Now that is what you call interesting #nlpoli

Labradore infuriates Connies both provincially and federally because the guy just knows his stuff and needles the little darlings at every chance.

On Tuesday, he posted a chart showing the number of words recorded by Hansard for each member of the House of Assembly during the last session.  He even colour-coded it by party for ease of reference.

You can find the whole chart here, but let’s take a look at a specific spot on the big picture.

If some of the provincial Connies, were quick to identify Tom Osborne as “deadwood”, then you have to wonder what they think of the people who participated less in the House than Osborne did.

People like Tony Cornect, Ray Hunter, Tracy Perry or John Dinn, all of whom spoke less than Osborne did.

Things got so bad in caucus, apparently, that Tom Osborne decided to leave rather than put up with it.  Is he the only one who will cross the floor this fall?  We could wind up with the “independent” party made up of as many members as the Liberals or the New Democrats.

-srbp-

The Old Wooden Mace #nlpoli

The Telegram’s James McLeod took some time during a recent Estimates committee hearing on Monday to dash off a post at his blog about the ceremonial aspects of the legislature proceedings.

He mentions the number of items in the House of Assembly chamber that came as presents from other provinces after Confederation.  He finishes off with this bit:

Arguably the coolest gift of them all came from B.C. They gave us a massive gold mace. The mace is so cool, it actually gets a parade every day when the House is sitting - it's a small parade, just the Speaker, and a handful of other folks, but still, a parade! You can read more about the mace here, including the old wood one that sits outside the public galleries.

The wooden mace on display in the public gallery of the House of Assembly is the one used in the first parliament in Newfoundland in 1832. How it got there is a story in itself.

Workload Measurement #nlpoli #nspoli #cdnpoli

One of the most telling indicators of what government does is how much legislation they put in front of the legislature for approval.  After all government can only do what it is allowed to do by the House of Assembly.

Active governments that are doing lots of work usually have lots of new laws or amendments to existing ones.  They are called bills until they are approved by the members of the legislature.

Compare Newfoundland and Labrador with Nova Scotia and you can get a striking contrast between two neighbouring provinces

The truth is an absolute defence #nlpoli

Seems that the goings-on in the provincial legislature are weighing heavy on many brows at the end of the first week the place is back in session since this time last year.

Telegram editor Russell Wangersky has a column on it as does Bob Wakeham in the Saturday paper.

Wangersky writes about the way the House was recently.

Part of the blame is the failure of not reining in these Type-A bad boys and bad girls soon enough; I know that criticizing past Speakers of the House is frowned upon in the parliamentary system, but when Speakers are either too lax or too one-sided in dealing with abuses of House procedure, you can guarantee that frustration will build and tempers will boil.

Let’s be clear:  Harvey Hodder and Roger Fitzgerald were both incompetent and nakedly biased during their time as Speaker of the legislature.

In the ordinary course of things, in a properly functioning House, that is a contempt and one could be expected to be dragged in front of the members to answer for it.

But as with all defamation claims, the truth is an absolute defence.  That’s why your humble e-scribbler had no problem in writing and publicising the comment repeatedly.

Both were picked, one might readily surmise because they were biased and would comply with the wishes of the root cause of the problem in the House.

The current Speaker is another hand-picked one; Tommy Osborne was told to stand aside.  But we have yet to see him rule on a major issue.  Let’s give Ross Wiseman the chance to break the recent pattern and restore some dignity to the tattered Speaker’s robes.

Wangersky identifies the source of the problem as well:  it starts at the top..

But what neither he nor Wakeham get to is why the government uses the tactics they do or why the opposition members individually or collective engage in the buffoonery.

That’s where the real problem lies.

And suggesting that the party leaders need to sit their members down and give them a stern talking to?

Well, that just misses the point entirely. You have to get at the cause.  The goons and the buffoons – whether in the House or on Twitter or in the comments sections online– are just a symptom.

Still, the very fact that people are talking about the legislature and how it needs to improve is good.

That’s certainly a radical change from recent years.

- srbp -

Enough of the Political Day-Care #nlpoli

In some respects, it is a threat that would strike fear only into the hearts of Danny Williams’ Tories:

If this problem is not resolved today, you can expect me to absolutely vilify your minister on Monday morning on Open Line.

No broken limbs.

No financial ruin.

A call to Open Line.

That was enough for the ruling Tories to save the voice message containing the threat and to reveal it to the world as a question of privilege in the House of Assembly at the end of the first week  the legislature has been open since last spring.

The government house leader spoke of intimidation and threats and fear.  In a scrum with the media after , Joan Burke – to whom the threat was directed in early February – appeared shaken.  Premier Kathy Dunderdale, she of the haughty condescension and the cheap put down had a few words of derision for the Liberals and their bad words. The only thing the Tories didn’t do in all their melodramatic glory was stage a collective back-of-wrist-to-forehead swoon.

All wonderful play-acting on the part of the Tories. Former parole officer Joan Burke showed her unease with all the credibility  of Rob Ford after a visit from Mary Walsh in her Princess Warrior costume one morning.

All that was vintage Danny,too.  The aged drama queen  could hurl any sorts of petty, vicious. mean-spirited and contemptible invective at anyone any time.  Yet, a whisper of derision aimed vaguely in his direction would bring on the screams of self-righteous indignation.  The bully one minute, the victim the next in the fashion of the chickenshit hockey goon who specialises in taking the dive for the ref whenever someone stands up to him.

Playing acting, hysterics,  and, of course, the finest vintage hypocrisy on the planet.

Classic Danny-era politics.

But that really isn't the story here.

The story is that elected provincial politics remains the domain of the childish and immature eight years after the mean widdle kid and his allies took it there.

Danny made the House safe for buffoonery, contempt, accusation, insult and intimidation.  Jerome, Darin, Paul and Steve showed how well they learned their lessons with their performance on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. On Thursday, the whole gang on the government side joined in.

This week, though, the Tories proved the old saying that in politics you don’t have to be good, you just have to be better than the alternatives.

For their part, the New Democrats display in the House this week was less about childishness than inexperience combined with basic incompetence.  This is a caucus that has a long way to go and a lot to learn before they could ever be considered a political threat to anyone except themselves.

As for the Liberals, they confirmed this week that these are likely the last Liberals anyone will see sitting in a legislature in this province, at least with enough of them to occupy the official opposition benches.    A couple of them might survive the next election but the Liberal Party is more an historical artifact than a viable political force.

To make clear how politically inept they are, consider Jim Bennett’s asinine phone call.  Anyone who watched the Liberals in action this week would hardly be surprised by it. In making the call, Bennett showed he has no judgment. In defending the call as the enthusiastic defence of a constituent, Bennett shows he has no genuine understanding of just how ridiculous his behaviour was.

Yvonne Jones’ performance as opposition House leader on Thursday was equally cringe-worthy.  In her embarrassing defence of Jim Bennett, she showed no signs of understanding parliamentary procedure despite having sat in the House for the past 16 years.  During Question Period the rest of the week, she displayed little knowledge of anything else. How bad was Jones?  She made John Hickey look good.

The root of the problem for the Liberals remains the same as it has been for years:  no one is in charge. Generally, neither the leader, no one in the caucus, the senior caucus staff nor the party leadership has any idea of where to go or what to do to get there. They operate as a loose association of individuals lacking either a common purpose or the common sense to work together.

Dwight Ball is clearly the leader in name only.  His own performance over the past few months and in the House so far could be generously described as grossly ineffective. The only good thing for Ball is that he won’t face any challengers should he decide he wants to lead the party permanently.  The party is in such desperate shape that no one in his or her right mind would waste energy trying to bring the party back from the political dead.

For the rest of us, though, this week has been nothing more but a reminder that the provincial legislature and the provincial government have become little more than a very expensive day-care. 

That is not merely an uncomfortable thought.

It’s unacceptable.

- srbp -

Shooting fish in a barrel #nlpoli

Okay.

So with the Premier babbling about cuts or not cuts, you could guess where the opposition parties would go during their second Question Period.

Yeah, well guess again.

Because something so obvious as a Premier who has no idea what she is talking about would seem like such an obvious, easy target that the opposition decided to go one better and show how clued out they are instead.

Liberal opposition leader Dwight Ball led off with a question about Muskrat Falls.

I would be remiss if I did not ask the Premier to allow a full debate and a free vote in this House.

If  - by some miracle – the Liberals actually had a policy on the scheme in the first place, having a debate and free vote on it might possibly make sense.

But since ball and his crowd don’t know whether they are punched or bored, further exposing their weakness with a debate is just plain dumb.

To make matters worse, his question is lamely worded.  it lacks forcefulness.  He should have just begged her pretty please with sugar on top and called her “Mommy” for good measure.

Remember that thing about demonstrating to the public that the opposition could be entrusted with government.  yeah, well Ball’s question raised doubts about his ability to be leader of the official opposition.

So Kathy gave him the wish to go down in history. There’ll be lots of time to debate, sez the Prem.

No kidding about the history thing. That’s what he said:

I think it would be nice for all of us to know where each and every one of us stood in history.

Then Ball switched to a lame question on natural gas that natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy knocked out of the park with ease.  to complete his self-immolation, Ball asked about pricing for electricity.

At no point did Ball give any indication he had a clue about the project at all.

But the Liberals weren’t done with that embarrassing opening.

Just to complete the show, they turned it over to Yvonne Jones.  Now just to give you context, Jones is campaigning hard to be the next federal member for Labrador.  All Yvonne sees is Labrador.  If it isn’t about Labrador she doesn’t give a crap about it.

So Jones wanted to know why the surplus power from Muskrat falls wouldn’t be available for projects in Labrador.

Of course it would, sez Kennedy.  And he’s right.  The Tories have said from the beginning that they wouldn’t be using 40% of the power.

Had Jones taken her head out of whatever bodily orifice she’s been storing it in, she’d also know that Muskrat Falls power is too expensive to sell anywhere else. This has been obvious for a year or more.  She’d also know that there are serious questions about whether the dam would be able to supply its minimum in the middle of winter, let alone have any to feed to industrial projects in Labrador.

Rather than try running on some of the numerous, well known weaknesses of the project, Jones decided to invent some slight against Labrador so she can fool someone into believing she is fighting for them.

Kennedy had no trouble telling her that when those projects came along he’d be happy to sell them the extra electricity from the wonderful, glorious project at Muskrat Falls.

Then  Randy Edmunds got up and tossed a set up question to Kathy Dunderdale about search and rescue and Burton Winters’ tragic death and the evil federal government that was somehow responsible for it. Having already successfully taken control of that issue, Dunderdale was suitable sad and pledged to do everything she could to make things right.

Edmunds then switched to the bullshit issue of all bullshit issues – Merv Wiseman’s workplace – and again Dunderdale put on her indignant crusader hat.  Which team is randy playing for again?  Not once but twice, he set Dunderdale up better than a Tory backbencher sucking for a promotion.

Andrew Parsons did ask a decent set of questions about skin surgery and got equally decent answers.

That was the semi-sensible interlude.

Jim Bennett then asked about a sooper sekrit agreement about the Marystown fish plant that supposedly involves the province, OCI and a company that no longer exists.

Fish minister Darin King talked about something else.

There endeth the Liberals.

Not to be outdone, NDP leader Lorraine Michael  decided to join in the fun.  To her credit, she did ask about Dunderdale’s budget comments.

But rather than point out the obvious confusion they Premier has, Michael asked a question fed to her by people who haven’t been paying attention:

What are government’s intentions with regard to potential loss of positions in the public service sector?

Dunderdale already said there won’t be layoffs and if any jobs do go it would only be through attrition.

Dunderdale didn’t waste time.  She just recited the basic ideas was a review of things to make sure it all worked properly.  Proper, responsible and all sorts of other good things,m Dunderdale said, even though she was in cabinet the whole while things got into a mess.

Michael went back to the same question again.

So Dunderdale noted that the NDP had talked about a one percent cut in their platform.  Dunderdale’s cut is only about the same amount and – in case you forgot – won’t involve any job losses.

having successfully set herself on fire with that one, Michael decided to go down the same blind alley the Liberals did.  She wanted to know about electricity prices and Muskrat Falls.  Jerome Kennedy recited the same, tired  - and inaccurate - numbers he’s used all along. 

The key thing for the government though, is that they twice got to allay public concerns about the costs of Muskrat Falls courtesy if incompetent questions from the opposition parties.

Noob NDP backbencher Geri Rogers then asked about housing.

Good topic.

She could have hammered away at the housing crisis in western Labrador caused as much by government incompetence at the provincial and municipal level as anything else.

That would make too much sense.

So Geri asked:

Mr. Speaker, when will this government create a housing division within government to deal with the critical need for affordable housing for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador as other provinces have done for their people?

That would be Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, an agency Rogers seems to have never heard about.

The minister responsible for that agency muffed the answer by talking about how much government had spent on housing.

Then Rogers recited all the initiatives from the housing corporation herself.  Had she not read her first question?  Or her follow on before she asked the first one?

The minister went back to the stats again, so Rogers countered with a question to the Premier.  Rogers wanted the Premier to organize a standing committee of the legislature to study housing.

And once the minister smacked that one out the window,  time expired.

On Day Two of the legislature, both opposition parties displayed a consistent and stunning display of the most fundamental incompetence anyone could imagine.

And for the government, as troubled as they are, Question Period was like shooting fish in a barrel.

It’s easy when the fish jump up and wrap their maws around the muzzle like that.

- srbp -

Dundernomics 101: The Cleary Factor #nlpoli

The gang at CBC shouldn’t feel sheepish.

