The way things go in Newfoundland and Labrador, you can sometimes think that some things only go on here.
Not so.
Take a short trip, if you can spare a second, to Manitoba and the riding of Brandon-Souris. The editor of the Brandon Sun published an e-mail last week that went from a federal Conservative political staffer out to thousands of people on a series of distribution lists.
No sooner had Lorraine Michael pronounced the New Democratic caucus back together again than two of its members announced that they would leave and sit in the House of Assembly as independent New Democrat members of the legislature.
Dale Kirby and Christopher Mitchelmore made the announcement in separate media statements on Tuesday morning.
This latest twist didn’t actually end anything, of course. It’s merely another step in a drama that will play out for another year or more. Let’s take a look at 10 observations about the whole ferkakta tale
Russell Wangersky is a fine writer with a keen and insightful mind.
He is also an editor at the province’s largest circulation daily.
That’s the same place where former fisheries minister Trevor Taylor has been scribbling a column every week.
A briefing note prepared for the province’s health minister in early September 2009 may contain important clues to when a decision was taken to move an air ambulance aircraft from St. Anthony to Goose Bay.
In a section headed “Medical Flight Specialists”, the briefing note points to the problem of putting specially trained medical crews on aircraft outside St. John’s. That’s the only place a medical flight specialist team exists since the provincial health department created the program in August 2007. Before 2007, local medical staff accompanied patients being transported to another hospital inside or outside the province by medical evacuation aircraft.
As part of the relocation of one aircraft to goose Bay, the provincial government will train a new medical flight specialist team. In the meantime, any staff needed for a medical evacuation from Goose Bay would have to originate in St. John’s or travel to St. John’s first and then return to goose Bay. That’s exactly the problem identified in the September 4, 2009 briefing note regardless of where outside St. John’s the health department based an aircraft.
Note that the final four bullets in that section are deleted. Three are deleted under a discretionary section of the province’s access to information law about to advice to a cabinet minister or government body. There’s no indication what that information might be.
But a fourth bullet is deleted because it relates to “plans that relate to the management of personnel of or the administration of a public body and that have not yet been implemented or made public…”. The province’s access to information allows the head of a department the discretion whether or note to censor that information. In this case, the department head decided to censor the information.
These deletions are important since they relate to a dispute over when the provincial government decided to move the air ambulance. Both provincial Tories and the Grit opposition have tied the move - directly or indirectly - to last fall’s by-election in the district formerly represented by provincial Tory cabinet minister Trevor Taylor.
Taylor resigned unexpectedly last fall. The provincial Liberals won the by-election held in October. Health care was a major issue in the by-election. In a letter to a local newspaper in the district in May, Taylor tied the by-election to the ambulance relocation.
While the Premier and health minister have denied the connection they have also hinted strongly that further protests by people in Taylor’s former district might lead to other cuts.
Paul Oram, the province’s health minister in September 2009, resigned suddenly in early October, citing ill health.
-srbp-
During that time I had the complete and unwavering support of the Premier for viable legitimate investments in the district, to the tune of $163 million during the six years we were in government, one of the biggest investments in any district in the province.And then he finishes with a heartfelt “f- you to his former constituents:
The district voted for change, change is what you are getting.Trevor’s letter also suggests that there was a deep-seated dissatisfaction with Taylor and no shortage of deep animosity between Taylor and his constituents.Taylor’s letter speaks volumes about how he and his colleagues operate: pork, for one, and if you read between the lines, payback for the other.
Hard across the province on CBC Radio, Tuesday afternoon, a woman in Plum Point reminding the host of CBC radio’s On the Go that many parts of the province still live in what host Ted Blades had referred to as the Dark Ages of the Internet or some such.
Dial-up.
Not broadband.
There is no modern, high-speed access in said community because of the costs of bringing such tools to sparsely populated areas of the province. The woman interviewed talked of a federal government initiative to help expand coverage of the information superhighway to places like Plum Point.
The lovely town of Plum Point is interesting because it is in the same neck of the woods once represented in the House of Assembly by Trevor Taylor. Trev represent the Straits and White Bay North and across the highway, his buddy Wally young still represents the district of St. Barbe in which Plum Point is located. The boys were touted back in January 2001 as the start of a Tory wave sweeping the province.
Odd the number of people scurrying to claim that the opposite is not true now, but that’s another issue.
