The Oracle of Brunei and The Prophet of Boswarlos #nlpoli

You know that the local news media are hard up for stories when they  post the musings about the current budget of somebody from Newfoundland currently swanning it in Brunei.

Well, it helps that the body is former Conservative finance minister Charlene Johnson, but if you look at what she said, it's hard to understand why she got any attention.

There are three things to notice about Charlene's ideas on how to save a penny or two that the local media didn't mention.

A Biblical finish #nlpoli

Paul Davis wasn’t around on Tuesday night to talk to reporters about the by-elections.  He had a family medical problem to deal with.

So the job of speaking for the government fell to Steve Kent, the self-promoting wonder from Mount Pearl whose fan club makes Danny’s look like a bunch of slackers.  No biggie, said Kent of the losses.  we are hard at work.  Lots to do.  Look how far we have come. Yada. Yada.  Yada. Gotta keep our stick on the ice.

Steve Kent spews clichés so often he has become one.  His buddy,  Sandy Collins called the night time talk show on VOCM after the votes were in.  No biggie.  Lots to do.  Keep our stick on the ice. They are all so scripted someone said to your humble e-scribbler.  Not scripted,  sez your scribbler:  sharing a mind. 

They all think alike.

Like Susan Sullivan,  who backed John Ottenheimer in the leadership, and the guy who won, Paul Davis.

Trash, Give-aways, and Conservative Policy #nlpoli

Friday is trash day in the world of political communications. It’s the day when you slip out stuff that is unpleasant in the hopes people will miss it.

If you can slide in another story, like say the completely unnecessary appointment of a finance minister who will have the job for a mere two weeks or so, it’s possible you can bury one load of trash under another.

That’s what happened last Friday in St. John’s.

Johnson to give colleagues the finger on Friday #nlpoli

Finance minister Charlene Johnson will be leaving politics on Friday, September 5.

Under changes that Johnson and her colleagues made to the provincial election laws, that means the Premier  - whoever it is at the time - will have to call a by-election no later than November 5 and have the by-election over by later than December 5.

He’ll also have to call one in the seat the current Premier Tom Marshall has said he will vacate as soon as is humanly possible after the Conservative leadership convention on the weekend of the 13th and 14th of September. 

Johnson’s resignation really put the screws to her soon-to-be former colleagues. They went from having to fight one by-election – which they stand to lose unless its Ottenheimer the Premier – to having to fight two, pretty much at the same time.  The problem is, the Conservatives don;t have the resources to fight two by-elections at opposite ends of the province on the same day. Unless Ottenheimer takes the leadership and runs in Humber East,  the Conservatives are likely to lose both by-elections before Christmas.

So much for morale.

Meanwhile, the double by-election makes it even less likely the new Premier  - whoever he is – will have a fall sitting of the House.  He’s more likely to put off the sitting until the spring, then unveil a new throne speech and a budget before heading to an election, if the polls turn around.  The official excuse won’t be about the by-elections:  it’s more likely to be some guff about having to  give the new cabinet (and an off-the-street appointee or two) the chance to come to grips with their new jobs.

Everyone will be waving to Charlene on Friday but in a few weeks time, they’ll be likely giving her back the finger she’s giving them this week,  family reasons, and all.

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Family reasons #nlpoli

The story flopped out on Friday morning,  broken by VOCM, based presumably on information that came directly from Charlene Johnson herself.

We can presume that because as the rest of the newsrooms caught up to VOCM,  Johnson confirmed that the story was generally true.  As CBC reported, “Johnson said she wants to leave because of family concerns. Her husband now works overseas. As well, she is the mother of a young daughter.”

The eulogies for her political career were quick and generally laudatory. Some picked up on the line from her commentary that she was leaving because of family considerations and pronounced it entirely right and just.  Her husband was working out of the country and her young daughter was just five years old. 

Good for you, girl, they clucked in paternalistic approval.  Someone claimed out that Johnson had broken new ground by being the first politician to give birth while in office.  She’d challenged the conventions, so the claim went, and forced the legislature to consider new rules about parental leave and responsibilities.  The political panel assembled for this week’s On Point over at CBC all thanked Charlene for her years of service and wished her well.

All wonderful stuff, except that “family reasons” is an excuse so worn out from over-use and, as in Johnson’s case, misuse, such that it is not a cliche.  “Family reasons” is beyond that.  It is now a code word for something else.

