Yahoo Movies To consult or not to consult? Idea of Greene report consultations drawing mixed reviews
The organization that represents Newfoundland and Labrador's towns and cities hopes public discussion of the Greene report will help guide communities through the reports recommendations — but a Paradise business owner says the consultations will be a waste of time.
The report from the premier's economic recovery team, led by Moya Greene, was released Thursday, calling for increases to taxes and fees, significant cuts to health care and post-secondary education and streamlining of the public service to right the province's financial ship.
During the provincial election earlier this year, Premier Andrew Furey said "everyone will have the chance to have a say" before any of the report's recommendations are carried out.
Amy Coady-Davis, the interim chair of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador and a town councillor in Grand Falls-Windsor, says the changes proposed shouldn't be made before speaking with the people who will be affected.
"We can't make decisions without consulting the municipalities. There's going to be huge implications, and coming out of COVID, municipalities have already suffered quite a lot," she said.
"We understand that the decisions are tough and they're hard, but they do require a healthy conversation."
Coady-Davis said the report lacks specifics for towns and cities, making consultation important to carry out its recommendations.
The report's recommendation of regionalization is positive, Coady-Davis said, as MNL is in favour of more regional co-operation and sharing services.
She pointed to the sharing of services like snow clearing between municipalities and unincorporated areas, for example, but said that's something that shouldn't happen without dialogue.
"From a regional approach, we could partner and work together and collect some sort ot taxation to be able to provide those services to those municipalities or [unincorporated areas] or [local service districts], but it would have to be after some consultations and an agreement was struck," Coady-Davis said.
"We're hoping that the province would not just download that onto the municipalities and make them take that on."
She said she understands the concern that holding consultations could slow the process of making changes but it's important that communities are part of the conversations about the report.
'Same old, same old'
Terry Hussey, CEO of Vigilant Management in Paradise, agrees that the public should have a say but he says the government will instead use the consultations to delay making decisions on the report's recommendations.
"What are they going to learn from public consultations? Every special interest group in the province is going to come forward and say, 'No, you're wrong, here's why our situation is special,'" he said.
"If they were actually going to be treated as a genuine opportunity to let people mould policy and shape the debate, sure, I'd be all for it, but I just don't think that's what's going to happen."
Hussey said there isn't time for inaction when the provincial government almost completely ran out of money just over a year ago.
"We just don't have time for this anymore. This is the same old, same old from politicians of all stripes," said Hussey.
"They don't really need to do consultations when it's something that they know people will like, so it's just the hard things, or the things they think will be unpopular, that they use consultations as just a deferral of having to do something that people might not be happy with."
Hussey said he doesn't expect many of the recommendations to be carried out.
"Politically, I don't think the government can do one-quarter of what's in this report, so people can probably relax a little bit," he said.
"The consultations, in many ways, I think, are just them not admitting that they can't really do any of this to begin with."
