Inconsistencies ?

Brian Crawley, chief of staff, Premier's Office, in testimony at the Cameron Inquiry on the extent to which he involved himself in departmental business:

Mr. Crawley:  At this stage of the game our role would have been very much just to have been advised of it , and I would have treated this issue the same as , you know , 99 percent of the other issues that come forward , you know. It's the department's job to manage it and if there is something there we should be aware of , I would expect to be made aware of it.

Commissioner : So forgive me , but that means no role , doesn't it?

Mr. Crawley: Yeah , no role in the sense of we actually have to do anything.

[Emphasis added]

Then there's this curious extract from the memos, e-mails and other documents that show the extent of government interference in efforts to hire a new president at Memorial University.

Curious because it seems to run contrary to Crawley's assertion that his office doesn't get involved in departmental business, at least not usually.

"I understand Brian C[rawley] will have called you on behalf of the Premier with the details."

That's a reference to the Premier's chief of staff and a call Crawley apparently made to education minister Joan Burke "on behalf of the Premier."

 

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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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MUN Crisis continues

Just because it hasn't been in the news lately doesn't mean that the Memorial University crisis is not simmering away beneath the surface.

You know that because Pam Frampton has another column this week which starts out with an e-mail exchange with the Premier's Office.

The open and accountable Premier's publicity department doesn't think that further comment on the presidential search would be in Memorial's interest.

When she went looking for a few comments from the Premier - likely to come via e-mail - Pam got the usual response from the Blackberry that runs government's publicity machine:  not interested.

If it weren't for opposable thumbs, this administration would not be able to carry out its media relations policy:

The interview is ducked. 

Declined. 

Avoided. 

So as not to have to give an actual answer or provide information.

It is the Blackberry version of government testimony at Cameron.  The talking points have to set a new record for brevity:  "I can't recall."

Rarely has the functioning of human society been so dependent on something monkeys could do. 

In order to tell some reporter to sod off, one does not need the gift of speech. 

One need only be able to click one's thumbs on some small keys in a certain sequence.

One need not have the ability to understand complex or abstract concepts, like the value of sustaining mutually beneficial human relationships through direct voice contact. [The concept of zero, as in the amount of useful information conveyed by the average government publicist, would not being among those unknown ideas.  That's about the only abstraction involved.]

And therein lies the larger problem here.  While none inside the Confederation Building likely see it, this is a sign of the full-on rot which takes hold in all administrations after a certain point. 

They become so convinced of their own immense value to the evolution of the species. They start to think that that their claims issued in written "statements" are not merely profound but universally true; like the Bible but better somehow. 

As they grow weary of the mortals with whom they must deal each day, they start to dismiss them as cavalierly as Louis or Marie ever did. 

In the last couple of years of the Peckford era, people wondered if the premier's media guy existed.  In the days before Blackberry kiss-offs, he just stopped returning phone calls from reporters.

Period.

Joe Smallwood coasted along on the daily stops at voice of the cabinet minister. Down with window, in comes microphone.  Blather for a few minutes and then drive off hopefully after reporter got arm back out of window.

The people in these august positions do not realise what is happening of course.  Their delusion is so complete that they neither see nor care to see the slow erosion of everything that supports them. 

They carry on with petty political feuds among themselves, as if these things were  important, let alone as important as what they were supposed to be focusing on.  In the process, supporters, friends and sometimes even family walk away. 

The whole apparatus of a particular administration can be propped up by nothing more substantive than a CRA poll. To those at the heights, it appears as though the whole thing is magically floating, held aloft by the righteousness of whatever it is they are doing.  They imagine a giant concrete base because they cannot see the real base:  two guys lashing broom handles together with duct tape.

You see, governments rarely fall apart before your eyes.  They don't just up and fall in on themselves one day. There is no final cataclysmic destruction.

They rot.

They decay.

They erode.

There is never anything truly spectacular except at the end when someone from another party finally pushes the whole mess over in a heap of ash.  By then, no one really cares any more.

Until then, there are the slights.  There are the dismissals.  There are broken promises. There are the frustrations and in some cases the outright insults that all remove another layer of the social bonds on which a political party is sustained.

The gotterdammerung - the twilight of the gods - is not heralded by the Ride of the Valkyries.

It is foretold, these days, by a RIM-shot.

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'The national interest" and marketing imperatives: a jarring symmetry of excuses

Submitted for your consideration:

“I think the viewers should be able to understand that, in the national interest, for the perception of the country, this was an extremely important and serious matter,” Chen Qigang, the ceremony's chief music director, said in an interview with a Beijing radio station.

compared with:

“But we also believe strongly in ensuring strong and visionary leadership for the people’s university. I cannot stress enough the importance of Memorial University to the educational, social and economic future of Newfoundland and Labrador. Just as the Board of Regents has an obligation and a duty to find the appropriate candidate, so does the government as mandated by the Memorial University Act. We take this obligation seriously."

and...

During a scrum on the search for a new MUN president last week, Danny Williams told  reporters that the province puts $300 million into MUN and that he's asked past presidents "to get more involved with government to promote the interests of the province."

Apparently, coupled with marketing considerations, the national interest can justify fakery and a bunch of other things too.

The Chinese just have more practice at rationalising these things in fewer words.

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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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Why Joan and Danny rejected Eddy

Eddy Campbell has withdrawn from the presidential competition.

His statement is an eloquent defence of the university in a time of crisis:

That [presidential search] committee should be free to conclude the mandate it was given without interference or outside influence, as is the case with all presidential search committees at other Canadian universities.

Heresy!

Jeffrey Simpson starkly describes the issues and problems tied up in the Memorial University crisis.

Once the usual suspects find out about it, they'll be screaming to the Great Oracle of the Valley for Simpson to be tossed in jail for hating Newfoundland.

Only one problem with Simpson's column: "But nary a peep is heard about the principles involved in political interference, because no one dares question the man who can leap tall icebergs."

The entire body of public criticism on government's illegal intervention is focused on the principles involved.

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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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Phoning it in

Education minister Joan Burke turned up this morning as the first caller on Open Line with Randy Simms.

She was calling from Stephenville, or "from the district" as Simms put it.

He made it sound like Burke was just back in her district for a visit.

After all, that's likely what you'd expect given that the department she runs is headquartered in St. John's. Being a minister is usually a busy life, even in the summer, what with the meetings related to cabinet and the meetings in the department and just being available to sign all those letters that have to be signed even in an age of computers and e-mail.

Thing is, Burke likely wasn't just stopping in for a visit.

And she likely isn't the only minister who tends to head back to the district during the times the House isn't in session.

Something keeps coming back to your humble e-scribbler about a comment Burke made having to do with ministerial expenses. There was a document establishing her primary residence, which, if memory serves, government officials expected would be in St. John's while she held Her Majesty's commission. The declaration was part of determining what set of expense rules from treasury board would apply.

Burke's comment stood out as she found that form a bit problematic, given her primary residence was in Stephenville. There was some mumbling criticism about the whole arrangement reflecting the "old boys club" of politics.

Now memories can be faulty, not the least of which being the one between the ears of your humble e-scribbler, so it's possible that wasn't exactly what was said.

The old boys club crack just stood out, though, because it was from straight out of left field. Why would it be surprising that an employer would expect you to live within easy commuting distance of the place where your job was located? There's something sexist in that?

Anyway, Tom Marshall is another minister not originally from the capital city who seems to spend a whack of time working from somewhere other than the Confederation Building.

Sit and think for a second and you could probably come up with a bunch of ministers who have offices and work responsibilities in the capital city but who seem to spend a huge amount of time not in the office.

Well, not in the main office. Marshall likely has a suite in the provincial government building in Corner Brook. Burke too, could likely scare up a bit of space in Stephenville.

John Hickey? Patty Pottle? Trevor Taylor? Tom Rideout when he was still a minister? Charlene Johnson? Kevin O'Brien?

These are just tossed out as possible examples because their districts are not within typical daily commuting distance of the metropolitan region.

Any of them keep two offices and work from home, home being somewhere other than within an easy commute of Sin Jawns?

This is not just a matter of some mouldy old rule after all. The cost of maintaining duplicate offices can be steep. Add to that the cost of having to grab a quickie flight at full fare from Stephenville - for argument sake - and then hopping back the same day just to do a media scrum.

Then there are the regular cabinet meetings and the committee meetings and all the rest.

Pretty soon, the cost of commuting like this would get to be a tidy sum.

Then there are the intangible costs. It would be much easier to meet and discuss some business face to face rather than do it by e-mail or over-the-phone. Ministers living in St. John's - where their main office is located - also have the chance to be more accessible to news media in a slow period during the summer. It gives all sorts of opportunities to increase the amount of information government provides to the public on its activities.

Well, that assumes government wants to give more information or that ministers are capable of doing more than parroting prepared lines, but let's just work on the assumption the current situation is an aberration in the great scheme of things.

Still it seemed a little odd that Burke was in St. John's for a 2:45 newser on Tuesday and then bright and early on Wednesday morning was safe on the west coast again.

Maybe it's just a misperception but then again, there have been too many references to some sort of dual office arrangement over the past couple of years to make it a case of being completely mistaken.

There's a subject for a little bit of investigative reporting.

In the meantime, it might be worthwhile to keep track of the number of cabinet ministers who are phoning in their media hits during times when the House is not in session.

-srbp-

Memorial University crisis to deepen

A member of the university senate apparently had a chat with the Western Star and told it as it is: the board of regents appoints the president, not the minister of education or cabinet.

Once the first one speaks, more are likely to follow.

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Memorial University autonomy crisis: choice quotes

From The Telegram coverage:

1.  Education minister Joan Burke:

"When those names and that selection process hits the cabinet table I want to ensure that we have the best possible selection, the best leadership that we can possibly find," said Burke.

Okay.

Define "best" and define it publicly and quickly.

If we all know what the cabinet thinks "best" means, then we might be able to figure out why it is that the board of regents Burke and her colleagues appointed and the people who run the university were suddenly struck incompetent.

Potential applicants would like to know what "best" means, especially since they now face a new and thus far secret process with secret selection criteria.

2.  Undergraduate student union external affairs director Cameron Campbell:

"I think the main problem here is the lack of accountability and the lack of transparency in the process, and I think that's really the issue we have to deal with," said Cameron Campbell, MUNSU executive director of external affairs.

While Campbell's comments earlier appeared to be somewhat equivocal, this line is an indictment of a government that supposedly embodies accountability and transparency.

3. The bizarre, from the cbc.ca/nl news story user comments by someone logged on as Anthony11:

I only hope that the next time the Premier is shopping at the South Carolina Home Depot that he stays there.

Huh?

This is either completely off the wall or a clue to some sort of back story that sounds interesting.

Made only more weird if someone googled "charter flights from South Carolina to St. John's" and landed at the Bond Papers post about Miss Teen South Carolina and her concern for education.  Remember Caitlin?

There's education for you and a totally freaky connection.

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CAUT: Prov Gov threatens MUN autonomy

Predictable but still, a voice worth heeding:

“This is an unprecedented and serious violation of university autonomy,” says CAUT president Penni Stewart. “Universities must be free from political interference or any outside influence.”

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Memorial University crisis: the media coverage to date

Conversation at the Tuesday family supper table included a question from your humble e-scribbler's sister as to why the education minister held her scrum with reporters at 2:45.

Good question, since, as the Sister noted, media now had time to get reaction from critics of the government's policy.

There is no good answer, though, except that she was essentially correct. Since news runs on controversy, this story will have legs. The contradictions between the Premier and the minister will fuel further inquiry.

At some point, the Grenfell issue will come back since a key part of the earlier rumour held that at least one of the candidates Burke now admits rejecting may have been someone who wasn't a fan of the proposed second university. Burke denied the issue had any impact on the hiring selection but that sounded a bit like what labradore calls "Not(x) = x".

Media coverage on Tuesday only intensified the criticism since the rumours of cabinet interference in hiring the university president have now been confirmed.

Canadian Press filed a story about seven hours ago with about half the story consisting of comments from the university faculty association: N.L. university faculty say freedom jeopardized after minister's intervention. The reaction is strongly negative:

"What it suggests is that if she's going to be actively administering the university, would she come in and deal with an individual faculty member whose politics she didn't like? Or an individual administrator at a lower level that she didn't like?" [Ross Klein, president-elect of the faculty association.]

That builds on a story that ran earlier on Tuesday across the country.

The Telegram's quickie version from Tuesday afternoon is simple and focuses on the continuing search. That's pretty much been their coverage to date. vocm.com's little summary sticks to the simple.

CBC's online story is a bit more detailed. it includes critical comment.

The CBC Here and Now supper hour news piece was harder hitting. On the Go played the entire scrum. None are online as of Tuesday evening unfortunately. The scrum would be worth having in its entirety, especially the bit where the education minister dances around the fact the Premier's version of events and hers are somewhat at odds.

NTV's report was longer and included critical comment.

There's also been a bit of blog coverage, like a post at Macleans.ca by a MUN education professor who labeled the media coverage "sometimes bizarre".

Editorial opinion has also been strongly negative, like this column from last weekend's Telegram. That's been the case since the details of the story and the allegations of interference first surfaced on the front page of the Globe and Mail last Saturday.

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Closed minds, reason and the Memorial University crisis

Education minister Joan Burke today confirmed the rumours that have been swirling around the province for months, namely that the cabinet had interfered in the process to hire a new president for Memorial University.

In her media scrum, today, Burke repeatedly spoke of following the provisions of the Memorial University Act. She then described a new process for selecting a president of the university in which a list of names would be presented to cabinet and from which cabinet would make select the person to be appointed.

That is not what was intended. The Memorial University Act is clear:

51. There shall be a president of the university who shall be appointed by the board in consultation with the senate and with the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

The board of regents makes the appointment. The cabinet - the lieutenant governor-in-council - may reject an appointment but nowhere is it provided in law that the president of the province's university is appointed by cabinet.

Memorial University traces it roots to Memorial College, founded in 1923 as a non-denominational institution of higher learning. In a country where public affairs were more sectarian than politically partisan, this was a revolutionary move. The college became a university in 1949, but government's intention, as expressed, in the Memorial University Act was to create a publicly-funded university that operated autonomously from government.

The Act gives to the board of regents the power to run the university and central to that is the authority to select the university's chief executive officer, the president. The hiring system, as it was, has functioned exceedingly well, finding successive presidents of extraordinary calibre: Dr. M.O. Morgan, Dr. Leslie Harris, Dr. Arthur May, and Dr. Axel Meisen are examples.

Under their leadership, the university has grown. It has earned a well-deserved international reputation despite sometimes very difficult financial times. The vision of the university founders has been fulfilled. The wisdom of their approach and that of successive government administrations has been proven.

Those administrations contained men and women of no mean ability. They were no less visionary, no less intelligent, no less capable and no less virtuous than Burke and her colleagues.

There was no reason to change the method of finding a university president.

To be fair, Joan Burke did not attempt to provide reason, nor did the official news release.

She simply laid down the law, even if she violated the statute as she did so.

Before going any further, let us dismiss any suggestion that Burke acted alone here. Only someone overly concerned with insignificant distinctions, only the most partisan of partisan apologists would consider it important that Burke claims to have made the decisions rather than the Premier, as accounts such as the one in The Globe and Mail have alleged.

Only someone totally unaware of how the administration works might think that a minister who cannot travel outside the province without the prior approval of the Premier's chief of staff might have undertaken to inject herself into the selection process at Memorial without the full approval of, if not direction by, the Premier's Office.

Burke is merely the instrument of government policy and that policy is aimed squarely at dismantling Memorial University's autonomy, the basis of its success thus far. Cabinet has already shown it's willingness to ignore the board of regents with its decision to create a separate university at Corner Brook. Now it confirms the policy by usurping the legal authority of the board of regents in not merely watching, but in substituting itself for the board.

Government policy, as described by Burke, will make finding a genuinely superlative candidate all that much harder.

The potential applicant will face an entirely unknown set of criteria for selection. Merit - the basis on which selections have been made to now - has been replaced with secret considerations. If the goal is to continue the university with the sort of success it has achieved to date, we should be suspicious of anyone who submits to this selection process. It is hardly the sort of thing one would expect in an academic institution that is supposedly "competing with other institutions nationally and internationally for the right person to take on the job."

The potential applicant will also know that - as demonstrated both in the Grenfell decision and in the hiring of the president - he or she will have no say on the future direction of the university. Cabinet is the sole authority, and it must be obeyed. Burke said it plainly in her scrum.

In the end, Burke made it clear that cabinet is not interested in open discussion.

There can be no more eloquent a reason for cabinet to stay out of the future of Memorial University than closed minds and the absence of reason. For all the contradictions between Burke's words and government actions, the contradiction between the essence of a university and the essence of this cabinet could not be more stark.

The only question left for the public right now is what the board of regents - those with the legal authority to appoint a president - will do now that their authority has been usurped.

Memorial is, to use Burke's abysmal phrase, the people's university. The people should look to the board, and to the candidates for the elected alumni seats on it, to know if the university will continue to reach for the heights or if it will begin a slide into the deep.

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