And everyone knows it is bullshit.

Horsefeathers #nlpoli

While people have been agitated about comments on Twitter,  the Premier has been dazzling the politicians in the House with his explanation of the marvellous financial position of the provincial government under the Conservative Party.

On Monday, the former finance minister buggered up the amount of dividend that Nalcor will provide thanks to Muskrat Falls.

On Tuesday, he corrected himself and noted he meant all of Nalcor instead of just Muskrat Falls. That just made matters worse, though.  You see,  the Premier’s comments didn’t exactly jive with information one of his colleagues talked about in the House a year or so ago.  That’s not including the fact that much of the money the Premier attributed to Nalcor was actually coming from oil that the people of the province gifted Nalcor with for nothing.

On Wednesday, the Premier went for the hat-trick with a discussion of debt.

Budget consultations and other political insanity #nlpoli

This year it is Charlene Johnson’s turn to host a series of meetings across the province that the provincial Conservatives cynically tout as a way for people to have some input into the provincial budget.

It’s cynical because – as the Conservatives know – the major budget decisions are already made before the finance minister heads to the first of these meetings. They are a waste of time.

The people who show up at these sessions have no idea what the actual state of the province’s finances are. The provincial government hides the real numbers until budget day.   Therefore the people who show up can’t offer any sensible suggestions, anyway.  Instead, they wind up begging like a bunch of serfs for more cash for this and more cash for that, even though the cash isn’t really available.

The Johnny Cab Minister (repost from The Persuasion Business)

This post originally appeared February 27, 2008 at The Persuasion Business:

Johnny Cab is a clever character in the 1990 movie Total Recall.  It's an automated taxi, voiced by veteran character actor Robert Picardo. You may recall him as the doctor on Star Trek: Voyager or as the witch Meg Mucklebones in the cult-hit Legend.

Taxis in the movie are entirely controlled by on-board computers.  To give them some semblance of normalcy, Johnny Cabs have robot drivers consisting of just a head and torso.  The computer is programmed with stock taxi driver lines like "Please state your destination" or "Helluva day."  If you don't ask a question to answer one that fits into the programming, the Johnny Cab will fall back on one of its stock lines.

You hear the same sort of thing with some people being interviewed by news media. Either they've had no media training, bad media training or the good training they had never took. No matter what the question, they refer back to their talking points or scripted lines. That's all the say.

Talking points are a standard feature of interview preparation.  A media relations officer will give three or four major points or ideas for the person being interviewed to make.  There should be some background or detail to expand on the point.  no set of talking points will ever be complete but good preparation means that someone being interviewed can make the points they want and nothing should be asked that comes as a surprise.

If the media person is doing his or her job, they already know the subject inside and out.  He can anticipate questions and provide sensible answers that convey meaningful information. The person being interviewed should also have more information;  he or she should be knowledgeable about the subject. If they aren't the interview will be incredible and the whole idea is to present credible, believable information from someone who knows what he or she is talking about.

After all, a media interview is a stock part of the persuasion business.  You want to gain support - not from the interviewer but from the audience -  and the way to do that is to present information in a way that people can relate to and understand.

A couple of times over the past week or so, provincial environment minister Charlene Johnson has wound up sounding like a Johnny Cab Minister.

In an interview with CBC's Ted Blades, Johnson was asked repeatedly over the course of a seven minute interview why her department didn't conduct regular structural inspections of 125 bridges over which thousands of people on the island pass ever week. She really never answered the question.  She fell back on her talking points, referring to a single bridge closure in 2006, or referring to her department's reliance on public complaints to know when a bridge needed some expert attention.

Now it's not like Blades was asking a bizarre or overly aggressive question.  Johnson herself said that public safety was paramount, that a human life was very important.  Blades' question gave Johnson a chance to give a concrete example or a convincing statement of how her department would put that sentiment into action.  After all, actions speak louder than words in the persuasion business.

Johnson could have easily said that the report from Transport Canada had caused her to re-examine the policy.  She and her officials would now work with the public works department and incorporate her hundred odd bridges into the others inspected annually by another department.

Her talking point  - her aide memoire - would have been something like this:  "Public safety is extremely important. It's so important that even though we had thought our policy was working, it isn't.  Now we'll be doing regular inspections."

