What happens when a slinky replaces a backbone.

I got a phone call from a friend last night cancelling a meeting of the Board at our Golf Course we were both to attend. He informed me that he had to go to another emergency meeting being held to discuss the subsidy problem of the Northumberland Ferry service between Wood Island and Caribou, Nova Scotia. Now if you want to hear a story about people with no spines when the chips are down read on.

The great debate on PEI about the fixed link took place in 1988, I may err on a few details, numbers etc but you'll get the general drift of how the Northumberland Ferry service fits in.

One of the problems with the fixed link was that if it was built there wouldn't be any one working at Marine Atlantic anymore so there was a lot of roaring going on in the media about what was going to happen to these people. And that's where the focus was, on the service between Borden and Cape Tormentine and that's what caught everyones attention. The bottom line was that there was some kind of a constitutional agreement between the Province and the Federal Government that there would be a Government supported Ferry service for all time. If the fixed link went ahead there wouldn't be a need for the ferry anymore so it was agreed that the guarantee would be replaced by the bridge and those effected would have some kind of formal severance, retraining, etc package negotiated. Sounds like the end of the story, not to likely.

You see there was another ferry service that was started up that ran between Wood Islands and Caribou at the Eastern end of the Island. Now the forming of this service had politics written all over it, in fact the location of the docking facilities was located at Wood islands where the channel is quite shallow rather than few miles east whwre the water is deep because of a political boundary.

Now in order to get equal treatment for this service it was decided that the original agreement with the Government of Canada would have the new service added to it in an effort to guarantee the annual subsidy. So it was added and described as an "adjunct service". Now when I came across this at the time of the debate I thought to myself. Mr. Stewart who was the prime mover and shaker that put this together did a real shrewed bit of maneuvering to secure the long term financial viability of the service (which incidentally he was a major shareholder of). Instead of negotiating an agreement outside of the existing agreement he had it attached to the "service for all time guarantee" as a separate agreement, A hell of a strategy I thought.

But by the time that the fixed link scenario came along Mr. Stewart was long in his grave and lesser fellows were at the controls. Northumberland Ferries had recently gone through a power struggle of sorts and the General Manager John Aspin had lost out in a bid to control the Company to Mitch MacLean by just a hairsbreadth. In fact John thought he had it but one of the shareholders who had promised to support him had a change of heart and he lost out. But don't feel sorry for him because he held a nice sized block of stock which was bought by the winners in the struggle and John went into retirement and the new gang took over.

When I was researching the issue I began to wonder about the constitutional agreement so I went and paid a visit to John to try and get his insight into the situation, and that was when I became aware that John had hired a lawyer and posed a very interesting question to him.

Now here comes some speculation mixed with fact I'll leave to your intuitions to come to your own conclusions. Now to say that John was kindly disposed towards Mitch Maclean was roughly on a par with the liklihood of Hilary Clinton having a chat over a cup of tea with Monica Lewinski.

But John was obviously thinking ahead and maybe he was sitting in his office one day and wondered to himself "now what if somebody built a bridge or a tunnel what would the position of the Northumberland Ferries subsidy be, and incidentally his share values. So he contacted a lawyer and asked him the question, "Joe" he said "if a fixed service came along down at Borden what would the impact of that be on Northumberland's subsidy." Hmm thought Joe good question. Now there was a reason why John went to this particular lawyer, you see this guy was quite brilliant and had written his Masters Thesis on Canadian constitutional law and since this was going to be a constitutional issue John thought " this is my boy".

Now by a quirk of fate Joe turned out to be Joe Ghiz who was practicing with Alan Scales at the time. So Joe set to work and it wasn't long before he cut to the heart of the matter. If a fixed link was built it was reasonable to assume that the federal Government would bring the argument forward that the link met and replaced the conditions of a permanent link to the mainland so the agreement should be declared null and void.

But Joe like any good lawyer said to himself "what about the fate of my client Northumberland Ferries, if the guaranteed subsidy agreement is thrown out." So he pondered the question What about the Northumberland amendment concerning the adjunct service, will it be scrapped or does it form a legal and binding agreement separate from the Borden - Cape Tormentine run.

In effect does the guarantee of a ferry service apply to the addendum to the original agreement, because, if it did then we have a guarantee of a link at Borden and a separate guarantee of a link in the east at Wood Islands. So a legal opinion was delivered that focused on that point. And John knew that if it could be argued and won in a constitutional court it was a separate agreement that it would probably be the only thing that could save Northumberland Ferries in the long term.

