Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador

Um, and- You know, I thought it was one of my better ones, right? I, I made it, you know, talked about policy, talked about where we needed to go, you know.

I, I took a few little, uh, jabs at the, the Liberals' policy and a few things like this.

I made it fun.

I talked about my colleagues.

I use some of those scenarios to make things, uh, flow well.

Uh, you know, I still have great rapport with all the people that I served with, you know, former ones who are retired and the present, uh, caucus members now, particularly the ones that I serve with, uh, in the House of Assembly

AssemblyWhat was the hardest time you had as leader keeping the caucus together? You recall, like, a particular issue or controversy or, uh, even something to decide whether or not to go after the Liberals about that you just found it really, really tough to get everybody on the same page?

Uh, there was, uh, a couple of things over the years, a couple of policy changes that we weren't quite sure we were gonna support.

And I think that's probably one that everyone in Newfoundland or anyone in Canada is really familiar with.

You know, probably three or four weekends ago, I saw a post by the Liberal Party on their social media.

It was a post by Jamie Corrab.

calling out the waste of the way from government doing an RFP for the refurbishment of Sinclair's.

Yes.

So I think the liberals are in no position to lecture anybody.

And in terms of the hypocrisy of government, I mean, if you look at the MOU, you don't have to look any further, right? Last year, we were being force-fed an MOU by the Liberal government at the time.

The Wakeham opposition was clamoring for a third-party assessment, said it was vital we had it.

Okay, Dave, let's take our first break of the morning.

Come back with the leader of the official opposition, uh, the Liberal member for Windsor Lake, John Hogan, right after the break.

And welcome back to the show.

Let's continue along to, uh, as promised, line number eight and the leader of the official opposition.

At least there are committees there.

I, I'm going to say it.

I mean, you know, the Liberals were in power for a good 10 years before that, and over that time, um, and, and not all just the government's doing.

We know that it's the system.

You see bits of it up on our website.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, what's really fascinating to me is Narrative point out, Narrative Research, respected polling firm, the Liberals are ahead of the PCs.

This is polling data from September.

The Liberals are ahead of the PCs.

Only 238 sample, though that can be a good sample in Newfoundland.

Just depends.

Again, not questioning Narrative's work.

What's fascinating, so the Liberals at 27, as I said.

We'll get into all of that in a few minutes with our friend, Joel-Denis Bellavance.

We're also going to talk to, uh, John Hogan, the leader of the opposition and the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador's leader, uh, about his reaction to the election, and in particular, uh, what it means both to the Churchill Falls, current Churchill Falls arrangement, and what it might mean, uh, for national unity.

We'll talk to John Hogan about that.

We'll take a break at about 4:30 and talk a little bit of hockey.

It is wild that no party got over 30% of the vote.

You flagged that last week.

The PQ in winning only got 28% of the vote, the Liberals 24, and the, uh, Quebec Conservatives 21.

Even the CAQ, who didn't get a seat, and that's the other thing, only got 13.

And it's an interesting dynamic in Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

Andrew knows this, but I've been very publicly supportive of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Party.

I mean, I was on the radio actually defending Jerry Byrne on something right before your last election, who was a colleague of mine in the House of Commons and a friend.

And then obviously we had portfolios across the way as well.

So ultimately, that procurement was cancelled.

What had happened at that point in time was when the new Liberal government took the helm, there was a strong campaign, or they had campaigned strongly on some significant infrastructure projects, first being, or one of them being, the completion of the Corner Brook Hospital.

That had a long and storied history going back to the Danny Williams government in terms of starts and fall starts and restarts.

And so the Liberal government had campaigned in 2015 on delivering on that project.

And they had also campaigned on the delivery of a new mental health and addictions facility in St. John's to replace the Waterford facility.

when they formed government, when they came to realize that the planning and the budget wasn't as far advanced internally as I guess they would have thought.

You know, we don't sell it directly to the U.S., to those two lines, to New York or anywhere else or Ontario or Massachusetts.

Yeah, well, I mean, when we had the Liberal government in there, they were talking almost the same thing, but they were willing to, any increases that Quebec would have, they would have to pass them on, or 50% of it, to Newfoundland and Labrador.

No increases that Quebec has.

It doesn't go anywhere.

And when I talk about 8.5%, I thought initially you were talking about the 6.5, 3.5 billion split, which gives you an eye as to proportionality and the investment that Hydro-Quebec is putting into this as opposed to the investment we are putting into it.

Yeah, well, that's the only one way I can say it.

And the leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Hogan, he said it was closer to 1969 than what it is to 2026 and beyond.

And I got to agree with him.