And if hit with the question again or asked how they might have thought no inspections was a good idea, her response would be:  "You know, we all make decisions that make sense at the time but experience shows something else. So now we are inspecting these bridges and we'll do regular inspections by civil engineers to make sure the bridges are safe.  Public safety is that important."

But that's not what she had and, even though she is a cabinet minister responsible for running a department, she couldn't stray from the confines of her programming.  As a result,she sounded incredible, insincere, or at the very least laughable.

She did much the same thing in an interview on Wednesday with Chris O'Neill-Yates on the collapse of a paper recycling program in St. John's for want of $100,000 a year in operating cash.  A request to the provincial recycling agency was turned down even though, as CBC had earlier reported, the Multi-materials Stewardship Board had a surplus of $2.0 million last year.

Johnson couldn't commit to reconsidering the policy of not funding operating grants, even though she is the environment minister and recycling is a key part of government's waste diversion policy.  Nope.  better to send it to the dump, supposedly, as Johnson had earlier said when confronted with the issue.
And when asked about possibly reviewing the mandate of the decade-old recycling organization, Johnson talked about the board's "wonderful" work and the need to give news media a briefing on what "wonderful" work they were doing.

Yes.

Wonderful work.

Even though, as a result of an old policy, a recycling project has collapsed and tons of recyclables are now going to the dump instead of to the recycler where they are supposed to go as part of the government's waste diversion, management and reduction policy.

It doesn't make sense.

But it was in the talking points.

And when you are a Johnny Cab Minister, the programmed talking points are all you've got.

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Cabinet Shuffle Bored

The back room plan to slide Kathy Dunderdale into the Premier’s job isn’t going so well.

The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight is back shooting itself in the foot.

Kathy Dunderdale meets with Danny Williams one day and then the next day there is a surprise cabinet shuffle that Dunderdale explains with some lame comment about getting fresh blood and shifting ministers around to give them experience.

That is most definitely NOT what this is about.

Oh and to be really sure, you can guarantee that it is not about Dunderdale “picking her key lieutenants” as CBC has been presenting it. None of the portfolios involved are biggies.  This is purely a shuffling around at the bottom end of the cabinet list.

So what is it about?

Well, for Derrick Dalley it is a huge promotion that can only mean he is in serious political trouble in his district.  Danny’s coat-tails were barely enough to get him elected last time and without the Old Man, that seat is likely to flip.  This way Dalley gets a nice boost in pay and a higher profile.

Dalley has no background in business so sticking him in that portfolio makes no sense at all.

Charlene Johnson got a sweet little promotion after years of slogging it out in a  department that is usually a starter department for ministers.  She’s a loyal Dan-ite so giving her a higher profile helps bolster the back-room deal crowd:  she takes direction very well.  Johnson’s never shown signs of understanding the portfolio she had and she’s unlikely to inject anything other than further listlessness in a new department that is still struggling.

Here’s hoping there are no more giant controversies in a department known to generate nasty headlines. Charlene had a tough time even with Danny on the ground to shore her up.  With the Old Man out of the picture, she could be a major disaster waiting to happen. 

Ross Wiseman slides downward to environment and conservation.  He isn’t likely to run again so this just keeps around one of the Dan-ite stalwarts until Dunderdale gets through the current crisis and the spring budget.

Darin King gets a huge demotion.  The leadership hopeful and likely internal dissident got the big ole bitch slap for something.  Like he’s paying a double price that includes a bill for the shitstorm he caused by trying to do his old job at Eastern School District.  Darin’s school reorganization is a cock-up of monumental proportions since it has served only to agitate voters needlessly in seats the Conservatives normally would call safe. 

Joan Burke is being called back to the limelight likely to clean up Darin’s mess.  It’s a novel concept and logically, Burke’s arrival should mean the plan goes in the bin.  Burke’s usual approach would be like adding gasoline to a political fire and even Dunderdale couldn’t blunder that badly. 

Putting her back in charge of education also gives Burke the chance to raise her profile again in anticipation of the leadership race that will inevitably follow the next election. 

Everyone knows Dunderdale is just a placeholder.  Well, everyone except people who think she is promoting her key lieutenants for the next election.

Sheesh, what a head-slapper of an idea.

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Scrum Update:  Take a watch of the post-swearing in scrum. The most over-used line – after Charlene talking about “the children” and how important they are -  is the effort to portray this as some sort of renewal and refreshment.

The cliché is so over-worn that all you’d have to say is “deck chairs” but everyone will know instantly how true it is as a description of Thursday’s cabinet shuffle.

As for Darin King, notice that he spoke last of all and started by thanking Dunderdale for the privilege of serving.  If anyone has any doubt that this guy is being punished then let them watch the scrum and seen the proof.

Tire burning decision on back burner

Environment minister Charlene Johnson is delaying a decision to permit Corner Brook Pulp and Paper to burn used car and truck tires as a fuel supplement at the company’s Corner Brook paper-making plant.

cbc.ca/nl reports that Johnson will now issue a decision on January 15 because the department received more public submissions than it expected. Johnson was originally supposed to make a decision by December 12.

While some initial reporters suggested there was considerable support for the proposal, protests, a Facebook group and other complaints grew as awareness of the proposal increased.

The Western Star reported in November that Johnson’s department reviewed the tire burning proposal last spring and recommended approving it.

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Suzuki Foundation takes aim at Gulf drilling #oilspill

Kathy Dunderdale might not be too worried about the environmental impacts of an offshore oil spill. 

Charlene Johnson might have trouble from day to day figuring out if the offshore is in her jurisdiction or not.

But make no mistake:  David Suzuki has the Gulf of St. Lawrence firmly in his sights. The David Suzuki Foundation is encouraging its supporters to contact the federal government to get a halt to drilling and other exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A big part of the campaign is simulations of the impact of a spill at Old Harry:

Each simulation illustrates what could happen if an spill of approximately 10,000 barrels of oil per day took place over a 10-day period in various seasons. The model demonstrates the direction of the flow of oil emanating from an instant or continuous spill. Forecasts indicate the location and concentration of surface and underground oil over time.

There’s a spring, summer, fall and winter version.

The spring spill hits Newfoundland very hard.

Summer is worse for western Newfoundland.

Fall nails the south coast as far away as the Burin Peninsula.  St. Pierre would take it heavily in this scenario.

Winter hits five provinces but affects only a small portion of south western Newfoundland.

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Related:

• NL offshore drilling bans rests with prov gov
• Drill, baby! Drill!
• Miles before they hit the shore (labradore)

D’oh! Dipper leader skewered by Johnson

It’s a pretty rare day when the likes of Charlene Johnson can score a major political blow but land one the provincial environment minister did on Friday, square between the eyes of the province’s New Democratic Party leader.

Seems Lorraine Michael served on an environmental panel in 1999 that approved use of a natural pond as a storage for tailings from Voisey’s Bay. Now Michael and her federal Dipper counterparts are lambasting the provincial Conservatives for doing the same thing at Vale’s smelter project in Long Harbour but made no reference to her own views of another project barely more than a decade ago.

There’s nothing like hypocrisy to damage the political cred. Johnson’s release must have sent the Dipper opposition office into a major tailspin trying to figure out how to unfrack themselves from this simple but devastating gaffe.

Then again that’s the sort of thing that happens when you do one thing and say another. Next thing you know, the New Democrats will try and erase many of the ideologically progressive ideas from the party constitution or push regressive tax reform all in an effort to appear more like Conservatives.

Oops.

Too late.

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Throw money at it: provgov to study garbage

Sometimes it seems as if Gus Portokalos’ brother wound up running the Newfoundland and Labrador government.

While Gus wanted to put window cleaner on everything, Gus’ imaginary brother in the provincial government likes to throw money at it.

The most recent example is a fund set up with a research centre at Memorial University. There is now $300,000 available to probe garbage.

Apparently, there are “unique waste diversion challenges” in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

So now the fine folks at the province’s university can get up to $15,000 to study ways of “reducing the amount of waste created, reusing materials and products, recycling or reprocessing waste, recovering some useful benefit from waste, and disposing of waste that has no further economic or environmental benefit.”

Ummm.

Right.

And these sorts of thing, the sorts of thing they’ve been doing everywhere else for decades, are not only unknown to people in Newfoundland and Labrador but we must fund university-level research to crack the garbage code that apparently bedevils us.

