By Sean Burton
On December 12, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey and Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced a tentative new deal with respect to hydro power development along the Mista Shipu, or Churchill River in its common English name, that flows through central Labrador.
During the announcement, Furey made a great show of tearing up the previous contract with Hydro Quebec from 1969. Initially set to expire in 2041, the symbolic gesture was met with great applause from those in attendance.
The 1969 contract has long been held in resentment within Newfoundland for being blatantly in Hydro Quebec’s favour, allowing them to buy power from Churchill Falls Generating Station at the low rate of 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour.
This resentment is also a part of a much longer-running dispute between the provinces, stoked by nationalist narratives in Quebec and Newfoundland, concerning the administration or indeed “ownership” of Labrador. The British Privy Council ruled in Newfoundland’s favour in 1927, but nationalist politicians in Quebec have never let the matter go. An example from the spring of 2023 saw Labrador West MHA Jordan Brown calling out the Bloc Quebecois for using a party logo consisting of a map of Quebec including all of Labrador.
The scene on December 12 was meant to convey a new era in relations between the provinces. The NL government was keen to highlight that Hydro Quebec would pay 5.9 cents per kilowatt hour instead of the 0.2, and that this would represent nearly $1 billion in additional provincial revenue for the next 17 years. The deal also makes provisions for expanding hydro generation on the river, committing to the development of Gull Island. The NL government has released a new media campaign to promote the agreement and future developments as well, with the obvious emphasis on the good jobs and money it will bring.
The opposition parties have questioned the extent of independent oversight and whether the deal is the best it could be financially for the province. Given the extensive need for public services in Newfoundland and Labrador, it may be better to ask how much of the additional revenue will make it beyond NL Hydro’s coffers to the public. That would be a more tangible benefit for the people here, already struggling with the high cost of living.
Getting to the bigger picture, Labrador has long been subject to Newfoundland’s and Quebec’s own regional colonialism. Most of Labrador consists of the Innu homeland of Nitassinan, while the northern coast is home to the Inuit of Nunatsiavut, with its own limited self-government within the province. Labrador’s population is just under 30,000 but Innu and Inuit make up a significant part of that. Lip service is paid to Indigenous communities when resource development projects are considered, and this MOU is no exception, referring to building “respectful relationships.”
If there is subsequent development, it is hard to imagine it would be any different than what happened with Muskrat Falls, with communities divided between those who wanted to protect the land from hydro development and those who wanted the jobs on site.
For all of the federal and provincial governments’ talk of truth and reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty remains a fiction; and as long as the north is short of good jobs and money, how fair is it for crown corporations to essentially force their will and once again divide communities? It certainly sounds as though the provincial government has learned little from the reaction to Muskrat Falls, despite Premier Furey claiming otherwise.
The NL government may better serve the population here by reducing electricity rates, or eliminating them entirely. Not everything need be hydro either – wind power has been discussed here for some time. In recent years, a number of private companies have made plans to set up wind farms on the island, but these would be for hydrogen fuel production for export. It also is not yet clear how many of those projects will come to fruition; there is still the short-sighted focus on the immediate construction jobs they would bring. Anything beyond that is just hype.
While there are still important environmental considerations to be made, it seems a missed opportunity for the provincial government to build a potential source of cheap power for everyone.
This new deal may sound pleasant to some ears, but as long as Labrador is treated as little more than a resource-rich colonial appendage to either the island or Quebec and as long as working people struggle to keep up with the cost of living with no serious plan to mitigate it, Furey may as well have been tearing up the air.
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