Privacy commish sues Dunderdale gov over “political” e-mails on gov comps, phones #nlpoli

The province’s access to information and privacy commissioner is taking the Dunderdale administration to court for its refusal to provide the commissioner with copies of e-mails on government computers and cellular telephones that government officials describe as “political in nature”.

Atlantic Business Magazine’s Rob Antle broke the story Wednesday afternoon on his blog at the magazine’s website.

At the heart of the suit are e-mails [that cover a period that would includes] related to accusations by erstwhile Tory leadership candidate Brad Cabana that a political staffer for then business minister Ross Wiseman attempted to bully him into quitting the leadership race. [There may be other political or party records involved as well.]

As CBC reported in January:

Cabana said the meeting with [Wiseman’s executive assistant Chick] Cholock happened in his [Cabana’s] home in Hickman's Harbour on Jan. 5 and his wife witnessed the exchange.

"They would marginalize me as a person. They would make me look like a quirk candidate and a glory seeker rather than someone who was really interested in the leadership and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador," he said.

An unidentified individual requested access to e-mails sent and received on government equipment by Cholock and Wiseman over three specific days in January.  As Antle reported for ABM:

The Department of Business provided the requester with about five pages of records. But the department advised that other responsive records were “political in nature” and exempt from disclosure.

The privacy and access commissioner’s office contacted the department to investigate an appeal of the department’s decision.  Under the province’s access laws, the commissioner has the legal right to review documents to determine if the department’s decision was correct.

The department refused the first request and ignored the second.

The commissioner then applied to the Supreme Court’s Trials Division for a review.

According to Antle, the provincial department appears to be relying on an earlier decision – currently under appeal – that barred the commissioner from reviewing many types of documents even if he did not subsequently recommend their disclosure.

In this case, according to Antle, the government is relying on a wide interpretation of a prohibition in the Access to Information and Protection of Personal Privacy Act that prohibits disclosure of constituency and political records.

That would be section 5(1):

This Act applies to all records in the custody of or under the control of a public body but does not apply to…

(c) a personal or constituency record of a member of the House of Assembly, that is in the possession or control of the member;

(c.1) records of a registered political party or caucus as defined in the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act;

…

(d) a personal or constituency record of a minister;

According to Antle the department described the records as “political”.  There’s no indication of whether or not the department cited a specific section of the Act, as required by law,  when refusing to disclose certain records. 

In the past departments have used a fictitious category called ‘non-responsive” to cover information they did not wish to disclose but  which they had no legal basis to withhold. 

- srbp -

Updates:  There are changes to this post to correct wrong information and some mistaken extrapolations of what Rob Antle wrote.  Any errors and incorrect extrapolations are mine and mine alone.

Para 3: The initial request was a blanket one that covered a period of time.  Some of the e-mails that are withheld and labelled political are likely related to the cabana affair however until someone reviews them, there is no way anyone knows specifically what they contain.

Para 10 (currently under appeal) deleted.  Two decisions.  One under appeal, the other not.  Your humble e-scribbler confused the decisions.

Sections of the Act being cited by government are c and c.1 and not c and d.

Dundernomics 101: Dazed and confused

There’s a Tellytorial  - editorial at the Telly – that is worth reading if you missed it already.

It’s the one from last Saturday that began by noting that the Conservatives are ploughing ahead with the Muskrat Falls project because they got a mandate for it in 2007.

Missed that little gem from four years ago, didn’t you?  As the Telegram notes, you surely aren’t alone.

Then there’s the bit where Premier Kathy Dunderdale says she’s confident an external “audit” and the public utilities board will back up claims that she and the Nalcor brass are making about the project.  No surprise there:  the audit isn’t really an audit, the utilities board has been given basically set up to deliver what Nalcor wants it to deliver and neither will examine the assumptions on which Dunderdale and her predecessor – Danny Williams – gave the green light for ramping up the public debt.  The fix, as they say, is in.

But the part of the editorial likely to really make you uncomfortable is the bit where the Telegram editorialist notes that Dunderdale is full steam ahead on the megadebt project yet at the same time:

in one part of the meeting, Dunderdale said governments across the country are getting stung by all manner of projects coming in vastly over budget — often by as much as a third or a half again as much as original budgets had outlined. At the same time, she argued that a contingency plan built into the Muskrat Falls project would handle any overages, even though the contingency set aside for the project is only 15 per cent of the project’s cost.

