Michael Friis Johansen

Out of sight, not out of mind

by MICHAEL JOHANSEN

 

   The place might as well not exist: the name "Labrador" doesn't appear even once in the policy platform the now-governing Parti Quebecois published before their recent election.

   However, Labradorians might wish to pause for a moment before releasing that deep sigh of relief they've just inhaled. The omission doesn't mean the region is not in the thoughts of the victorious politicians, or that it won't feel repercussions from PQ policies - quite the opposite. The Labrador Question has been so deeply entrenched in Quebec political culture for so long (and in the separatist movement, as well) that Quebec politicians or every party tend to avoid any discussion of the topic, or even mention of the name, for fear of sparking a fire they can't stamp out.

   The biggest issue now as always is the border between the territory and the province - an issue that quite recently resurfaced over a Hydro Quebec plan to dam a river and flood some territory in Labrador. Governments of Quebec, of course, have been claiming Labrador territory ever since it was an international dispute and they maintained that Newfoundland's Labrador colony should only consist of a thin strip of land along the coast from Blanc Sablon to Killinek. Canada took the case to court on Quebec's behalf, but lost to Newfoundland in 1927 before the highest court in the British Empire - a court that set the boundaries of Labrador as currently drawn on Newfoundland maps. In defiance of the Privy Council's ruling, that's still not how the boundaries appear on Quebec maps.

   This is a problem for Quebec separatists because when they leave Canada they'll want to argue that Quebec's borders must remain unchanged - thus denying aboriginal peoples, particularly northern aboriginal peoples, the right to separate their territories from Quebec in order to stay within Confederation. To demand that one part of the border should change would be to admit that every part can.

   Naturally, the last thing any Quebec politician wants is to lose Nouveau-Quebec - no more than any Newfoundland politician wants to lose Labrador - especially as long as the north still has some resources worth exploiting. That was one issue that was much on the minds and in the speeches of the campaigning politicians. All parties want to dam the rivers, dig mines and cut timber in the province's northern territories, but there was some disagreement about how to go about doing it.

   The now-not-governing Liberals had formulated and were implementing their Plan Nord - a $2.1-billion program for building airports and roads in northern Quebec and along the Quebec north shore. Resource extractors loved it, calling Quebec "one of the world's friendliest mining jurisdictions" because of it. The Parti Quebecois hated it, dismissing it as a public relations exercise designed to get the Liberals re-elected and calling it a multi-billion-dollar giveaway to large corporations.

   "A Parti Quebecois government won't pay the whole bill for building new infrastructure," the party proclaimed last March.

   At the time and since then the Parti Quebecois was most concerned about money spent to help open some new iron ore mines near Schefferville - even calling the arrangement "scandalous". The developers, a partnership between the Canadian company New Millenium and the Indian company Tata Steel, has plans for mines on both sides of the Quebec-Labrador border and they want to build a new railway to ship the ore to a new deepwater port now being built in Sept-Iles.

   "There will be no refining in Quebec of 22-million tonnes of iron extracted by the Indian multinational Tata Steel," the PQ's mining critic complained in June. "Quebeckers will see this iron shipped by boat directly and entirely to Asia."

   While executives of mining companies working the iron-rich Labrador Trough (not only New Millenium, but also Alderon Iron Ore and Adriana Resources, which is partnered with a Chinese state corporation) say that nothing the Quebec government can do will effect their operations on the Labrador side of the border, they all claim the PQ will make resource extraction too expensive in Quebec. The PQ have proposed levying a five-per-cent minimum royalty on all minerals mined in the province and a 30-per-cent tax on mining company profits above eight per cent, which is supposed to add an additional $388-million to provincial revenues.

   However, it's another PQ policy that wasn't mentioned during the election that could have the most impact on Labrador: the party's opposition to Ottawa's promise to co-sign the $6.2-billion loan Newfoundland needs if it's going to build another dam on Labrador's Grand River. Last year the Parti Quebecois claimed that the loan equals what Quebeckers pay to Ottawa in taxes and that therefore Quebeckers are being asked to subsidize a company that competes in hydro markets with their own Hydro Quebec.

   PQ politicians didn't say much about this during the election, but chances are they'll be saying it soon when Newfoundland going to beg for the vital loan.