Newfoundland and Labrador premier-designate Tony Wakeham’s election promise for the tentative Churchill Falls hydroelectric deal could be hard to keep, warns one political scientist.
Wakeham campaigned on putting the new deal through an independent review and a referendum, vowing to get the province a better deal than the one the former Liberal-led government said it secured in December.
Lori Turnbull, a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said Wakeham’s promises were a “smart political strategy” while campaigning, but he’s now been elected but now “he’s about to become premier and he has to do it, and it seems like from a number of perspectives … the path that he’s suggesting to get there is not in his control,” she told CBC Radio’s The St. John’s Morning Show.
Turnbull recently wrote an article for Policy Magazine titled “Newfoundland and Labrador Election: A Close-Run Thing on an All-But Guaranteed Fiasco”, in which she laid out pitfalls Wakeham might face when negotiating a new Churchill Falls deal.
While an independent review makes sense, she said, the review could come back and say it is a good deal, and Turnbull wonders what Wakeham would do in response.
“Negotiating with the Quebec government for a new deal is going to be hugely complicated,” she said.
The deal is also meant to be finalized by April 2026, and Turnbull doesn’t see how a review and referendum could happen between now and then, but added there could be flexibility in the deadline.
Another complicating factor is Quebec is scheduled to go to an election in the fall of next year.
“The longer this conversation goes on with no deal, the more likely it is that the situation in Quebec will be less open to renegotiating this,” said Turnbull.
Turnbull said Quebec Premier François Legault might not be willing to renegotiate the deal, and a new Quebec government would also complicate efforts to get a more favourable deal for N.L.
PC spokesperson Ashley Politi said Wakeham wasn’t available for an interview on Monday.
‘Very complicated’
Even if N.L. and Quebec came to a new agreement, it could be difficult for the N.L. government to get a consensus from the public on the deal, said Turnbull. A referendum could polarize the public. She said if the referendum doesn’t pass, it could risk the deal but it could also show a large split in public opinion on the deal.
“And so it ends up, I think, becoming very difficult for the government to build a consensus for the deal as it is negotiated.”
She added while Wakeham has been elected he’s also “untested” and it remains to be seen if he can renegotiate the Churchill Falls MOU.
Turnbull would like to see a PC government hire an effective communication team to get their messages to the public on what the Churchill Falls deal contains.
“I think it’s going to be very complicated because there’s lots of people saying this isn’t the right deal, but it’s going to be very difficult to get a better one.”
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