Now that the special session of the House of Assembly is over, and the final vote on the Churchill Falls deal has concluded, I feel like it is time to say something that might be seen as controversial for many people in this province: I’m glad the government cancelled the referendum.
Usually when a government makes a U-turn on a policy or breaks an election promise, the average party supporter and voter in general is disappointed, or in some cases, angry, especially if it was a policy that they liked.
But for me, as a supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party, my reaction to the Wakeham government scrapping its plans for a referendum on the new Churchill Falls deal was one of relief, knowing that we may have just spared ourselves a massive headache and a slew of different worst case scenarios.
Even if we ignore the logistics with the newfound support of the federal government, referendums as a whole are fundamentally messy and easily manipulated in practice, which consistently in recent history has caused the public to be lied to and has caused the original question to be completely shifted away from its original purpose.
Look at Brexit, which celebrated its 10th anniversary a few months ago. You had one side effectively lie their way to victory and focus the debate around fearmongering on the question of sovereignty and immigration instead of what the real debate should have been about: economics, trade, and regulations.
Regardless of the misinformation that would be pushed during a referendum, the idea that we should be voting on high-level, inter-provincial energy deals is ridiculous.
I personally don’t believe in referendums at all; they are expensive and go against the principles of representative democracy that our country is built upon, but of all the things I don’t think should be put to a referendum; this is probably at the top of the list.
If we were to put this deal to a referendum, we would essentially be saying that the work of the negotiators really doesn’t matter, because in the end the deal needs to be approved by a mass group of people with less education and knowledge of the situation, and a history besides “Quebec screwed us back in the day.”
I’m an economics and political science major, but I do not feel nearly as educated on the agreement nor the economics surrounding it to feel confident enough to vote in a referendum, and the idea that I would get to vote on a deal that the prosperity of our province heavily depends on is crazy.
Let our elected officials have the final say; they are elected explicitly to vote on our behalf, and they have more access to the information, including asking specific questions to the people who negotiated the deal—which none of the general populace has. It’s also their job to actually read the deal in detail, something I can confidently say an overwhelming majority of those who would vote in a referendum would not do.
While yes, we should usually push for politicians to keep their promises and not U-turn on policy, I’m not going to be angry when they go back on policies that I don’t support, and I’m going to celebrate the government’s change of heart and realization of the logistics, especially now that the federal government is involved.
By cancelling this referendum, the Wakeham government is correcting a wrong and changing a policy which never really should have been promised.
A highly complicated interprovincial energy deal that’s supported by the federal government is the last thing we should be having a referendum on. Not only is it expensive, but it’s also irresponsible, as it risks our prosperity and is a kick in the teeth to the negotiators.
So, as a supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party, I don’t feel offended or betrayed, but instead I feel thankful and relieved that we as a province have been freed from an expensive headache that would have been the potential Churchill Fall Referendum.