NJN Network

Our correspondent dishes more on Minister Carolyn Bertram. Read on…

Mme la Ministre won’t listen

Par l’Acadienne, special to NJN Network, January 27th, 2009

The list of people Minister Carolyn Bertram refuses to meet or to return calls from grows daily. It has become a badge of honour and people exchange information about being on it. The No-Call list is almost as exciting as comparing notes on the cost of wining and dining the minister in order for her expenses to look modest. The No-Call List is composed of anyone who disagrees with her or might. That includes most members of the francophone community, a large part of the heritage lobby and a big chunk of the sports community. She has a reputation for blowing off meetings – due to sudden onset illnesses – with those on the No-Call list.

Bertram made it clear she is not interested in the advice of officials. Their job is to make her look good while she makes decisions based on her own deep understanding of the issues and opinion of what is right for the community. Her arbitrary decisions are not to be challenged or even discussed. Sentences such as “The Minister refused to meet the Executive Director to discuss…” are beginning to appear in the minutes of francophone and heritage organizations.

Bertram has lost her top francophone bureaucrat. Highly respected in the Acadian and francophone communities, he found the situation intolerable. The whole strategy which saw the Liberals pick up not just Evangeline but crucial votes in a number of Charlottetown seats lies exposed as a hollow sham. The Saint Thomas Aquinas Society (the spokes body for the Island’s francophones) knows doors that were promised to be wide open are – in fact – tightly shut.

Ironically, the Binns government never hid its hostility on the language agenda, yet on its watch French school-community centres were built in Summerside and Deblois. Now the Ghiz government is blocking the community centre component of the new Rustico school and didn’t even have the courage to announce the fact. They merely didn’t refer to it at all when they announced the school.

The Francophone community centre would not be offering any of the services presently provided by the Lions Club, but would be an added plus including dedicated office facilities for Francophone community organisations. We are also looking at two different clienteles here and I’m sure the community would be quite prepared to give the Lions a reasonable non-compete agreement.

The feds are on standby to receive the request and it is they who actually pay. So Bertram’s hostility is actually costing the province “free” new federal dollars and tax revenues on the build.

The good folks of Rustico are still trying to square Carolyn’s deep hostility to a centre scolaire-communautaire in Rustico with her previous strong public support for them as crucial to the Acadian and francophone community, as in a passionate speech delivered on the occasion of the celebration of the August 15th Fête nationale des Acadiens at Port Lajoye just this past summer.

What is worse, Bertram is trying to hide behind the hapless and uncomfortable education minister and the fiction of a vote by Executive Council. The killing off of Rustico by Carolyn’s implacable hostility was known in both government and the community well before the rubber stamp of an Executive Council vote. The fig leaves are falling away and the minister is revealed as damned by her own words. Much as she tries to shift the blame, the spotlight returns to her.

It is understandable that Ghiz tolerates the nonsense. He is known to regard the promises to the Acadians as an amusing joke, never meant to be taken seriously by those who understand and share his government’s real priorities. Whether Ghiz will be so sanguine when faced with a Charter challenge is perhaps another matter.

There is deep anger building that the Minister plans to visit a small village in Normandy in June to commemorate PEI Acadian soldiers who fought to liberate the home of their forefathers. Island Acadians who lost family on the beaches and in the bocage of Normandy feel they will be poorly represented by a minister who is betraying the Charter Rights of Acadians today – rights their grandparents fought to establish and preserve.

Many are asking where Rob Vessey (MLA for the neighbouring District) and Sonny Gallant (Evangeline MLA) stand on this. Perhaps they could comment?