Quote:
Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout
Albertans may not like him, may not like his ABC campaign, but he wanted to be able to have the offshore oil proceeds going to Newfoundland. Can you imagine if the federal government said "hey Alberta I understand you have oil, but since it's under land it's ours, tough". You don't think the Alberta premier would blow a gasket?
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Funny thing was, he was being a prick for asking for the same deal that Alberta has.. Nothing more... That deal being alberta not including oil revenue in its transfer payments.. All Alberta said was "No Comment". Sask was NF's biggest cheerleader cause they want the same deal Alberta has but already signed their agreement. Williams tried to team up with NS who later accepted the 50% agreement cause Stephen Harper said they were gonna stop transfer payments. All the other provinces was on the federal side cause they wanted the cut of oil revenue from NF that it wasn't able to get for Alberta... Aside from SASK he was on his own in that fight for the people of NL..
Here's a couple other national corperate/political highlights..
The Nickel mine in Voisy Bay Labrador, he left the table with INCO when they said if they couldn't ship the ORE to Sudbury they weren't gonna build the mine.. He said leave it in the ground.. 3 years later they signed the agreement, and vale is now investing 3.4 billion dollars into the province and NF has a favourable royality agreement.
Churchill Falls is the worst example of financial exploitation in the county today... He has worked for the last 7 years to change that deal. It's currently in court in Quebec and we don't know how thats gonna turn out. In the mean time the last thing he wanted to do was develop the lower churchill and he signed that agreement last week(hence the retirement annoucement today). Dispite the protest by quebec and dispite them blocking off access to the power grid in Quebec. Quebec even went so far as to try to purchase NB Power so they could force NL into using thoes power grids.. The agreement now builds a new transmission line through NL and an undersea cable to NS.. worth half a billion to NS..
Just a few of the things he's done that's garnered some national attention...