It is an iron cold, late January afternoon in Newfoundland and Labrador’s capital city, where the fog perches like an omen over one of Canada’s most outspoken political leaders. Premier Danny Williams has spent the better part of the morning reviewing news reports about a revised deal to sell most of New Brunswick’s power generating assets to Quebec by March 31 in return for cheap hydro-electric energy. The more he reads, the more concerned he becomes, now drumming out his objections over the phone. “When I talked to New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham last Sunday,” he says, “he gave me a quick overview of this new deal. He told me that he was going to get his power rate agreement, sell some of his generation capacity, and retain his transmission and distribution system. Of course, I haven’t seen the actual agreement. And the devil is in the details. But…”

Williams pauses as the speaker-linkup crackles. “But,” he continues, “at no time during that conversation was there any mention of transferring New Brunswick’s transmission rights to Quebec. And from what I read in the newspapers, this seems to be the case. From what I read, Hydro-Quebec will actually control 97 per cent of New Brunswick’s transmission lines once this deal goes through.”

In fact, it’s hard to discern what worries Williams most about the current circumstance. Is it that Graham may have withheld certain crucial elements of the deal with Quebec in order to secure his titular support? Or is it that New Brunswick’s premier had the temerity to make an arrangement with a jurisdiction whose dominance over a key Maritime transmission system could ruin, or at least savagely curtail, Newfoundland and Labrador’s access to lucrative energy markets in the American Northeast? At this point, there may not be much difference.

Since news of a tentative understanding between New Brunswick and Quebec broke like a tidal wave over the Atlantic region last fall, Williams has led a loud and ready charge against any arrangement that would transfer ownership of the former’s power transmission infrastructure to the latter. At that time, the deal would, indeed, have sold nearly all of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec: generating stations, including the Point Lepreau nuclear plant, distribution cables, transformers, poles, wires. But after a display of popular outrage rarely seen in New Brunswick (which was at least partly inspired by Williams’ public speeches and media interviews), with opponents from almost every quarter screaming about lost “energy sovereignty” and “jurisdictional poaching” of taxpayer-owned assets, Graham backtracked. In January, he announced an amended version that would see the province keep its transmission capacity. And he placed a call to Williams to both assuage his concerns and soothe his savage breast.

But somehow during that discussion, the phrase “priority access”, with respect to Hydro-Quebec’s advantageous relationship with New Brunswick’s transmission system throughout the province and, crucially, across the border and into Maine was never fully plumbed for meaning.

To Graham, granting priority access to Quebec is a mere technicality; nothing for Newfoundland and Labrador to worry about. For Williams, however, it is a serious mistake. And from his St. John’s office, he makes his point articulately, if bluntly.

“What really strikes home to me is Quebec Premier Jean Charest coming out now and saying this revised deal is actually better than the first one for his province,” he observes. “Coincidentally, Hydro-Quebec president Thierry Vandal says that Hydro-Quebec will now hold a guaranteed, unlimited access to distribution in New Brunswick. So, in essence, they will now control transmission rights in that province without actually having to buy the lines, which were the terms of the original deal. Does this make any sense whatsoever?”

To hear Williams vent spleen on what might have been, in another time and at another place, a minor scuffle among eastern premiers, you’d think civilization teeters at the precipice. In fact, you’d not be entirely wrong.

Over the past few years, nothing has become more crucial to the steady progress of the Atlantic Provinces, or a more hotly debated issue, than energy self-sufficiency. Williams’ objections to both the current and original deals with Quebec are rooted in his deep mistrust of it and its energy mandarins over a power purchase agreement signed in 1969. Not scheduled to grandfather until 2041, the deal sees Newfoundland and Labrador’s Upper Churchill hydroelectricity sold to La belle province at bargain basement prices, costing the former billions of dollars off current market prices. Exacerbating this is what he describes as that jurisdiction’s obstructionist, intractable attitude toward developing the 2,800 megawatts of sustainable, continuous, environmentally friendly hydroelectric power from the Lower Churchill River. The proposed development has stalled over Quebec’s apparent unwillingness to negotiate an agreement to carry this Newfoundland energy, bound for Ontario and American markets, through its lines. How can New Brunswick, he wonders, reasonably expect any better treatment?