What is the purpose of a resource?

Gawd knows I am no favorite of the oil companies, but...

From the CBC archives comes this picture, taken at the Capital Hotel last October, 2006. The picture was taken during a job fair at the hotel.

Some 9000 people showed up looking for prospective employment in Alberta.

While Alberta enjoys having the problem of not enough people to help nurture its resources and help bring them to market, here the problem is the opposite-we have the resources, but not enough of an ability to realize what the purpose of those resources are.

We don't have the courage to sign a deal that means more than just to the provincial treasury.

The picture itself has to ask the question, if you live here in Newfoundland and Labrador, exactly what is the purpose of a resource?

If then, the purpose of a resource is to make things better in your own neck of the woods, then why can't the province get it right? If we can't USE a resource to put our own people to work, then, why do we have them?

The purpose of a resource is to help nurture your own people so they can create an environment where they can stay, have some kind of hope that they can put down roots, to carry out what we have been trying to do for years:

Survive!

If we are so hell-bent on doing what is right for the province, why can't we reach a consensus with those who are to develop those same resources to help us survive in this place?

I don't like the fact that someone can purport to be "doing the right thing" when I see line-ups of people looking for opportunity elsewhere from this land. I don't like the fact that our best resource-OUR PEOPLE- are being exported "raw" to places where they'll be a number and not a name.

It's here that the people of this land want to stay.

To you in the upper echelon I do have to say:

The purpose of a resource, is to keep your most important resource-your people-here.

Exactly how bad is the Hebron-Ben Nevis deal, that we haven't been shown the details of what has been negotiated for before talks broke off? How bad off does the government treasury have to be before the government realizes it has done irreparable damage to it's own people for which their resources have been meant for?

Does the government forget that, with out-migration comes a lack of youth? That in turn means an older population for which they'll be spending millions for homecare when they get older because their own children would have planted roots in a far away land years before?

Does the government understand the implications for which it has broken off negotiations?

Really!...

The words of a Stan Rogers song come to mind here:

"So, bid farewell to the eastern town you never more will see...

There's self respect and a steady check in this refinery.

You will miss the green and the woods and streams and the dust

will fill your nose.

But you'll be free, and just like me, an idiot I suppose..."

Now he's off to Fort McMurray to check on the kids...

I'm sure they're doing just fine.

Maybe they might have phoned you from the 403 or 780 area code already

to tell you so...