Politics, CETA, and the fishery #nlpoli

The European trade deal came up in the House of Assembly on Monday.

Everyone kept to the same lines they've been kicking around for months.

Believe it if you want,  but if you want to find out what is really going on,  check out the interview your humble e-scribbler did with Jamie Baker of the Fisheries Broadcast last week.

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Related:

• Province increase CETA demands after crucial agreement (December 2014)
• Abbott and Costello meet the trade deal (January 2015)
• Conservatives abandon ridiculous position on European deal (May 2015)

Conservatives abandon ridiculous position on European trade… again #nlpoli

In January, trade minister Darin King wrote a letter to his federal counterpart about the European trade deal.
King said the provincial government would:

1. withdraw from any trade talks OTHER than the one about the European trade deal, and,
2. should “the federal government fail to honour the terms of the June 2013 agreement to establish a fisheries fund, you will appreciate that the Province will reconsider its support for CETA.”

On Tuesday, King announced the provincial government would:

1. resume participation in all the ongoing trade talks, and,
2. accept the European trade deal, but not the bit on minimum processing requirements.

That last one will leave Canada open to a challenge by Europeans if - and only if - the provincial government ever invokes minimum processing requirements in dealing with a European company. There’s not much danger of that since the provincial government has been granting more and more exemptions from the out-dated policy.

Besides, the federal government is already working on a mechanism to pass the cost of any damages from a trade dispute on to the province that caused them. They started work on that little gem after the current Conservative administration in this province violated the North American free trade deal and seized hydro-electric assets belonging to three companies under an entirely false pretense.

When Darin King said the government would “let the chips fall where they may” he knew full well that the provincial government would take it in the neck if it ever used the minimum processing requirements provisions of current legislation.

What you have here is a climb down. The provincial government position was always a transparent pile of nonsense. As CBC’s access to information research confirmed last week, the provincial government has been granting more and more exemptions from the minimum processing regulations. In practical terms, that means they have already abandoned MPRs and won’t use them to trigger any CETA problems.

What local media still haven’t reported is that the heart of this dispute has been a political fraud by the provincial government. It tried to radically alter the deal in 2014. The federal government rebuffed the provincial government’s effort to rejig the deal. Faced with no prospect of success in its scam, the provincial government abandoned its ludicrous position.

Both the Liberal and NDP criticised the government for submitting to federal perfidy. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but the truth never stopped a politician in this province from opening his mouth before. Tuesday was no exception.

Incidentally, the letter from King to his federal counterpart as well as the news release that King issued on Tuesday are both pretty vague about what the provincial government is actually doing. King explained the details to reporters.

This is the second time the provincial Conservatives have abandoned a stupid position on the European trade talks. The first was Danny Williams’ refusal to take part in the talks in the first place Williams claimed he needed to protect the seal hunt.

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Abbott and Costello meet the Trade Deal #nlpoli

If you are confused by the provincial government’s struggle over free trade with the European trade, find comfort in the fact you are not alone.

Pretty well everyone is confused by what the government is up to. 

That includes, incidentally,  intergovernmental affairs minister Keith Hutchings and industry minister Darin King, who announced on Monday that the provincial government was pulling its support for every free trade negotiation Canada has going at the moment except for the European trade agreement.

Roger Grimes: savage political attack dog #nlpoli

Maybe it was the headline on John Ivison’s opinion piece in the National Post that threw them off.

Spat over $400M N.L. fund could make federal government look bad to European trade partners

Provincial Conservatives, their patronage clients, and their paid staffers were all over Twitter all weekend tweeting touting the support in Ivison’s piece for their fight with the federal Conservatives over a federal cheque for $280 million.

Pay up feds, says Ivison, and end this dispute because it looks bad.

The problem for the Conservatives is that if you read the whole Ivison column, this is not a great endorse of the provincial Conservatives’ desperate political ploy.  It offers sensible advice in that both sides need to get this dispute settled now,  but Ivison gets there based on all sorts of half-baked ideas.  That much of it shows the extent to which observers both at home and outside the province don’t really understand what’s going on here. 

And if you follow the piece through to the end, you see just exactly how bad a position Paul Davis and his crowd really are.

Fishing for support #nlpoli

When the going gets tough, the tough go fishing.

