Liberal minister dismisses call for investigation into Muskrat Falls wetland capping failure

Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Parsons says PC Leader Ches Crosbie's call for the auditor general to investigate why wetland capping at the Muskrat Falls dam never happened is a purely political manuever.

On Tuesday, Crosbie said it was needed to uncover why government failed to follow through on a promise to Indigenous communities to complete capping in the flood zone, a move recommended by an independent committee as a way to potentially prevent methylmercury from entering the food chain.

In response, Parsons said that was Crosbie's way of distracting from the fact that the PC Party instigated the over budget and behind schedule megaproject in the first place.

"If I was the captain of the team that sanctioned Muskrat Falls, I'd want to shift the blame too, because we all know it falls on him and his colleagues, they're the ones that foisted this on us," Parsons told CBC News Friday.

However, the PCs had long been out of power when Nalcor applied to the Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment in the summer of 2018 for a permit to carry out the wetland capping work, which would've involved putting a rock cover over an area of vegetation to be flooded.

Nalcor never gave deadline: Parsons

Parsons said he never heard anything about a deadline from Nalcor until last month, and said a letter the Crown corporation sent last July simply stated "the work is planned for completion by December of 2018."

At the time, Parsons was the minister responsible for the department. 

"That was it. That to me when I read it doesn't even read like a deadline. And the fact remains in the months after that I was there, I never had a single call, email or letter from anybody at Nalcor or anywhere else saying, 'You know, the deadline is approaching, you need to continue working or getting something or making a decision," Parsons said.

"I never heard anything in August, September, October. Never heard a single thing. And all of a sudden there's a deadline passed that nobody seemed to know about."

• Government talked about Muskrat Falls wetland capping months after deadline passed

• Crosbie calls for AG investigation of Muskrat Falls wetland capping failure

Not the department's fault

Internal documents released under access to information laws show that in January 2019, Nalcor's vice-president told the department the wetland work could no longer be carried out, as the construction window had passed.

Premier Dwight Ball has previously laid the blame for missing the deadline on the department's civil servants, but Parsons refused to follow suit.

It was an extremely busy summer.- Andrew Parsons

"They're good, hardworking people," he said.

"In saying that something got missed, I'm not going to blame any single one of them. I just don't think that's the right thing to do."

The work permit application was submitted to the department during a time of political upheaval, as the department's former minister, Eddie Joyce, had been removed from his role, and the Liberal party, due to allegations of bullying.

Parsons also said "It was an extremely busy summer," with issues like the legalization of cannabis looming ahead.

But he maintained that that did not factor into why the permit wasn't issued.

"I don't think one thing was left out because of all the other things going on," he said.

• Too late to mitigate: Inquiry hears how wetland capping no longer a Muskrat option

Parsons said he hopes the results of the Muskrat Falls inquiry will hold some answers as to what happened with the wetland capping issue, and that in the meantime Crosbie is simply trying to "throw mud" at him.

The inquiry's final report is expected by Dec. 31.

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