I think John was in a position something like this, he hated what had happened with Mitch Maclean, but felt a loyalty towards the Northumberland employees. When I presented him with what I thought could be the answer to the problem he agreed that I was on the right track and then he told me about Joe Ghiz and the work he had done. So I popped the question, did he have a copy of Ghiz's legal opinion and if so could I see it. Now thats when John got uncomfortable, you see if he had a copy would it be ethical to make it available to me, after all it was a confidential document.

"Yes" he said I have a copy, no he said he couldn't show it to me, but felt that if another lawyer were to reseach the question his/her findings would probably bring an interesting turn to the events that were going on.

So thats what it came down to and just to make it clear about the issue I'll spell it out again. If the fixed link went ahead at Borden and the bridge was judged to fill the conditions of the original guarantee then the word fixed link could replace the word ferry. But, what about the addendum concerning the adjunct service, did the fixed link also fulfill the guarantee of service in the East. Does that make it clear, because if it does, then crappola to the ferry service or death by a thousand cuts.

But if it didn't then the guarantee of continued service at Wood Island was guaranteed.

So there we sit, what John had been concerned about was about to take place. It was a high stakes game for the Island because the prospect of a fixed link was widely agreed upon as being an enormous economic boon to the Island. Traffic and tourism would increase, money would flow jobs would be created, wow the land of milk and honey was just around the corner.

And just what could be expected happened, the Minister of Transport decreed that as a condition of the Federal Government's approval the constitutional guarantee of perpetual ferry service would be thrown into the sea of forgetfullness because the link now met the conditions.

Now my own personal opinion is that, lawyers on the Federal side had looked deep into the agreement as it had been amended and were uncomfortable with what they found about the adjunct agreement. Incidentally this is a public document and anyone interested enough can get a copy and you can form your own opinion.

But I thought old Dave Stewart has outfoxed them, and by having the agreement apply to the eastern end of the Island as a separate guarantee there was nothing to worry about.

But as time passed it became clear to me that someone was dropping the ball, why wasn't Northumberland Ferries waving its agreement and why was there a crescendo of silence from the politicians from Kings County. Then it struck me, these fucking guys haven't caught on. So I thought Ill let them in on a little secret. I made a few phone calls and set up meetings with the Kings County Champions, the guys elected to take care of business for us.

Well was I in for a shock, it quickly became obvious that Lawrence MacAulay and his aids wanted no part of this. Now if you knew Lawrence back then you knew that he would no more get caught up in trying explain or defend a complex position than jump in front of a truck. Plus I don't think Lawrence could see past the end of the week. So no luck there.

But the Provincial representatives would surely see the light, so armed with my story I headed off to give them a way to save the day, was I in for a surprise. The reaction was approximately the same if I would have come bearing shit on a stick. The Liberal party was in a period of transition with Joe bolting to the safety of a position as Dean of Law at Dalhousie and every Liberal politician in the Province except Peter Doucette trying to keep in the good graces of Katherine the Klutz and Katie sure as hell wasn't going to put the golden goose at risk by putting up a fight for little old Eastern PEI and Mitch Macleans navy. And she would surely have looked with disfavour on anybody in the caucus trying to upset her little applecart.

So I got told to back off and not meddle with big boys business and the next thing you know the dirty deed was done. End of story, except its not the end quite yet, but its coming. The service got cut back, remember the thousand cuts, well here it is 2005 and the game is still going on, little by little. From 4 boats to 2, and stay tuned cause next theres just going to be one. just to 1 and with a shortened season. And wait until 2010 when the next agreement comes due, get ready for June to September with reduced sailings and by about 2015 the coffin will just about be ready to sent to the bottom of Davey Jones locker.

Now understanding that, doesn't it piss you off that it went down without so much as a peep. Imagine what would have happened if one or all of our Liberal members from Kings County had stood up and been counted, but all they could think about was there own skins. Its funny how your judgement can be blurred when all you can think about is your own interests. There used to be a saying on NBC Wonderful World of Sports " snatching defeat from the jaws of victory". After all these birds were toasted anyway and Pat Binns was warming up the griddle.

Now boys and girls its time to turn out the lights and go to sleep and I'll tell you another bedtime story tomorrow.