Danny "Chavez" Williams Gets It
by C. L. Cook
 As corporations stand bag in hand waiting for governments on both sides of the 49th to deliver tax dollars into their coffers, at least one leader in Canada is calling 'Poor Pilgarlic's' bluff.
Newfoundland premier, Danny Williams responded to timber and resource giant, AbitibiBowater's decision to shut down their Grand Falls-Windsor mill throwing hundreds out of work by introducing legislation to reclaim resource rights granted to the operators of the mill.
More than a century ago, the Grand Falls mill was the price for access to timber and hydro-electric water resources. After changing owners several times over the decades, AbitibiBowater Inc. bought the mill operation and inherited with it the rights granted the original holder. When AbitibiBowater, who are shutting down many of their mill holdings across North America, announced they would shut down Grand Falls too, Williams wasted no time repatriating the resource leases, saying:
"These resources belong to the people of my province and they're
going back to the people of my province."
Imagine that, a government official who remembers the forgotten factor in the democracy equation: The People!
Of course, AbitibiBowater is not about to let poetic justice take the day; they promise to invoke the anti-democratic NAFTA agreement, the first refuge of corporate cry-babies, to take from the people what belongs to them.
Williams was unfazed by the threats, and the suggestion other companies would shy off investing in Newfoundland, saying:
"If a company that came here to do a milling and logging business
decides it's no longer going to do that business, do you think the
province should allow it to leave with the rights to its water and the
rights to the land?"
Judging from the positive call-in radio response to the premier's tough line, and the precipitous dive in AbitibiBowater's stock value, this experience may prove a precedent corporations well-used to pushing the public around would do well to take heed.
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