That big emerald broach - March 4th

DIARY

Quebec – bastion of Confederation

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          On the subject of government efficiency (no comment required about that phrase) I refer the reader to the many newspaper and other media headlines this winter - that we in New Brunswick pay about 20 cents more per litre for heating oil than people do in other Atlantic provinces. After hearing this for two months, the government sprang into action and commissioned a study.

          Don’t we love studies? It gives those in power a chance to hire political cronies at $500 a day plus expenses and spend some of their allotted office money on impressive looking reports.

          This specific study on the cost of heating oil confirmed that New Brunswickers do indeed pay 20 cents more per litre. (They could have asked me and Flug.) Then the government made a daring recommendation – do another study. They announced that it would be at least a year before the study was complete and the price of heating oil went down. Maybe.

          This reminds me of a certain federal government study in the mid-1990s when half a dozen assistant assistant deputy ministers from the Maritimes travelled to Ottawa once a week, staying in hotels three days a week for six months. They wrote a 500-page report with two possible plans of action on what the government should do about shipping problems in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The minister said thanks for the report, which strongly urged that Canada do Option A rather than B. Then the bureaucrats headed back to their jobs in the Maritimes.

          Three days later, they were somewhat surprised to read that the federal government had trashed their recommendations and had chosen Option B, which they had strongly opposed.

          The reason? Politics. Mustn’t offend Quebec, that bastion of Confederation. Remember, this was the mid-1990s, during one of those ‘neverendums’.          

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This news just came in from Ottawa and Washington, DC: the two governments have just passed a law banning the sale or purchase of jewellery “because it’s silly, useless and wasteful”.

          I was lying in bed at the time, and half-asleep, but I leapt up to grab  all my jewellery to protect it from the Diamond Police. (In fact, I dreamed it all, but I didn’t just say that.) I was halfway to my jewellery box when I remembered I didn’t have a jewellery box because I don’t have any jewellery.

          Apparently I’m an anomaly (although I’ve been called other things). Most people own and wear a plethora of rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants, broaches and similar items. I know one chap who owns a $5000 watch that has to be taken in every five years for servicing at a cost of $500. There are those who might say he’s the one getting serviced, but who am I to say? My own back yard is enough to take care of.

          The reason I arrived at the subject of jewellery was that my Aunt Minerva stopped by for a one-day visit in January and just yesterday left on the Kincardine train for points south. She likes to be back in Gagetown for the spring maple sugar season and salmon run; just thinking about those two events and fiddlehead time is enough to get me drooling, not a good thing to do when one is leaning over a $289 computer keyboard.

          Aunt Minerva likes jewellery. She owns enough of that stuff to finance a small skirmish – like World War II – and I can’t help bugging her about it, although, as you know, I’m usually very tolerant.

          “Auntie,” I said over the lentil soup at supper, “why don’t you sell that big emerald broach – no, not that one, the other one, two broaches to the left – and give the money to the food bank?”

          I miss-timed that question. Lentil soup flew across the table and sprayed the cat, or at least a photo of a cat since I don’t allow them in the house, and we all got a misty feeling. “What! Get rid of my favourite broach? Czar Nicholas III gave that to me in Greece in 1951 and it’s a treasure.”

          “Auntie,” I remonstrated. “You bought that at a yard sale in Wapske, for fifty cents. Why don’t you sell it and add a few hundred more dollars to help out the food bank…and by the way, the last Czar was Nicholas II.”

          Since I was being glared at, I decided it was a good time to visit my athletic club and get some exercise. When I got back from the bar a few hours later Aunt Minerva was quiet, as in asleep, and the broach was absent from her lapel. “She called up the food bank and wanted to donate the broach,” said my wife. “For some reason they said they would rather have food or the cash she could sell the broach for. Little did they know. They might have bought a can of no-name lentil soup.”

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