. Every major construction project, save the dread Muskrat Falls, which is a great anchor of outsized debt and mismanagement, has evaporated.
And all the while, even during the days, if I may call them that, of oil “prosperity,” government spending always outclassed revenue, by Greene’s estimate by a full quarter of the budgets — 25 per cent. To place one final dark stroke on this canvas, the palsied hand of COVID-19 over the past year and a half has shut down the province’s economy almost completely, increased the need for government outlays, and battered almost every single small enterprise — from tourist B&BS to retail outlets — in the entire province.
Bleak? Bleak doesn’t do it. One of the notes in Greene’s report is quite shocking when you step back from it.
It is that Newfoundland and Labrador has escaped the skeleton hand of bankruptcy thus far only because the federal programs to combat COVID-19 brought new cash into the province. It is not a good thing when a pandemic is the reason a province is not in bankruptcy.
Her prescriptions are brutal. I don’t think she left anything out except perhaps selling Signal Hill and the rock on which it perches, and transferring Gros Morne National Park to Bill Gates or Elon Musk for a handful of their billions.
I can just hint at a few, there are so many. New taxes on almost everything, slashing the provincial budget for years to come, selling off Nalcor Energy, selling the provincial liquor corporation, cutting university funding, increasing fees on everything that moves … it goes on and on. The summary state of Newfoundland comes in one compressed statement that “the province also has the oldest population, highest unemployment, highest per capita health-care spending and the poorest health outcomes in the country.”
Of her recommendations, I will leave that to another day. But for now it must be said this is a very sad business. Newfoundland has so much that is good and inspiriting. The province — the physical land itself — fashions a mysterious bond with its people. I cannot think of a place which so “connects” and charms the people living there. She, the province, is almost a family member. And the lifestyle — despite hardships, tragedies, and the damn weather — is, as someone once wrote, one of the most tenacious in all of North America. It is a grief to me to see so much challenge ahead, and not a lot of light.
As for how the politicians will respond — or some of Newfoundland’s many institutions and organizations. Well, the first bear an extremely hearty responsibility for bringing the crisis on in the first place. And as for the second, absent real political leadership — leadership that truly stands out and leaders who can face the storm — I am sorry, but I do not place much hope there either.
As the ballad we all know states so clearly, “It’s hard, hard times.” And that is such a shame.