NDP Leader Earle McCurdy says Premier Dwight Ball and Natural Resources Minister Siobhan Coady have lost the confidence of the people of the province and should resign.
At a time when harsh cutbacks in the budget are hurting people throughout the province, there is widespread public anger about the lavish severance and other benefits conferred on the former CEO of Nalcor, Ed Martin under an agreement negotiated with Nalcor under the previous PC administration.
Instead of dealing with this matter in a forthright way, McCurdy says, “The Premier and Minister of Natural Resources have engaged in continuing evasion about what they knew and when they knew it.
“People are up in arms that the Premier and his Minister have told so many conflicting stories about what they knew and when they knew it. Their house of cards collapsed with the release yesterday of email correspondence between the former Nalcor Chair and the Premier dating as far back as April 20.”
The outcry about whether the premier has misled the House and the general public has dominated Question Period and news headlines for almost two weeks. Cabinet ministers are on the defensive, and members of the public are calling for resignations.
“Even before details of Martin’s severance started to emerge, the government took a spectacular drop in polling numbers for breaking every major promise they made in last fall’s election campaign,” McCurdy said.
“Trust once lost is hard to regain. And the Liberals have completely and utterly lost the trust of the people of the province.”
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