Plans evolving.

I reprint the below item from Brandon Pardy.
I have no idea of its accuracy, I trust Brandon knows what he is about. Brandon ran for the Labrador Party in Lake Melville last provincial election, he came within 300 votes of winning.
I do not know Mr. Pardy personally, I just thought that seeing that he sent his views to a number of media outlets, and I have no idea if any re printed them, that I would put it out there for anyone’s viewing.

I do know that there is not much trust in these plans that are put out in incomplete form. It took quite some time for the government to do both the Northern Strategic Plan and the Energy Plan, and then they are “evolving documents”. Evolving into what I would like to know.


Dear Editor,

I would like to discuss the issue of fiscal imbalance. No, not the fiscal imbalance debate of Quebec, Alberta, nor that of Ontario.

I speak of the fiscal imbalance experienced in Labrador. I’ve always had an interest, as have many Labradorians, in the amount of resource revenue that heads to St. John’s versus the amount of money spent here in Labrador. The reason I write about this now, just before an election, is that the “Energy Plan” coupled with the “Northern Strategic Plan” seem to be “election plans”. The $250 million bucks piqued my interest.

I, like many Labradorians, have said time and again that billions of dollars of Labrador resources are gobbled up every year, and after the greasy jowls have been wiped the bones are tossed back to Labrador. Well, I decided to use the Dept of Finance website to track the actual, major resource dollars Labrador pours into the provincial coffers:

Total mining revenue for province (06/07) = $270M/year:
(Unclear if this includes the $98M for the 98% exploration revenue in Labrador)
Labrador west = 50% (of prov. revenue) X 270M = $135M/year
Voisey Bay = 48% (of prov. Revenue) X 270M = $129.6M/year
“Upper Churchill” recall power sale $230M/5years = $46M/year
“Upper Churchill” revenue ~ $20M/year
5 Wing Goose Bay revenue (one reference) ~ $36M/year

Total : 366.6 Million dollars/year
This of course ignores smaller mining, fishing, forestry, tourism, and agricultural operations as well as general taxes (gas, sales, income, liquor, tobacco etc). But the general provincial taxes are roughly 2.171 billion multiplied by Labrador’s 5.47% of the population and that’s about 118.7 million more Labrador can be assumed to pay in tax, fair enough).

So what comes out of Labrador is $485,270,000.00 a year in revenue to the coffers. They “cough-er” up $50M a year ($250 million NSP / 5 years) and no distribution of “lower Churchill power”. Side note: a large chunk of that NSP money is recycled federal programs/dollars!

Another way of looking at it is this: from the PROVINCIAL revenue portion of the budget (3.932B of 5.244B) each Labradorian “pays” $17,415.60 and each Islander “pays” $7154.57. YET we get $50M/year NSP divided by 27, 864 Labradorians = $1794.43 per Labradorian per year. I’m not against sharing, not at all but where’s the “Labrador First?”

That’s all, I just wanted to put that out there. I hope Labradorians will demand more from the “warehouse of resources” that we seem to be. The election is not that many days away – Try defending that “Labrador first” agenda!

Thank you,
Brandon Pardy
currently residing at:
412 Lewis St Ottawa, On K2P0S9