Showing posts with label Valdmania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valdmania. Show all posts

09 September 2011

Dateline: Desperation, Newfoundland

Finance minister Tom Marshall called the province’s major radio talk show on Thursday to promote the Muskrat Falls power project.

He quoted from a book by Wally Read and L.J. Cole.  The quote runs down opponents of the Bay d’Espoir megaproject in the 1960s as ignorant, blind or politically motivated people of dubious character who lacked the foresight to undertake the marvelous project.

You can hear the whole call courtesy of Dave Adey.  Before going any farther, take a second and listen to Tom in all his persuasive majesty.  Then, when you are finished being awestruck, come back to these scribbles.

Fair warning:  if you are awestruck at Tom, you’ll be gobsmacked by the end of this post.



You were warned.

Now if you don’t know – and your humble e-scribbler didn’t know until he went looking – that book was in fact no book at all.  It was a 28 page pamphlet produced by the Newfoundland and Labrador Power Commission in 1972 to mark the inauguration of their new power plant at Bay d’Espoir. The Commission was the forerunner of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

And if the words Marshall read sounded familiar, if they sounded as though you heard them before, if it struck you that the language used by Read and Cole resonated in a way you may have heard before, if the sentences seemed to come with bow tie and dark-rimmed spectacles, then you would be right.

The visionary Read and Cole were praising, the champion-in-chief of modernity, progress, and the future of His People, the one who stood out among the one or two the authors obliquely referenced in the text was none other than the Only Living Father of Confederation at the time.

Yes, Joe Smallwood.

So right off the bat, you have a fellow who got his current job as part of a crowd who campaigned against foolish megaprojects, gigantic wastes of money and enormous give-aways quoting favourably about the fellow who was chief among their targets.

And the fellows of low character and small minds the two others lambasted were Marshall’s political predecessors in the provincial Conservatives.

And if the full story be told, Tom probably campaigned for some of them and fulminated against Smallwood himself four decades ago.

Now if you are feeling a bit weak in the knees, we can all wait for you to catch your breath.

This is only the beginning.

You see, we are not dealing here with mere irony.

No.

That would be too common a theatrical device for people of such enormous vision and unparalleled ability.

This, my friends, is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

If someone among the current administration plucked out his own eyes after slaughtering his own father, bedding his sister, and marrying his own mother, you could not have anything more fundamentally twisted, demented and frigged in the head than Tories justifying themselves by borrowing words of praise for Joe Smallwood.

The whole thing enters another dimension when you realise that Bay d’Espoir was conceived and built in the 1960s not as a simple project to meet identified need as Tom Marshall would have you believe.

No, sir.

Bay d’Espoir was the centrepiece of yet another scheme by which the ratepayers of Newfoundland would give megawatts of power at bargain basement prices to create not one, not two, not three or even four or five, but something like eight new industries.

A paper mill for the east coast.

A hockey stick factory.

A refinery.

A petrochemical plant.

A phosphorus plant.

And on and on it went.

Joe Smallwood gives the thing a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of page 375 and the top of page 376 in I chose Canada.  After reciting the efforts to get companies to take power for the project, Smallwood writes on page 376:
The killer was the cost of the transmission line, but we agreed to build the line and charge Brinco nothing for it until after the enterprise had begun to make money.
You won’t find the full story of the Bay d’Espoir saga in the Read and Cole monograph of in Smallwood’s memoir.  You’ll get a much better sense of the dubious economics of the whole affair in a paper done in 2007 1974 by Peter Crabb.

Bay d’Espoir was supposed to do magical things.  Many of the same claims of magic Tom Marshall and his friends are using for Muskrat falls are the same ones Smallwood and his associates used for their mega-failures. As it turned out, the only new industry Bay d’Espoir attracted was the phosphorus plant at Long Harbour.  The scheme to attract new industry by providing heavily discounted electricity to industries was a complete bust.

Proponents of megaprojects grossly exaggerate the benefits and grossly underestimate the risks, in case you haven’t heard that one before.

Skip ahead 40 years and you have tom Marshall marvelling at how history is repeating itself.  Indeed it is, except not in the way Marshall supposes.  He and his colleagues are on the wrong side of the story.

Now just so that there is no one with any sense who thinks this is a conspiracy,  Randy Simms did a grave disservice to his audience during the conversation with Marshall when he tried to turn the arguments against Muskrat Falls into something they aren’t.

Undoubtedly, Tom Marshall and Kathy Dunderdale sincerely believe they are doing the right thing.  They have convinced themselves that this is the way to go, just as Smallwood did in the 1960s repeatedly.  Just as Brian Peckford and his crowd did with the cucumber factory. 

Desperation makes politicians – even normally sensible ones like Tom Marshall -  do strange things.

But make no mistake about it:  Muskrat Falls has absolutely nothing to do with a power need on the island just as surely as the Bay d’Espoir project and nothing to do with consumer power needs.  We know this because Nalcor could not produce figures that demonstrate their forecasts of an impending power shortage are real.

We also know it because this project has never, ever been justified on the basis of urgent need.

Tom Marshall and his colleagues pushed the development of the Lower Churchill in the beginning as a way to make money by selling power to people outside the province. 

Go back to January 2005.

Not a single peep about a need for electricity on the island.

The joint review panel found the same thing.

Muskrat Falls is not about need.

It is about want.

More specifically, it is about a political want.  Danny Williams wanted to cap off his term by saying he had a deal.  the economics of it had long since vanished.  The project – as originally planned – simply could not fly.  So he cut a deal for something that would look good in theory but that fails when anyone with half a clue looks closely at it.

Williams’ political want for an excuse to cover his exit became the political want of his successor to have something to tide her through an election.

We know this project is not driven by public need because neither Nalcor nor Tom Marshall nor anyone else pushing it ever more frantically down our collective throat has been able to give a simple, consistent and factual set of answers to a simple set of questions. They squirm and they dodge and they toss out red herrings and they attack their critics.

Tom and his associates spent two years with a hand-picked panel of five intelligent, sensible people looking over this Muskrat Falls thing. Those five people told Nalcor that the company had not made its case.

Not once, mind you, but twice.

Those five people on the joint federal-provincial review panel recommended giving the whole thing to someone without a vested interest in the project in order to make sure that all the evidence was there.

That’s as serious an indictment of Nalcor’s poor performance as one could get.

So the people Tom Marshall claims know so much about electricity needs and megaprojects couldn’t knock off a two year review process successfully on the crucial component:  the need for it in the first place to meet local energy demand.

And ultimately we know this project is driven by politics because of Tom Marshall’s obvious desperation that he would praise the Churchill Falls development and Bay d’Espoir as models to follow.

There is obviously no claim so ridiculous and no argument so transparent that Marshall and his colleagues would not toss it out to try and fight off the public worry about Muskrat Falls and what the project will do to electricity rates and the public debt.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Joe Smallwood is looking down on this all.  He is sitting with John Shaheen and O.L. Vardy while Valdmanis plays waiter and freshens their drinks every now and then.  They are kicked back enjoying fine cigars and letting the sand scrunch between their toes.

And on that magnificent Panamanian beach beyond all time and care, Joe is shitting himself laughing. 

He is crapping his Bermudas at Tom and Kathy and Danny.

The rest of us could join him in the chuckle too.  We could bust open our pants with a hearty belly laugh. We could do that if only we were not faced with the embarrassing spectacle of Tom Marshall’s desperation.

We could maybe even manage a smile, were it not for the fact that – if the province’s Conservatives and New Democrats get their way -  we will be footing the bill for yet another megaproject give-away to rival the greatest ones of the last century.

And we will have to listen as our children and grandchildren as they ask us over and over again how some people could have become so utterly deluded that they could make the same miserable mistake twice inside a half century and use the first fiasco as proof of the genius in the second.

We could laugh except that some of us cannot explain it.

We only know that we will be paying for their folly.

Again.

- srbp -

17 May 2010

Reach for the Screech

In a couple of weeks time, the Memorial University political science department is holding a reunion.  The thing is timed to coincide with the spring convocation.  A bunch of alumni will be there, none of whom has written – as best as your humble e-scribbler can determine – what we used to joke was the definitive doctoral thesis on local politics.

The influence of rum on Newfoundland public policy.

That was the working title.

screech rum On the surface, it would be a piece about the triangle trade and especially the exchange of salt fish with Caribbean countries in exchange for that magical elixir.

But on the more cynical level it was supposed to be a work that noted the number of times local politicians made decisions that seemed – in the cold light of morning – as if they’d been tanked up on the dark liquid at every stage from the moment the idea popped into someone’s head until someone scrawled the last  signature across the last contract.

Rum, it would seem, played a role in a few of the more colourful events in local political life.  Elections sometimes turned on the number of swallies doled out in the right districts. Fistfights in the legislature sometimes came complete with their own aroma – essence of the captain – to cover over the smell of blood and snot on the curtains behind the Speaker’s chair from the odd poke in the snoot one gave another.

Heck, so pervasive is the rumoured connection between politics and the bottle that the current Premier – the Old Man Hisself – could not help but make a half-joking reference to it.  That was back in 2004, incidentally, in an editorial board meeting with the crowd at Macleans. 

But while tippling on the job fell out of favour a few years back, few would blame the current crowd were they to ever to be found seeking comfort with a reach for the Screech. 

After all, they have not had a good political day in the better part of a year:  Resignations, the stunning loss of a by-election, public finances in a mess, caught frigging with the 1961 Churchill falls lease and then forced to hold an emergency session of the legislature to clean up the mess of that, the shagged up expropriation of Abitibi’s polluted properties, pollution reports they tried to keep secret.

And still no Lower Churchill.

The finest undeveloped hydro project in North America, as the Old Man likes to call it.  The phrase is getting a little shop-worn by the way, since it was first called that way back before the provincial government nationalised BRINCO in the mid-1970s. 

40 years later, still undeveloped but still the finest.

Once said to be Hisself’s legacy project.  Staying until it as done, he said.

But now things are so dark that even Hisself apparently doesn’t like to talk about legacies anymore.

Don Martin, still desperate to see his 2004 “Harper wins majority” headline used as something other than a joke, took a trip to the far east to chat with the Old Man. The account of the visit – or a least the sampling of the local heart-stopping cuisine – is in the weekend National Post.

"I hope my own legacy -- which is a stupid term but it's in vogue so I'll use it -- is that we can keep this feeling of pride and respect and self-confidence, that we're as good as anybody else.

"For the longest time we were perceived by Canadians as second-class citizens. Those who knew us knew it was bum rap, but it was an overall perception that's changed dramatically. When you've got young people from other parts of the country coming here, not just for an education but also to stay and work, it shows we have a real good future."

There it is:  Williams wants to be remembered for something he didn’t do.  Williams has nothing to talk about except a throne speech from five years ago:

This is a speech which claims credit for finding that which was not lost. It praises the lustre restored to that which had not been dulled. It lauds the cleansing of that which is not sullied. It remembers what was never forgotten. This speech sings hymns of praise to its authors unhindered by modesty or fact.

Williams chose to call his 2005 hand-out from Ottawa the “Atlantic Accord” and not surprisingly it is often confused with the real accomplishment of the same name done by someone else 25 years ago.  It shouldn’t be surprising he now wants his legacy to be claiming credit for something Newfoundlanders and Labradorians never lacked:  confidence in their own abilities. Forget what others thought.  Self-confidence and ability is something the people of this province have always had, in spades.

But look at Danny Williams’ comments in this Martin column and you can see the state of affairs almost eight years after he took office.  We need to be masters of our destiny Williams says, or more like it: masters of our domain as a budget speech two years ago put it.  “Need to be”, as if we aren’t now and never have been.

Again with the false goals.  Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have always been masters of their own fate.

The problem they face today is that as they roll up on the end of the period Williams used to say was the time frame for his plan to take effect, things are not looking all that good.

The local economy seems more dependent than ever before on public spending.  The Conference Board of Canada predicted last week that the provincial economy would grow by 2.4% in 2010 based mostly on public infrastructure spending. But the government budget last year was short by a half a billion dollars, one of the largest cash deficits in the province’s history.  The forecast is that it will be short again by at least that much, if not more. If growth depends on the public purse, then this province is in for a hard time any day now.  