The only thing Trevor listed as an accomplishment as he hastily ran from cabinet and local politics a month ago was a provincial government plan to give a bunch of private sector companies a wad of public cash so they could stretch broadband access across the island to places that sounded suspiciously like Plum Point.
Now Plum Point is also no ordinary town as these things go for many more reasons than the fact that it is near where Trevor used to rule.
Plum Point is also home to the local member of the House of Assembly, one Wallace Young. He owns the local motel. His official biography also reminds us that his wife is a teacher who “has seen first-hand the effects of teacher cuts and larger classrooms”. Old news or foreshadowing?
Anyway, perhaps Wally’s good lady wife knows, as well, the value of Internet access for local schools.
Maybe someone should ask Wally and his wife about that.
And while they’re at it wonder how it is that this glorious fibreoptic deal Trevor was so proud of could benefit Greenland but not the lovely community of Plum Point.
-srbp-
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?
There has always been this bizarro cult of personality thing to Danny Williams’ supporters.
They worship him as if he was a celebrity.
Some out here in the rest of the world – your humble e-scribbler included – have taken to calling the truly hard core cultists The Fan Club. They make comments all over the Internet faithfully pushing whatever line is currently on the go from the Club directors or simply attacking anything that they think undermines the gloriousness of their idol.
They’ve got a language of their own, too, but that’s another story.
Six years in, though, the Fan Club doesn’t have quite the same impact as it once did.
Take the past 24 hours with two examples.
Not so very long ago, the sort of attack on supposed foreign demonios being launched by Hisself and the Fan Club against Hydro-Quebec (again) would be spreading like wildfire. For examples of the Fan Club talking points, just check the comments sections at the Telegram, CBC or even here at Bond Papers.
Not so this time.
This is all old hat around these parts and ordinary taxpayers seem to be having a really hard time connecting a theoretical issue in far off New Brunswick to real-world issues in this province and in their lives.
People have built up an immunity to the same old, same old.
Now that’s really interesting because the immunity is really at the heart of the results in the Straits by-election. Hisself framed the whole thing around the same old, same old: look at all the riches I brought you. $137 million. Show me how much you appreciate that by voting for me.
Well, they didn’t.
A couple of thousand people didn’t and likely lots more didn’t who just never bothered to show up at the polls. A monumental effort worthy of the most grandiose display of the faltering Smallwood empire failed to motivate enough to win the seat as it has every time since 2001 in the Straits and on the overwhelming majority of other similar cases across the province ever since 2001.
That’s not good.
Nor is it good that the Hydro-Quebec attack – another same old, same old – ain’t working either.
That is intended for two purposes:
First, it lets Hisself vent his frustration that the Lower Churchill just isn’t happening.
Second – and perhaps most importantly - it is supposed to help change the channel and get people’s mind off the disaster in the Straits.
But it isn’t doing that second thing. The ordinary taxpayers seem to have caught on.
Meanwhile, there is another problem for the Fan Club beyond the fact their usual stuff just doesn’t work any more.
As he left, Trevor Taylor provided his membership in the Fan Club by praising Hisself to the highest heights on every level. Hisself returned the favour in his comments about Trevor.
Until the loss in the Straits.
Now party insiders are spinning the story to local media – see David Cochrane’s report on Wednesday’s Here and Now, for example – that the whole loss was Trevor’s fault.
That sort of stuff just isn’t going to sit well with a whole bunch of people who haven’t joined the Fan Club but who like the stuff Hisself puts out. They’ve been buying his CDs for a few years now just like they’ve bought The Other Blue Note CDs before.
But maybe not so much any more.
Not, that is, if people like Trevor are getting blamed for stuff they really didn’t do.
Fan Club takes on a whole new meaning when it’s the fans getting clubbed.
-srbp-
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.
-srbp-
One of the little stories that seemed to sail past most people was a report that three of the province’s four regional health authorities will finish the year with balanced budgets.
"The light bill goes up, the phone bill goes up, the oil bill goes up — that type thing," said Western Health finance committee member Tom O'Brien. "We submitted that to the government and [government] approved our budget with those inflationary numbers in it. So we'll have a balanced budget for 2009-2010.
The only one that wouldn’t is Eastern Health but given some of the issues involved, that’s understandable.
But Labrador-Grenfell, Western and Central expect to balance their books by year end.
Last spring, Labrador-Grenfell Health estimated it would end its fiscal year with a $2-million deficit, but officials said Wednesday that's no longer the case.
