From the CBC today:

Very good news! Many agree that the tone of Parliament has become to avoid more drama and get back to business. This tone, if accurate, is greasing the passage for the final deliberations around the Accord. Certainly, the great job of members of this community to continue to email and fax the Finance Committee and others have contributed to the revitalized “get back to work” mantra of Ottawa legislators.

Hill Times Article

CBC Article

The Finance Committee’s approval of this bill effectively pushes the Atlantic Accord legislation through to the next stage of the Parliamentary process. Seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight emails to the collective group of Finance Committee members — several of whom responded to the pressure with a form-letter thank-you notes, and a couple who wrote with dismay “Who is telling you to send letters??” If you are one of the 500 Fair Deal members who were randomly contacted to participate in this push, thanks! If you just showed up and sent the letter — there are more than a few — thanks!

Just a quick update: my schedule has involved lots of work travel — incidentally to the motherland of Canada but not to NL — and thus the sporadic blog entries. Let’s see where the next hurdle lies for the budget and the Accord legislation.

I’ve been preoccupied with real life goings-on, but two things happened this week on the Fair Deal website that I want to make a note of:

1/ We breached 100,000 letters delivered to Ottawa legislators. More specifically, at the time of this posting 102,499 letters have been delivered since Boxing Day, December 26th of 2004. This is a big number, and if I were an elected official, I’d look at this as a serious indication of the will of many in the province to cast their future votes in direct response to the fate of the Accord. Not everyone is online in Newfoundland and Labrador (the figure is at about 60%), and not all those who are online are moved to send a political letter, but this is a very real percentage that the Liberal MPs, the Conservative MPs and the NDP should be more than mindful of. If the Accord languishes due to party politics and either party is perceived to be the primary culprit, that party will lose serious support in this part of Canada.

2/ Earlier this week I sent an email to 500 randomly selected Fair Deal activists and asked them to send a letter to the Finance Committee as they considered the budget and the Atlantic Accord. At the time of posting, the participation rate of this group is 79 percent — so far.

This number is interesting because it shows that Fair Deal activists are still deeply committed to the Accord passage, but it also illuminates another fact that’s easy to lose sight of on a blog-oriented site: almost none of the 500 activists this week commented on the blog or sent me a personal email. They are what I would call a perfect example of “The Silent Majority".

While the blog-commenters on Fair Deal and the blog-writers of Canadian politics are squeaking loudly on their soapboxes, it is The Silent Majority of several thousand Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and Canadians who have sent all these letters. It is The Silent Majority that are sick and tired of party allegiance over common sense governance. It is The Silent Majority that would like to see the Accord legislation made a reality before the summer break.

It is The Silent Majority that will decide the outcome of the next election.

And so: a big thank-you to The Silent Majority from the Fair Deal campaign. Without your participation we would never have reached 100,000 letters, and even though it might seem that a few voices dominate the web, we are just the extroverts in the room demanding all the attention. It’s The Silent Majority who deserve all the credit — and who most of the time, define the right path.

Today the Fair Deal website promoted a new letter-writing action: contact members of the Finance Committee who are currently considering the budget and the Atlantic Accord legislation. This call to action only went to 500 randomly selected members of the Fair Deal community. Why only 500? Because during the coming days and weeks, it might be important to sustain pressure on the Committee to act expeditiously. And as I said in a previous post, inundating elected officials with an “avalanche of email” isn’t always the best tactic.

So far, these 500 Fair Deal supporters have written over 3700 letters to the Finance Committee as a whole (10:00 pm 06/01). If you are a Fair Deal supporter who didn’t receive the letter today but would like to contact the committee, please do so here.

Thanks to all who have taken the action! The participation has been great today, and I believe ultimately effective. If any of you hear back from the offices of committee members, please let us know.

This week the Atlantic Accord is being considered by the Finance Committee. Consisting of twelve MPs from across the four major parties (5 Liberals, 4 Conservatives, 2 Bloc Québécois, 1 NDP), the Finance Committee has a difficult challenge: pass the budget and therefore the Atlantic Accord before the June 23rd summer break.

If the House closes for the summer and the Accord is not passed, this lingering piece of legislation that we have fought so hard for is delayed until the fall, and possibly another election cycle. This isn’t a risk that I want to take; I’d rather see the Accord made law as soon as possible, and not used as a bargaining chip amongst the competing parties.

To get through this stage, members from all parties are going to have to work together and put effective governance before party ambition. The Conservatives will have to decide whether to keep pushing for the fall of the Liberal government, while the Liberals will have to decide to step up and keep their promises.

What’s the Strategy? Inundating legislators with thousands of emails isn’t always the best strategy. That’s why I’m staggering this call to action over a period of days. Some of you may have arrived here because you saw an email from me today. Others might get an email tomorrow. By all means, if you are a visitor to the site but haven’t received the call to action, don’t go away! We need everybody to take action.

Send a Letter to the Finance Committee today, asking them to Speed Up the Deal.

For more background on the Atlantic Accord status, read this article from the Hill Times.