Today, in this place, we can stand back and see ourselves for what we truly are: a knee-jerk horde of bigots.
Apparently, anyway.
See, I’ve been racking my mind trying to figure out why people were so hostile toward the NB Power deal. I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical at first. But my main beef was Graham’s approach – the way he slapped the agreement on the table and demanded we sign by March – not the actual details of the sale.
Because, honestly, I don’t, didn’t and likely never would have grasped every intricate working of the deal. And neither would you. Neither would the majority of us. We didn’t act out because we felt the deal was sour, we rebelled because the way it was thrust on us and because, of course, the prospect of selling your major assets is pretty spooky, even to a layman.
But we should have gotten over that. We should have cast aside our pride in what is clearly a botched utility, and accepted the horrible spectre of challenges that lies ahead for NB Power. We should have traced the lines of how we got here – $4.75-million in debt, a burdensome nuclear plant, crumbling dam and inefficient coal-fired facilities – and been big enough to accept we need help, a way out.
Instead, we let a few outspoken mouthpieces propagate fear and outrage for months, we fed them, they fed us, and now we’re back at square one, with an even less valuable asset – thanks to all the publicity now about how screwed NB Power and its assets are. If Quebec didn’t want it, why should we? And who will now?
Sure, critics of the deal said NB Power’s assets were worth keeping, especially the transmission lines, and that we should find a home-grown solution to better manage the utility and steer our way of out debt.
Fair enough. But it’s been five months. Five months where the deal was front-page news everyday, five months where the deal was constantly in the spotlight, coffee shop talk, street exchanges, and five months later  no better ideas have come forward. Let alone better ideas – simply no other options, alternatives or solutions have been proposed.
And even though not one single person, not one frothing-at-the-mouth critic nor even the great lame duck David Alward came forward with a better idea, we still fought Graham’s plan tooth and nail.
And for what, New Brunswick? Higher rates? Growing debt at NB Power? A less competitive climate for attracting  jobs?
How many more mills do we have to lose before we wake up and realize what we’ve done? How many families will have to move away before the light comes on and we realize we flicked the wrong switch off?
No, we’re not very bright, in this place.
As Charles Cirtwill of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies wrote in the Telegraph-Journal: “So we have a dead deal. Dead because New Brunswick originally managed to get Quebec to offer far more than they should have. Dead because Quebec caught on before the final agreement was signed, and dead because the New Brunswick government for all its hinting couldn’t convince their fellow New Brunswickers that they really had outmanoeuvred, at least for  few days, Quebec.”
This isn’t Graham’s fault. Yes, he botched the pitch. But the NB Power deal was big enough that we should’ve been able to look past the premier’s flawed PR skills and weigh the benefits with the cost.
Do I think the agreement with Hydro-Quebec was ideal? No, it probably wasn’t. But it was better than the status quo, and better than any deal we can cook up now. It was, frankly, as good as it was going to get.
And I wouldn’t hang my hat on Bethany Thorne-Dykstra’s analysis of ‘now the people of New Brunswick will take part in the process of fixing NB Power.’ What do we know about fixing a public energy utility? Please.
And as for Alward, shame. Nothing would make me sicker than to see that man win the election this September, after having done nothing for five months but cast aside the interests of New Brunswickers so he could play politics and further his own ambitions. For shame.
But, alas, I’m still left wondering: why?
Why the outrage, why the opposition, the seemingly uneducated, uninformed, knee-jerk opposition? Because surely any reasonable person, when presented with the sad state of affairs that is NB Power, would see that something must be done. Surely logic would win over emotion if it were just the facts involved.
But it wasn’t just about the facts, was it? I find myself wondering if the outrage wasn’t at all about the deal, so much as it was the buyer. Maybe we didn’t even realize it; maybe our bigotry assumed such a subtle form that we weren’t even aware. It certainly seemed that way listening to talk radio, when countless individuals would call in to speak out against the deal but offer no reasonable explanation why, only fruitless rhetoric.
And Wednesday, as I read of the collapsed deal, one image played over and over in my mind, and I couldn’t figure out why at first. It was a photo of the rally held in Fredericton this weekend, where people (a thousand or two, depending who you ask) gathered to protest the sale of NB Power. In this photo, a man with a scowl face held a sign that read: Shawn Graham resign now, why wait? The ‘Now’ was all capitalized, and in the centre of the ‘O’ was a blue fleur-de-lis.
No sir. We’re not too bright at all, in this place.

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