Abstinence or cop out?

Yvonne Jones says Labrador City and Wabush didn't vote against the fly-in/fly-out resolution put to the Combined Councils of Labrador at its Annual General Meeting earlier this month but the word was it was passed unanimously.

The Liberal Opposition leader said no reports she received out of the meeting indicated that either Lab. City's Dick Hepditch or Wabush's Jim Farrell abstained from voting and even if both members of the CCL did abstain, it's not anything to be proud of.

"I look at it this way, when you're looking at issues like this and you are a leader in Labrador, don't sit on the fence; take a position one way or the other," Jones said. "I inquired and I was told the motion passed unanimously with no voting against it. If there was people at the table who abstained, it was certainly not communicated to me." The whole thing strikes her as odd saying, "If they were against it they should have voted against it. But because they didn't vote against it, it passed with the full support of the assembly, that is what I was told."

Jones doesn't buy the reason that both men wanted to bring it back to their respective councils for discussion and she points out a lot of motions were voted on, yet to her understanding this is the only one that was supposedly abstained on.

"Those who sit at the table of the CCL are selected to represent their entire town," she added. "Decisions they make at that meeting are supposed to reflect the views of that community, that is why they are there as a representative."

Jones doesn't quite understand, she says, why Mayor Graham Letto opposes the fly-in/fly-out request when he, though had no voting power, was present at the CCL's AGM and didn't exercise any voice of resistance to it at the time.

"So, if they have an opposing view today, they should made it known at that Annual General Meeting," she said firmly. "I checked with a number of people and neither one of them spoke out against it. I have no time for people who want to be leaders, presume to be leaders, but don't want to take a position on an issue because of the way the public might view it."