Atlantic Accord finally made law

Very glad to be in St. John’s this week as this battle comes to an end, with a victory for our province.

All told, about 30,000 Newfoundlanders, Labradorians and Canadians wrote over 103,000 letters since this campaign started on December 26th, 2004 – Boxing Day. We’ve already patted ourselves on the back here, so there’s no need to do it again. Now is the time to wrap up this campaign, see what’s next, and move on.

Thanks to all. Enjoy a grand Canada Day! The weather and the outlook from my perch in St. John’s this week could not be better.

– Kevin McCann

From the CBC today:

Very good news! Many agree that the tone of Parliament has become to avoid more drama and get back to business. This tone, if accurate, is greasing the passage for the final deliberations around the Accord. Certainly, the great job of members of this community to continue to email and fax the Finance Committee and others have contributed to the revitalized “get back to work” mantra of Ottawa legislators.

Hill Times Article

CBC Article

The Finance Committee’s approval of this bill effectively pushes the Atlantic Accord legislation through to the next stage of the Parliamentary process. Seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight emails to the collective group of Finance Committee members — several of whom responded to the pressure with a form-letter thank-you notes, and a couple who wrote with dismay “Who is telling you to send letters??” If you are one of the 500 Fair Deal members who were randomly contacted to participate in this push, thanks! If you just showed up and sent the letter — there are more than a few — thanks!

Just a quick update: my schedule has involved lots of work travel — incidentally to the motherland of Canada but not to NL — and thus the sporadic blog entries. Let’s see where the next hurdle lies for the budget and the Accord legislation.

I’ve been preoccupied with real life goings-on, but two things happened this week on the Fair Deal website that I want to make a note of:

1/ We breached 100,000 letters delivered to Ottawa legislators. More specifically, at the time of this posting 102,499 letters have been delivered since Boxing Day, December 26th of 2004. This is a big number, and if I were an elected official, I’d look at this as a serious indication of the will of many in the province to cast their future votes in direct response to the fate of the Accord. Not everyone is online in Newfoundland and Labrador (the figure is at about 60%), and not all those who are online are moved to send a political letter, but this is a very real percentage that the Liberal MPs, the Conservative MPs and the NDP should be more than mindful of. If the Accord languishes due to party politics and either party is perceived to be the primary culprit, that party will lose serious support in this part of Canada.

2/ Earlier this week I sent an email to 500 randomly selected Fair Deal activists and asked them to send a letter to the Finance Committee as they considered the budget and the Atlantic Accord. At the time of posting, the participation rate of this group is 79 percent — so far.

This number is interesting because it shows that Fair Deal activists are still deeply committed to the Accord passage, but it also illuminates another fact that’s easy to lose sight of on a blog-oriented site: almost none of the 500 activists this week commented on the blog or sent me a personal email. They are what I would call a perfect example of “The Silent Majority".

While the blog-commenters on Fair Deal and the blog-writers of Canadian politics are squeaking loudly on their soapboxes, it is The Silent Majority of several thousand Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and Canadians who have sent all these letters. It is The Silent Majority that are sick and tired of party allegiance over common sense governance. It is The Silent Majority that would like to see the Accord legislation made a reality before the summer break.

It is The Silent Majority that will decide the outcome of the next election.

And so: a big thank-you to The Silent Majority from the Fair Deal campaign. Without your participation we would never have reached 100,000 letters, and even though it might seem that a few voices dominate the web, we are just the extroverts in the room demanding all the attention. It’s The Silent Majority who deserve all the credit — and who most of the time, define the right path.

Today the Fair Deal website promoted a new letter-writing action: contact members of the Finance Committee who are currently considering the budget and the Atlantic Accord legislation. This call to action only went to 500 randomly selected members of the Fair Deal community. Why only 500? Because during the coming days and weeks, it might be important to sustain pressure on the Committee to act expeditiously. And as I said in a previous post, inundating elected officials with an “avalanche of email” isn’t always the best tactic.

So far, these 500 Fair Deal supporters have written over 3700 letters to the Finance Committee as a whole (10:00 pm 06/01). If you are a Fair Deal supporter who didn’t receive the letter today but would like to contact the committee, please do so here.

Thanks to all who have taken the action! The participation has been great today, and I believe ultimately effective. If any of you hear back from the offices of committee members, please let us know.

This week the Atlantic Accord is being considered by the Finance Committee. Consisting of twelve MPs from across the four major parties (5 Liberals, 4 Conservatives, 2 Bloc Québécois, 1 NDP), the Finance Committee has a difficult challenge: pass the budget and therefore the Atlantic Accord before the June 23rd summer break.

