On January 8, your humble e-scribbler sent an e-mail to the natural resources department seeking some clarification of issues related to the Abitibi expropriation in December.
One of the questions sought clarification of the expropriated hydro assets:
5. The legislation is explicit in section 5 in that the water rights, land and assets of both Star Lake and Exploits River partnership are forfeit to the Crown. Section 7 voids all the agreements and licenses associated with those projects.
At the same time, the Premier indicated in the scrum outside the House that Fortis, for instance, would continue to "maintain ownership".
Those two things can't exist in the same space. If the Crown has expropriated the assets of the projects, the former proponents can't still have ownership of those assets.
Are you able to clarify this for me: Who owns the expropriated assets - dams, generation equipment, transmission facilities etc? A written statement is fine or if there is someone I could speak with, then I am at your disposal.
The response – received yesterday – was that the department would offer no comment beyond what was in the public domain already since compensation discussions are outstanding.
Nothing.
Zip.
Zilch.
So who is the government in compensation discussions with? went the reply.
No further comment beyond what is the public domain came the response.
Fascinating.
Confusion is preferable to information.
And…
Denying comment because of “outstanding” compensation talks isn’t comment – now we know there are outstanding talks – but actually telling the public if talks are underway, who is party to the talks and all the other stuff that logically flows from the fact that you just confirmed talks exist or are at least “outstanding” is comment…
and is therefore verboten.
Surely the parties to the talks know they are talking or going to talk.
So finding out that they are in talks wouldn’t come as a surprise to them nor would it materially affect the talks to say something even as ambiguous as “the companies subject to the expropriation” when asking who was talking or with whom talks were outstanding.
Surely the parties to the talks – whoever they might be – know the issues well enough such that clarifying the discrepancy noted in question five wouldn’t actually affect the compensation talks. For instance, if Fortis, Sun Life and others actually still do own stuff supposedly expropriated – as the Premier himself said - then they wouldn’t be party to the compensation talks because there’d be nothing to compensate them for.
And just to give a sense of how straightforward the questions are, here are a couple of others the government won’t comment on because of the outstanding talks:
6. Bill 75 does allow cabinet to enter into arrangements (permissions and licenses) for the use of the assets. Has this taken place? If yes, what are the arrangements, with whom etc, for what term etc?
7. Under section 10(2), persons affected by the expropriation of Schedule C assets are entitled to compensation in a manner determined by the LG in Council:
- Has the provincial government received representation from any parties for compensation under this section?
- If so, who are the parties?
- Has the LG in C determined a manner for compensating parties affected by the hydro expropriations?
Factual questions about the process can’t be answered because the process exists.
And a government that prides itself on being open, transparent and accountable prefers confusion to factual information about a major public issue.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
-srbp-
2 comments:
Believe me I am not speaking for the people in NR, or more specifically the 8th floor, but I assume that the messenger was the reason for not supplying the answers to the questions posed.
While the answers to the questions are worthy and necessary for public discourse the truth of the matter is that they feel no obligation to answer the humble emailer's querries. Sad but true.
Further, the SRBP has not been a water cooler favorite in East Block and if anything, you are likened to a stubborn house fly buzzing around the room. My guess is that when officials see your email addey in their in box it is shelved and later sent to the thumbs on the 8th and 10 th floors.
Should they answer legitimate questions from intersted and probbing citizens?...absolutely. Do they have to provide indepth and succinct reponses?....no they don't.
If one goes through the regular protocols of Access to Info...well, that's another story.
If anything this refence to the fact that legitimate questions are not forth coming, is probaly more pertinent that the answers to the questions. One would assume that if they are important then the "main stream" media will bring it up. With that said, the main stream media are reluctant in bringing something forward that has not been "hatched" as original in their morning story board meetings.
In this case Ed, the questions that you pose, or will pose to gov't, are not taken seriously. I would imagine that you realize this, and that your intentions are to intice other "messengers" to bring forward the same questions.
Maybe on day I could be a messenger and start my own blog....
Anthony Roy
Anthony:
I harbour no illusions but the fact is that over the past five years many of my e-mails like this one have been handled straight forwardly.
There was one occasion last year when I was told things that were contrary both to policy and the statute but that sort of unprofessional nonsense has actually be the exception rather than the rule.
In this case, I don't think the questioner caused the problem. I can say that since the Telly asked about Dunderdale's trip to Ottawa and got exactly the same sort of non-response I got to the Abitibi questions.
Talk to reporters and you will find a similar pattern on non-responsiveness to questions that are legitimate but which - for some inexplicable reason - cause some discomfort.
When one takes the only legal recourse left, like say though ATIPPA, consider that Mr. Bartlett at the Telly got a phone call directly from the 8th wondering why he would go that route to obtain information.
There's a bit more to the pattern than just shagging me over.
The walls are gwoing higher for everybody.
As for Bond Papers, my traffic software tells me that plenty of gov.nl.ca addys read it regularly. One has been a lurker 24/7 for years. I even have anecdotal accounts of people on the Hill discovering stuff from this space they didn't know about the very government they work for.
And if nothing else, think "masters of our domain".
Where did you see that before it turned up in the budget speech last year?
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