Premier’s comments on fishery the heights of hypocrisy says Opposition

Fisheries Critic Marshall Dean, MHA for the District of The Straits and White Bay North, says it is ironic that Premier Williams would challenge the Opposition to ask questions on the fishery when he, as provincial leader,  has barely spoken a word on the issue and snubbed requests to help get the crab fishery started this season.

Responding to a question by the MHA for the District of Burgeo & La Poile, Kelvin Parsons, on the ineffective and wasteful use of the Ottawa office today in the House of Assembly, the premier responded that the Opposition should be asking questions on the fishery instead.  

“I find it rather ironic that the premier should give us a lecture on raising fishery issues when we have been challenging government on this issue each day since the Legislature opened to provide investment support and they have refused,” says Dean.  “What is most baffling is that the premier has been called upon time and time again to provide some leadership on the fishery and has failed the people of the province with his hands-off approach to an industry that is on the brink of collapse and 20,000 incomes are at risk.”  

“It is clear that the premier did not like to be challenged on his waste of taxpayers’ money in keeping open a provincial office in Ottawa that is serving no purpose other than eating up its $400,000 a year budget,” says MHA Parsons.  “The premier got rather touchy as well when we raised the costs associated with his blunder of accidentally expropriating the Abitibi mill and the NFATA liability piece.”

The Opposition members also point out that it is further ironic that the premier and his government solicited legal advice on free trade implications of his expropriation move and ignored it, but on the other hand used the legal opinion of trade risks for the fishery as an excuse not to provide investment.  

- 30 -