Complaints that N.L. could’ve gone it alone don’t hold water
I hear some people say that they have or had (some are deceased) no problem with Confederation with Canada but in the manner in which it was done. Specifically that we didn’t return to responsible government first, as was in the terms under which the end of Commission of Government was negotiated.
Instead they bemoan the fact that Britain, Canada and confederates conspired to go directly to the people via referendum. Those of this persuasion argue it was a contemptible insult to a country that was being treated unconstitutionaly as a colony in abrogatation of the Statute of Wesminister that created it.
They pay no attention, however, to the practicality for doing so and appear to be unaware that it was done not to undermine democracy but to ensure compliance to it. Why, you may ask? Because there was no way that St. John’s gilt-edged business people, former politicians and professional elites (such as the majority of the Newfoundland Law Society) would ever have allowed a plebisite that included Confederation as an option. It was simply not to their advantage. Had responsible government been restored they would have certainly moved the levers of power towards their own benefit and not that of the majority of people especially those in rural areas.
The St. John’s elite had traditionally controlled the electoral process throughout the country through their proxies in the outports. Simply put, they often chose local candidates or parachuted them in while influencing or intimidating local voters to elect their preferred candidate.
Author, journalist and politician Harold Horwood said St. John’s in its early days was a beehive of pirate activity for ship repairs, recruitment, etc. And that many jest the pirates never left but settled in the “Merchant Row, along Water St. and in the Colonial Building, the seat of government.”
To curtail this trend, the Commission of Government stipulated a minimum twoyear residency requirement for National Assembly nominees. It is one of those quirky coincidences of history that Joey Smallwood, journalist turned pig farmer, had moved to Gander where he met this requirement. He would never have been appointed in St. John’s.
If electoral assemblies are meant to represent the values and views of their constituents (with room for sage leadership), how can going directly to them be some kind of political dereliction of duty? Was this decision a heinous, conspiratorial plot or just a tight lipped political plan like any other?
I hear professors and other pundits say we will now never know if we could have prospered alone. Really? Somehow we would have avoided the corruption and demagoguery of the pre-commission era that continued to flourish well into the 75 years hence? Romantic sentimentality certainly wouldn’t have protected us from the unscrupulous exploits by the likes of John C. Doyle, Alfred Valmanis, John Shaneen, Al Vardy and others, not to mention the unrealistic expectations of facile and crazed politicians.
The disputants further argue that representatives of an elected assembly would have negotiated a better deal with Canada as a result of having more legitimacy than those that constituted the National Assembly.
There’s no evidence to support this assertion, given strong indications by Canada at the time that the offer at hand in 1949 was a near final offer. The enduring and defiant standoff regarding additional benefits between Smallwood and Prime Minister Deifenbaker a few years later bears out this intractability.
Some argue that 75 years later (in the absences of billions of federal transfer payments) we might have done better by going it alone. Doing what exactly? Herding unicorns, perhaps, as the carved pediment sculpture on the front of the Colonial Building might suggest?
Pierre Trudeau said Confederation “is people, individuals, nothing less and very little more.” That good government is “not the state of the Gross National Product but the state of the people.” The state of the people in this province has immensely improved (Indigenous and resettlement concerns notwithstanding) since joining Canada.
The people spoke in the 1948 referendums and in the subsequent provincial and federal elections held in 1949 winning majorities in all three contests. The matter should be put to rest. We can be proud Chapel’s Covers, Newfoundlanders, Labradorians and Canadians all the same time.