Against the Tide: Battling for Economic Renewal in Newfoundland and Labrador

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

In 1989, the incoming Liberal government led by Premier Clyde Wells
fulfilled its election promise and appointed an economic recovery team
to examine Newfoundland’s chronic economic problems and high
unemployment rate. The result was the Economic Recovery Commission (ERC)
headed by the former chair of a provincial Royal Commission on
Employment and Unemployment, whose 1986 report favored a planned and
integrated approach to economic development. Until it was disbanded in
1996, the ERC—through its various studies and reports—advocated
regional economic development and the establishment of a knowledge-based
economy, a marked shift from the past emphasis on large
resource-development projects.

The ERC’s chair was Memorial University sociologist Doug House.
Against the Tide is his explanation of why the ERC failed to achieve
some of its goals, even if the government that later disbanded it
adopted many of the ERC’s programs and policies as its own. House
blames an entrenched senior service most concerned with holding power
and influence for undermining the ERC’s work. He names names—civil
servants whose outlook was at odds with the integrated approach to
economic development. Yet it is unlikely that any elected government
would have given the ERC, an appointed public body, the unfettered
administrative freedom and power that House maintains was vital to the
“creativity, taking risks, front-line decision-making” authority
that was the ERC’s “currency of trade.” In that regard, the senior
civil service probably worked as a check on the ERC’s work and
enthusiasm.

For anyone interested in the inner workings of modern government,
House’s book is a wonderful introduction.