Today in the House of Assembly, NL NDP Leader Jim Dinn (St. John’s Centre) and MHA Sheilagh O’Leary (St. John’s East-Quidi Vidi) continued to question government today on their true commitment to transparency around the Independent Review Committee (IRC) report on the Churchill Falls MOU.
Dinn challenged the “trust us” way that Wakeham’s Conservatives are handling the release of the report. He said not being able to question the panel or even know who was interviewed for the report that the committee used for their findings is a major transparency issue. He highlighted not only the hypocrisy, but what appears to be information not included in considerations in the report.
“Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of Energy and Mines said the Premier had the foresight to understand that the MOU was flawed,” Dinn said. “So, I ask the Premier, if that was the case, why didn’t he and his caucus vote against the deal?”
“The Independent Review Committee noted a key outcome of the MOU is access to an additional 600 MW before 2041 but restricted to 500 MW post 2041. Yet Schedule E of the MOU indicates that there will be an additional 360 MW available bringing the total to 860 MW post 2041,” said Dinn. “Since we are not permitted to question the IRC, will the Premier explain why members of the committee ignored the additional power? Was it an oversight on their part or did they deliberately exclude that information?”
MHA O’Leary focused on the advice given to the panel from their lawyers to not speak in public, asking who those lawyers are.
Speaker, the Independent Review Panel received legal advice not to speak to the public about their findings,” said O’Leary. “I ask the Premier which lawyers gave this advice? Was it the two he secretly hired back in January, the former Premier Danny Williams, their own government lawyers? Who was it?
Government did not come forward with who the IRC lawyers were.