Hornswoggle

Work in Progress by Ivan Morgan

Great word, isn’t it?

It means to trick or deceive someone, to bamboozle or pull off a hoax. 

It’s a word that came to mind recently when I read a news story about Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro’s plans for more electricity generation on the Island. It made me hopping mad.

I don’t get angry easily. When and if I do, I don’t stay mad long, but I was surprised how mad I got, and for how long I was angry, when I read that Hydro was finding ways to expand the Bay d’Espoir hydro plant and keep Holyrood running to meet our expanding electrical power needs.  This work needs to be done, they said, because there are doubts about the reliability of Muskrat Falls power on the Island.

Man o man, I was mad!

In 2012 I was working for Lorraine Michael’s New Democrats in the House of Assembly, and we were facing the onslaught of the Muskrat Falls project. Ten years ago, when most folks were going to Christmas parties, getting ready for the holidays and the much-anticipated time off, my colleague and I were supporting five MHAs as they tried to debate the Muskrat Falls project.

In preparation for that debate, we met with opponents to the project, and we met with government and Hydro officials. We had many questions.

Government and Hydro said we needed Muskrat Falls because we needed the power. We were told – in no uncertain terms – there was no real hydro generating capacity left on the island. We were told, by the “experts,” that alternative power sources such as wind were not proven. We were told we could not continue to afford to operate the Holyrood generating station. It was too old, too environmentally unfriendly, and the fuel was too expensive.

Something had to be done. Immediately.

The few vocal opponents to the project who spoke to us told us Muskrat Falls was unnecessary.  There were more practical solutions to meeting the island’s power needs. There were ways to generate power on the island without spending six billion dollars in Labrador. Many of them were afraid to speak publicly, and those who did were vilified by the government and their supporters.

Nonsense said government. Muskrat is the only way.

We met with government. We met with Hydro. What I remember most was the condescension. We were spoken to like stupid children. Government and Hydro officials knew better than us. They were the experts, we mere duffers. What, they would ask with barely masked impatience, were we to do when there was no more power? Rolling blackouts? Freezing seniors? Did we want that on our conscience?

I remember it well. Its one thing to read about it here, its an altogether different thing to experience it firsthand. To your face.

Ten years later Ms. Williams, the new head of Hydro, is now telling us they are developing more hydro on the Island and keeping Holyrood as a backup (for now). I was furious. (Not at her. Her plans sound viable.)

I got angry because ten years ago the government of the day, and their supporters, were so focussed on building Muskat Falls, so sure of themselves, so immune from the facts, from reason, from even basic civility, that it was clear nothing was going to stop them. They refused to debate. They mocked opponents. They side-stepped the Public Utilities Board. They treated anyone who questioned them with arrogance and disdain.

I’m angry because my grandchildren (those who choose to live here) will be paying on this breathtakingly stupid project their whole lives. I’m mad because I felt powerless in the face of that government’s blind intention to get this project going. Maybe I’m angry at myself for not doing more to stop them.

What really lights me up is the public of this province (that’s you and me, my friends) were deliberately hornswoggled.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com