If the House closes for the summer and the Accord is not passed, this lingering piece of legislation that we have fought so hard for is delayed until the fall, and possibly another election cycle. This isn’t a risk that I want to take; I’d rather see the Accord made law as soon as possible, and not used as a bargaining chip amongst the competing parties.

To get through this stage, members from all parties are going to have to work together and put effective governance before party ambition. The Conservatives will have to decide whether to keep pushing for the fall of the Liberal government, while the Liberals will have to decide to step up and keep their promises.

What’s the Strategy? Inundating legislators with thousands of emails isn’t always the best strategy. That’s why I’m staggering this call to action over a period of days. Some of you may have arrived here because you saw an email from me today. Others might get an email tomorrow. By all means, if you are a visitor to the site but haven’t received the call to action, don’t go away! We need everybody to take action.

Send a Letter to the Finance Committee today, asking them to Speed Up the Deal.

For more background on the Atlantic Accord status, read this article from the Hill Times.

The Second Fair Deal Podcast, Sponsored by Grassroots Enterprise, Can Be Downloaded Here (right-click on the link, save target as…grab the MP3 file).

(If you don’t know what a podcast is, then go here and watch a four minute movie about it).

This is the second Podcast from Grassroots Enterprise that featured the Fair Deal campaign (check out this post to listen to the first podcast and learn more about Fair Deal).

This Podcast features 20 minutes and 57 seconds of spills, chills and intrigue, as one American observer talks to yours truly about recent events on the Fair Deal website. We delve into the targeting of Loyola Hearn and Norm Doyle last week, the Stronach incident, the comparatively boring American political climate, getting yelled at by the LEFT and the RIGHT, Fair Deal strategy as the Accord legislation “plods through the entrails of Parliament", and most importantly, a victorious pronunciation of the word “NewfoundLAND” by the interviewer. This is historic.

Hey, if you listen to this Podcast, then please drop me a line or leave a comment. If you really love this Podcast and would like to subscribe, then be sure to visit Podcast Alley. Vote for the Grassroots Enterprise Podcast feed.

Special thanks to the intrepid media-maven Mike Panetta for his audio expertise.

Off to a long weekend. Current action trickling away, with over 26,000 letters sent to the Liberal MPs and Paul Martin. Next week, keep the pressure on. Take Action here, if you haven’t already.

Earlier this week I threw out a post asking people for their favorite Newfoundland and Labrador Blogs – either based in the province, focused on the province, or written by someone from the province. I thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight some of the NL-based blogwriters out there – regardless of their political leaning (I always have to submit that caveat it seems on this site).

The results are in, so here’s what has come back. I’ve added a few of my own links, and I added the blog name and tagline if it was available, along with the location. Thanks to everyone who contacted me on this little project. I think this would be a good list to maintain, and having met many in the blogging community in Washington D.C., I can say that it’s a positive thing when bloggers connect.

The list is in no particular order. The only connecting factor in the list is that the author either lives in Newfoundland and Labrador or is from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Any bloggers back home who’d like to organize a happy hour at the end of June? I’ll be in town. We could have an inaugural happy hour of the NLBA (NL Blog Army). Leave politics at the door.

Me (Kevin McCann, Fair Deal For Newfoundland and Labrador)
http://www.FairDealForNewfoundland.com
Washington, D.C.

John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot
Points east from a St. John’s-based, ellipsis-friendly journalist …
Dot-Dot-Dot is Morse code for the letter S, the content of the transatlantic transmission received at Signal Hill in 1901.
http://johngushue.typepad.com/
St. John’s

The Sir Robert Bond Papers
The Why Incision on Politics and the News Media
http://bondpapers.blogspot.com/
St. John’s

Shootin’ off with Amy
http://www.amymartin.nl/
New York, New York

Greg Locke
Journalism, Photography, News, Analysis
http://blog.greglocke.com/
(and most recently http://blog.canadianjournalist.ca/)
St. John’s

Boswarlos Daily
Barry Stagg’s Toronto Town And Country
http://barrystagg.typepad.com/my_weblog/
Toronto

Daimnation!
Manufacturing consent since 2001
http://www.damianpenny.com/
Corner Brook

Alan Doyle
Occasional Tour Diary (not currently touring)
Great Big Sea, From The Road
http://www.greatbigsea.com/thetour/fromroad.cfm
St. John’s and Everywhere Else

MBA on the Rock
Just a typical MBA looking for a place to vent on a wide variety of topics.
http://rockmba.blogspot.com/
St. John’s

WJM
http://labradore.blogspot.com/

Responsible Government League
Analysis and commentary on Public Policy Issues affecting Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as some global issues.
http://responsiblegovernmentleague.blogspot.com/
Halifax St. John’s, via Buchans

