I’m normally not one for telling tales out of school. But having sat it on a handful of meetings between Prime Ministers and Premiers, and having regularly set up phone calls for a Prime Minister with several of his provincial counterparts – sometimes out of simple courtesy, sometimes to consult on a national or regional concern, or else to deal with a sudden burning issue – that Newfoundland is the only place in Canada where a telephone call between a Premier and the Prime Minister warrants s a five or six day news story.
People – this does not happen anywhere else. I swear. It’s bizarre.
And it doesn’t matter what party is in power provincially or federally. It could be Liberals and Tories, or Tories and Liberals. We could be in an election year, in the midst of a natural disaster, in the dog days of summer, or in the middle of Christmas holidays, it doesn’t matter. And it usually goes a little something like this:
Day 1 – the suggestion that a phone call should happen, maybe from a reporter or some third party
Day 2 – the insinuation/accusation by political opponent(s) that a phone call isn’t happening because of the shortcomings of one of the people not having the phone call
Day 3 – the editorialization of the necessity of the phone call, were one to occur, and what the lack of one might mean
Day 4 – the strategically offered speculation, usually by an underling, that a phone call may, indeed occur
Day 5 – the glory of declaring that, yes, a phone call is gonna happen
Day 6 – Phone call occurs, followed by the unilateral expression of the accomplishment of the phone call (by only one of the parties)
Day 7 – clean up, perhaps by way of a scrum or a call to Open Line Radio. Alternatively, a bevy of happy press releases or informative stories to move on to another topic
Tomorrow, apparently, Premier Dunderdale will be scrumming to complete this latest cycle of predictable telephonic silliness.
Until next time.