They might have been the ones who pushed it most aggressively but  they weren’t the only news outlet that started talking up budget cuts and restraint based on what Premier Kathy Dunderdale told them.

Here’s part of what the Premier said to CBC’s Debbie Cooper:

“We're looking at a three-per-cent reduction right across government,…”

The Telly picked up a similar idea:

“It’s time to rein in our spending on infrastructure particularly,”

The Premier even repeated the same basic comments in the House on Tuesday afternoon before she scrummed with news media:

We have asked all our departments to look for at least 3 per cent in reductions, and yes, there are exemptions

All CBC did was take the Premier at her word, just like they recently took the word of a federal member of parliament about his view of his own pension.

They also – quite logically – concluded that the Premier was looking at cuts of more than $200 million. That would be three percent of the $7.5 billion or so in last year’s provincial budget.

Turns out when it comes to what they say, Ryan Cleary and Kathy Dunderdale are the same person.

On Tuesday, Kathy Dunderdale said the amount to be cut would be less than $100 million and that most of the big areas of government spending – health care and education, justice, and social assistance – were all “ring-fenced” and so they’d be immune from any cuts.

Now on a budget of $7.5 or $8.0 billion,  you can get $100 million in “savings” just by how you round your numbers.  That’s because you are looking at something like a cut of one to one and a half percent. 

Not three percent.

But half that or maybe less again

And just to make sure you can’t miss the point, note that Dunderdale herself flippantly dismissed the amount to be saved.  On Tuesday, she told reporters that maybe officials might go to six conferences instead of 10.

You just can’t reconcile what Kathy Dunderdale told Debbie Cooper and what Dunderdale said 24 hours later unless you come to one conclusion: Dunderdale simply didn’t know what she was talking about on Monday.

- srbp -

New partners and new supplicants #nlpoli

After the throne speech, the leaders of the opposition parties get to have their say in the legislature.

Just as the throne speech sets the government’s agenda, so too can the replies set the agenda for the opposition parties. They could be committed to biting at the government’s heels and demonstrating, as one former opposition leader put it, that the public could toss out the incumbents and trust the Opposition with the government at the next election.

Liberal leader Dwight Ball, the official opposition leader, offered a few “thoughts as we collectively work together to secure a brighter future.”

The rest of his speech covered health spending,  search and rescue and a handful of other topics all of which fit with the government’s agenda very neatly.  Any differences – on things like the fishery, for example -  were more cosmetic than substantive.

So with Ball basically pledging to be a partner for the ruling Tories, what of the New Democrats and Lorraine Michael?

Well, Lorraine talked as though she didn’t have a caucus.  There were plenty of references to what Lorraine had said before.  There are a great many “I”s in the NDP team.

But most telling of all, was Lorraine’s reversion to her old approach, of the supplicant going to authority to beg favours:

What we are asking for, Mr. Speaker, is very, very basic.

What they are “asking” for.  Not what they are working for.  Not what they will push for and not what they will do when they form the government.

No, as they did during the election, the NDP want to ask for things from those in power.

So with the Tories pledging to stay the course,  they can count on a new partnership with the Liberals as the NDP come on bended knee to ask for something or other.

Anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador will have to look somewhere other than the House of Assembly if they want new ideas. 

As for those clamouring for democratic reform, they could put a dozen new committees in the House.  Since none of the elected members seem to have any idea what they should be doing with them, democratic reform will have to come from somewhere else as well.

- srbp -

…fairness and balance for all the people of our province… #nlpoli

Excerpts from remarks by Clyde Wells, Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Assembly, in reply to the Speech from the Throne, March 10, 1988:

…We will vigorously oppose that which should be opposed.  We will criticize that which should be criticized.  We will examine and question everything.  It is our duty and our function.

Finally, we will approve the worthy and the proper.

Above all, we will discharge that great responsibility that all oppositions in the British parliamentary system have:  to make sure that government fully and completely accounts to the electorate for the expenditure of taxpayers’ funds, for the use of taxation authority, and for the management of the public affairs of this province, and we will not waver in our duty to ensure that they fully discharge the total responsibility with which they have been entrusted when they were given the awesome powers of being a government.

They are awesome powers but they are not theirs.  They are only holding them in trust for due exercise for the benefit of the people of this province and we will not waver in discharging our responsibility to make sure that the government does just that.

In doing so…we will act honourably.  We will neither unduly impede nor will we unduly facilitate, which, from an Opposition point of view, is worse than unduly impeding, … [If] you  unduly facilitate and you fail to fully and properly discharge your responsibility to be fully critical of the government and examine in detail what they are doing, you allow the government to do anything it wishes, the government deteriorates in quality …We will do so with respect for the function and responsibility of the government, we will acknowledge their good intentions, but we will expect similar acknowledgement and respect from government in return.

…the ultimate purpose of Opposition actions ought not to be to get them on the government side of the House.  As well as achieving that, our purpose is to ensure the betterment of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, to bring about a situation where the able are working productively and the unable are cared for and are included in the activities of the life of this province, where the old can feel secure and comfortable and the young are preparing for and are optimistic and have a reason to be optimistic about their future, where everybody is participating, where everybody has equal opportunity.

We will be taking steps to ensure that there is fairness and balance, always fairness and balance for all people of this province in all governmental actions and in all governmental expenditures wherever they live, without regard to the political stripe of their MHA…

- srbp -

The Old Boys (and Girls) Club #nlpoli

The always provocative and informative labradore posted a chart on Wednesday showing the number of days the House of Assembly sat in each session since Confederation.

The information to make up the chart came from the legislative library,  the group of people who provide information and research for the members of the legislature.

That period marked by the black band is the period in which the House typically sat for the greatest number of days. It runs from 1972 to 1996.  For the 22 years before that and for the 16 years after that period, the legislature hasn’t sat more than 60 days a year.

There’s more.  Since 1996 or so, the House has also sat for fewer days per week when it is in session.  The members decided that they didn’t want to have a session on Friday mornings as the rules used to require.  They decided to cancel the Friday sitting and add an hour to three of the other four days.  Same number of hours, they explained, so there was no loss to the amount of time.

They just left out a couple of details.  One of the biggest ones is that they chopped off a Question Period on Friday morning.  That meant that the opposition parties had one fewer chance during the week to grill the government party.  It also meant that House lost a day on which to debate legislation.  While they theoretically had the same number of hours in total, the members actually cut off the amount of effective time they had for discussion.

They made a few other changes as well.  Once upon a time, not so very long ago, members of the legislature would ask for information from government departments.  They got them through something called Questions on the Order Paper.  Departments were obliged to deliver the information, free of charge, and without much – if any – deletions or omissions.

The idea behind that was that the members of the legislature had an inherent right to inquire into what the government was doing with public money and how they were doing it. The legislature is supposed to be about more than a place for rackets and speeches. It’s supposed to be a place where the members found out stuff.

After all, the legislature is not the government.  It is the place where the government goes to get permission to do things with the people’s money.  They get the permission from the men and women the people elected to keep an eye on things. That’s the idea at the heart of democracy based on popular sovereignty.  Power  - the right to make decisions - comes from the people.

In any event, all that’s as maybe.  In the late 1990s, the government and opposition cut a deal among themselves.  Instead of asking questions on the order paper, the opposition agreed to submit access to information requests, which they would pay for out of the money they got to run the House.  The government could then censor the documents as if the members of the House had no right to information other than what the ordinary punters could get.

Everyone had less work to do, the government could keep more information from the public and – don’t forget – they all agreed to give themselves extra cash to hand out in their districts as they saw fit and without receipt.

No one objected.

Not a one.

No one did anything to change any of it until 2006 and even then, the only reason they changed was because some of them got caught breaking the law.  Even then the only thing that changed out of the convenient deal was the slush fund.  All the other parts stayed in place. 

It’s that sort of general understanding among the political parties - the back-room agreements among da b’ys - that helped create the current state of the House of Assembly.

What will be interesting to see in the new session that starts on Monday is whether the sort of easy relationship among the members will carry on.

- srbp -

A legislative first in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

If the province’s Liberals live up to the promise made in a news release issued Monday, they’ll make local legislative history.

Andrew Parsons, MHA for Burgeo-La Poile, announced today that he will be introducing a Bill to regulate the opening of the House of Assembly in the future.

Since Confederation, opposition political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have contented themselves with taking one afternoon a week to debate a meaningless resolution.

While they’ve had the ability all along to introduce bills that could become law, no opposition party has ever tried before.  It’s so common elsewhere that no one really pays attention to it.

Of course now that Parsons has told everyone, you can expect the NDP will start drafting bills and the Tories will try to figure out some procedural reason to stop it. 

Good luck on the latter.

On the former that just means the Tories will have a much harder time in the House this spring than they expected.

And when the governing party has to work hard during a legislative session, that’s only a good thing.

- srbp -

The value of nothing or Pater knows best, redux #nlpoli

Talk show host Randy Simms has a fine column in the most recent Saturday edition of the Telegram.

Our House of Assembly needs fixing, writes Simms.

It hardly sits.

It has no functioning committees.

Laws receive cursory discussion at best.

Simms quotes from an article by Memorial University professor Alex Marland that you can find in the latest issue of the Canadian Parliamentary Review.

Simms quotes:

The House is closed for 88 per cent of the year and talk radio has effectively replaced it as the people’s voice. Legislation is not sufficiently scrutinized. The committee of the whole is greatly overused, there are too few opposition MHAs to assess bills sufficiently and standing committees are embarrassingly underused to the point of being dysfunctional.

Simms notes in another spot that the last time a piece of legislation went off to a House committee for specific review was 2001. Note the date.

All true.

Russell Wangersky adds a couple of other details in a column of his own but  regular SRBP readers are familiar with these issues:

• 2006:  the half-time legislature
• 2007:  Danny Williams muses about taking freedom of speech from the House of Assembly
• 2010:  The Biased Speaker
• 2010:  Paternalism
• 2011:  The Persistence of Patronage Politics

The problem with the current state of the legislature is not just that the members aren’t working as hard as those in other places or that they are among the highest paid in the country.

The problems now are the same one your humble e-scribbler has been raising all these years:

• No one is holding the government to account in public as it should, and,
• The government is making decisions that will affect the province for decades to come without disclosing what they are doing and why.

The most glaring example of the sort of mess the dysfunctional House can produce is the Abitibi expropriation.  But you can equally add the unsustainable growth in public spending since 2003, the Conservatives’ love affair with secrecy, dismantling of the access to information laws,  and the ongoing management problems that have beset the Williams and Dunderdale administrations.

The answer to the problem in Newfoundland and Labrador’s political culture is not to shut down the legislature and have a committee run around to see what others are doing.

The first step would be to acknowledge what the problem is, exactly.  if you missed it, read back a couple of paragraphs.

The second step would be for people to acknowledge it isn’t a problem with the legislature alone.  It’s much bigger and goes into the issues Wangersky points out.

The third step would be perhaps the hardest.  For that one, people would have to recognise that the legislature got the way it is because they placed a higher value on conformity or cheerleading than on democracy.

Danny didn’t do. 

Kathy didn’t do it.

Other people, including the two columnists now calling for reform,  allowed them to do it with comments like this:

“That being said, for the last seven years, Danny Williams has been the right choice to run this province, and, regardless of any number of complaints, he’s done it well.”

Rooting for Danny and/or and otherwise staying silent – even when what he was saying or doing was truly appalling in a civilised society – basically gave Williams and his associates free reign to dismantle the legislature and the rules by which we are all governed.

Kathy Dunderdale is just carrying on with the same approach.

Pater didn’t know best, after all.

- srbp -

Working stiffs and lazy ones #nlpoli

For some reason, TransCon papers carried a story on newly elected Liberal member of the House of Assembly Jim Bennett and his plan to carry on a law practice while he sits as an opposition member in the legislature.

The Telegram even put the thing in its Saturday paper.  Here’s a link the version carried by the Western Star.

What’s so striking about this is that it is a complete non-story.  As you’ll see part way down the page, the conflict of interest section of the House of Assembly Act quite rightly exempts ordinary members from the restrictions on carrying on with another job or outside business interests while serving in the legislature.

So why single Bennett out?

Good question.

The story turned out to be a bit of fodder for at least one of the local radio talk-shows.  But there again you have to wonder why they singled Bennett out for comment and, in some instances, for criticism. It’s not like others haven’t done the same sort of thing in the past or aren’t doing it now.

For example, Paul Oram carried on several businesses while he served as a backbencher in the Tory caucus.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Harris carried on an active law practice the whole time he sat in the legislature. Other backbench lawyers have done the same thing.

St. John’s South MHA Tom Osborne runs a music promotion business called 5th String Entertainment. On the right, you’ll find the online registration for the company with Service Newfoundland and Labrador.

Nothing odd about politicians and entertainment:  once upon a time, not so very long ago,  another Tory ran a popular downtown nightspot while he sat in the legislature.

Enterprising young fellow that he is, Steve Kent used to have a small consulting company. 

Since he’s been in the legislature, though, Steve’s been running a driver training business with his wife as partner.

Steve also serves as chair of the board president and chief commissioner of Scouts Canada.

There is nothing unusual about backbench members of the legislature carrying on with private businesses or a career while they are also in the legislature.

So why did some local media single out Jim Bennett?

Hopefully it was nothing more than laziness and sloppiness.

If they weren’t lazy and/or sloppy, they could have done a quick check and turned up all sorts of people.  And the list here contains only the ones your humble e-scribbler noted over the years. 

Undoubtedly ,someone going through the individual member’s disclosure statements could find other businesses or professional practices backbenchers are still carrying on.  The cabinet ministers will all have their stuff in blind trusts  But backbenchers can continue to work a second job.  There’s no legal or ethical reason for them to stop unless the second job interferes with their ability to do their elected job.

More to the point, though, there’s no reason why any of us should expect backbench members of the legislature to give up their other interests. That’s especially true for licensed professionals who would have to stay current in their profession in order to stay licensed.

It’s interesting to note that while Chief Justice Green spent a considerable part of his report discussing the idea that holding a seat in the legislature to become a full-time job in itself. Green discusses the issue at some length and makes the following observations:

If one can tease an underlying legislative policy from this subsection [27 of the House of Assembly Act] , and extrapolate into the broader arena, it is that the life of an MHA does contemplate other non-political activities; and where there is a conflict between those other activities and the Member’s duties, the test for determining whether the Member is properly fulfilling those duties is not a quantitative one (i.e., not defined by reference  to numbers of days or weeks, vacation entitlement, etc.) but a qualitative one (i.e., to use the words of ss. 27(4), “… so long as the member, notwithstanding the activity, is able to fulfil the member’s obligations …”).

The issue under discussion is not theoretical.  In the 1970s, a Member attended university full-time outside of Canada for the better part of a year.  In the 1980s a Member continued to act as a deputy mayor of a municipality.  More recently, since my appointment,
two issues have entered the public domain relating, respectively, to certain Members who were  allegedly “moonlighting” by carrying on the practice of law
and a Member who allegedly was unavailable to deal with a public issue in her district because she had been working outside the province as a nurse. [p. 9-28]

In the end of that section, Green recommended, among other things that:

To eliminate confusion on the point [full-time versus part-time] , the legislation should also state that a Member, qua Member, is not prohibited from carrying on a business or engaging in other employment or a profession, provided that the nature of the business, work or profession is such that it does not prevent him or her from attendance in the House when it is in session and from devoting time primarily to the discharge of his or
her duties as a Member when the House is not in session.

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The Bow Wow Parliament at work

Among the important pieces of legislation introduced in the House of Assembly for the eight days of its fall sitting, an act to amend the Real Estate Trading Act by adding the word "and" at the end of subparagraph (ii);  deleting the comma and the word "and" at the end of subparagraph (iii) and substituting a period; and deleting subparagraph (iv).

The amendment will also change section four of the Act by deleting the word "or" at the end of paragraph (d), and by adding immediately after that paragraph this clause:  “(d.1)  a person in the business of property management who arranges a lease or rental agreement; or…”.

You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

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Hansard editor pens unique parliamentary novel

 

The blurb for this novel by the former editor of Hansard at the House of Assembly says it all:

Verbatim: a novel is a hilarious and scathing exposé of parliamentary practice in an unnamed Atlantic
province. Dirty tricks, vicious insults, and inept parliamentary procedures are some of the methods members use to best represent their constituents.

Infighting about petty matters within the staff of the legislature is captured by Hansard, its recording division, complete with typos unique to each correspondent. But when the bureaucrats begin to emulate their political masters, the parliamentary system’s supposed dignity is further stripped away.

Jeff Bursey reveals how chaotic and mean-spirited the rules behind the game of politics are, and how political virtue corrupts everyone. Verbatim is an inventive and blackly humorous work that speaks to the broken parliamentary practices found across the country.

About the author:

“Jeff Bursey has worked for Hansard in Atlantic Canada for seventeen years, first as
a transcriber, and then as an editor. Born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and currently
living in Charlottetown, PEI, Jeff has only ever lived on islands.”

What others are saying:

“Jeff Bursey has written a clever, highly innovative and highly readable novel about Newfoundland, specifically modern Newfoundland politics. The satire is sharp, sometimes hilarious, the language perfectly suited to the subject.“-- Wayne Johnston, author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Bursey’s work also enjoyed a very favourable review in the Winnipeg Free Press.

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No House sitting until December

The House of Assembly won’t be sitting until December and, as a result, it likely won’t sit much more than a dozen days.

No word on why the House is being delayed so long. 

Maybe the Premier’s Office is a wee bit preoccupied replacing all the carpets chewed up since last week.

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The Shortest-Timers

At an average of a mere 43 days, the Reform-based Conservative Party led by Danny Williams holds the post-Confederation record in Newfoundland and Labrador for lowest average number of sitting days in the legislature by an elected Premier.

The only Premiers whose administrations met the House of Assembly less frequently than Danny Williams were three people who got the job as a result of internal party politics, not as a result of winning a general election. 