Rj:Product
Pop Culture through a “Newfoundland-filter".
http://www.rjproduct.ca/

Fickle Fish
http://www.ficklefish.net/

MindBin
CS student a MUN
http://mindbin.net/
St. John’s

Duleepa Wijayawardhana (Dups)
Blog, Travels, Photos and More…
http://dups.ca/
Edmonton

THE BIG WHY
Journey with author Michael Winter as he travels Canada reading from his brand new novel, The Big Why.
http://mhardywinter.blogspot.com/

Ranting and Roaring
David Janes, BlogMatrix Founder
http://blog.davidjanes.com/

Matthew Hollett
non*glossy photoblog of a twenty-three-year-old artist living in Montreal, Canada, originally from Newfoundland.
http://www.matthewhollett.com/nonglossy/

Raphael Borja
St. John’s & Clarenville
http://cvillian.blogspot.com/

Web Talk - Newfoundland and Labrador (Myles Higgins)
http://freenewfoundlandlabrador.blogspot.com/

Joan’s Kitchen
Clarenville
http://joanskitchen.blogspot.com/

Any corrections, additions, modifications? Is there an organized NL Blog group in existence already?

I just received a note from Loyola Hearn’s office, pointing me to this release which has been posted since last Friday:

Many have said that splitting the Accord from the bill would slow it down, and many have said that the bill should be split in order to fast track the pace. I’m not a parliamentarian, so it’s hard for me to say which would be better. What I’m asking now of the Liberal MPs and leaders of the House is conveyed nicely in Hearn’s last line “…cooperate with us to ensure the Accord becomes its own piece of legislation". If becoming a new piece of legislation is the best way, so be it. If keeping it in the larger bill is the best way, then let’s do that. Cooperate is what I’m pointing to here as the important word.

I don’t care what approach is used here. All I care about, and what I’m asking legislators to do in good faith, is to sort out the semantics for themselves. Just make the deal a reality as soon as possible. Please - make it law before the end of the summer session. We do not want the Accord unsettled come fall; we’d be at obvious risk for losing what we have gained with another looming federal election.

Hearn’s full release is available here.

Start contacting the Finance Committee here.

Call or send a fax to your direct Member of Parliament here.

Ask Paul Martin, Ralph Goodale and Liberal MPs to fast track the deal – the best way possible – here.

Our legislators need to know that we expect action on this bill before the party wranglings begin again.

I said repeatedly last week that this campaign was outside of the fray of party politics – that this campaign has as its only goal the enactment of the new Atlantic Accord. One of the ways to achieve this is through direct legislative pressure, wherein citizens attempt to influence the thinking of an elected official through mass action. We’ve seen Members of Parliament acknowledge this kind of pressure, and we’ve seen the Prime Minister of Canada respond to online activity.

This is well and good, but the other – and perhaps more important way to keep the Accord legislation a high priority – is to keep the Accord issue somewhere on the radar of journalists across the country. Tug on the coat of newspaper editors, call an open line show, call the office of your Member of Parliament – all of these kinds of activities can contribute to a low hum of activity that the media will pay attention to. Politicians will be more reluctant to delay passage of this bill if they know that voters are paying attention. They are even more reluctant to delay passage if they know that the media still sees the Accord saga as a story. Keep the pressure on, take action, contact your direct Member of Parliament. Contact the Finance Committee, who will deal with the Accord next.

And guess what? The media pays attention not only to mass-action movements like this one, but the Globe and Mail reports today that blogs are “moving mainstream":

I wonder what the stats are for Canada?

This I just had to share: I can affirm that there is one less rat in Washington D.C. today. I ran over one on my mountain bike on the way home from work. Right in front of the Whitehouse. I’m not kidding.

Last week this campaign asked supporters to contact Loyola Hearn and Norm Doyle (Conservative Party MPs), asking them to keep the Accord deal alive by voting against their party. The reasoning was clear: don’t gamble on another promise. Get the deal now and vote to bring down the government later.

Paul Martin’s Liberal government survived, and since the vote last Thursday, the Conservatives – including Hearn, Doyle and Premier Williams – have asked that the Accord legislation be treated with expedience. Fast track the deal to get it working for the province as soon as possible.

Why target the Liberal MPs and Paul Martin? The Liberal government is still in jeopardy of falling in the coming weeks or months. The Accord deal, four months after it was signed and promised to the people of the province, needs to become a reality by the end of the next parliamentary session. The Liberals, regardless of challenges from other parties, should work with their colleagues across the isle to make this happen. Now it’s their turn to push party politics aside and fast track this deal.

The Fair Deal campaign was founded to push for a new Atlantic Accord and for what’s economically beneficial for the province. This campaign has no party affiliation. The Liberals have already been asked to fast track the deal by some of the other major parties. It’s time they heeded that call.

If you haven’t sent your letter yet, click here to do so now.