Once the researchers produce answers to the refuse puzzle, the second pillar of the anti-trash strategy will cut in:  they will tell people about it. And maybe, once they’ve told people about it, those people might come up with suggestions to – in the words of the guy running the research centre -  “shape research questions, leading to new ideas which then encourage further research to achieve implementation.”

So they’ll think about something.  Then they’ll tell people what they thought about.  And then the people they told will come up with new things to think about.  So the people doing the thinking will go back and think some more about the stuff they’ve been told to think about.

And maybe at some point, after all this thinking and talking and thinking and talking, someone might be able to do something with the garbage.

The technical term for this approach is GIGO:  garbage in, garbage out.

People unused to the refined language of the government and the university will only look at the complete lack of action on waste reduction since 2003  and think “circle jerk”.

And they will be right.

This is the administration, after all,  that is now renowned for its inability to do stuff.

This is the administration that took almost four years to take the waste management strategy of their predecessors, photocopy it, move all the target dates back a decade and then announce it as their own, brand-new strategy.

Just in time for an election.

And now three years after that announcement, they toss money at a bunch of people to supposedly figure out what to do with garbage.

This is the same administration that gave a consultant some unspecified hunk of public money to spend 18 months studying ways of keeping young people in the province. The result of the cogitation was truly Earth-shattering in its inventiveness:

1.  Create jobs.

2.  Put services in major centres. Like maybe St. John’s, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor and Corner Brook?

3.  Link education to the labour market.

4.  Build “an understanding of the benefits of immigration and diversity through public education, community dialogue and strengthened curriculums in the education system.”

Well, d’uh.

And it even came with a spelling mistake in the bit that talks about education.

Brilliant!

There is no way that anyone could possibly invent this policy.  It is, after all, nothing more than a hideous self-parody of an administration that is obviously lacking any sense of direction.

Reductio ad argentum, indeed.

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A summer like no other: torquing in Technicolor on the cheap

One of the great things about summer for perpetual campaigning is that cabinet ministers can spit out sheer nonsense and reporters for the local paper won’t even bother to ask pesky questions.

Like how will an imaginary project could ever  lower carbon emissions in the real world.

And in this bucolic world, where minister’s publicists apparently don’t have to pitch a puff piece, even one of the most incompetent of ministers can sound like she knows something.

The result is better than the stuff pumped out by the official government publicity system:  in this case, the reporter’s name goes on the piece and it appears in a local newspaper. Having gone through a supposed editorial review, the resulting piece suddenly has way more credibility than it actually deserves.

Charlene Johnson – arguably the second biggest bumbler in the current provincial administration  - recently got the chance to dazzle readers of the Western Star with her thoughts on how the province has an opportunity to lead the world in tackling global warming.

“There are opportunities to use energy more efficiently, displace fossil-fuel based power generated by Holyrood with renewable energy from Lower Churchill, and ensure we continue to manage our land and forests in ways that store greenhouse gases rather than release them to the atmosphere,” Johnson said.

If Johnson knew something more than her briefing books or was willing to speak frankly, she’d acknowledge a couple of relevant points here.

The most obvious is that the Lower Churchill doesn’t exist and likely won’t exist within the next decade or two.  As such, any ideas about reducing emissions from Holyrood using the Lower Churchill is just pure bullshit.

Second, the government’s energy plan places economic benefits ahead of environmental ones.  It isn’t about sustainable development or reducing the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.  It isn’t an energy plan or environmental plan as much as it is a business plan.

Everything is held hostage to the LC anyway, but the project talks about ways of building new energy generation for export.  It doesn’t address local needs at all.  If it did, the plan would set policies that encouraged energy conservation on the island and the development of new generation that has a low environmental impact. 

You can see this rejection of local needs in the Lower Churchill environmental review documents, for example. The first thing that strikes you is that the LC isn’t needed to meet current or anticipated energy needs on the island. 

Those demands are so minor that a combined program of conservation (including improved efficiency) coupled with new generation (more than 54 MWs of wind) would meet any demand anticipated in the LC documents.  And just remember that document was drawn up in a world where all that hydro from Abitibi’s Grand Falls-Windsor operation was making jobs in central Newfoundland.

As for Labrador, the Lower Churchill documents plan to continue using diesel generation, despite the fact power lines for the Lower Churchill would pass right by some of the communities it plans to leave on diesel generation. As astonishing that seems, that is the project the province’s environment minister is holding out as a way of dealing with emissions in the province.

This is not a new idea, by the way.  The 2005 climate change action plan contains the same fundamental bias in favour of large, expensive megaprojects.  It anything but a modest development of wind energy because wind is supposedly intermittent.  However, experience elsewhere shows that wind can deliver consistent power levels if a series of projects over a wide area are joined together and managed effectively.

There are opportunities for Newfoundland and Labrador in the fight against global warming.  The problem is that the provincial government policy rejects ideas that could take advantage of those opportunities or puts obstacles in their way.

Anyone can see the fundamental problems in the provincial government’s policy – it doesn’t actually have a sustainable development act or a green energy policy, for example – if one had the time or took the time to read.

Fortunately for Charlene, the crowd at the Western Star didn’t have the time to get ready for her.  As a result she gets to spout complete bullshit and have the Star present as if it were gold.

What better way for a bumbling minister top spend August than torquing in Technicolor on the cheap.

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Sins of omission

“Five key bridges in the western portion of the T’Railway Provincial Park that closed in 2008 are now re-opened to park users. … [The five bridges are being ] replaced as a result of a $3.6 million allocation in Budget 2010: The Right Investments – For Our Children and Our Future.”

That’s part of the first paragraph of a happy-news release from the province’s environment.  It’s one of dozens issued every week in July as part of the happy-news offensive mounted by the provincial government in the run up to August’s scheduled polling by the provincial government pollster.

The release leaves out much relevant detail.

Not surprisingly, that detail is embarrassing to the provincial government and especially to the ever-embarrassing minister, Charlene Johnson.

For starters, the bridges in questions were all former railway bridges inherited by the provincial government in 1988 when the railway closed.  The provincial government took responsibility for the bridges but until 2008 – apparently  - did nothing with them.

No maintenance.

No repairs.

No inspections either, apparently.

At all.

That is until the federal government inspected a few that crossed over federally-monitored waterways.  They found a raft of them in what appeared to be perilous states of disrepair. 

In one case, one of the bridges had vanished entirely.  When inspectors showed up to take a lookee-look, they couldn’t find anything except the footings on either shore.

So basically this splendiferous investment of more than three and a half millions could have been avoided or at least spread out over time if someone – anyone – at any point along the way had decided to do some regular maintenance on the bridges.

Or even taken a peek at them once in a while.

Even an auditor general’s report in 2003 on inadequate inspection of road bridges seems to have prompted any action on the former railway bridges, the ones now used by pedestrians, snowmobilers and ATV operators.

None of this, by the by, stopped Johnson from claiming that her department prized public safety. As your humble e-scribbler noted at the time:

We understand the inconvenience of the closure of these structures; however, public safety has to be our number one priority," said Minister Johnson.

But...

Environment Minister Charlene Johnson said today the province does not conduct routine safety assessments of structures on the T’Railway, which is a provincial park.

“There’s no regular inspections, no,” Johnson said in response to questions from reporters.

That sort of bumbling is why some people find it odd that Charlene has adopted a tone of haughty arrogance when dealing with issues like the Abitibi expropriation fiasco or offshore oil.

That sort of bumbling is also likely why Charlene’s publicists decided to torque this release without any reference  whatsoever - an omission in other words - to the mess that started it all.

But all of it doesn’t explain the real sin of omission here:  namely the explanation of why the Premier keeps this minister in a job for which she is clearly unqualified and at which she has clearly been a disaster of BP proportions.

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Are you smarter than a cheese grater, now?

Remember that fisheries research cash announcement that seemed to have been cobbled together within the past six weeks?

Well, there’s a bit more evidence of the whole thing was baked up in a few weeks.  The evidence comes from the release of a consultation document to support development of a coastal and oceans management strategy by the provincial governments.

Environment minister Charlene Johnson is in the thick of it, once again, with this quote from the news release:

“Our oceans play a very valuable role in our ecosystems and it is important that we employ an appropriate policy framework for their management,”…

Charlene has an interest in and jurisdiction over the ocean.

Interesting.

In late May – about six weeks ago – she sure didn’t.

