Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More (29 page)

This was a tremendous achievement—or so we thought at the time.

But it was not to be. The Clark government lost a non-confidence motion on the
budget in March, 1980, an election ensued, and the
government
was defeated. The subsequent Trudeau government would not honour the letter, and
our early hopes for a full agreement along the lines of the Clark commitment
were dashed. It is a bitter irony, not lost on many of us, that the government
fell as a result of a budget measure by then minister of Finance, a
Newfoundlander, John Crosbie.

The echoes of times past rang in our ears: the fight for Representative and
Responsible Government in the 1830s and 1850s; the promise of the fishery and
the French fishing interests; the promise of the alleged immense wealth and
prosperity that would flow from the centre part of the province with the paper
mills of Grand Falls and Corner Brook; the major concessions of the building of
the railway; the broken promise of a restored independent country; of
Confederation with no real provincial fishery power; the Churchill Falls power
contract; and Smallwood's industrialization at almost any cost.

Perhaps the least known, but of potential great importance, was of the great
trade agreement negotiated by Prime Minister Robert Bond and the U. S. Secretary
of State, James Blaine, originally agreed to by Britain but vetoed by them soon
thereafter as a result of “Canadian” opposition to the treaty.

Through this treaty Newfoundland would have been allowed to export mineral
products—and most importantly fish products—to the United States duty-free.
Sadly, we remained a producer of raw fish shipped to the United States, with all
the processing jobs in the state of Massachusetts. It would be ninety-four years
later, long after Ontario had its own free-trade agreement with the United
States (the Auto Pact), before we would see tariffs being reduced on fish
exports, thanks to Brian Mulroney's courageous insistence on signing a
free-trade agreement with the United States.

And so we were back to square one and having to deal with a government whose
view of the country was one of a more powerful central government with its
desire to ensure that jurisdiction of offshore minerals remained firmly in
federal hands and that any sharing of management responsibilities and/or
revenues would be decided solely by the federal government.

Meanwhile, I was having trouble with my Energy minister and
former leadership rival, Leo Barry. He made it clear that in the pursuit of a
deal on the offshore, he wanted a lot of freedom/flexibility, contrary to the
practices then in place as it related to policy, especially large policy issues
like the offshore.

There was in place at that time a series of Cabinet committees on policy: the
Resource Policy Committee, the Social Policy Committee, and the Planning and
Priorities Committee. In the normal course of events, any Cabinet paper that
involved resource or social matters was referred to the respective committees
before moving up the chain for full Cabinet consideration.

The Planning and Priorities Committee, chaired by the premier, was the senior
Cabinet committee and dealt almost exclusively with new policy initiatives,
including of course the offshore file. This was not the way that Mr. Barry
wanted to proceed, and all the other members of the committee, including me, had
trouble with the process that he wanted to have implemented. The committee made
it clear to Minister Barry that there was a process and that he must follow that
and get direction from the committee as negotiations moved forward; in many
cases full Cabinet would have to be involved. It was obvious that the minister
was on a collision course, either by accident or design, and so one morning
after a day where the Planning and Priorities Committee had made its position
very clear to the minister, he visited me in my office to submit his
resignation, with me about to ask for it. This was not the only issue I had with
the minister at the time. In recent weeks and months, the minister had been
travelling outside the province on various matters involving the department, but
without informing me of these travels. A recent incident had occurred relating
to travel to meet individuals and companies in Chicago. The minister was
obviously not a team player, and it was this very characteristic that I was
implementing in the Cabinet process. It was not long before he became a Member
of the Opposition, the Liberal Party, and then its leader.

This turned out to be a very favourable happening since it brought to the fore
one of Newfoundland's most able ministers ever, William
(Bill)
Marshall. I was fortunate that Bill Marshall, Gerald Ottenheimer, and John
Collins (all leadership supporters) became integral parts of my Cabinet:
Ottenheimer, Justice; John Collins, Finance; and Marshall, responsible for
offshore and Newfoundland Hydro Corporation. All three understood government,
its strengths and weaknesses, the role of a minister of Cabinet and of the
premier. They were key advisers and loyalists, and always respectful of one
another. With Collins on the budget, Ottenheimer on the Constitution, and
Marshall on the key energy issues of offshore oil and gas and water power, this
trio arguably had no match in Canada.

Marshall approached his job with conviction and analytical prowess. Here was a
Newfoundlander through and through, steeped in Newfoundland history and
tradition, painfully aware of our past resource mistakes and cognizant of the
power and influence of an overarching federal government. It wasn't long before
Marc Lalonde and Jean Chrétien, two of Prime Minister Trudeau's Energy
ministers, and the federal bureaucracy realized that they had more than met
their match in this Newfoundlander.

But a difficult road lay ahead, not made easier by some (a minority) of our own
people and the national media, which often failed to actually read or listen to
what we were saying. This is most aptly demonstrated by a letter I was forced to
write to Peter Newman, then editor of
Maclean's
magazine, our only
national magazine, on September 22, 1980:

One would think that such a pointed rebuttal of the comments in the article
would have stimulated further correspondence with the province and the magazine,
who, following good journalist standards, would have wanted to get at the facts,
at the truth. However, only silence followed.

At this juncture, chronologically, we were advancing on all three: the
Churchill Falls issue regarding the lease was before the courts; constitutional
talks were moving and we would be seeking greater say over the fishery through
this process; and despite the setback with the defeat of the Clark government,
we were still trying to advance the offshore file.

We were encouraged in this regard by a statement made by the new prime
minister, Pierre Trudeau, in St. John's on May 5, 1981, in which he said:

This very public statement, coupled with a later public television interview in
which the prime minister indicated the federal government was prepared to accept
the idea of sharing offshore the same as if the resources were on land until a
certain level of wealth was attained, led us to believe that a good chance at
achieving a negotiated agreement outside constitutional considerations was
possible.

This led to a first negotiating meeting on October 2, 1981, and a further
meeting on November 12, 1981, both of which addressed the principles that were
necessary from the province's point of view in order to advance toward detailed
negotiations and a final agreement. The second meeting incorporated these
principles into a thirty-one-page document entitled “A Framework for an
Agreement.” Some of the principles in this framework included:

It was clear, in writing, then, right at the beginning of these talks, what the
province was seeking, and most importantly it seemed to us these principles were
very consistent with Mr. Trudeau's public pronouncements.

We were shocked, therefore, when at a December 14, 1981, meeting the federal
response failed to meet these basic principles. Mr. Marshall wrote the federal
minister, Marc Lalonde, on December 18 requesting a ministerial meeting, which
was held on January 8, 1982.

The province once again repeated its position and a further officials meeting
was to be held, and another ministerial meeting in early February. To further
elaborate and make crystal clear the province's position and to attempt to see a
negotiated settlement, the province produced yet another document entitled “A
Proposal For Settlement,” dated January 25, 1982.

On February 10, 1982, only sixteen days after our “Proposal for Settlement” was
presented, I was forced to write (telex) the prime minister: