En fait, il était tellement intraitable qu'il a renié un engagement pris avec le premier ministre Danny Williams, soit de laisser au gouvernement et aux habitants de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador l'intégralité des recettes tirées des ressources extracôtières de la province, sans récupération aux termes du programme de la péréquation.
In fact he was so inflexible that he reneged on a deal he made with Premier Danny Williams to give the government and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador 100% of their resource revenues with no equalization clawback. Those are nice words to say and promises to make during an election, but they are a little harder to follow up, especially when one has built one's career as a finance minister by saying no to the aspirations of Newfoundland and Labrador and other Canadian provinces.