Kathy Dunderdale told reporters on Tuesday, while the polls were still open mind you, that the by-election results would be no big thing.
Life would go on.
The world would turn.
And the Conservatives had two years left in their mandate.
That’s when everyone in the province understood that the provincial Conservatives had already conceded defeat in the Carbonear-Harbour Grace by-election.
Unfortunately for Dunderdale, though, the election result means something. Here’s what.
Paul Oram was a colourful politician.
Well, colourful in the sense that he flamed out very quickly. Regular readers of these scribbles will remember him as the guy who had no idea what had happened in the province during his lifetime. Not long after taking over the health department, Oram precipitated a huge political crisis. Then he high-tailed it from politics altogether with some pretty damning comments about how his colleagues were spending public money.
These days Paul turns up as the token Tory on CBC Radio’s West Coast Morning Show political panel. he is still colourful.
On Monday’s show, Oram said that Muskrat Falls was a wonderful thing because it diversifies the provincial economy. He did not say how. Oram just said that it would. No one asked him to explain what he meant.
That’s a lucky break for Paul. You see, Muskrat Falls will not diversify the provincial economy. It is a public utility project. What’s more, it does not produce any revenue other than what the people of this province will be forced to pay. In that respect it is less of a way to diversify the economy as it is a new kind of government tax on the local economy.
But that’s okay: Paul has usually had trouble understanding this whole economic development thing. That’s probably why Danny put him in charge of economic development at one point.
After bashing that around, the panel switched to talking about the provincial budget and health care. Bernice Hillier – the host – asked Paul about the money in the budget for planning the new Corner brook hospital.
Not a problem, said Paul. The hospital is important. The government will build it.
It’s just that times are tough, according to Paul. The government is just slowing things down a bit until they have the money to build the hospital.
Interesting idea Paul had there.
Interesting because it is something that Oram’s old colleagues have categorically denied.
Don’t have the money to build it now?
“That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long time,” said finance minister Tom Marshall last week. Here’s what health minister Susan Sullivan said in the House of Assembly on Monday:
What we had in the past was a replacement design. Mr. Speaker, we are much more progressive than that. We do not want a replacement of the Corner Brook hospital; we want a hospital that is going to see us into the future. Therefore, we have asked them to go back, and with this $1 million we will look at a hospital that will meet the needs of the future in terms of essential services that are going to be in that hospital, Mr. Speaker. When that is done, then we will move forward with a design concept for the facility itself.
Paul Oram was a colourful politician.
He still says some curious things. Makes you wonder what he is going to say next.
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Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her ministers refuse to hand over documents on more than $5.0 billion in public works spending by the Conservatives since 2004.
The documents are cabinet secrets, as their argument goes, and under the access to information law cabinet cannot release that information to him.
like her predecessor, Premier Dunderdale was unavailable to talk to reporters earlier on Thursday but she did have time to call an open line radio show to talk about the Auditor General and other things. Dunderdale eventually turned up at a 2:00 PM scrum to take reporters questions. Predictably she rejected any claims that she is withholding information improperly.
Here’s one bit, as relayed by CBC:
Every piece of information that comes in to government is available to the auditor general. It's just the preparation of material used specifically for the preparation of cabinet documents is not available.
Elsewhere in the scrum Dunderdale explained that the Auditor General had others ways to get the information he needed. When asked to explain that by reporters, she couldn’t. Dunderdale also admitted that there was actually no infrastructure strategy. Instead there were documents prepared for cabinet that gave a complete overview of the government’s capital works spending.
But anyway, by her own account, therefore, that’s the sort of thing that the Auditor General wouldn’t be allowed to see. The AG wanted to look at a strategy and assess the performance. By Dunderdale’s account there’d be no way he could see what was included in the non-existent strategy and what wasn’t.
Sounds foolish.
And it is foolish.
It’s also familiar.
In 2006, Danny Williams and his cabinet (including Kathy Dunderdale) took exactly the same position when another Auditor General asked for documents on the fibre optic project.
No way, they said: cabinet documents.
Secret, don’t you know, old chap.
Access to information law and all that, what what.
Now in that instance the government - through a resolution in the House of Assembly – asked the AG to “investigate all the details and circumstances” of the controversial deal. That’s really no different than the AG doing the job he got from a law passed by the House of Assembly (the Auditor General Act).
Same situation.
Same effort to hide information.
And ultimately, cabinet’s excuses are still just as flimsy.
