Kremlinology 39: What Burke didn’t say #nlpoli

In defending the $140,000 –a-year patronage job she gave to former Tory candidate John Noseworthy, advanced skills minister Joan Burke told the House of Assembly:

Mr. Speaker, no one can argue that Mr. Noseworthy has a unique set of skills.

Indeed no one can make such an argument.

Former auditor general John Noseworthy doesn’t have any special skills at least, in this case.

He is an accountant with lots of experience as a provincial auditor.  In that role, he has been known to make a few serious fumbles.

Everything that Burke said her department needed to help the department sort itself out could be had from a great many people out there.  Some would be former provincial public servants here or from other provinces.  Some would be former federal public servants and some would come from the private sector. What’s more, all of those people would know more about the core mandate of Burke’s department than than John Noseworthy.

Joan Burke is right.

No one can argue Noseworthy has a unique skill set.

He doesn’t.

And to her credit, at no point in her response to questions in the House did Burke actually say he did. 

Looks like someone foisted the guy on Burke and she got stuck trying to defend someone else’s pork-barrel decision.

The clue is in what Joan didn’t say.

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An ex-Premier scorned #nlpoli

Not content merely to discuss his nomination of Elizabeth Matthews for a seat on the offshore regulatory board, Danny Williams took some pretty heavy shots at his former cabinet members on Monday in a 10 minute interview with the CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates.

In my opinion, Elizabeth Matthews – of all the women I have met in politics including my ministers – was the most competent woman I had come across.

Williams went further. 

He claimed to have significantly advanced the place of women in politics in the province during his term of office.

Williams claimed he was instrumental in getting Joan Burke and Kathy Dunderdale nominated, claiming that “in those days it was more of a man’s world.”

You don’t have to read hard to between the lines to see Williams was making a very pointed jab at two key cabinet ministers in his administration.

The fact he is full of crap  - as if 2001 was the political stone age in this province - is largely irrelevant.

Interesting too that he mentioned a recent comment about the fact there are very few women seeking office in this election.

Great minds think alike, eh?

But that comment about Matthews and the implicit idea that Dunderdale and Burke owe their place to Williams is not going to sit well with a great many Tories.

Heck, it was so bad that even talk show caller and Danny fan Club charter member Minnie H burned Bill’s ears on Monday night calling Danny down to the dirt for his remarks.

Whatever Dunderdale and company did to Danny after he left, the Old man is certainly going to claim his pound and a half of their hides, one way or the other.

Payback is a mother.

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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.

The die is cast aside

“The die is cast!”

That’s what then-education minister Joan Burke said back in 2007 when the current provincial administration unveiled its plan to give Sir Wilfred Grenfell College something called “autonomy” from Memorial University. 

She was arrogantly dismissing concerns raised about the feasibility of creating a second university in the province.

Burke even used the word “independent” in a news release in 2007 - “Grenfell College is about to gain independence…” – something she predicted would happen in 2008. 

Well, in 2009, none of the promises came true.

And you can tell none of the promises came true because the announcement was made by Darrin King, the education minister, and not Danny Williams, the premier behind the whole drive.

You can also tell there’s nothing to get excited about because the release is gigantic – 13 paragraphs – and there are no fewer than five media contacts.  The way these things usually go, the less positive news there is, the more names are listed as media contacts.

Under the proposed approach, Grenfell will lose its separate and proud identity, becoming instead something to be called Memorial University  - Corner Brook.

It also won’t get a separate president or senate, as recommended by two consultants hired in 2005 to look at the whole idea of Grenfell “autonomy”.  Their Option 1A was the one supposedly on the books to be implemented.

Instead, the current senior official – named the Principal – will continue to be called the Principal and will report directly to the President of Memorial.  And there will be a separate budget presented to government through Memorial University in St. John’s.

Whoopee ding.

The whole thing looks suspiciously like the consultant’s Option 2A  but without the administrative clout of having a separate president for the new university at Corner Brook.

And what were the disadvantages noted for that by the consultants, you may ask?

• common Senate reduces Grenfell’s academic autonomy and
  development potential;
• little change from current unsatisfactory situation.

That’s right.  The consultant’s considered that the approach government ultimately  would actually reduce Grenfell’s autonomy and offer little change from the status quo.

Looks like the die for Grenfell autonomy Joan Burke talked about wound up getting cast alright, cast aside.

Expect lots of negative reaction to this as the magnitude of the broken promise starts to sink in for people in Corner Brook.

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Rorke’s other Drift

The present advocate reviewed the case again - and I cannot speak for the advocate, only what was given to me - he felt that the review was unnecessary but would continue based on the actions of the previous advocate.