Williams came to office promising ”jobs, jobs, jobs” that he would create based on his proven ability as a local businessman. A new department – with the creative name “business”  - sprang up to to channel his genius. 

After a couple of years, no one  - least of all Danny - had any idea what the department was supposed to do.  Scuttlebutt had it that his own deputy minister couldn’t get to see him for months on end. The only thing that piled up were claims about how many files from companies sat on someone’s desk.

By the time someone figured out what the “plan” might look like, Williams had long since handed over his own personal department to first one and then another and then another of his ministers. Other things needed the Old Man’s attention more urgently than did his own personal department.

valdmanis_550 The “plan”  - as the successors finally hit on it in 2007  - would be to hand out free cash to any company that would come here to do business.  The only thing missing from this revolutionary, never-before-seen concept was the Latvian crook to run around clicking his heels together with a snappy “Yes, My Premier” at the prospect of yet another rubber boot factory or eyeglass plant.

Not content with just that bit of genius, after threatening expropriation a couple of times and then finally doing it to no fewer than three companies, the current crowd put in authority over us have so fouled the investment climate in the province that they cannot even pay companies to come here and create jobs. 

Think about that for a second.

Out of $75 million budgeted for the give-aways since 2007, the business department has handed out only $14 million of it.  Some went to set up a marine service centre in  a land-locked town. Half the cash they did dole out went to a company – itself a descendant of the Latvian legacy – that promised to add 50 jobs but instead cut nearly twice that. No word if they’ll still get all the cash.

The Tories said “no more give-aways” but somehow this doesn’t seem to be what they had in mind.  Things have changed on many fronts, alright, but not in the way people might have expected.

The government backbenchers don’t talk so much any more about how great things are across the province.  Their speeches in the legislature these days are more likely than not great homages to their glorious leader.  They offer paens to his posterior that seem to be either laying the groundwork for his departure -  he is, Martin tells us, “mindful of being closer to the end of his political career than the beginning”  - or coded, panic-stricken pleas for him not to shag off permanently to the new digs in Florida. 

It’s likely been a bit jarring for the poor dears to poke their heads out of the fog of their prepared Open Line talking points only to discover that they are not – in fact – just coming up on the New Jerusalem as foretold in the speaking notes;  they are in fact currently midway up shit creek and none of Danny’s potential replacements appears to know where he keeps the batteries for the GPS, let alone have a clear idea of how to work it.

And that original eight year plan, the one it took them four years just to figure out?

Even that has changed:

But that's just the beginning of his 30-year plan to harness offshore oil and gas, wind and hydro electric power into Newfoundland's shield against buffeting by external forces.

It’s enough to make anyone reach for the Screech.

-srbp-

19 November 2008

Aluminumania!

Oh yes, there'll be a smelter for sure in Labrador.

Aluminum prices hit a three year low.

Perfect time for a company to hit up a willing government for some Valdmania cash.

-srbp-

Paying for work

The provincial government's business department is tossing $325,000 at an international, private sector information technology company so the company can create 10 new jobs over the next five years.

$325 K

10 jobs

Five years.

Do the math.

That's 32,500 per job, or $6,500 for each position for each of the five years.

That's pretty much on par with the current administration's plan to develop new jobs in the province by subsidizing with public sector cash.

Within the past two weeks, the provincial government did the same thing with more public cash for a private sector manufacturing business and its facility on the Burin Peninsula:  $500 K for an extra 30 jobs and that's on top of the subsidies to get the workforce to its current level.

This use of public cash  - including low cost power - for the private sector mirrors what was done here in the 1950s and 1960s in the disastrous Smallwood industrial development program. 

It's an idea that was rejected in the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan.  There's good reason for it. Subsidizing private sector businesses like this doesn't have the greatest record of success, at least when it comes to creating sustainable, competitive industries.

No small irony that the money for a software company  - singled out by the auditor general - comes days after another software developer that relied heavily on public sector cash closed its doors.

Another recipient of provincial cash imploded just months after getting the cheque.

Major national cable and telecom companies aren't likely to fold, but they sure loved getting a massive cash injection from the provincial government to subsidize their expansion projects.  The total cost of that one hasn't been calculated yet.

-srbp-