The
"pre-feasibility study update" released on Wednesday into a fixed
link across the Straits to Labrador (a.k.a The Stunnel) is a really good
example of how the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador tackles policy problems and why it keeps making bad
decisions.
One way to
think about "policy" is problem-solving. We have a problem and the
policy is how we are going to solve it. We can look at it as the way of
changing a situation that is causing an issue or may cause an issue.
There are
some sensible steps to figuring out the right "policy" and they all
start with figuring out what the problem is. Once you know what the problem is,
you can figure out what your goal is. Now that you have a start point and an
end point, you can figure out the policy, which is the way you get from where
you are to where you want to be.
After you
get the start and the goal, usually, it's a good idea to look for alternatives.
Slap 'em all on the page, no matter how crazy.
Figure out
what resources you have.
Then you
start evaluating the options you have come up with. You can cross some off
because they would take too long, create other problems, take more resources
than you have, and so on.
Once you
have taken off the obviously unattainable ones, you can start looking more
closely at the ones you have left. That's when you would look at which of them
is feasible.
If you wrote
the steps down they might look like this. This list doesn't cover all the steps
and other people may have better ones. At step seven you'd actually have a
bunch of other bits since this is the part where the other 90% of the work is
to go with the 90% you have already done. There are eight steps in the list we
are using here.
- Current Situation (where we are now/what is wrong)
- Options
- Assess resources (some might suggest to do this before thinking of options)
- Narrow list (toss out the obviously unworkable ideas)
- Detailed review of viable ideas
- Select Option
- Act - that is, implement the choice
- Reach the goal
So where
does this pre-feasibility study go?
Arguably at Stage 6 since government has
apparently already decided to spend more money (20-30 million) on a
"feasibility" study.
But what
problem are we trying to solve? Is it about the Gulf ferry? Is it about the STraits ferry?
Maybe the solution
is to change the ferry system. After all, we didn't seem to have as many
problems with the old fleet as the new one. Maybe we need to get the feds to
buy new ships. Maybe we need to turn the Gulf service to the private sector.
Is the fixed
link about making it easier for people to get from the southeast coast of
Labrador to the island and vice versa? Maybe we need a new ferry for that run.
Leaving
aside the enormous problems with the "pre-feasibility" study itself,
we are actually way ahead of ourselves. Government is spending money and
getting people both excited and frightened without even considering the Stunnel
itself might well be the last thing we need to do because there are cheaper
options to fix a problem we aren't even sure we have or what it looks like.
Muskrat
Falls came out of the same way of thinking. Nalcor never evaluated options to
provide domestic supply cheaply and effectively. They decided (with lots of
political backing) to build the dams (initially) and then proceeded from there.
Everything after that was a rationalization to the goal of building the dam, no
matter what.
The Stunnel
is a goal in itself. Everything else has just been a rationalization
for building it. We have no idea why we need to build it, what other choices
there are, or if any of them make sense, let alone whether they are affordable.
And yet the
government is now looking to Ottawa for cash, apparently.
Muskrat
Falls isn't the only thing the government has done this way.
It was just
the most recent thing in a long line of things, large and small, done the same
way that have gone off the rails and yet we never seem to have learned from our
mistakes.
That's what
the Stunnel seems to show, more than anything else.
-srbp-