That’s child, youth and family services minister Joan Burke during Question Period in the House of Assembly on December 10. 

She’s referring to retired judge John Rorke and a review of a tragic death in Labrador initiated by his predecessor. 

Now all these high-fallutin’ legal notions might be more than a humble e-scribbler can grasp but surely it is just dead wrong for someone to state an opinion on an investigation before it is concluded.

Wouldn’t this be like the judge saying  - before any evidence had been presented - that he could see no reason in wasting everyone’s time on this and entering a verdict right off the bat?

And it would be even worse  - wouldn’t it? - if, having made such a preliminary judgment, he then communicated that observation to someone outside his office.

Now if Judge Rorke, as he used to be, has reviewed the material collected to date and has reached a conclusion, he certainly has the power to do so and cease any further inquiry into the matter.

It’s spelled out clearly in the law:

18. The advocate, in his or her discretion, may refuse to review or investigate or may cease to review or investigate a complaint where…e) in his or her opinion the circumstances of the complaint do not require investigation; …”.

How very peculiar that the former judge would persist in a review which he had already decided was unnecessary and that he could stop on his own authority.

How very peculiar indeed.

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“The overriding and paramount consideration…”

[One of the fundamental changes we have to make, Mr. Speaker, is our legislation. We have to review the legislation; we have to amend it. One thing that is fundamentally flawed with the legislation, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that it does not focus on the best interests of the child.]

Mr. Speaker, the previous government received a report in 1997, and on page 59 of that report it outlined what the focus should be in the legislation. In not one place did it say it should be in the best interests of the child. Do you know what? You took it, you brought it in and now we are left with the problems. [Update:  Paragraph added to give full context to the citation]

That was child, youth and family services minister Joan Burke evidently feeling a bit flustered at having to answer questions in the House of Assembly in her department. 

For some unknown reason, Burke blurted out that claim.

The only problem for Burke is that it isn’t true.

The 1998 Child, Youth and Family Services Act has a clause under a section titled principles.  The clause – number seven – states categorically:

General principles

7. This Act shall be interpreted and administered in accordance with the following principles:

(a) the overriding and paramount consideration in any decision made under this Act shall be the best interests of the child; [Emphasis added]

If there are indeed problems in Burke’s newly minted department it is most definitely not because the 1998 legislation lacked any direction about how the best interests of the child should be factored into departmental decision-making.

Let’s hope that was just a flub under pressure and not symptomatic of Burke’s grasp of her new department’s responsibilities.

How much more wrong can she be? Update:  labradore cites two other sections of the CYFS Act that also mandate the best interest of the child take paramountcy.

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The search for a university president: compare and contrast

At McMaster, they started hunted in January and 10 months later came up with a winner.

At Memorial,  it has already taken almost 10 months just to go through the bullshit at the front end designed solely to get people to forget the sheer sh*t-wreck made of your humble e-scribbler’s alma mater in the first go- ‘round.

The only way the Memorial University search committee will find a president before the end of this year is if John Fitzgerald  - Our Man in a Blue Line Cab, seen left, hard at it on the diplomatic circuit - tells Danny he wants out of Ottawa pronto.

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Freedom from information: lack of briefing notes for minister called “bizarre” by senior government official

An unnamed senior public sector manager has termed a move by government to eliminate briefing notes for ministers “bizarre”.

The official is quoted in a post by Telegram blogger Geoff Meeker.  The unidentified official spoke only on condition of anonymity.

“I don't think it's possible to keep up to speed without a briefing book,” said the person, who has worked at some of the highest levels of the public service.

“It will make it very difficult to understand, in retrospect, why certain decisions were made - very dangerous for the staff who must execute them and very problematic if one needs to retrace and do a course-correction on something that's gone off the rails. Without briefing books, corporate memory is very much reduced and future government decisions rendered more difficult.”

The comment came after another Telegram story (not online) in which Joan Burke, government house leader and minister of a newly created child, youth and family services department, said that she had received no briefing notes when taking over her new portfolio. Burke told the Telegram’s Rob Antle that

“I didn’t want to be handed a binder with 500 to 1,000 sheets of paper to try to determine what’s important and what’s not, and what’s current and what I need on my radar.”

As Meeker points out, Burke’s attitude may have little to do with what she described as her desire to get down to work.

Burke was embroiled in a controversy last year over the hiring of a new president for Memorial University.  Details of the minister’s involvement became embarrassing when the Liberal opposition office obtained copies of government records through the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and provided them to local media.

