At least two provincial cabinet ministers have been stricken with advanced cases of pinocchiosis politica, a debilitating public policy disorder characterized by incredible or misleading statements, usually by politicians.
Cabinet ministers are particularly susceptible to infection.
Ironically, health minister Ross Wiseman appears to have the most advanced case.
Wiseman, who has been parliamentary secretary to the health minister since 2003 and took on the ministerial job in 2007 called reporters on Wednesday to correct what he felt were media misstatements.
However, when Wiseman met with reporters in a scrum, he experienced a flare-up:
Asked by a reporter about problems at the Waterford, the minister referenced its “facility report.” He later backtracked, saying “there might be” such a report. But he declined comment on the Waterford situation, noting that he had not read it.
Wiseman later acknowledged Eastern Health had completed an evaluation of its facilities, including the Waterford.
The reports - more than one - on all acute care facilities in St. John's, including the province's major health centre, were released later in the day. They chronicle $135 million in capital costs to address critical and potentially critical problems with the physical plant as well as a range of other problems and issues.
They were prepared in 2005 but kept secret until Wednesday.
Government thus far has not addressed the problems in the two year old report, beyond offering $500,000 to study the health infrastructure needs in the capital region.
In its 2007-08 budget submission to government, Eastern Health asked for $93 million to deal with critical or near-critical repairs.
The board received $3.6 million, according to [Keith] Bowden, [Eastern Health’s director of infrastructure support].
In December 2007, finance minister Tom Marshall announced the provincial budget would finish that fiscal year with a capital and current account surplus of more than $880 million, In 2005 - the year the reports were received - the surplus on capital and current account was more than $500 million.
Marshall also appears to afflicted with pinocchiosis politica. On a radio call-in show Thursday, Marshall credited the Auditor General's annual report last year with bringing to his attention the provincial government's debt load and the need for a debt reduction program.
Marshall campaigned in 2003 on the public debt. As a cabinet minister in 2003, he received a full briefing on the provincial government's financial state from government officials. Along with the rest of cabinet, he received a detailed financial analysis by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Both included references to the high level of public debt.
In 2004, Marshall was part of a cabinet that implemented austerity measures based on the financial analysis it received from these two.
There is no known cure for pinocchiosis politica although the symptoms can be reduced through prolonged exposure of politicians to public scrutiny. Sustained questioning in the legislature and elsewhere is the usual course of treatment. In extreme cases, treatment will require a public inquiry.
Effective treatment is often hampered by open resistance by the infected individuals to questions or to public inquiry .
Left untreated, pinocchiosis politica spreads and may result in public policy crises, the destruction of individual political careers and ultimately in political defeat for the party with the greatest number of infected members.
Communities where legislatures are closed for extended periods are ripe for major outbreaks which infect not only cabinet ministers but government backbenchers, other politicians and senior public servants.
Long gaps between general elections and the opening of a legislature also present heightened risk for pinocchiosis politica infections.
The presence of weak, ineffective or fawning news media promotes the development of the disorder and encourages its spread through the repetition of the incredible and/or misleading statements.
Update: Several e-mails today shed new light on pinocchiosis politica.
As the correspondents noted, pinocchiosis politica is the general term for a family of disorders afflicting the political class.
Several specific local variants have been identified:
Pinocchiosis rideoutis has been thus far been identified in only one case. It is an unusual variant in which patients present with obvious confusion about time (today is today, but tomorrow is actually four months from now) and confusion about buildings (a house is referred to as an office), although they appear completely unaware that what they are saying is pure nonsense. P. rideoutis patients sometimes display a preference for unusual headwear, right.
- Pinocchiosis politica hickii seems to occur among politicians from northern climes. P. hickii presents as a belief by the patient that he or she has a signed agreement when in fact the agreements don't exist. P. hickii has also been known to manifest as a compulsion to submit expense claims over and over.
- Pinocchiosis stephenvillia manifests with the patient making promises he or she cannot fulfill. It is named for the Town of Stephenville. Residents of the town were promised by a campaigning party leader that the major local employer, a paper mill, "would not close on my watch". The mill closed. [See Williams Syndrome]
- Humber West Denial Virus, also known as Williams Syndrome, is characterized by the repeated used of certain words and phrases which have no real meaning or which have lost meaning through repeated use. For example, "Quite frankly", "nothing could be further from the truth", "you know" or "Steve". Patients frequently display repetitive shrugs of the shoulders. Often this physical action is accompanied by a persistent non-productive cough, particularly when in stressful situations such as when being questioned by reporters. While these are the common names for this manifestation, Williams Syndrome is in fact a variant of pinocchiosis known as P. willielmus.
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