Your humble e-scribbler pointed out in 2006 that cabinet can use its own discretion and release any documents it likes. They did it in 2004 and, eventually, Williams and cabinet relented with the fibre optic review and gave the AG what he needed.
Now it took four months, mind you, for them to do the right thing. But after lots of public pressure, Williams and his cabinet reversed their stand. In effect, Williams and his cabinet (including Kathy Dunderdale) admitted the argument they’d used the year before was utter bullshit.
Just to be sure, folks, what we are talking about here is just provincial capital works spending dolled up as something much grander than it ever was. They called it “infrastructure” but essentially it was – and is – the sort of road building, road paving, schools building and all the other capital works that government shave done for decades.
And Auditors General before the current one have had no problem looking at the documents, totalling up the amounts, checking the way things were done and then reporting what they’ve found.
Until now.
For some reason Kathy Dunderdale and her cabinet want to keep a giant chunk of public works spending over the past eight years away from the Auditor General and his Excel spreadsheet.
The question is why.
Maybe it has something to do with what the AG did get to look at. The Labrador Highway and public publics repairs chapters don’t make for pretty reading.
Maybe it has something to do with just how much political consideration goes into public works decisions like road paving.
Maybe it has something to do with what SRBP already noted about capital works under the Tories. So much of the “stimulus” and the infrastructure program was nothing more than regular public works spending announced and re-announced and announced over again. Through it all, though, it appears that massive cost over-runs and inexplicable delays measured in years are routine for government public works projects.
Some of the most embarrassing of the administrative messes cost the provincial government a cabinet minister in 2009. Remember the Lewisporte and Fleur de Lys health care centres and Paul Oram? That was about capital works decision-making within one of the departments that refused to turn over documents to the Auditor General.
Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: early on in his tenure, while Danny Williams could keep up the old cabinet documents ploy for six months, six years later, the public won’t put up with that sort of political tomfoolery any more from any one.
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Sandy Collins, former executive assistant to Paul Oram is the provincial Conservative candidate in Terra Nova in the by-election yet to be called.
Orange Update: Robyn Brentnall is the New Democrat in the running.
Red Update: The Liberal candidate is John Baird. He was elected in a nomination fight on October 17.
Two things:
1. Remember what your humble e-scribbler said about a party that can only offer up former executive assistants as candidates, and,
2. The people in Terra Nova district can vote today by special ballot even though no election has been called.
Every person can request a special ballot including:
- an elector who has reason to believe that he/she will have difficulty voting on polling day perhaps due to work or personal commitments;
- a student who is in attendance at a recognized educational institution either inside or outside the Province;
- an elector temporarily residing outside the Province for a continuous period of less than 6 months who is unable to attend at either the advance or regular poll;
- an elector who is incarcerated in a correctional institution or in detention at the Waterford Hospital;
- a patient in hospital who will be unable to attend either the advance or regular poll.
All you have to do is contact the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, otherwise known as Elections Newfoundland and Labrador.
There’s a form to complete and send in. You can find it in pdf format here.
They’ll send you back a voter kit which you can use to cast your vote right now.
But there’s no election yet, you may be thinking.
Doesn’t matter.
Under section 86(4) of the Elections Act, voters who meet those criteria above can ask for a special ballot no more than four weeks before an election or by-election is called. Well, you and the rest of the world don’t know when the thing will be called but we know when the earliest date is that it could be called.
That would be the day Paul Oram threw his teddy in the corner. Any of you who knew Paul was going could have already voted.
But since the rest of us found out later on, you should be able to get a ballot and vote right now.
There is no legal reason for the Chief Electoral Officer (former Tory party president Paul Reynolds) to refuse you the opportunity to vote under section 86(4).
And don’t worry if you don't like the party but not the candidate. [Updated to reflect that all candidates are now in place, barring any independents]
Under section 86.4, you can write in the name of the political party you want to vote for instead of the name of a particular person.
Voting is your right.
Now that’s pretty much the same thing said in a post about the Straits, but you know, it is not very often people get to protest a completely foolish electoral law twice in the space of a month or so. In the Straits, people were a bit fried so a protest vote was possible.
In Terra Nova, townies may not be able to judge which way the local wind is blowing.
This time everyone can take advantage of the oddest election rules in the civilised world. Only in Newfoundland and Labrador could you get to vote before an election has been called.
Vote early for the candidate of your choice.
But vote.
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Public submissions on MHA severance pay, as with pensions, were few. Those who did comment on MHA severance pay felt that it should be one week for each year of service instead of the current one month, to make it more in line with other severance payment provisions in the province.How few?