"We have had a greater success in recruiting staff, with a greater number of nurses on staff that actually cuts down on our cost of providing services," CEO Boyd Rowe said. "When we don't have adequate numbers of staff, we end up paying a considerable amount of overtime."
How odd then that earlier this month health minister Paul Oram announced that government had decided to cut laboratory and x-ray service in Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte. he claimed the government needed to save money and that the cuts had been recommended by the health authorities involved.
Sure those two ideas were among dozens tossed out by all four regional health authorities back in February as possible cuts when they were asked - hypothetically – what they could do to balance their budgets if they got funding frozen at 2008 levels.
But if the books are balanced the cuts weren’t necessary.
And if there was a problem with the government health budget generally, then surely it would have made more sense to do some serious thinking and announce a wide range of options with the new budget in the spring. There was no rush to chop in September if things were okay and certainly there’d be no reason to cut only two.
That’s what one would expect from a government that generally practices sound financial management based on a genuinely strategic approach. That was the logical implication when Oram acknowledged what many have known for some time, namely that the current administration has been spending wildly, spending public money in a way that – in Oram’s word was “unsustainable.”
Such a government would not engage in seemingly capricious, apparently ill-considered and curious, bizarre cuts that seem to bear no connection to anything. Heck they aren’t even connected to a review of laboratory and x-ray service which isn’t even completed yet.
Such decisions would seem driven by something other than sound reasoning, logic, and a firm grasp of the whole picture. They’d seem panicky. They’d seem irrational, perchance even stupid given the political fall-out that’s resulted across the northern coast of Newfoundland.
And it would seem even more irrational, capricious, certainly foolishly stubborn and – yes maybe even stupid – to persist in the irrational and apparently unnecessary cuts on those two communities once the backlash started and the overall financial picture was shown to be something other than dire.
Events of the past couple of weeks make you wonder what is really going on inside the provincial government. What is the real story behind the Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte cuts.
Was there more to Trevor’s departure than meets the eye? Was there something to be found in his comment to Randy Simms the other morning that we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Taylor was known to speak bluntly and he certainly never spouted the “we are living in a bubble” rhetoric.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the good people of Newfoundland and Labrador would look on another administration and wonder what was going on. Things sometimes didn’t make sense.
The good people would stare in bewilderment since the leader was known to be a political mastermind. Surely there had to be some Mensa answer they would rationalize, an idea incomprehensible to mere mortals as to why such bizarre things were occurring.
Even went things looked insane they figured there had to be a plan behind it all. No one had to tell them that at a board of trade speech; they knew it already.
Yet, despite their faith, they remained perplexed.
Uneasy.
Unsettled.
Disquieted.
Your humble e-scribbler would suggest to these people that they think about the issue again, and about their conclusion, with one tiny difference:
Merely look on events without the assumption that there was some inscrutable genius at work.
Then look again at the conclusion they reached.
Invariably, inevitably, predictably, at the point they reached a conclusion once again – devoid of the assumed secret and unknown brilliance – their faces turned ashen.
And they would go very quiet.
Quiet isn’t a word you’d use these days in some parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, is it? Places where the Great Tory Revolution supposedly started.
That must be a very uncomfortable thought for some people.
-srbp-
In honour of Trevor Taylor’s departure from politics, here’s a link to a post on what he said is his proudest accomplishment in politics.
The fibre-optic deal may well prove to be the railway branch lines of the information superhighway. It was also one of the finest examples of a government that can’t seem to figure out what it is doing or why it is doing it but it does know the public shouldn’t get any concrete information.
Just remember: Trevor picked this as his own political monument.
-srbp-
In other instalments in the Kremlinology series, we introduced you to Trevor Taylor. There were a couple of signs that things were not right with Trevor Taylor and his relationship with the current administration.
Until today he was a cabinet minister in the Danny Williams crew. He’ll be resigning his seat in the legislature next week.
Taylor pulled pin unexpectedly Thursday, announcing he was off to a new gig with a not-for-profit interested in Arctic ecology. According to Taylor, he is going for personal reasons. He said he made the decision a month ago, told the Premier a week and a bit ago and dropped it on cabinet today.
There’s a new job waiting for him that will involve working with a not-for-profit on fisheries management in places like the Beaufort Sea.
The real reasons are likely contained in all the pre-emptive denials Trevor tossed out in his scrum:
- He still loves Danny
- No dissention or tension
- Not running federally
- Nothing to do with Flowers Cove
Politics is hard on the personal life and when things get tough on issues like Flowers Cove, forestry and the fishery – all big issues in Taylor’s neck of the woods - family members often bear the brunt. The fact that Taylor hasn’t been able to make any headway with his cabinet colleagues on those issues doesn’t help.
His tone during the scrum seems stressed. This is a guy who doesn’t appear to want to leave politics. If he has issues within his family, a job that will take him over North America and involve work at the opposite end of the country doesn’t sound like a recipe for spending more time with the kids, as the phrase goes.
For his part, the Premier praised Taylor and said it might take until next month to sort out a new cabinet arrangement. A permanent replacement for Taylor would take longer. Taylor has carried a few stinky parcels for the current administration, including the fibre optic scheme.
Maybe Taylor’s departure speaks to frustration at his inability to change certain minds in the Confederation Building. He spoke about getting into politics to make decisions on certain things. One of them was likely the fishery, interestingly a portfolio from which Taylor was ripped in favour of some old-fashioned thinking.
Trevor Taylor is a relatively young man who – until today – seemed to have a bright political future ahead of him, especially in a post-Danny Williams Tory party. The fact that he decided to pack it in, rather than stick it any longer, might be a sign that kremlinology sometimes works.
Any other cabinet ministers or back-benchers feeling political heat these days?
-srbp-
While the poll goosing machine may have tried to convince the good burghers of Labrador West that they would be seeing pavement before the snow flew, the wise people of the community likely knew far better.
At least this past week, they had the pleasure of listening to transportation minister Trevor Taylor explain why about a month an a half after he and cabinet colleague John “The Shoveller” Hickey - left, doing his takogo kak puddin’ routine - promised the whole paving thing would be “accelerated”, they would like not be seeing much pavement this year on the Trans-Labrador Highway.
Seems that the contractor on the current tender ran into some problems shipping the equipment up from Sept Isles; something about too big for the tunnels, so they had to unscrew some bits and dismantle some others.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, it seems that there was a problem finding enough aggregate – crushed stone to you and moi – to go with the asphalt.
But that didn’t just shag up the schedule for this year.
Hoooo, no.
As Trevor told the whole of Labrador via Labrador Morning [mp3 link] that lack of aggregate meant the “accelerated” tender was actually not even out yet.
Trevor insisted though that the direction to the contractor was to do everything possible to get some pavement on the ground this season, even though the daily temperatures in Labrador this time of year hover around the “no go” temp for laying asphalt successfully.
Between the shag-ups with the road and the on-again, off-again hospital it will take a lot more than a teaspoon of hardened tar to convince some people that what they just saw the past couple of months from Hickey and Taylor wasn’t open mike night at Yuk-Yuks.
As it turns out though, the road work will not be accelerated, as anyone with half a clue could have told you. It was always planned for next year, planned that is by the people who do the work and know what they are talking about.
-srbp-
Years ago, your humble e-scribbler studied Soviet politics.
The tightly controlled, secretive, autocratic society of Bolshevik politics, gave rise to a whole bunch of western academics who tried to figure out the workings inside the seat of power – the Kremlin – by studying all sorts of seemingly insignificant details.
They’d study photographs to see who was standing next to the acknowledged powerful in order to spot either the rise or fall of certain people within the leadership. They’d study the wording of documents to see how things changed and see if that meant something.
There’s a pattern to regimes and so these Kremlinologists would look for changes in the patterns. Then they’d try to figure out what the changes meant.
Sometimes it’s fun to play the old games again.
Like say studying a news release of government money for a project to see if there is anything that doesn’t fit the usual pattern.
Lookee here: a news release announcing that a regional municipal service organization on the Northern Peninsula is getting an $232,000 of provincial money to help it fight fires and look after garbage disposal.
The money is called an “investment.”
Nothing strange there. The current provincial administration doesn’t spend money. It invests public cash in all sorts of things.
Taking out the town trash is called “waste management”.
Again, another classic piece of modern bureaucratese.
Given any government’s record of spending public cash on dubious projects, some wags would suggest that the act of government spending is itself really an exercise in “waste management”, but that’s another tale.
Back to the case at hand:
Things are actually looking pretty innocuous so far.
Quotes?
Yep.
Two.
One from the minister responsible for helping towns fight fires and haul away their refuse, the Honourable Diane Whelan, she of the multiple announcements of money she didn’t actually have.
Another one from the guy running the local crowd that are getting the “investment”.
