DIARY
What
if the Hartland-PQ situation were reversed?
by
Robert LaFrance
One of the ‘trending’ news stories
that have sent New Brunswickers to the cursing pit has been the one about a
Hartland company, Craig Manufacturing, losing out to a Quebec company on a bid
to supply D.O.T. with half a million dollars worth of snowploughs and other
equipment. The difference between the Quebec bid and the Craig bid was $1600. I spill more than that during the average evening at the club.
We may not have 20-20 vision in all
things, but I suspect there has been some dirty work going on, some
behind-the-scenes manoeuvring between the Quebec company and the FIFA – er, I
mean NB – civil servants. I would be quite interested to know who gave the
final okay for that contract to go outside New Brunswick when we are hurting
for jobs and bleeding for citizens to stay in our province.
We wonder, when that final decision
was made, about the condition of the brain of the NB politician who finally
said: “Yeah, let’s give all that work to a Quebec company.” As we all know,
just about any tender offer contains the phrase “Lowest bid not necessarily
accepted.”
Here’s the kicker: Let us try and
imagine if the scenario were reversed. Quebec D.O.T. put out a tender for
making ploughs, etc. and a New Brunswick company won the bid by $1600 (or by
$100,000 for that matter) over a company in, let’s say, Lac St. Jean, PQ.
Would there be one snowball’s chance
in hell that the Quebec government would choose the bid from New Brunswick? Not
one. Such is life in our part of the world.
(Note: Although the province has since cancelled the contract, we can be sure
that the Quebec company and Quebeckers in general will not 'prendre position
couchée' - take it lying down.)
************************
Other comments: A gent from
Perth-Andover was telling me the other day that people are having a hard time
defining the word ‘handyman’ as it appears on his truck. I’m not going to
mention his name, but Perry was quite frustrated that people don’t realize that
a ‘handyman’ is ready, willing and able to do any kind of (legal) work
from lawn mowing to shingling to repair work all over the place.
I have put in a formal complaint to
the province and am considering a court action to stop a sexist practice that
male drivers are subjected to all over this province. I refer to the graphic
signs picturing moose that are likely to cross the road at any time. The moose
drawings invariably have antlers, and there is the sexist part. Know any female
moose with antlers?
Going back a day or two, I must say that the only
thing I remember from my childhood is that I don’t remember a thing about it. I
get a great kick (sometimes literally) when someone tells an involved tale
about some event in his or her childhood, and then someone else who grew up
with him or her says: “I don’t remember it that way at all.” In other words,
we’re all liars when we talk about things we used to do. One fellow I knew – he
was about 20 years older than I – used to tell stories constantly and he was
always the hero of his own yarn. He led the D-day invasion onto the beach even
though he had three broken legs.
Somebody told me last week that he had thrown out
two dozens eggs because they were slightly past their expiry date. We’re talking
$3 or so per dozen. When I was a kid we threw out an egg when, after we cracked
it, the smell would knock a cat off a gut-wagon – and that is nothing to sneeze
at. People nowadays are very paranoid about ‘best-before’ dates as if, at
midnight on the final date, the food suddenly explodes into a fine mist that
will blow off your ear. I call that smell ‘PC fever’. Nothing political; I
refer to the day about 1975 when I drove out to Port Colbourne (PC), Ontario,
and found that, days earlier, a ship had dropped some toxic chemicals into Lake
Ontario at that point and killed all the fish. I was barely able to drive away,
it smelled that bad. Just think, if the commercials aren’t lying, today we
could merely spray some Lysol into the water and the whole area would be
‘springtime fresh’.
I find I must end this column with a
sad report. A lady in Satret, Inner Mongolia (or Gibraltar, one a them places)
has succumbed to a condition called Claditis Syndrome. She clad her foot in
size four shoes although her feet were size nine. Apparently all the blood that
was supposed to flow through her feet couldn’t get there and returned to her
brain, which then exploded. Of course I could be lying, but I am trying to
illustrate the Mark Twain comment that women buy shoes for their eyes, not
their feet.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment