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And now for the $200-million question.

The election is over. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have a minority government that essentially needs support from at least one opposition party to pass legislation. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Liberal government is depending on Ottawa to come up with $200 million a year — every year — to keep domestic electricity prices from shooting up to an unsustainable level as a result of the overbudget and off-schedule hydroelectric project at Muskrat Falls.

With the new reality in Ottawa, how likely is it that the federal Liberals can come up with what provincial Liberals in this province are depending on?

And more to the point, where do they get the 14 opposition votes they’d need to deliver millions in “sorry you screwed things up” cash?

To start off, the move is likely to be extremely unpopular in at least two opposition camps: neither the Tories nor the Bloc Québécois are likely to be very keen on the idea. The Conservatives are likely to be opposed to a federal handout simply on principle.

With the new reality in Ottawa, how likely is it that the federal Liberals can come up with what provincial Liberals in this province are depending on?

Quebec, meanwhile, is also an electricity-selling province, and has generally taken the position that, if anyone gets federal cash, they should, too. (The Quebec government was upset about the original federal loan guarantee for the Muskrat Falls project, arguing it was an unfair subsidy, so you can only imagine how the Bloc would feel about a straight-up cash payout to Newfoundland and Labrador.)

That leaves two options: the Green Party, which might like the idea of supporting hydroelectric power (or not, given the environmental impacts of same) but which has only three seats, or the NDP.

Now, the NDP could certainly find reasons to support a bailout (St. John’s East NDP MP Jack Harris might make a healthy argument for it), but at the same time, the NDP might want some sort of strategic quid pro quo for backing the move, and that might be something the federal Liberals would find unpalatable.

All in all, you could probably argue that delivering on a promise that was never actually made — former Finance minister Bill Morneau has only made commitments along the lines of meeting with Premier Dwight Ball “in a collaborative fashion so we can address some of the key challenges that people of Newfoundland and Labrador are facing” — puts big federal funding to offset Muskrat Falls costs way, way down the federal government’s to-do list.

Of course, if they have the desire to do it, the federal Liberals could just use the tried-and-true method of stuffing a bailout for this province into an omnibus budget bill, and daring the opposition parties to bring down the government.

On the whole, though, the federal light at the end of the fiscal tunnel just got a little dimmer.

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