Another couple of checks in the standard boxes.
Wait a second.
Where’s the quote from the member of the House of Assembly for the area?
If there’s one thing any government of any stripe does, it’s give the local boy credit for “investments” especially when said local boy is one of their own team. Just this week alone, Harry Hunter got a quote added to spending on a school in his district.
Flower’s Cove and environs is in the district represented by Whelan’s cabinet mate ,Trevor Taylor.
Now, Trevor is no ordinary fellow. He ran once for the New Democrats and then, in 2001, was elected for the provincial Conservatives in one of two by-elections on the Great Northern Peninsula.
That two-fer was heralded by newly minted Conservative leader Danny Williams as the first ripples of a Tory tsunami that would sweep the Liberals out and put the Tories back into power.
Trevor’s been in cabinet a while and has carried the can for a number of projects, good and bad. He’s been a loyal soldier and right now he’s got a few thousand constituents up in arms over everything from the downturn in the forest industry to the downturn in the fishery.
The loggers blocked a road this week trying to get a meeting with Trevor. The fisherman plan a protest aimed at the provincial government’s lack of help this week now that they’ve already protested about the federal government’s lack of help.
And it’s not like lesser mortals than cabinet ministers don’t get to hand out the pork.
Tory backbencher Derrick Dalley - a recently appointed parliamentary secretary to the education minister - turned up in the Lewisporte Pilot back in April handing out a cheque from the provincial government for money from a grant program to support sports initiatives. The money was described as a “donation”, the new term for government program spending that isn’t an “investment”.
Derrick’s likely not alone, by the by. Since the spending scandal dried up the slush fund that used to be constituency allowances, the government crowd seem to have discovered the political usefulness of letting the crowd on the back benches do some bacon-doling. His colleagues are out there with cheques, too; they just don’t always make the local paper.
Anyways…
No quote from the cabinet minister of some seniority about spending in his own district at a time when the guy could use the good coverage.
And it’s not like Trevor hasn’t had other shared announcements.
Hmmm.
It’s not like he’s Ray Hunter or something, either.
Ray’s the guy who showed up in the legislature this past sitting to find his desk and chair moved right next to the exit door. He probably had to keep shifting to avoid getting the door in the head every time someone went out for a leak or a smoke.
Ray’s also had to defend himself publicly from accusations by angry constituents that he is not allowed to speak freely within his caucus. Of course, that pretty much confirmed them.
Hmmm, indeed.
Now the thing about kremlinology is that it is one of the more dismal of dismal sciences. Think of it as economics but without the accuracy.
This omission could be nothing at all.
Or it could be a sign.
A sign of something very important.
-srbp-
Heard on Tuesday January 20, the voice of a cabinet minister on the voice of the cabinet minister, saying:
We’re good at issuin’ releases.
Truer words were never spoken.
-srbp-
Narrow partisan considerations reared their ugly head in a meeting of the legislature's management committee.
An independent study commissioned by the House of Assembly management commission recommends an increase in budgets for the Provincial Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic causes in the House of Assembly.
MR. SPEAKER: Okay. Provide base funding for the Government Members’ Caucus of $100,000 annually.
The Chair is ready for discussion.
Ms Burke.
MS BURKE: That is one recommendation that I support.
Joan Burke, education minister and government house leader may have enthusiastically voted money for her political friends but in the end, the Provincial Conservative members of the legislature's internal management commission support every single recommendation, except one.
That one allocated $162,000 to the Official Opposition office to ensure a well-funded opposition that would have appropriate resources to carry out its important legislative function in a modern democracy. The study reviewed legislature budgets across Canada and in several foreign parliaments.
The report included a set of general principles on democratic legislatures and caucus funding. They included, among others:
3. The legislature must be strong vis-à-vis the executive in order for democratic government to be effective.
...
5. In adversarial systems, the Opposition and other parties play important roles and need institutionalized protections.
...
One cannot imagine a more straightforward set of principles. In order to drive home their point on the importance of a legislature with a properly funded opposition, the authors included an observation on events in several provinces where opposition benches were depleted after an election:
The crucial thing is that there has to be informed opposition, and that takes resources. However, one other consideration is germane here. That is that in first-past-the-post (single member plurality) systems such as those that exist in Canada, there is a danger of opposition shut-outs or quasi shut-outs as the electoral system exaggerates the winner’s share of seats. This has been seen in general elections in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia. There needs to be a kind of “Opposition Bill of Rights” to deal with such anomalies, since Westminster systems
depend on adversarialism.