In this case,  a bunch of politicians in a tough spot with voters are fishing among a small bunch of politicians in Ottawa for support in their campaign to turn a deal achieved in 2013 into something else entirely.

This isn’t really news, by the way, but in the world of the provincial government these days, intergovernmental affairs minister Keith Hutchings sent out a news release on Friday to tell  everyone what was reported before Christmas.  That is,  Keith and Premier Paul Davis are trying to get federal members of parliament and senators a from Newfoundland and Labrador to back the provincial government in its latest war with Ottawa.

All they need for Christmas is new talking points #nlpoli

Keith Hutchings - the provincial cabinet minister leading talks with the federal government on European trade  - issued a statement on December 9, 2014.that began with a simple statement.

“In June, 2013,” Hutchings began,

“our governments agreed that, in exchange for the [provincial government] agreeing to lift minimum processing requirements (MPRs) for the European Union (EU), the Federal Government and the provinc[ial government] would establish a fund that would provide for total expenditure of $400 million based on a 70/30 federal/provincial cost share.”

The money was for “industry development and renewal [in the fishing industry] as well as worker displacement”  according to Hutchings.

But when Hutchings spoke with the Telegram’s James McLeod six months later, things weren’t quite so cut and dried.

The Lunatic Fringe #nlpoli

If the provincial Conservatives have done nothing else with their European trade charade,  they have breathed new energy into the political lunatic fringe that opposed the trade deal before they even heard of it.

Province increased CETA demands after crucial agreement #nlpoli

Almost a year after reaching an understanding with the federal government on a joint federal-provincial fisheries fund related to the European trade talks, the provincial government tried to alter the deal radically.

Documents released by the provincial government in 2013 and 2014 show that the federal and provincial governments agreed in June 2013 to  fund a cost-shared (70% federal and 30% provincial) “transition program” of up to $400 million that would address “industry development and renewal as well as worker displacement.” 

But in May 2014,  provincial fisheries minister Keith Hutchings changed the provincial demands.

Recurring Behaviour #nlpoli

Exactly one year ago,  the provincial government was in a controversy over its part in the European free trade deal.  The Conservatives were  heralding the great deal, including a $400 million fisheries development fund.

The opposition Liberals asked for details.  The provincial Conservatives and then-Premier Kathy Dunderdale wouldn’t release any information.  On December 5, 2013,  Premier Kathy Dunderdale relented and released 80 pages of letters and e-mails between federal and provincial officials about the talks. 

A year later,  the provincial Conservatives are still in a political quagmire over the deal. This time the problem is that there isn’t any deal. Premier Paul Davis said on Monday that the whole thing was just a matter of crossing a few tees and dotting some eyes.  On Tuesday, ,  Davis and a gaggle of his cabinet ministers said the negotiations on the fund were going no where.  He needed to take it to the Prime Minister and so Davis and Stephen Harper would meet on Wednesday.

That was fine except that the Prime Minister’s Office said there’d been no meeting scheduled. Harper was scheduled to be in Montreal for Jean Belliveau’s funeral.

Converting principles to other people’s money #nlpoli

When Premier Kathy Dunderdale spoke to a St. John’s Board of Trade last May,  she claimed the federal government had tried to tie the federal loan guarantee on Muskrat Falls to the European free trade talks.

There’s no evidence that her claim is true, at least based on the selected documents Dunderdale released last week in the House of Assembly on the negotiations.

The documents actually show something else.

Vale delays Long Harbour smelter… again #nlpoli

Earlier this year,  mining giant Vale was saying they’d start production at the new Long Harbour smelter in 2013, but after a meeting with Premier Kathy Dunderdale in Brazil,  the company won’t be ramping up until 2015.

That’s the news from VOCM on the weekend, although they didn’t report the actual news about the delay at Long Harbour.  VO just reported that Dunderdale met with Vale officials and that the start-up date was 2015, as if it had always been two years away.

The premier says she went down a few days early to meet specifically with Vale officials to get an update on the Long Harbour development and the Voisey's Bay mine site.

She says Vale officials indicated that Long Harbour will start to ramp up in 2015, while they're looking to go underground at Voisey's Bay.

According to VOCM, the company officials are concerned about power supplies “in the area”. But the story isn’t clear if the power supply problems are in Labrador or at Long Harbour.