Why no one was shocked that Eddie Joyce told a cabinet colleague to hire a friend
We prepared a bit of a history lesson about an old political culture
There's a famous scene in the movie Casablanca, when Rick, Humphrey Bogart's grizzled club owner, is told that he is being shut down. The official, Renault, blows a whistle and tells him, "I am shocked — shocked! — to find that gambling is going on here."
Renault orders everyone out — a split second after he is handed his nightly winnings.
In the cynical world of politics, we are shocked — shocked! — all the time.
Or … not so much.
Take Eddie Joyce, and the report that came out last week about his interactions with former cabinet colleague Sherry Gambin-Walsh.
The nub of the investigation revealed that Joyce had been lobbying Gambin-Walsh to arrange to have a friend hired for an occupational health and safety job on the west coast.
According to the report, Gambin-Walsh had felt that her relationship with Joyce was "already dysfunctional" by the time he sent her an email on a Sunday afternoon with a simple instruction: to call him.
Joyce didn't put his request in writing; she had to call him for him to tell her what to do. Gambin-Walsh, who was responsible for Service NL, was not interested in what he had to say, but he pressed on — with playbook directions of how government jobs can be handed out.
Here's the relevant excerpt from the report:
I told Minister Joyce that the applicant was not qualified for the position. Minister Joyce was not happy about this and he was very persistent by saying go back and tell him that's who you want, yes you can do that, you're the Minister.
Gambin-Walsh did indeed talk to her deputy minister, who reported back that Joyce's friend met only two of the six requirements for the job.
To say that relations between the two got worse would be an understatement.
A quick history lesson
It might be useful to look at some context here.
Eddie Joyce was first elected in 1989, the year that Clyde Wells led the Liberals out of Opposition and into power. As a famous footnote, Wells lost his own race in Humber East against Tory minister Lynn Verge … leading Joyce to resign his Bay of Islands seat just a day into MHAhood, so that Wells could take his place in the legislature.
It was a sacrifice that the Liberals never forgot.
There's another narrative from that time that's worth remembering. In May 1991, Liberal heavyweight John Efford was forced out of cabinet — over his role in a scandal over political hiring. [I reported on this at the time for the long-defunct Sunday Express.]
A volunteer who had worked on Efford's campaigns had been leaked questions, in advance, for a job interview managed through the Public Service Commission. The worker revealed that fact to another member of a workers' compensation review panel, who in turn took the information to Efford, then the minister of social services.
To that official's surprise, Efford didn't take the matter seriously.
Efford didn't have anything to do with leaking the questions — the finger of blame fell to his executive assistant, Roland Butler, and to Beaton Tulk, who had been hired as an assistant deputy minister in Efford's department in the aftermath of losing his own seat in the 1989 election. [Tulk was within his rights to ask for the questions; it was just found to be extraordinarily unusual.]
What burned Clyde Wells was that Efford did not respond appropriately to a complaint.
Efford remained pretty unapologetic about the whole matter. Off the record, some politicians told me that the main thing that went wrong was that it all came to light.
[By the way, none of the repercussions for the people involved were permanent. Efford came back to cabinet in 1993. Roland Butler later succeeded him as MHA. Beaton Tulk became Brian Tobin's anointed choice to serve as premier after he quit, and before the Liberals clashed at a leadership convention in which Roger Grimes bested Efford. Politics, man.]
So, that was the political culture of that era. Nothing, of course, compared to earlier times, when a premier like Joseph R. Smallwood could hire and fire at will.
Eddie Joyce came up through the same system as John Efford and others.
Sherry Gambin-Walsh, it has to be underscored, did not.
In the meantime, we can only wonder how many other weekend conversations between cabinet ministers have taken place, and how many times politicians have told their deputy ministers "that's who I want."
Eddie Joyce, at the moment, isn't going anywhere — in several senses of the phrase. He's not apologizing, and he's also still sitting as an Independent, away from the Liberal caucus.
Sherry Gambin-Walsh is going somewhere, sort of. She revealed this week she'll be spending less time in the House of Assembly, all because of Eddie Joyce.
It's a wrap(per!)
Do you still have Halloween candy in your house? Brave souls, and kudos to you for your willpower.
Perhaps you still have all the plastic in your house still. You certainly wouldn't be alone.
This year, CBC stations in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Gander and Corner Brook did something about just that. They got boxes from a company called Terracycle, and have been collecting exactly this kind of waste.
The boxes aren't cheap: they cost $86 a pop. But John Gaudi of Labrador Morning told me it was something the program wanted to take on as a campaign for all of November.
"We here at Labrador Morning wanted to make a difference," he told me.
"We're asking schools, community groups, individuals to get involved. Not only will you have bragging rights about keeping Halloween trash out of the landfill, you'll have a chance to be featured on CBC for all your recycling efforts — and if that's not sweet enough — we'll even be giving out prizes in December."
Pretty sweet, right?
By the way, if you're wondering what happens to your Kit-Kat wrappers, they all get melted down, turned into pellets and wind up being turned into things like playgrounds and park benches.
There's something to sit and reflect on while you're having a snack — and a good reason to not toss that wrapper into a landfill.
Here's a video the Labrador Morning squad made that explains what they're up to.
It's the weekend. Let's do some reading!
It's been a busy week. Here are some highlights you may have missed.
The impish smile of Tanner Alexander belies what his mom, Wanda Cormier, has come to know in the years since her schizophrenic son grew up. Bernice Hillier's reporting on a mother's plea for help was one of our most widely-read and shared articles this week.
No one seemed the slightest bit surprised that Newfoundland and Labrador did not prevail in its bid to have the ruinous 65-year Upper Churchill contract overturned at the Supreme Court of Canada. "The decision is the decision," said Premier Dwight Ball who said he was disappointed … like one would be after paying millions in legal and other fees.
Invoices don't often make the news, but this one was really quite unusual: the mid-December bill that the province's main school board got for … lawn-mowing. It's part of Rob Antle's investigative report.
A startling revelation: self-harm incidents in Newfoundland and Labrador are significantly higher than the national average. In Labrador, it's highest of all.
A question raised at the legislature, and still not answered, is this: who owns the numbered company that bought some land in the White Hills, and then leased it right away to Canopy Growth for its cannabis facility?
We love this character-driven story that brings together an indie musician and the unlikely place he's found a passion: VOWR. Check out Kenney Purchase's story.
On the lighter side …
… don't miss just how creative the students, teachers and staff at one high school in Conception Bay South can get about Halloween.
As the kids might say, can I live!?
By the way, before the memory of Halloween fades away entirely, we'd like to share a good message from a team member that went around the world — several times, at least — this week.
Hi! If a teenager comes trick-or-treating at your door this Halloween, rather than saying, aren't you a little old? Just give them a treat. Stop trying to force them to "grow up." Stop trying to project your irrational discomfort on young people. They're fine. OK thanks.
—@stobincbcStephanie Tobin's advice to cut trick-or-treating teens some slack resonated hugely, with almost 20,000 people retweeting it and more than 90,000 clicking the like button. [Be grateful, older teens with a sweet tooth, you're not in Bathurst, N.B.]
All that activity crashed Twitter on Stephanie's phone, and checking the notifications burned the battery down.
Pretty as a picture
Mark Gray's photos of partridgeberries was so colourful and wonderful, we posted it right away Friday to Instagram. You can check out our feed here.
You can also find Mark's photo, and other wonderful stuff, in our weekly audience gallery. We love getting photos, and we try to keep up with submissions, posting them online, on social media and on Ashley Brauweiler's forecasts on Here & Now. To submit, send the photo, your name and caption information to [email protected]. Thanks!
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