NDP leader Earle McCurdy called the province’s major open line show on Thursday and by the sounds of things he hasn’t backed off the position that the size of the government’s financial problems will mean more cuts.
Sure he said he was opposed to austerity, but what Earle did say was that the government will have to cut jobs, lay people off and slash spending to cope with its financial problems.
Potato, potato, Earle.
A couple of years after his war with one prime minister, Danny Williams was locked in another war with another federal first minister.
Williams was demanding compensation for yet another supposed injustice.
“What I said before and I said going in, this is about principles,” Williams told reporters in November 2007 “but it's also about money as well. At the end of the day, the promise and the principle converts to cash for the bottom line ….”
The pattern set in 2004 was repeating itself.
Unnamed Conservative “insiders” have been talking about the Ches Crosbie nomination fiasco as if it was a rejection of a new Tory Jesus or something.
The way they talk you’d think people are waiting breathlessly for the pictures on Jane Crosbie’s Twitter feed of young Ches taking his first steps across Virginia Lake, just as his father and grandfather did at his tender age without getting so much as a bunion moistened.
Some of these nameless Conservatives - to use the words from the CBC story – .”believe Ches Crosbie could have raised at least $100,000 by now for his run in Avalon. Many of those donors will now sit on their wallets rather than give cash to another candidate.”
Now that’s an interesting claim.
Every story told thus far about Ches Crosbie and the riding in Avalon has the unmistakeable odour of bullshit about it.
The latest twist, namely that Senator David Wells was scuttling a potential rival as The Biggest Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, is a bit more in the realm of plausible but it still doesn’t quite ring true.
Jihad against people who dissed Harper?
“This may be our last shot at it,” said captain of industry Paul Antle this week as he set off to find other captains of industry to help him save the province. .
Gotta get off the oil, see. The Tories have frigged everything up..
Not so very long ago another rich guy-turned-politician said pretty much the same sort of thing.
The Liberals had cocked things up so badly – said captain of industry Danny Williams - that he was trying to get oil royalties that Ottawa was taking.
They weren’t really doing that, as Williams later admitted, but hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.
“Williams provided [Macleans scribbler Paul Wells with] chapter and verse of his battle with Ottawa for a bigger share of the wealth generated by offshore oil. He passionately advanced the idea that this is his province's last, best hope to become a have rather than a perennial have-not.” That was December 2004..
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There is a lengthy list of political stories in contention to be the top political story of 2014.
Start the year with #darnknl, the failure of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Hydro generation to supply the capital city and surrounding communities with electricity last January.
It led to Kathy Dunderdale’s resignation as Conservative leader and Premier, which in turn led to the appointment of yet another interim Premier. That was followed by the Conservative leadership, the brief and ultimately ruined political career of Frank Coleman, and finally the second Conservative leadership contest that ended with the selection of Premier Paul Davis.
The year ended with a political crisis as Paul Davis, launched a political war with the federal government over a promise supposedly broken. And then there has been the string of by-election victories by the Liberals and losses by the Conservatives.
Or the financial mess, triggered by the 40% drop in oil prices. It promises to produce one of the worst deficits on record this year – unless the Conservatives have been bullshitting, like they have done so many times before – or a very harsh budget next year.
Either of these stories alone could be the top political story of 2014. But the big political story of 2014 is the element that links them all together in one.
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.
Putting a freeze on any discretionary spending is the very least that the provincial government could do in light of the dramatic – but entirely predictable – volatility in oil prices that have made the government’s huge budget deficit even larger.
The fact that Premier Paul Davis finally admitted on Thursday that oil prices are likely to remain low for the foreseeable future – something that has been clear for some time now – is a pathetically small sign that the provincial cabinet is finally starting to realise the depth of the problem the provincial government currently faces.
As small and as pathetic as it is, we do at last have a sign.
In the 1980s, local entrepreneur Craig Dobbin bought a batch of helicopter service companies across Canada and merged them with his own company - Sealand – to form Canadian Helicopters.
By the time Dobbin died in 2006, CHC was one of the largest providers of helicopter support services in the world.
Not just Newfoundland and Labrador.
Or Canada.
Or even North America.
The world.
You really do have to wonder how anyone could be expected to keep things straight when the people they rely on to help them understand keep changing their statements.
Take, for example, the fight between the provincial Conservative administration in Newfoundland and Labrador a decade ago over offshore oil royalties and Equalization.
CBC’s On Point this weekend delivered up some all-too-familiar conversation on the budget and a political panel talking about Judy Manning but sometimes you have to look closely at things to appreciate the value in public comments by politicians and reporters.
In an interview with David Cochrane, finance minister Ross Wiseman confirmed that he cannot even think about trimming government spending because the economy is heavily dependent on it. Wiseman put the figure at about 30%.
Regular readers of these e-scribbles have know this for years. What’s news in this is that we have a finance minister admitting it publicly.
While you are busily mulling over the possible implications the drop in oil prices might have on the provincial government’s budgets, distract yourself by pondering some of the other implications of low oil prices on the provincial economy.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency thinks that about 25% of Canadian energy projects would be in jeopardy if oil goes below US$80 a barrel and stays there for any length of time. As the Financial Post noted in its report last week on the IEA opinion, that would put a number of newer more expensive projects in Alberta and maybe in Saskatchewan in doubt. Norway’s Statoil has already shelved an oil sands project.
Globally, the low prices would also make about three percent of all energy projects dodgy propositions. Some of those are deep water projects like those in the Orphan Basin offshore Newfoundland. The Orphan isn’t turning up in any of these global forecasts because people don’t know enough about the prospects there to determine if they are even commercially viable.
Lots of people are wondering what the changes to the price of oil will do to the provincial budget.
It will have an impact: no doubt about that.
But trying to figure out what the provincial budget numbers will look like is a wee bit more complicated.
Like clockwork, about two weeks after Danny Williams last got his mug on the news, the most thin-skinned media hound on the planet got himself a ton more ego-stroking attention.
Every two weeks or so.
Like clockwork.
If you don’t believe it, just do some google searching.
Political conservatives like to talk about how government ought to be run like a business. They talk about it so much that it’s odd, then, that they never actually do it.
Part of it has to do with language. They use words that appear to mean the same thing when, in fact, they actually have two distinctly different meanings.
Danny Williams is a good example of how that peculiar breed of politician. The Old Man talks about the public money his buddies on city council gave to his hockey team as an investment. As a businessman, though, Williams means something different when he talks about investing his own money.