Marshall Dean took the by-election in the Straits and White Bay North this evening against Premier Danny Williams, just about all the provincial cabinet and millions in public cash.
Dean defeated provincial Conservative candidate Rick Pelley – former executive assistant to Trevor Taylor – and New Democrat Dale Colbourne.
The results (40 out of 40 polls) were:
Dean – 1925
Pelley – 1799
Colbourne – 320
The Straits was one of two by-elections won by the provincial Conservatives in 2001 and heralded by many as a sign of the ascendency of the Tories under Danny Williams.
Trevor Taylor won the seat for the Tories. The by-election Tuesday was necessitated by his unexpected resignation in September.
Danny Williams, the former cable television mogul, was the only declared candidate to lead the provincial Conservatives at the time of the 2001 by-election in January 2001 and was acclaimed as leader a few weeks later.
In many respects this Liberal victory is truly remarkable. Williams’ Conservatives have been virtually unassailable for years and their bank account is full. that’s exemplified by the 2008 financial reports which show the Tories raised the better part of $600,000 while the Liberals barely pocketed $40,000.
While Williams, his cabinet and long-time party organizers rushed to the district to back the Tory candidate, the Grits could rely on little more than moral encouragement from other parts of the province, a very small cadre of provincial organizers and whatever Dean could pull together himself.
The next test will be a by-election in Terra Nova necessitated by the surprise resignation of Paul Oram only days after Taylor bailed out.
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When the political going gets tough, what better way to handle it than to launch a phoney jihad against a completely imaginary enemy over a completely imaginary dispute:
The Premier is gearing up for another fight on the national stage. Danny Williams says Hydro Quebec continues to try and block this province from developing the Lower Churchill, now refusing to sign onto a water management agreement for the Churchill River in Labrador.
For starters, Danny Williams is only pissed at Hydro-Quebec because they aren’t willing to take the ownership of the Lower Churchill he offered then. It’s not that they are so interested in the LC and Danny that they are blocking him, it’s really bothering him that Hydro-Quebec just isn’t interested at all.
And that’s after five years of desperately trying:
[Natural resources minister Kathy] Dunderdale told VOCM Open Line show host Randy Simms on Friday morning that over the past five years, the Williams administration “got a path beaten to their [Hydro Quebec’s] door” in an attempt to have HQ become what Dunderdale described as an “equity partner” in the Lower Churchill.
Dunderdale described the Lower Churchill “piece” as a “win-win” for Hydro Quebec. She said that despite efforts by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador there was “no take up [from Hydro Quebec] on the proposal.”
But the biggest thing you have to consider on this water rights agreement thingy is that if the two parties – NALCO and Churchill Falls-Labrador Company – can’t reach and agreement on their own, the whole thing will be settled legally and finally by the public utilities board.
No big public, hair-mussing fuss required.
Danny Williams knows this because that’s what he amended the law to say in preparation for just such an event.
Well, okay first the provincial government tried to screw with the contract – as someone else tried in the 1980 water rights case - but they got caught red-handed in that little bit of tomfoolery.
While Williams and his ministers tried to downplay it at the time, they were caught so far in the wrong they even had to call an extremely rare emergency session of the legislature to deal with the mess created by someone’s childish legalistic game.
Anyway, that’s another story.
CFLCO not interested in the deal on water rights Williams wants?
Well that’s no problemo.
The whole thing just falls along according to amendments made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2007 by none other than Danny Williams’ own administration.
The public utilities board – headed by Williams’ new buddy Andy Wells – just imposes a deal on the two sides:
5.5 (1) Where 2 or more persons to whom subsection 5.4(1) applies fail to enter into an agreement within a reasonable time, one or more of them may apply to the public utilities board to establish the terms of an agreement between them.
(2) Where an application is made to the public utilities board under subsection (1), the board shall establish the terms of an agreement for the purpose of achieving the policy objective set out in subparagraph 3(b)(i).
(3) An agreement established by the public utilities board under subsection (2) is binding on the persons named in the agreement.
Poof.
Job done.
Pas de sweat.
And lookit, the company involved here isn’t Hydro-Quebec, it’s the Churchill Falls-Labrador Corporation. That’s the company in which the provincial government’s energy company – NALCOR - owns a 65% stake.
And if you are still not convinced this is all yet another case of Tory dog-wagging, just consider that this evil foreign demonio Hydro-Quebec hates Williams so much and is working so hard to block the Lower Churchill they were will to sign a deal allowing energy from Labrador wheel across their province.
Wheel power and they make millions off the wheeling charges. Gee, that’s really putting obstacles in the way of the Lower Churchill. Yep, what better way to block the Glorious Lower Churchill project than demonstrating that Danny Williams can wheel power through Quebec to some other market than Quebec without any obstacles.
So what is all Danny Williams’ puffed chest really about?
Not even Ed Martin - the head of the provincial government’s energy company - seems to know.
But if one Ed doesn’t, maybe your humble e-scribbler can offer some easy suggestions on what issues are causing the provincial Conservatives to go hunting for a distraction:
- The by-election in the Straits is really not going well at all for the Tories. Then there’s Terra Nova to fight where the Tories haven’t even got a candidate yet and the Liberals wound up having two to pick from. Eight cabinet ministers in one day and four trips by the premier Hisself don’t seem to be working on the voters, at least not the way it is supposed to work.
Very frustrating when the old tricks don’t work any more.
- It’s really, really, really painful to make one decision and then be forced to make another. Think Danny Williams and the whole lab and x-ray thing. Jerome Kennedy confessed just this past week to what some of us have known all along: the decision to chop service was made by the entire cabinet.
That’s why they all stuck so hard to the line about “improvements.
That’s why they resisted changing their minds right up until the point they had no choice.
That’s why they tried desperately for weeks to try and blame someone else for the shag up rather than the people who actually shagged up.
It really bruises the ego to lose.
- And that’s on top of a string of “losses” including the Gros Morne one. Again, as much as they tried to downplay it, the whole emergency session of the legislature must have deeply embarrassed cabinet.
- There’s also the ongoing embarrassment of Paul Oram coupled with his decision to up and run when the going got tough. A cabinet minister resigns hot on the heels of another, thereby creating a mini-crisis in the government? Not a way to make the leader feel cheery. Paul Oram took himself off a raft of Tory Christmas card lists with his poorly executed exit.
- Unflattering comparisons to Roger Grimes? Lighten up a bit, people. It’s a joke.
- Let’s not forget the admission that the provincial Conservatives haven’t been doing such a fine old job of managing the public purse as they’d claimed. The word Oram used was “unsustainable.” Finance minister Tom Marshall said much the same thing.
- Then there’s the revelation that the government’s satisfaction rate ain’t what it was purported to be by the government’s own pollster. Between the opposition and local media, three recent CRA polls – never released publicly before – show that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador told CRA one thing but CRA told the public something else. The truth is sometimes painful but it does come out.
- Then there is the ongoing frustration of the Lower Churchill. As a story in the Telegram noted [not available online], NALCO has to go back and answer a whole bunch of questions for the environmental review on the Lower Churchill and that is now behind schedule. That’s on top of the lack of partners (see above), lack of markets - think Rhode Island - and the huge embarrassment to the government of being forced to abandon their original plan of slinging power lines through a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
On the whole it has been a very rough patch for the ruling Conservatives, at least from their perspective over the last six weeks and a bit more.
And what better place for provincial Conservatives to engage in some traditional Tory dog-wagging than the annual convention in Gander.
After all, that’s where ABC was born, at a time – as the House spending scandal broke in 2006, among other things – when things didn’t look all that rosy for provincial Tories in the short term.
Come to think of it, Loyola Sullivan packed it in not long after that, as did Paul Shelley and a few others.
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Even in Paul Oram’s political death, he and Danny Williams can’t get on the same page.
Asked about Oram’s resignation, Danny Williams told reporters that when it comes to an individual’s health and family, he doesn’t even try and convince someone to stay. “I just accept it,” said Williams.
But that’s not what Paul says. As the Gander Beacon put it:
Mr. Oram said the premier asked whether he would consider staying on as an MHA, but he said he felt if he was going to walk away from one aspect of his work, he would prefer to fully remove himself from politics.
"I just felt that if I needed to regain control of my life, I had to walk away from politics altogether."
That’s not the first time that Oram and Williams have been at odds.
On the same day in early September – before Oram’s surprise resignation - Williams said the decision on cutting lab and x-ray services was made months earlier, long before Oram became minister.
Williams told a scrum that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew of the cuts some time before July 9, 2009. Williams indicated Verge had the information from both Williams’ chief of staff and from Ross Wiseman when the latter was still health minister.
Oram told the House of Assembly - at almost the same time Williams was talking to reporters at another location - that he made the decision after meeting with concerned citizens in Lewisporte in mid-August.
None of the dates match up since letters released by Oram in early September were part of the pre-budget process. They were dated in February 2009.
But now even Danny Williams can’t get it straight.
According to the Northern Pen, the Beacon’s sister newspaper, a campaigning Danny Williams said something completely different from his earlier versions:
"Paul Oram had proceeded on the basis of recommendations made to him by the health authority," stated Premier Williams.
Not only did Oram now supposedly make a decisions Williams earlier attributed to someone else but the health authorities actually didn’t make the recommendations. They were simply asked for options to save money, money that – as it turned out – they actually never had to save anyway.
No wonder some people don’t trust some politicians.
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We knew Paul Oram’s comments the day he left politics were complete hogwash.
labradore refutes him, point by point. And he adds the picture of Oram and his wife from 2006 that puts paid to the whole pack of nonsense Oram spouted about not wanting his family in the media.
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On September 10, 2009, then health minister Paul Oram gave a version of the health care cuts decision that contradicted what his boss was saying.
On September 21, 2009, then health minister Paul Oram said that his own administration had boosted spending to levels that were unsustainable.
That was an amazing admission that the province’s finances were in such a horrendous state. Until then virtually every cabinet minister had claimed the opposite.
Paul’s talk of cuts prompted your humble e-scribbler to remind the universe of a previously unsuccessful health minister whose daughter now works for the Premier and of the current Premier’s own phrase when talking about a previous administration. But that was just fun.
On September 29, 2009, then justice minister Tom Marshall turned up on a local call-in show to discuss the province’s finances.
Marshall said a whole bunch of things that tended to affirm Oram’s statement, although Marshall – who had been finance minister for the highest of the high-spending years never actually said the word “unsustainable.”
But notice that it was Marshall delivering the message.
Not Jerome Kennedy, the guy actually holding down the title of finance minister at the time.
But Tom Marshall, the former finance minister, calling from his ministerial office in Corner Brook.
This was the day Danny headed off for a gigantic swan hobnobbing with the international environmental hoi-polloi that ran from the 30th of September to October 2.
On October 1st – and despite his previous insistence that the cuts at Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte were carved in stone - Paul restored at least some of the previous cut in Flower’s Cove.
Danny got back on the weekend.
On Monday, Paul told Danny he was leaving. That’s by Paul’s own version of the timing.
Paul heads off to Buchans for an emergency town meeting, called very hastily by the provincial government Tuesday morning.
The next morning, Oram ends it all, politically, in front of the House of Assembly.
Of course, Oram has some cock and bull set of talking points about health issues and the pain his family suffered and the evils of the CBC none of which explained why he was not only bailing out of cabinet but hauling ass out of politics altogether.
Oram was slitting the wrists of his own political body and yet he was blaming someone else for wielding the blade.
One of the examples Oram cited as painful was having his wife’s name on the television news in connection with the family business.
Odd that Paul Oram backbencher had no trouble with his wife’s picture and name being in a Labrador newspaper when she and her husband travelled to Labrador west talking about opening a new personal care home in the area. Anyone got a picture of that to share for posterity?
But that’s to get away from the real oddity here namely the appearance of the former finance minister a week or so before he got the job back again to tackle a finance issue when there was a perfectly serviceable finance minister more than capable of sorting out the whole issue. And to really add to the oddity, the formerly serviceable finance minister has now become the health minister.
The timing and the comments all seem a little curious.
One of the Premier’s most loyal foot soldiers leaving politics so quickly is highly unusual in itself.
The context might make it more unusual.
And if that’s the case, then Paul’s reference to Danny Williams as having been a father figure to him?
Well, that’s just likely to give a body the heebie jeebies.
-srbp-
Paul Oram left politics entirely today blaming ill health and the news media who apparently hounded him and his family.
That second one never lasted a second as reporters quite rightly pointed out that oram himself and his boss have said far worse about their political enemies than any reporter ever said about either one.
Watch the scrum down the right hand side of the cbc.ca/nl website.
The reporters cut him no slack, in other words and nailed his bullshit about the media for what it was. He mentioned the coverage of his conflict of interest, in particular during the scrum.
There are still many questions left by Oram’s sudden departure.
Why did he leave so hastily, leaving the Premier so little time to lash together a replacement scheme that he couldn’t even replace Trevor Taylor properly?
Why did Oram opt to quit entirely when he could have asked for a temporary leave from cabinet until he got his blood pressure under control?
Why did Oram leave politics altogether? The back bench is not a hard spot and Oram could have taken the pause to get his health in order.
As with Trevor’s departure there is much more to this than meets the eye.
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Embattled health minister Paul Oram is holding a newser in 15 minutes to discuss his political fate.
That’s usually code for announcing his resignation.
If he resigns quickly that would cause another by-election before Christmas but it would certainly be the second high profile cabinet minister to resign unexpectedly within the space of two weeks.
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There’s something about Paul Oram that just seems so familiar.
Maybe it’s his similarities to the equally-perfectly coifed predecessor, Lloyd Matthews.
Yes the father of the Premier’s Chief Publicist occupied the health minister’s office until early 1997 when he was hastily shuffled out. There was a massive revolt against the way government was handling health care.
Take a second and read the old news releases from those days though, and you’ll find more than a few things that seem oddly familiar. Stuff like reviewing health care in central Newfoundland with an eye to what could get “improved”:
Health Minister Lloyd Matthews will take the next 6-8 weeks to fully evaluate and consider the recommendations of the report into health services in Central Newfoundland. KPMG Management Consultants recently presented the final report to the minister following four months of consultation with individuals and organizations throughout the region.
"This review is a comprehensive analysis of current and future health needs for the entire Central Newfoundland region," said Mr. Matthews. "The report looks at the network of primary, secondary, chronic and community based care, and makes recommendations on how these services can be better organized and coordinated to meet existing health needs and to reflect the emerging health needs of residents in the region."
The minister stated he would now be presenting this report to Cabinet for consideration. "Once government has had an opportunity to consider the full report, I will be able to provide further details on health services contained in the report, as well as outline future directions for health services in Central Newfoundland," said Matthews.
The minister thanked all individuals who made presentations or submissions to the consultants during the period of review, for their interest in health service delivery.
Matthews released the review in March, 1997, after announcing it had been received in early January. The project started the previous June. It recommended a number of things, including renovations to North Haven Manor in Lewisporte to ensure it could provide service out to 2005.
There are a lot of things in Matthews’ ministerial past that seem oddly familiar to the current generation, as well as a few surprising differences.
Matthews didn’t have much money to play with either as minister or as a member of cabinet generally. Paul Oram and his cabinet colleagues - by stark contrast - have access to more cash than any cabinet in the province’s history.
Oram talks about health care cuts.
Matthews’ review of health care in central Newfoundland could note that since the creation of new health care boards (re-organized out of existence by Oram’s clan), day surgery had increased by 70% in Gander. Note, for example, the reference to demographic projections for 2005.
There’s a sense of planning and organization to the whole thing. The re-organization started with a view to changing how health care money was spent so more could be pushed toward front-line service. It may not have worked out exactly as intended, but there was a long-range goal based on the knowledge that by 2005ish, the population would be pretty much where it actually turned out to be. That brought with it certain predictable consequences and government worked to organize a system that could provide needed care within the budget likely to exist.
Sometimes, the differences are startling. Back in the 1990s, the health minister could commission a report, get it and then release it within six weeks. When was the last time Oram and his colleagues managed to get a report on the street within six months of getting it in hand?
Compare as well, Matthews’ language to that used in the past 48 hours or so. The emphasis on changes in the 1990s was ensuring that the government could continue to meet health care needs despite limited funds and what was anticipated to be skyrocketing demand.
There’s a decidedly less positive sound to the way Oram put it:
“Our government faces a difficult decision to make regarding the types of services we can offer in the long-term, how much we can continue to invest as a province and identifying how we can improve the quality in our programs and services across the province.”
Still through it all there are some common threads, ones that transcend the superficial nonsense Oram got on with the other day by referring to cuts in the 1990s.
He might do well to check with some of his predecessors, people who had a real hard time running the department but who managed to get through it with their reputation intact. Roger Grimes would likely give him a good pile of advice. So too would Herb Kitchen or Julie Bettney. Lloyd Matthews wouldn’t: if memory serves, he got into political hot water largely due to the way he presented himself publicly.
How Oram handles himself might determine who really gets remembers as being the Kings of Cuts: Danny Williams and his crew or the guy Danny used to call the King of Cuts.
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the guy who is trying to explain health care decisions is the same guy who is clued out about a bunch of other things.
He’s also gotten himself in hot water over conflict of interest and briefing books and he even briefly turned up with one of the infamous rings from the House of Assembly scandal.
Last summer, as markets were tanking, then-business minister Paul Oram talked about a booming local economy. In January, he was talking about bright the future will be but with no talk of any big financial problems at home. Thankfully, the guy has finally wised up, or so it seems when it comes to the unsound state of the provincial government finances.
All that coupled with the inherent contradictions between what Paul Oram has been saying, what the Premier has said publicly, and what the record shows might just make this health care crisis bleed all over the local political landscape well into the fall.
That Oram-fuelled health issue is on top of the other problems on both the Northern Peninsula and in central Newfoundland related to forestry that just won’t go away no matter how much money the provincial government has been willing to toss at the two areas.
Of course, now Oram and the talk of unsustainable spending built on oil makes it look like it is money government doesn’t have.
It may ell be one of the most interesting fall seasons in a long while in this province’s politics.
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While everyone is talking about the removal of laboratory and x-ray services from Lewisporte, a much larger cut seems to have escaped public attention.
The proposed redevelopment of the chronic care centre at North haven Manor was supposed to include acute care facilities as well. The original budgeted cost was $20 million.
When people started to complain about the lab and x-ray business, the initial government response from no less a personage than the local member of the legislature was that people should be mindful of the $30 million health centre that was coming to town.
Now a 50% cost over-run sounded bad enough, the more accurate version of the whole story is found in the local newspaper – the Lewisporte Packet – from August 12.
Turns out that the original concept had ballooned in cost to $42 million. Not so much as a single shovel had been soiled by local mud and the thing had jumped 110% in cost. The provincial government’s response was to hack out most if not all of the acute care facilities, bringing the cost down to the low 30s.
"The one-roof health facility project was estimated to be around $20 million. It escalated to be about $40 million, in fact over $40 million," Mr. Oram explained. "As a government we had to look at where our priorities lie and we had to prioritize based on the identified needs.
"The project is still going to be - from our estimates - around $30 million for North Haven Manor and some other components as well. There's no way to keep it under $30 million to do what we want to do there and to meet the needs that we see as being in the Lewisporte area - this is the amount of money we are going to have to spend to do it."
The slash to laboratory and x-ray facilities was on top of that $12 million cut.
If all that weren’t bad enough, the story is already widening.
Health minister Paul Oram is taking it in the head for the way the information on the x-ray and lab changes was released in the first place, let alone the way the new information flopped out last Friday.
The letters released last Friday have given risen to concerns in other communities that cuts are coming there as well. But even in trying to allay concerns, the health minister just made matters worse: all health regions were asked to identify cuts, according to Oram.
Now what he said is absolutely true but in the context, he is only adding gasoline to his own backside. In his initial bluster, Oram stated clearly that further changes – always read as cuts – are coming.
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Related: “Much less for may more for St. Anthony”
Just a few observations on announcements from the province’s health ministry lately.
1. labradore points out that others – like the local news media - are noticing the odd but telling similarity between the Lewisporte cuts announcement and the one from Eastern Health about breast cancer back in April.
So much for the story then and now that it was all up to the local health authority.
2. During Cameron, every senior government witness insisted that all the decisions were made by the people at the health authority because that’s what they do; ministers of health and cabinet did not get involved in operational issues.
Like say, deciding whether to shut down laboratory and x-ray services.
Who decided on an operational issue in the Lewisporte case?
Hint: it wasn’t the regional health authorities. They found out about the cut the morning it was announced.
3. And how many times will a cabinet minister refer to the recommendations of the Cameron Inquiry in trying to justify the operational decision made in Lewisporte?
4. Then there’s the claim by no less a personage than the Premier that the cuts came from the health authorities and that it was aimed at improving the system.
He claims the health authority made a recommendation “to us” for services that should be cut.
He leaves out the important bit, of course, that the health authority didn’t come up with this idea on their own. They suggested cuts only when prompted by a request from the health department to suggest cuts in the first place.
And the cuts had nothing to do with either offsetting the cost of the health centre in Lewisporte (as the Friday release claims) or “improving” the system.
That’s plain from the letters released by government late on Friday.
But don’t take my word for it: Read them for yourself.
5. And since we are in the questioning mood: why would a provincial government that is evidently flush with billions in loose change ask for recommendations on what to cut from health budgets in the first place, especially when the sum finally settled on by - whom? cabinet, the Premier, definitely Paul Oram – was such a measly, miserable amount?
And that’s based on nothing more than the general political principle that you just don’t go out and randomly shoot off a body part when you don’t need to.
Cuts make people upset.
Cuts to health care make lots of people really upset.
Burn ‘em at the stake kinda upset.
And they don’t get un-upset easily.
Un-upsetting them will be costly either in blood and/or treasure: cash or in political strips taken off someone’s hide.