That’s because, according to Johnson, “if the Leader of the Opposition was so concerned about the environment and offshore she should have asked me a question where jurisdiction does fall under my department and that is when the oil reaches the land, Mr. Speaker.”

In that same session, natural resources minister Calamity Kathy Dunderdale went so far as to put a specific delimitation on where the shore began: the “Minister of Environment and Conservation … has no responsibility beyond the high water mark.”

Dunderdale – who is also Danny Williams’ hand-picked choice as second in command on the good ship Williams – also had no trouble defining where the fisheries minister stood:  his “did not go any further than that either as far as the offshore was concerned.”

How truly odd, then, that the other minister involved in the oceans strategy consultation was none other than Clyde Jackman, minister of fisheries and aquaculture.

Now we’ve already had more than a few chortles  at Dunderdale’s expense over this whole issue of jurisdiction. Okay so maybe there were a few guffaws too. But for an administration  whose deputy premier only a few weeks ago was adamant that  ministers had absolutely no responsibility for what went on below the high water mark on the shore, this new document is a gigantic change of direction.

All in six weeks.

But that’s not the end of it.

This new strategy is supposedly about…well, let’s let Charlene tell us:

“Our goal is sustainability and ensuring we use our resources effectively…”

Laudable stuff, indeed.

The word “sustainable” occurs no fewer than 36 times in the consultation document itself, usually in conjunction with the word “manner”, as in things must be done in a “sustainable manner”.

The responsibility for this sustainable stuff rests with none other than Charlene Johnson and her intrepid little department:

The Department of Environment and Conservation is responsible for developing and implementing the Sustainable Development Act, the Sustainable Development Strategy, and coordinating interdepartmental interests. It supports the Sustainable Development Roundtable, comprised of stakeholders from around the province, and
the development and monitoring of indicators to ensure development adheres to the principles of sustainability. (p.13)

Sustainable Development Act?

Yes, that would be the same piece of legislation that was part of the Tory campaign platform in 2003, passed into law in early 2007 but never implemented.

The roundtable?

Doesn’t exist, apparently.

And that sustainable development strategy?  Well, if the Act had been put into effect, then the whole thing would already exist. Instead, government is trotting out yet another consultation to develop yet another strategy on things which apparently are beyond its ministerial competence and all of this is being done before they bother to put into an effect a commitment made in 2003.

For those who are counting that is a total of seven years to get exactly nowhere.

The Sustainable Development Act required that cabinet approve a comprehensive strategic environment management plan for the whole province within two years of the Act coming into force.  In other words, if this Act had been put into effect the year it was passed, the entire province – including the fisheries related bits – would already have a plan.

And then five years after that, the whole thing would be reviewed again complete with public consultation.

To put it bluntly, had the current administration done what it committed to do in 2003 and what it finally got around to passing through the House of Assembly in 2007, this entire business and a whole lot more besides would already be done or well under way.

As it is, one has to wonder why the SDA remains in mothballs and why this  particular “consultation” appears now, out of the blue, and focuses – as it appears – on areas over which the provincial government has no legislative jurisdiction.

Taken together with Friday’s announcement, it looks a we bit curious if not downright suspicious.

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Related:

• “Your serial government at work” (2007)
• “To listen to old, archived messages, press 2…” (2006)
• “Res ipsa loquitur, once more” (2005)  a.k.a. “…and there shall be plans, and planning for plans and plans to co-ordinate the plans of the planning for plans…”

Enviro minister of denial

Charlene Johnson, by some accounts the province’s environment minister, answering a question in the House of Assembly about a potential oil spill in Placentia Bay where tankers travel daily to a refinery and an oil storage facility:

Mr. Speaker, there is one thing that she has right, and that is that we have the jurisdiction in the Department of Environment and Conservation should the oil, in the unlikely event, that should the oil reach land then it does come under the Department of Environment and Conservation, Mr. Speaker. [Emphasis added]

And there’s no way she’d ever expropriate a polluted paper mill either.

Who ya trying to impress, Charlene?

‘Cause if it’s no one you are doing a fine job.

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Enviro minister trades with the enemy

Sometimes it’s hard to know which is funnier:  environment minister Charlene Johnson’s repeated attempts to be arrogant and condescending even when she is completely shagging up or her admission that her answer to the mounds of used tires in the province collected under a recycling program is exactly the same answer used by her Liberal predecessor.

I can get the exact details for him on the cost for shipping to Quebec. Certainly, under their failed attempts in the past that is where the tires went as well, so I imagine it would be somewhere in line when you had to ship them to Quebec as well. Mr. Speaker, shipping tires to Quebec is certainly, we know, the cheapest option for the tires.

Yes, folks, the tires are being shipped to Quebec.

Charlene Johnson is trading with the enemy.

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Williams admits taxpayers stuck with bill for his expropriation mess

While his embattled environment minister blustered and stuck to the old line during Question Period, outside the legislature Premier Danny Williams admitted to reporters today that the taxpayers of the province will be stuck paying for the environmental cleanup from his expropriation mess.

CBC.ca/nl has a version of the story that’s worth checking out.

The cost of the clean-up, legal fees, any NAFTA penalties for the expropriation and the cost of compensation for seized assets belonging to three companies could reach $500 million or more based on the provincial government’s own estimates.

More to follow.

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Buchans saga deepens: Johnson claims credit for Abitibi work

CBC may have retracted its story about the provincial government and possible lead pollution at a former mine in Buchans but that isn’t the end of the Buchans saga.

As CBC quoted it:

"We held a town meeting. The public meeting was in fact reported on. That site was, in fact, remediated that very summer," Environment Minister Charlene Johnson told the legislature on Monday.

Johnson told the legislature that:

Mr. Speaker, quickly we hired a consultant to go out and do a Human Health Risk Assessment. That piece of work was done in literally less than months. The report came to our office in December 2007, at which time my officials went out to the Town of Buchans, gave the report to the Town of Buchans in less than days. The Town of Buchans at that time, Mr. Speaker, asked to have a public meeting. That public meeting was held and my officials were there. In fact, Mr. Speaker, CBC carried the reports of that within days after the public meeting.

But the full story is very different.

According to the Grand Falls-Windsor Advertiser, the environmental review was done by AMEC, a consultant retained by Abitibi. And the timeline for when the town council first learned of the problem was the spring of 2007, not late 2007 or early 2008 as Johnson suggested in the House of Assembly:

With ASARCO declaring bankruptcy a number of years ago, AbitibiBowater is left bearing the brunt of the responsibility for the site.

It wasn't until a representative with AMEC, a consultant for AbitibiBowater, met with the Buchans council last spring to update its members on environmental improvements that the town's municipal leaders became aware of the situation.

It wasn’t until six months later, in the fall of 2007 – when current MHA Susan Sullivan was fighting for her seat in a by-election - that the provincial government got involved as Johnson described.  According to the Advertiser:

The council contacted Susan Sullivan in November, who was campaigning for her seat as MHA for Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans at the time, for an immediate meeting.

She visited the town to hear their concerns and brought the council's demand for a complete human health risk study to the minister of environment.

The Buchans story demolishes the provincial government’s efforts to portray Abitibi as abandoning its responsibilities in the province.

Again, as the Advertiser reported well before the botched expropriation:

Remedial action and/or additional studies in the area were recommended.

And that is exactly what AbibitiBowater and AMEC intend to do, although it will be a costly venture. Already the paper company has anywhere from $1.6-2.5 million budgeted for the clean-up.

If that's not enough, they are prepared to spend more to ensure the job is finished.

"The day we ask for a certificate of approval from the government to carry out the work, we have to carry it out to the end and if it costs more, we're stuck with it; we have to do it," said Nicole Lee, environment manager with AbitibiBowater.

The Advertiser reported that the best containment option at that point seemed to be collecting the contaminated materials and burying them in a glory hole or in an abandoned mine.  The Advertiser also reported in March 2008 that both a mining company and the provincial natural resources department opposed this option.

Interestingly enough, when the provincial government finally announced the clean-up option for the land it expropriated, a new remediation proposal cropped up:  cover it over.  Again as the Advertiser reported in late 2009:

He said that of all the option open to his department the "cap in place" option was the best because it would among other things minimize the amount of dust created during construction and wouldn't affect future mining operations. SNC Lavalin has been contracted for $114,000 to prepare and tended documents that are hoped to be ready by late spring with construction to be carried out from June to September. As well as the tailings spill area, the identified arsenic problem by the old ore shed will be taken care of with a layer of berm. [Emphasis added]

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