Roger Grimes’ administration sat an average of 42 days, but Grimes got the job as the result of a party leadership convention.

The same goes for Tom Rideout, who won a leadership contest in 1989 to replace Brian Peckford.  Rideout served as Premier for a total of 43 days but never sat in the legislature as Premier. During the 1989 campaign, Rideout did make a public commitment that he would do so within two weeks of polling day if voters re-elected his party with a majority.

Nor did Beaton Tulk, who served for a handful of weeks between Brian Tobin’s resignation in October 2000 and Roger Grimes election as party leader in February 2001. 

At the 43 day average, Williams beats the previous record, set between 1949 and 1972, by Joe Smallwood.  He met the legislature, on average, for 53 days a year.   Brian Peckford’s third administration tied the same record after the 1985 general election.

Between 1979 and 1985, though, Peckford set what is still the record for highest average number of sitting days.  Peckford’s administration introduced scheduled fall sittings and, as a result, sat an average of 80 days annually for those six years.

That’s only slightly ahead of Clyde Wells’ administrations, which met the legislature on average 79.4 days from 1989 to 1995. 

Discounting the 1989 and 1993 election years, Wells faced the House an average of 88 days per year.  Discounting the 2007 election year, Williams has faced the House only 45.6 days per year.

In 2009, the House of Assembly sat on 32 days.

Williams himself makes no bones about his attitude toward the House of Assembly.  As Macleans related it in 2004:

He still bristles at the "wasted time" in the House, and the daily distractions that take him away from the real work of governing.

His record of attendance and his record of sitting days apparently confirms his negative attitude.

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Sources:  Parliament of Canada website and Susan McCorquodale, “Newfoundland; personality, party and politics” in Gary levy and Graham White, editors, Provincial and territorial legislatures of Canada, (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1989)

The Le Petomane School of Government

“Work, work, work”

 

Among the bills passed or on track to be passed in the current sitting of the House of Assembly:

• Making illegal what is already illegal: Changes to the Highway Traffic Act to make it illegal to send text messages while driving a car.  The Act currently prohibits the use of cellular telephones while driving.  Cell phones are the device people use to send text messages. 
• And then exempting people from the cell phone ban:  The list of exemptions under the new version of the Act is as impressive as it is vague in places.  It includes police, fire and other emergency responders, people texting or calling someone about something that is allowed under regulations and a whole undefined class of people – like maybe politicians? - specifically allowed to talk on cellular telephones and do other similar things while driving that ordinary folks are barred from doing.
• The Court Security Act 2010.  Repeats word for word the Court Security Act (passed in 2004 but never enacted) and includes two minor amendments that could have been done by amending the existing Act.
• The Architects Act 2008, amendment bill:  makes minor amendments to an Act passed in 2008 but not yet in force. See?
• Three separate bills  that change the Insurance Companies Act:  they could have been one bill or a complete revision of the old Act. Here’s the first amendment bill. 
• A bill to postpone the date for a report on salaries and benefits for provincial court judges.
• Two separate amendments to the Income Tax Act that could have been done in one bill.

It’s like government by a bunch of people who learned everything they know from some online university in the States, like say the William J. Le Petomane School of Government, run by Dean Hedley Lamarr.

 

 

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Never let it be said: House of Assembly version

Never let it be said that your humble e-scribbler didn’t help out the governing party as it struggles to figure things out a mere seven years into its time in office.

Tuesday’s post on on the opening of the House of Assembly noted that there was a major bit of business missing from the news release issued at 11:00 AM, namely proroguing, or officially closing, the old session.

Poof.

At 4:20 PM on Wednesday – odd time for something supposedly routine, dontchathink? -  yet a second media advisory emerges giving “details” of the proceedings on March 22. Turns out the House will meet at 10:00 to prorogue the old session.  Then His Honour will show up at 2:00 PM to deliver the speech from the throne.

24 hours and 20 minutes after the BP post points out the missing bits, basic information that ought to have been known and released in the first place miraculously appears.

Shades of the ABC website.

Ya gotta wonder sometimes. 

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House to open two weeks late

Surprisingly this didn’t get announced yesterday – on a government holiday – along with the news Hisself had returned to work.

The House of Assembly will open with a Throne speech next Monday, March 22.  That’s two weeks late.

If past speeches are any guide, this one will be a truly mind-numbingly hideous piece of verbal diarrhoea.

No mention of what happened to the old session which was adjourned before Christmas but not ended.  Normally the House would meet and conclude the old session.  Maybe the word normally used for that – prorogue – is not in fashion among Conservatives any more.

Anyway, the finance minister will deliver a new budget a week after that, Monday March 29.

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