Therefore, as the political wisdom would suggest: do NOT cut health care unless it is absolutely necessary.
So why in the name of all that is political and therefore unholy would any cabinet in its right mind ask health regions to recommend a list of slashes, some of them valued at upwards of a million bucks.
6. When did they make the decisions? Observers of government will note the date on the letters released on Friday is from early 2009, well into the budget cycle and long after decisions would normally be made. People will start asking hard questions about when all this was decided. Evidently it wasn’t in August.
7. There is no plan. And when all that is done, ask yourself why a government department would release letters that show their initial talking points were more composed at the Mad hatter’s tea party?
Usually you release evidence that backs your claim, not further hints that – contrary to the Premier’s claims at the bored of trayed last week - people in the departments of government have no idea what they are doing.
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As a sharp-eared reader picked up, the raw video of the Premier’s scrum revealed that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew about cuts to health service in his district some time before July 9, 2009.
That’s the day Premier Danny Williams shuffled Ross Wiseman out of health and moved Paul Oram in.
The decision wasn’t announced until August 31, almost two months later. And even then, some people claim, the wording of the news release didn’t make plain what was happening in the affected communities.
The regional health authorities involved didn’t hear about the changes until the morning they were announced.
But even that is now at odds with comments by health minister Paul Oram. Under questioning in the House of Assembly on Wednesday, Oram said the decision was made after a trip he made to the region to discuss the issue with local officials:
The fact is that this decision was made during discussions, Mr. Speaker, with Central Health and Community Services, also with discussions that we had ongoing with the community. The fact of the matter is, we went out to Lewisporte, and we told them very clearly that this facility would not be built or put inside of the new facility. We would not have X-ray and lab inside of the new facility. That is exactly what we told them, Mr. Speaker. They understood where we were coming from and we moved forward on that basis.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.
MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister: Isn’t it true that you told the people in Lewisporte at that time that there would not be a one-roof concept for lab and X-ray services, but you did not tell them you were prepared to gut their service within two weeks, did you?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. ORAM: Mr. Speaker, I said exactly what I said, and that was that there would be no laboratory and X-ray services under the one roof in the new facility that we were building in Lewisporte. In terms of –
MS JONES: (Inaudible).
MR. ORAM: - if she would let me answer. In terms of a discussion around what was happening with closing out the lab and X-ray part of what we were doing in Lewisporte, that discussion was had but there was no final decision made on that when I was out in Lewisporte.
Either the Premier has his story shagged up or Oram does.
Which is it?
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The issues raised by the Paul Oram case just got a whole lot worse, politically:
…Oram replied that "if you look at any business people that are involved in government you'd have to ask the same question."
"I'm not the only one that owns businesses within government and owns shares within government, and has been a director of a business within government. There's all sorts of people that are involved there."
Expect reporters and others to ask some logical questions:
That last one remains the crucial one for your humble e-scribbler. This entire issue was one of the easiest to manage with a little preventive action.
As a result of that initial decision, Paul Oram’s answer to The Telegram just opened up a whole new line of inquiry where really there shouldn’t need to be one.
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Not only is he moving all his shares in personal-care homes into a blind trust, Oram said, but he is going even further by moving all of his business interests — including stakes in funeral homes, a grocery store and a construction company — into a blind trust.Yes.
It makes sense to do it all at once, Oram said, in case he changes portfolios.
Former business minister Paul Oram did a series of interviews when he was in Atlanta last October to attend a trade mission.
His interview on diversifying the economy is interesting mostly because Oram manages to completely cock-up just about everything.
According to Oram, the cod moratorium took place in the “early to mid-1980s”.
If you think that was a slip of the tongue consider that according to Oram, once the moratorium started, we then turned to diversifying the economy with mining for things like iron ore and uranium. Iron ore mining dates back to the 1890s, not the 1980s and as for uranium, there isn’t a functioning uranium in the province at the moment. There never has been one. There are prospects but no actual mine.
The Lower Churchill will start up within the coming year (i.e. 2009) according to Oram, even though the thing had not even started the environmental review process when he did the interview. It won’t complete the process until 2010-2011.
When asked about innovation, Oram couldn’t give an example. Instead, he talked about the difference between his department and the innovation department.
We’ll be generous and say that oram sounded like the minister of revisionist history.
Others might say he was the minister of the “Don’t know a Damn Thing” department.
Oh.
Incidentally, just count the number of times Oram says “to be honest with you.”
We assume he is being honest. It’s just that he honestly doesn’t have a clue about recent events in Newfoundland and Labrador.
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