ST. JOHN'S -- Peter Fenwick, the newly elected leader of the Newfoundland New Democratic Party, says he will focus his attention on curing the province's economic ills and easing unemployment.
But first, Fenwick, a 37-year-old community college political science professor acclaimed Sunday as leader, will have to elect an NDP member to the Legislature.
Although provincial support of the NDP has grown to about 14 percent, the party has never elected a member to the Newfoundland House of Assembly, and Fenwick says he wants to change that.
Fenwick, of Cape St. George, said his party's policy-making efforts would focus on proposals to alleviate Newfoundland's economic woes and its chronic unemployment -- now more than double the national average.
'We have to get somebody in the House. That's our ultimate priority,' Fenwick told the NDP's annual convention.
He declined to speculate on his personal chances of election and said he was more interested in establishing a provincial foothold for the party.
'If I wanted to go into a party that could certainly have got me elected, I would have joined the Liberals five or 10 years ago, when they asked me,' he said.
'We are basically gearing up for what we anticipate to be a provincial election within the next year. We now have a considerable body of policies that address the problems of the province.'
Fenwick, who ran unsuccessfully in one federal and two provincial elections, has been a member of the NDP for three years and chairman of the provincial policy review committee for the past year. He replaced Fones Faour, who said last month he wanted to devote more time to his law career.
Fenwick praised Premier Brian Peckford for his handling of the development of the province's offshore resources.
'I doubt if the NDP could have done any better,' he said. 'But the thing you have to ask is why hasn't he done it with any of the other extractive resource industries.'
Among some of the specific issues Fenwick said he wanted to raise was the impending shutdown of the asbestos mine at Baie Verte on the province's northeast coast.
Fenwick contended that Canadian Johns Manville (CJM), which owns 30 percent of the Baie Verte operation, simply wanted to shut it down to protect the mine it owns in Asbestos, Que., from soft world markets.
He would urge that the province buy out CJM's 30 percent and keep the Baie Verte mine, which employs 600 people.