The Provincial Conservative members took a decidedly different view. Innovation minister Trevor Taylor put it this way:
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I don’t need to reiterate everything that Ms Burke just said, but I think if you just look at it from a perspective, a base allocation, one would think that a base allocation would be a base for all caucuses. Why the principles of Metrics EFG would differentiate is hard for me to follow, to be honest about it. [Emphasis added]
That last statement could not be more painfully obvious or true.
The extent to which the Provincial Conservative members also picked at petty issues is evident in the transcript of the session. Education minister Joan Burke seemed concerned either to micromanage issues - as with Memorial University - or to ensure that no one got a few dollars more in his or her budget than she had available in hers:
MS BURKE: I have a question on that, and I think it may be just a clarification.
It says that the assistant to the Opposition House Leader is $49,000 and the assistant to the Government House Leader is $43,000. So, is this simply a case where there is a step progression but it would be the same job?
Okay, I just wanted to clarify that because in the report it kind of stands out as to why and I thought that would have been the explanation.
MR. SPEAKER: Yes. My understanding is that the assistant to the Leader of the Opposition has gone through the step progression to reflect that salary, and the assistant to the Government House Leader will do the incremental steps to get up to that particular salary as well.
MS BURKE: In essence what we are saying is, instead of it being, say, $49,000 there, that would depend, I guess – that is only an indication of where an individual would be on a step. If that position changed tomorrow, that $49,000 could potentially be, I do not know, $38,000 or $39,000.
Outside the meeting the Provincial Conservatives defended their actions as being about responsible management of public spending.
-srbp-
Provincial acting fisheries minister Trevor Taylor is in a hard spot.
You can tell he's in a hard spot because in order to criticize a recent fish quota trade deal, Taylor wound up resorting to an argument favoured by people Taylor usually criticizes harshly, people like Gus Etchegary and Sue The Vanished Hydroqueen:
Taylor said the deal hearkens back to prior trade agreements, in which Canada traded its fisheries stocks for economic advantages.
Yes, it's a sign of complete bankruptcy when your argument is merely to repeat the same discredited fables as Gus, Sue and others.
Taylor called the deal tragic.
It's hard to see how it is tragic.
In exchange for allowing Americans to fish a portion of the Canadian quota for yellowtail flounder outside 200 miles, a portion not usually caught anyway, Canada gains. It gains because:
- the deal secures American support particularly for other conservation measures;
- the deal includes Canadian access to over 600 tons of deep water shrimp which will be fished by a Newfoundland and Labrador company (and processed in already under-utilized plants); and,
- the deal includes an increased by-catch for American plaice which will allow the Newfoundland and Labrador harvesters to fish the yellow-tail flounder quota more efficiently and to a greater extent.
Sadly, the fishery is as misunderstood as the offshore oil and gas industry. The result is that completely bogus arguments like the ones offered by Etchegary and Taylor are accepted as fact.
What is tragic is that Taylor is considering increasing plant capacity in a province in which there is way more capacity than existing quotas. Fish plant workers are making as little as $8,000 in some cases from their labour and must scramble to find other work in order to qualify for a pittance in employment insurance on top of that. The existing plants are in many respects nothing more than stamp factories and Taylor is seriously considering making a bad situation demonstrably worse.
Taylor and the cabinet to which he belongs know what needs to be done. They are - in effect - abrogating their responsibility to reorganize the fishery in a way that corrects the human tragedy and the economic tragedy in the province's fishery. Taylor and his colleagues are doing nothing more than following the less than sterling example of some recent fisheries ministers, like John Efford, who during his tenure increased the number of plant licenses and contributed to creating the current mess.
Such is the scope of the tragedy in the fishery.
Such is the scope of the tragedy that Taylor, who started his political career showing some promise, has become just another politician mucking about in the fishing industry for political purposes.
A shuffling of the province's cabinet will evidently produce no positive change in the province's fishing industry.
That's another sign of the tragedy.
-srbp-
Trevor Taylor, part-time substitute fisheries minister in the Provincial Conservative government has been busily ducking a looming issue in the fisheries world. In a system already grossly overstocked with processing capacity, Taylor's department has a recommendation under consideration to add a few more licenses.
The local CBC fisheries broadcast has been trying desperately to get Taylor on the air.
He's been unavailable.
