Stormy Thoughts

Snow days are good for the soul…

Except when it gives you time to think about missed chances and lost opportunities…

 Like the fishery!

As the storm swirled outside, a dark storm whirled within,  triggered by the Premier’s comments at a year-end interview that “We have a fishery that is in trouble”

Does it get any more pathetic than that?    It is like a pregnant woman pointing at her swollen belly and admonishing the unborn for the mess the child has gotten itself  into!

A terrible metaphor perhaps, but you get the point?

Not a sense, nor an admission of, responsibility …

One could perhaps overlook the gall if this had been uttered a year or 2 after taking government; but this crew has been occupying space in the Confederation Building for not 1, not 5, but 10 years!

A decade is a boatload of time to turn around any industry including the fishery -Iceland and Norway have both proven so.

But 10 years into Tory Territory, we are still without a vision, a strategy, an action plan (other the Reactive one) … or even an imagination regarding our most  important industry in our province.

It`s also the lack of optimism about the fishery that is ingrained in the premier’s remarks  that makes the storm even darker in my head.

This is a Government that was warned for years of their inattention to the fishery; so not even a First-grader would be surprised  by the outcome.

This is a Government that promised a rural strategy which included fishery – and did not deliver.

This is a Government that promised joint management and custodial management  of our fisheries & did not deliver.

This is a Government that in 2007  allowed corporate interests to take over FPI, dismantle it and then sold off the one ace up our sleeve in the fishery – our brilliant marketing division. (The fall-out from this non genius decision has been seen recently in the closure of the plants in Marystown, Burin and Port Union - not to mention the other plants that have closed under their watch)

This is a Government`s whose leader's claim to fame in the fishery was to host a 1 day Premier`s Summit.

This is a Government that spent $850,000 on a MOU Fisheries Report  that was dissed at its birth like an ugly sculpin - the ask was too much the minister muttered.

This was a Government that promised during the last election that the Marystown plant had a future …and walked away without assisting … with not even a shred of guilt.

This was a Government that has allowed Corporate interests to dictate public policy – because that`s what happens when a vacuum  exits in policy, imagination and leadership.

This is a Government currently on the verge of  giving up public safeguards for our fishery in an international treaty with the EU – an agreement that could in only a few short decades see foreigners fishing inside the 200-mile limit and corporations dictating the rest of fisheries public policy.

Finally, this is a Government singularly obsessed with protecting Nalcor and then setting up the  grand coronation of  Muskrat Falls so that this entity and this project never ever ever get into trouble and go into overdraft! 

Imagine if the fishery had the massive amount of money invested in Muskrat Falls by a Government with imagination- how  progressive our industry would be and how alive our rural regions would feel!

This government bombed on the fishery – that is their undisputed legacy.

And no "mother of all storms"  can white-out the fact that there is blood on this government`s hands, up to its elbow, for a fishery neglected and set adrift without a real captain for over 10 years.

There's something about red blood (and missed chances) that tend to glare more starkly in the belly of a snow storm …