The documents including e-mails and briefing notes that included questions for Burke to use during her screening interviews with the two finalists selected by the university’s hiring process.  Burke rejected both candidates.

Briefing notes have also proved embarrassing for other cabinet ministers.

A note prepared for Burke’s successor in November 2008 on financial implications of “autonomy” for Grenfell College from Memorial University, another controversial policy from Burke’s tenure in education, was virtually completed deleted before being released under the province’s open records laws.  While promised two years ago, there is still no sign of the enabling legislation.

During the Cameron inquiry into the hormone receptor scandal, health minister Ross Wiseman stated under oath that he had not read briefing notes on the issue when he took over the portfolio.  As CBC reported,

… Wiseman said he did not have the opportunity to read briefing notes about the cancer testing after he was sworn in as health minister, because he was busy tackling other pressing issues and preparing for the annual budget.

Opposition politicians have also claimed that ministers apparently no longer receive briefing notes to use in preparation for the House of Assembly.

Meeker’s public sector manager also described some of the concerns about the new policy which would see the elimination of any paper trail of documents and backgrounders for ministers. 

“Without briefing documents, the public can never really know what grounds decisions were made on - cutting the foundation out from under transparency and accountability, not to mention history - how will future generations understand the story of this government and this time without primary research sources?

“This puts a great burden on senior and mid-level public officials to keep good records in their own briefing books and black books. These would be accessible under ATIPP, but that leaves the paper trail with the officials, not the Minister. And if they don't keep good records, well - we all heard during the Cameron inquiry how difficult it is for these busy, busy people [cabinet ministers and political staff] to recall details from 6 or 12 months ago.”

That last point is particularly cogent:  at one point during the inquiry, an exasperated commissioner Justice Margaret Cameron commented that many of the witnesses seemed to have difficulty recalling anything at all. 

The premier's chief of staff, Brian Crawley, was sent an e-mail in July, 2005 that warned of a major story about to break involving breast cancer testing mistakes.

But Crawley testified he can't remember getting the e-mail or even talking to anyone in the premier's office — including the premier — about it.

"I really don't remember anything about those early days at all," he said.

Judge Margaret Cameron asked Crawley whether he remembered any of the events of July and he responded, "No."

"You don't remember seeing anything about this until the story broke in the Independent [Newfoundland & Labrador Independent newspaper] and you don't even really remember reading the Independent story," she said.

Crawley was not alone and that exchange prompted an angry premier Danny Williams to criticise Cameron over the remark, as cbc.ca/nl reported:

When Crawley answered one question about what he would have done in a situation, Cameron replied, "Well, I'm getting a lot of that, 'This is what I would've done,' but nobody ever remembers seemingly having done much."

On Friday, Williams fired back.

"I have to say I was disappointed. I was disappointed as I watched Madame Justice Cameron show disdain for a professional witness who was before her, giving testimony, honestly, forthright, under oath, to the best of his or her ability," Williams told reporters.

Meeker’s post and the comments by the unnamed official echo concerns identified in Donald Savoie’s recent book on the erosion of accountability at White hall and in Ottawa.

In Court government: the collapse of accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom, Savoie documents a similar practice of eliminating briefing notes and other official written documents in order to avoid the access to information laws.

In addition to the move to eliminate a paper trail, Savoie also notes concerns among politicians with whistleblower legislation as part of a larger trend away from government openness and internal and external accountability.

Savoie also points to the appearance of unofficial practices within the administration of government that are also designed to avoid disclosure under access to information laws.  For example, one study cited by Savoie found that requests from politicians and the media took longer to process than those from others even though there did not appear to be any particular difference in one request from another.   

Similar efforts by officials to skirt open records laws have already been noted in Newfoundland and Labrador.

For example, officials have invented a concept called non-responsive records to refer to documents which are apparently covered by an access request but which are not  released. One of the Burke e-mails on Memorial University, for example, includes a deletion marked “non-responsive” rather than use the official requirement to cite a specific section of the access law under which a deletion is made.

Perhaps the most notorious example was a claim that records did not exist even though the Premier and other officials acknowledged that they did.

In another case, access to documents was denied on the grounds that the review was ongoing.  The request had not been for a final report but for documents relating to the study and an accounting of its costs.

Officials have also been able to avoid disclosure based on questionable claims about the scope of the request.

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The joy of giving

The new chair of the board of governors at College of the North Atlantic – headquarters in Stephenville – just happens to be the top contributor to the past two election campaigns of Joan Burke, education minister and member of the provincial legislature for Stephenville.

There’s a story on the front page of the Saturday Telegram.

Appalachia Distributing – the company listed as making the donations - has a record of political giving:

Year	Party	Candidate	Annual/ Election	Amount
1998	Liberal		Annual	450.00
1999	Liberal		Annual	450.00
	PC	Leonard Muise	Election	150.00
2000	Liberal		Annual	450.00
2001	Liberal		Annual	450.00
2003	Liberal	Gerald Smith	Election	170.00
	PC	Joan Burke	Election	1,000.00
	PC	Joan Burke	Election	192.50
	PC	Jim Hodder	Election	200.00
2004	PC		Annual	375.00

The Telegram also reports election contributions for 2007 - $1,000 to Joan Burke’s campaign - but those still aren’t available on the provincial elections office website.

Government corporate registry records show the company was dissolved in 2005 and revived a year later. The corporate registry lists Appalachia Distributing Limited with two directors, Terrence Styles and Darlene Styles.

That makes the political giving totals (including the grand listed by the Telly for 2007) as follows:

Liberal (ended 2003) : $1,560.00

PC (1999, 2003-current) $2,577.50

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No sense of shame

From a news release by government House leader Joan Burke in an announcement that the provincial legislature would re-open for its fall sitting on November 25th:

The sitting of the legislature is an important part of our democratic process.

Yes it is.

Well, it would be if the opposition didn't have to shame Burke into making an announcement.  In past years, the party house leaders shared information informally so that they could be properly prepared to engage in, as Burke puts it, "productive session with respectful and healthy debate on the legislative agenda".  That's a pattern of non-partisan co-operation that dates back decades in the legislature.

Word from the hallways of the legislature is that so far Burke has shown her opposition counterparts the same regard as she's given to the Memorial University Act, the Memorial University board of regents and senate and university president Eddy Campbell.  Her approach so far is pretty much in keeping with her small-minded approach to funding the opposition parties, well at least the Liberal one.

No indication would she give of when the House would open and so far no advance warning, in confidence, of what general areas would be coming up for debate.  No indication that is until after opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons issued a news release pointing to "a continuous trend developing in this province that our current government will wait until the absolute last minute to open the legislature and then rush towards closure in the shortest time possible."

Still no word on the legislative agenda apparently nd Parsons is likely not holding his breath.  Burke will probably let him know a couple of days beforehand.

Seems that Burke is playing the petty partisan game just as roughly as her boss does, but then again, contempt  - whether for the traditions of the House or the legislature itself - is a hallmark of the current administration since it first took the government benches in 2003.

That's what makes Burke's references to the democratic process such a nose puller. 

Expect the session to be shorter than normal, since the opposition is likely going to be pushing the government hard.  Under the circumstances, given the stress from the financial hard times cabinet is wrestling with and given that Burke herself will come under scrutiny for her hand in the Memorial University mess,  the government's real lack of regard for the legislature and the democratic process will shine through.

After all, that's what happened in December 2006 when they last faced some serious problems.

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The Blue Shaft

Narrow partisan considerations reared their ugly head in a meeting of the legislature's management committee.

An independent study commissioned by the House of Assembly management commission recommends an increase in budgets for the Provincial Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic causes in the House of Assembly.

MR. SPEAKER: Okay. Provide base funding for the Government Members’ Caucus of $100,000 annually.

The Chair is ready for discussion.

Ms Burke.

MS BURKE: That is one recommendation that I support.

Joan Burke, education minister and government house leader may have enthusiastically voted money for her political friends but in the end, the Provincial Conservative members of the legislature's internal management commission support every single recommendation, except one. 

That one allocated $162,000 to the Official Opposition office to ensure a well-funded opposition that would have appropriate resources to carry out its important legislative function in a modern democracy.  The study reviewed legislature budgets across Canada and in several foreign parliaments.

The report included a set of general principles on democratic legislatures and caucus funding. They included, among others:

3. The legislature must be strong vis-à-vis the executive in order for democratic government to be effective.

...

5. In adversarial systems, the Opposition and other parties play important roles and need institutionalized protections.

...

One cannot imagine a more straightforward set of principles.  In order to drive home their point on the importance of a legislature with a properly funded opposition, the authors included an observation on events in several provinces where opposition benches were depleted after an election:

The crucial thing is that there has to be informed opposition, and that takes resources. However, one other consideration is germane here. That is that in first-past-the-post (single member plurality) systems such as those that exist in Canada, there is a danger of opposition shut-outs or quasi shut-outs as the electoral system exaggerates the winner’s share of seats. This has been seen in general elections in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia. There needs to be a kind of “Opposition Bill of Rights” to deal with such anomalies, since Westminster systems
depend on adversarialism.

The Provincial Conservative members took a decidedly different view. Innovation minister Trevor Taylor put it this way:

MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I don’t need to reiterate everything that Ms Burke just said, but I think if you just look at it from a perspective, a base allocation, one would think that a base allocation would be a base for all caucuses. Why the principles of Metrics EFG would differentiate is hard for me to follow, to be honest about it. [Emphasis added]

That last statement could not be more painfully obvious or true.

The extent to which the Provincial Conservative members also picked at petty issues is evident in the transcript of the session.  Education minister Joan Burke seemed concerned either to micromanage issues - as with Memorial University - or to ensure that no one got a few dollars more in his or her budget than she had available in hers:

MS BURKE: I have a question on that, and I think it may be just a clarification.

It says that the assistant to the Opposition House Leader is $49,000 and the assistant to the Government House Leader is $43,000. So, is this simply a case where there is a step progression but it would be the same job?

Okay, I just wanted to clarify that because in the report it kind of stands out as to why and I thought that would have been the explanation.

MR. SPEAKER: Yes. My understanding is that the assistant to the Leader of the Opposition has gone through the step progression to reflect that salary, and the assistant to the Government House Leader will do the incremental steps to get up to that particular salary as well.

MS BURKE: In essence what we are saying is, instead of it being, say, $49,000 there, that would depend, I guess – that is only an indication of where an individual would be on a step. If that position changed tomorrow, that $49,000 could potentially be, I do not know, $38,000 or $39,000.

Outside the meeting the Provincial Conservatives defended their actions as being about responsible management of public spending. 

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Autonomy? What university autonomy?

A statement on university autonomy released this morning was sent to reporters without sign-off from Memorial University.

Pretty much proves the medium is the message.

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Memorial University crisis: it just keeps getting worse

Danny Williams, former Rhodent, should have known that academics are not ones to take his usual blather as if it were gospel.

No surprise therefore, that Memorial University professors are turning the Premier's lack of logic against him in the Memorial University crisis.

And just to really make it bad, they even point to academic freedom:

"If, in some way, we're supposed to be doing specific, applied bits of research, you know, for the province rather than following our interests then there are questions of ... academic freedom looming," says [politicial scientist Steve] Wolinetz.

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Pull the other one, the MUN version

His latest version of events doesn't match any of the other versions, including his own earlier version.

There is no effort to pull back fro Joan Burke's insistance that the new preisdent will be appointed by cabinet.

Still, the implausibility of the different versions of government interference in the MUN crisis doesn't stop the faithful from crowing that it "does clear the Premier of any allegation of interfering with the process."

Nope.

Not even an attempt to reconcile the new story with the old ones; just blind acceptance at face value.

Take it with a grain of salt.

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Oh yeah, Pam's fried...just like a whole raft more

Telegram editor Pam Frampton has been writing about the Memorial University thing for some time now.

Her column on Sunday is not for the faint of heart.

She's fried.

Pissed would be a better term.

And she's got good reason, since she's discovered that sometimes people in government like to dance on the extremely fine meaning of words. They'll answer the question you asked - literally - but not even think about giving the answer to the question they know you were really driving at.

In the media relations business that sort of thing is something you do rarely. It's the kind of stuff you save for when they ask you about invasions from Mars and you are sitting on the body of a Venusian. No sez you, no Martians. The only justifiable motive for that kind of semantic dancing, in other words, is something of supreme national importance.

Even then a simple response like "we don't discuss national security issues" is way better than what amounts to a lie by omission:

In June, long before the Globe and Mail published its speculative piece about what was going on behind the scenes of the stalled presidential search process, I asked Joan Burke straight out: "Has MUN's board of regents, acting on the recommendation of the presidential search committee, brought any names forward for cabinet's/the premier's consideration?"

Her response: "We have had no correspondence from the board of regents and the presidential committee."

Really? So how did Minister Burke know there were two shortlisted candidates winnowed out from a longer list by the search committee?

According to Burke's public relations specialist, Nora Daly, "The minister became aware of the short (list) last winter/spring through routine contact with the chair of the board of regents."

Well, golly, I'm no education minister, but to me "routine contact" certainly falls under the definition of correspondence.

The problem with this sort of too-cute-by-half stuff is that it doesn't erode credibility, it smashes it with a battle axe.

Pam Frampton just won't trust Joan Burke and her colleagues ever again on anything. Sure there have been plenty of examples of other people being jerked off over the past few years, but until it happens to you, there's always the temptation to think it isn't really as bad as others portray it.

Then it happens to you.

And you wind up being done browner than a wedgie left in the deep fryer too long.

No amount of malt vinegar and ketchup will make that taste disappear.

And it won't disappear.

Part of what the public have been seeing over the past six to eight months in Newfoundland and Labrador has been the dismantling of the very comfortable situation between the news media and the government. Some would say it's lasted too long anyway, but basically, it stayed extremely positive for government civilized as long as reporters didn't feel they were being frigged with too much.

In some respects the change in reporting mirrors the considerable volume of critical public comment coming in the online spaces. Some of it might be planted, but with the opposition parties in the state they are in, they'd be organizational miracle workers if they could sustain the variety and intensity of the stuff turning up so far in 2008. People aren't shy to voice their disquiet as they might have been before 2007. The cause is irrelevant; it's just notable that there's is such a change.

None of this means that the government will collapse tomorrow. it just means the news media and the public have changed. Government will have to shift itself and start responding differently to the new environment than they have been.

Otherwise we are witnessing that start of something which could get quite ugly. It's not like we haven't seen that happen before. Reporters who haven't been able to get the Premier on the phone even though they know he's in town might ask their gray-haired colleagues about the days when they couldn't get Peckford at all even the Premier's press secretary didn't answer his phone messages.

Much depends on the man behind the curtain and whether he really plans to pack it in next year, as he suggested in 2006. Danny Williams might just tough the whole thing out for a few months and leave everything to his cabinet to cope with, if they wanted to. That would possibly meet his needs but, frankly, the long term prospects for his party would just get dimmer with each unanswered e-mail.

All of that just remains to be seen.

All we can say today is that Pam is fried. And if Pam is fried, things are not good for government and its relations with news media.

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A small but significant distinction

The Telegram's Russell Wangersky gives cabinet some good advice this rainy Saturday in order to avoid what he describes as "boneheaded mistakes".
Around these parts, we'd make one small quibble over this otherwise apt comparison with the current Memorial situation:

Stymied at the CNLOPB, Wells miraculously became the best choice for head of the PUB - oh, wait. He was the only choice considered. Unlike at MUN, the Public Utilities Board job didn't bother with the niceties of anything like a messy old search for the best candidates.

Turns out there was a messy old search for candidates, after all, as Bond Papers reported last February.
Andy Wells doesn't appear to have been a candidate since there was no mention of the competition or of Wells winning said merit-based selection process after the initial ads appeared in the Telegram and elsewhere. The Public Service Commission parsed the details of the thing in such a way as to leave more questions than the parsing answered.
With that little piece of information corrected, Wangersky's piece  - particularly the Andy bit - now makes even more sense.

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The Looking Glass Cabinet

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone," it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

Through the Looking Glass: and what Alice found there

Tom Marshall must have received his law degree from the University of Wonderland.

You know.

The place Alice went.

She ran into Tom's old law prof, Humpty Dumpty, who first taught him that the words on the page are meaningless plastic things. 

Humpty Dumpty's lessons took.

Last week, education minister Joan Burke said that, in picking a new president for MUN, the university board of regents would send over a list of names and cabinet would make the appointment since - as the law provides, according to Burke - the president's job is a cabinet appointment.

Hang on there, said a number of people including Grenfell professor Dr. Paul Wilson who insist that the words in the law - 'the board of regents shall appoint a president" - doesn't mean that cabinet does the job.

Marshall, a former attorney general, insists that Wilson is being a stick-in-the-mud, and that Wilson is "not helping" the university.

There's that favourite government phrase "not helping" or "being unhelpful".

In this case, it would mean pointing out the obvious bankruptcy of the government position, but that's really a separate issue.

Marshall, sounding a bit like a 1960s hold-over, insisted that the professor was being square, Man.

What's interesting is the way Marshall (LLB, U Wonder) described Wilson's view:

Everyone is entitled to their view. He’s given his analysis. I consider his analysis a literal interpretation — a strict, constructionist interpretation. A proper interpretation of the legislation would have to consider the wording in context. When you consider the wording in context, the minister of Education plays a very important role.

"Strict, constructionist interpretation". 

You will note of course, that no where in Marshall's comment does he say that Wilson is actually wrong.  Not at all.

Not if you actually read what Marshall said:  according to Marshall, the legislation properly read with all the words in their context means that the education minister plays an important role in the process.

Marshall  - clever fellow - didn't define that role, however.  The role envisaged in the legislation is that the education minister takes the name of the appointed person to cabinet for approval.  That's the role.  it's largely administrative in nature.

And no where does it say cabinet picks, which is what Burke insisted she and her colleagues will be doing.

But still, according to Marshall,  Wilson is wrong because he is using a "strict, constructionist interpretation"?

Here's a simple solution.

Let's put this before a judge.

They are easy to find down on Duckworth Street.  Odds are, we could find one of them with a few spare minutes in between trips to the neighbourhood Timmies to hear the learned former attorney general appear on behalf of the Crown to argue the matter.  Now we'd be doing this no just to resolve the dispute between Marshall and Wilson, but to settle on the legality of the cabinet's move in this extremely important crisis.

The justices would likely fight over the chance to hear this one.

And they get paid to resolve disputes.

After all, government has been extremely successful in this Mad Hatter, March Hare approach to the things before.

There was the now famous October 2004 interview Danny Williams gave to the CBC's Carole MacNeil.  According to Williams, once the province didn't qualification for Equalization, clawbacks wouldn't be 100 per cent but zero., even though when the province qualified for just a fraction of a penny of federal handout, the clawback was 99.9999999 per cent.

Then there was Tom Rideout's classic time travel episode:

Consider Rideout's efforts to explain that while today might well have been June 14 when the bill was passed, tomorrow did not actually mean June 15. Rather it meant some date four months hence:

"Since Green didn't say the act comes into effect today, we, in consultation with him, said what can come into effect today comes into effect today, what needs time to come into effect tomorrow comes into effect tomorrow, and tomorrow is Oct. 9, 2007"

Or Marshall gamely trying to criticise Brian Peckford and in the process fibbing royally about the province's finances.

Or on legal matters, just ask Don Burridge, the current deputy attorney general and, odds are, the poor sod who would carry this threadbare Stanfield's of an argument downtown to see what others made of it.

Burridge is the extremely talented lawyer who was in the unfortunate position of having to carry forward government's argument in Ruelokke.  The government argument, one suspects, was dictated to him by the learned barristers in cabinet but he gamely laid it out.

They tried the argument that a clause in the 1985 Atlantic Accord which said the hiring tribunal's decision was binding on both the federal and provincial, governments really meant that the courts couldn't intervene in the matter.

Mr. Justice Halley loved that one, one suspects, so much so that he likely had to stab himself repeatedly with a fork under his robes so that the pain would keep him from rolling on the floor in laughter.

We all know the outcome of that foray into the courts.

All of this just goes to show just exactly how desperate the cabinet is to try and escape the Memorial mess they've created.  Tom Marshall is trotting out all sorts of verbiage to try and obscure things.

The problem for Marshall in this little drama  is that he is stuffed in the role played before by Burridge. He is carrying a preposterous argument and he knows it.

But if he is game, there are a few people wearing black robes in the later summer heat who will gladly sit and enjoy the government's revival of Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland.

We'd all enjoy the play immensely even if the outcome is predictable.

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Into the deep

The provincial government's crisis with Memorial University got just that much deeper today.

Op-ed pieces in the province's largest daily newspaper from two distinguished professors simply and succinctly laid out the problem in plain English. [Not available online]

As political science professor Steve Wolinetz wrote:

Simply put, universities can only function effectively when they are at arm's length from government or any single entity funding them. This not only ensures academic freedom and allows members of the university community to "speak truth to power," but also enables them to harness the creative energies of faculty, staff and students. Independence and autonomy are at the core of any university. It has enabled Memorial to explore vital issues and helped the province and its people grow and thrive.

Independence and autonomy are indeed at the core of any university and they are at the core of the current problem. By injecting herself into the selection process for a new president, education minister Joan Burke she has not stepped across an invisible but well-defined boundary, she has committed to completely ignore the law by making the presidential appointment a cabinet one instead of a decision of the board of regents, as the law provides. She has usurped the authority of the board to appoint the president, which in itself is an expression of the university's independence and autonomy.

Nor has no one outside cabinet and government back benches is able to ignore the evident contradiction between Burke's action in this case and the government's commitment to make Grenfell College "autonomous."

All that is pretty much old hat now, as this story ends its first of what may prove to be several weeks of political pain.

What made the hole Burke dug even deeper is the revelation in another op-ed piece - this time by former academic vice president and pro-chancellor Evan Simpson - that the university has been reduced, in effect, to the status of a Crown corporation or agency:

The university depends heavily upon its operating and capital grants from the government. Memorial used to receive block grants and set its priorities within the financial limits they imposed. Now, in submitting a budget, the university presents a menu of initiatives and the government chooses those it likes. In effect, Memorial has surrendered its capacity to set its own priorities. Basic operating funding continues but room for innovation is limited. The government expects Memorial to have a strategic plan, but it is difficult to take this seriously when the Treasury Board decides what it will or will not fund.

Clearly, the current crisis at Memorial University has been brewing since the fall of 2003. The clash over Burke's intervention in the hiring process for a new president is merely the tip of a very large and very dangerous iceberg. Former president Axel Meisen's early departure from the job was perceived publicly as flowing from the clash with government over the Grenfell issue. Odds are that there have been a series of events that led to his move to Alberta eight months before his first term expired.

Burke did not recover with her late-afternoon news release. The release was in many respects cumbersome and contained errors of style and punctuation suggesting it was very hastily written.

In it, she insisted - despite the evidence to the contrary in plain sight - that she had not interfered and that her actions were within the bounds of the law. She also insisted the government has not violated academic freedom, however with that claim she simply pushed the next shovel deeper into the earth at the bottom of the hole in which she currently resides.

“I have yet to hear one concrete example of how exactly our government has impeded or interfered in academic freedom or autonomy,” said Minister Burke. “We have never told people what to teach or how to teach nor have we suppressed opinion. We are very simply saying we will exercise our legal obligation under the act, which clearly states that Cabinet has an approval role as an oversight, and I can assure everyone that we take that role seriously and will exercise our responsibility.”

Right away the claim that government had not interfered in the university's autonomy is nonsense given the evidence already in the public domain.

However, on the other issue, that of academic freedom, Burke's protests will likely prove unconvincing. The reason is easy to see.

Throughout the week, Burke repeatedly used government's financial stake in the university as justification for government's action. There may not be an example of interference in academic freedom yet. There may be no signs of political arm-twisting yet.

But given all that the public has learned to date, it is not hard to imagine a day in the not too distant future when a member of cabinet will find some public comment by a professor or student to be unwelcome. A call will be made and the justification will be simply that the government is concerned the comments are damaging this, that or the other interest of the province.

If the matter ever became public some minister may undoubtedly say that there has not been a violation of academic freedom, despite the plain evidence to the contrary and using exactly the same words and the same rationalizations Burke has used already:

We have invested heavily in our post-secondary institutions. The current and capital budget for the university alone this year is nearly $240 million. Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic are making names for themselves in the international arena.

Do I think that government needs to step away from this process? Absolutely not. As long as we have a budget of $240 million, we have 2,500 staff, we have 18,000 students (at the school), I think that we are expected by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to play the leadership role that is ours.

Newfoundland and Labrador can certainly make its own decisions and we don't have to act in the way that other provinces or other universities do.

No, it's not hard to imagine it at all.

After all, until recently, no one might have though the government would ever interfere in hiring a president for the university.

And then Burke did just that.

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Regents chair has splainin' to do; high jump in his future?

According to an education department spokesperson, board of regents chair Gil Dalton gave the short list of candidates to education minister Joan Burke.

If that's the case, then Dalton needs to quit immediately as chair of the board and chair of the selection committee. If Dalton is the leak - which apparently occurred last winter or this spring - then it goes along way to explaining Dalton's silence on the whole matter of the selection and Burke's interference.

If that isn't the case, then he needs to parse the details of the process and set the record straight.

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And then the crisis deepens...

Like no one saw this coming.

1.  Former education minister Chris Decker:

"I can only see one possible way to redeem this, is for the minister to resign or for the premier to have her ... shuffled to another portfolio. I can't use words strongly enough."

Add to that Decker's cabinet colleague Dr. Phil Warren, who is quoted by VOCM as saying he was shocked by Burke's action.  Warren noted that in his time he did not interfere in the selection of Dr. Art May.

2.  Professor Paul Wilson, university senator and a prof at Grenfell (!!!):

“She can be as defiant as she wants — as she was in the scrum — but I’m sorry the legislation is absolutely clear and there is no room for interpretation of that simple sentence in English. There’s no legalese. There are no notwithstandings.”

3.  From the Great Oracle in the Valley, otherwise known as the voice of the cabinet minister comes some predictable stuff from the other perspective:

• Finance minister and former attorney general Tom Marshall weighs in, backing his colleague in their complete misrepresentation of the law.  No quotes but those who heard it were surprised at Marshall's continued insistence that up was down.
• The Premier was unavailable - as in out of the province, presumably - but an unidentified publicist from his office said the Premier did back the minister.

4.  And in the same online story  - headline:  "Burke gets support from colleagues" - we find that opposition education critic Roland Butler doesn't like Burke's actions at all.  That's not the only thing wrong with that online story but there's only so much space, even in a Bond Papers post.

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