Apparently, Trevor's been too busy campaigning against Fabian Manning, not in his free time or anything mind you but during the day time - normal government working hours - when one might expect he could have found a few hours to devote to his custodial responsibilities in the fish department.
Seems Trevor has been joined on the hustings by attorney general Jerome Kennedy and intergovernmental affairs genius Tom Hedderson.
You will recall Hedderson as the guy writing letters to Ottawa last June lobbying on a decision that was made...18 months earlier.
Trevor sees no problem with this carrying on partisan family fights during daylight hours.
Trevor also decided on Monday to issue a news release criticizing the federal government for a deal giving 1500 tonnes of yellowtail flounder from Canada's NAFO allocation to the Americans.
But sure Trevor and the boys are supporting the ABC campaign, you say.
Yes, sez your humble e-scribbler, but don't forget the real motivation for all these cabinet ministers to join in the Family Feud.
There's a big cabinet shuffle coming very shortly. Being seen out there hammering away at The Boss' favourite cause is much better for the old career path than spending time doing other things, like say the job you get paid to do.
Oh. That's right.
Trevor did find time in his hectic hectoring schedule to call the Fisheries Broadcast and do an interview.
But that was after one of his predecessors outed him on the Family Feud thing.
-srbp-
February 5, 2008, p. A1
Business
Company shut down after $675-K handout
Closure came months after infusion of tax cash
Rob Antle
A local oil industry firm ceased operations last year, just months after quietly receiving a $500,000 equity investment from the provincial government.
The province had previously provided a $175,000 loan to SAC Mfg. Inc. of Paradise. Taxpayers are now out a total of $675,000.
But Innovation Minister Trevor Taylor insisted that officials did due diligence on the company, which was working to develop a natural gas compressor for use in the Alberta oil industry.
"We knew it was a high-risk investment," Taylor told The Telegram. "We knew that the company, there were cash-flow issues ... that this was as far as we could go, and that they were going to need to change the way they were conducting their business, or get further private investment or whatever in order to be able to carry forward.
"The reason we invested in it is because it was an innovative product. It was something that was explained to us - as we understood it, based on the analysis that was done - (that) this was an unconventional piece of equipment, that if it took off, would have had a good placement in the oil industry."
There are no news releases in provincial government archives announcing or even referencing any investments in SAC Mfg. Inc. Details of the equity infusion are buried in a schedule attached to the recently-released 2006-07 public accounts.
Taylor said he didn't know why there was no news release trumpeting the SAC cash, even though his department routinely does so for other infusions of government money. "I really couldn't tell you, to be honest with you ... I don't know." But Taylor noted there was no direction from him to keep it quiet.
In early 2006, the province loaned SAC $175,000. Later that year, in mid-December, the government made a $500,000 equity investment in the
company through its new commercialization program.
But soon after SAC received the money, the company's sole two directors - Dana Clancy and Sandy Clancy - sold their Paradise home, according to records filed at the provincial Registry of Deeds. That address doubled as the contact point for the company, according to documents filed at the Registry of Companies.
The house sale went through in June 2007, less than six months after the $500,000 government investment in SAC. There is no record of the Clancys subsequently buying another house in Newfoundland and Labrador. Taylor said one of the firm's principals moved back to Alberta.
The government said it was informed in September 2007 that SAC lacked sufficient capital to continue operations, citing competition from the U.S. and downturns in selected markets.
Government officials are now examining their options to recoup the cash. Taylor acknowledged he is concerned that the company's directors left so soon after the equity investment, but defended the actions of his department.
"We don't have a crystal ball around here that we can gaze into and say, 'Oh yeah, I just saw this person selling a house six months after we gave them money.'"
The province knew SAC Mfg. Inc. was a "high-risk" venture, and decided it was "worth a shot," Taylor said, insisting that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador want the government to take such risks.
"They've asked us - as a department, and as a government - to invest in research and development, and to put our money on the line and to do our due diligence, and understand what the risks are, and understand what the benefits might be if a technology is developed."
SAC officials were not reachable for comment. Sandy Clancy's e-mail address returned messages as undeliverable. All local phone numbers associated with the firm are out of service. And SAC's website has disappeared from the Internet. In fact, its domain is not currently registered by anyone.
The Department of Innovation was slow to respond to inquiries about SAC.
The Telegram first asked about the investment on Jan. 30, following a posting on the company by Internet blogger Ed Hollett.
rantle@thetelegram.com