That’s pretty much what your humble e-scribbler has been saying about these sorts of projects in other parts of the world and about the administration Dunderdale’s been a part of since 2003.

The current provincial administration is routinely over budget and behind schedule on everything it does. The latest example is a plan to build a bunch of new ferries for the provincial coastal service. Already years behind schedule, the current administration torqued everything related to the launch of the first two hulls of a planned series to update the aged fleet. Turns out, though, that the project is not only years behind schedule, it is also significantly over budget such that it is causing problems for the remainder of the program.  People didn’t find this out – by the way – until human resources minister Darin King spoke to CBC’s David Cochrane last week about  labour problems at the Marystown shipyard.

Flip back to the Muskrat project though.

Current estimate for the project is $6.2 billion.  Increase that by 50%,  the likely over-run given Dunderdale’s comments to the editorial and experience with the current Conservative administration. You are already at about $10 billion and that’s roughly the size of the provincial government’s current liabilities.

Consider, though that the estimate of $6.2 billion isn’t realistic in the first place.  Nalcor and the provincial government are basically citing figures for 2011 that are exactly the same as ones first floated in the late 1990s.  Put a bit of inflation on that number at you’d be at $10 billion or more as a realistic starting figure.

Now add 50% and see what you get.

Scary, isn’t it?

When you are done with that and your breathing returns to normal, notice that Kathy Dunderdale acknowledged to the Telegram editorial board that these sorts of projects tend to go over-budget by up to 50%.  Your humble e-scribbler has been saying that for years.  others have said the same thing.

So… the Premier and critics of the project agree on both the likelihood of over-runs and how bad they’ll be.

Then recall this Dunderdale quote from a recent speech:

May I suggest you look at the motives of the few vocal naysayers who are working so hard to find flaws in what is easily one of the most exciting developments in North America.

Maybe you should.

And while you are at it, look at Dunderdale’s motives in pushing the megadebt project despite the very obvious and massive flaws in her proposal that even she acknowledges.

If you look at both, it should be pretty easily to see who is dazed and confused and who thinks there’s a better deal waiting to be had than the one the Premier and her supporters are flogging.

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Expectations

Having jacked expectations through the ceiling, Kathy Dunderdale better convince Stephen Harper to commit to halt the transfer of the jobs at the coast guard search and rescue co-ordination office in St. John’s to Halifax.

If she gets nothing, then she will bear responsibility for the failure.

The only worse outcome will be if harper takes Dunderdale’s commitment to have the provincial government pay for the federal operation.

Dunderdale and Harper will speak by telephone this evening, apparently but Dunderdale has already said she won’t be available to brief reporters on the call afterward.

Local media are hyping the crap out of it based on Dunderdale’s babbling in front of reporters on Tuesday.

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Dundernomics 101: All your toasters are belong to us

labradore does yet another fine job exposing the completely ludicrous claims of those backing Kathy Dunderdale’s Empire of Debt, doing business as the Muskrat Falls project.

Specifically, labradore tackles the idea that electricity demand in the province is growing such that the only sensible alternative to the current situation is to build this super expensive project and force local ratepayers to pay the full freight for it.  Excess power – and there’ll be lots of it – would be sold outside the province at huge discounts, courtesy of the fine folks in what noob Bloc MP Ryan Cleary calls Newfoundland Labrador. 

There are no conjunctions in his world-view apparently.

In any event, labradore offers up two charts compiled from official government figures.  They show energy demand in two different ways.

See if you can spot a growth in demand.

Unlike Nalcor’s open house propaganda sessions, there won’t be a hundred bucks as a door prize for showing up to this little exercise. 

You could, however save yourself from doubling your own electricity rates so other people can profit by Kathy Dunderdale’s folly.

Oh and to understand the title you have to read the quote from Hansard over at labradore.  make sure you turn away from the screen when you do the spit-take.  no need to get the computer all mucked up.

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Dundernomics 101: how to lose money

In the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Premier Kathy Dunderdale displayed her keen insight into the intricacies of public finance and economics:

We are in the open market and in the spot market and sometimes we sell high and sometimes we sell low. What we need to ensure, Mr. Speaker, is that on average we are doing as well or better than we were selling the power to Hydro-Québec, which has always been their plan.

Ummm.

Yeah.

Well, no.

Not unless you are a complete moron, of course.

There’s just no polite way to say it.

The important thing is to make sure the price you get for the power is averaging more than the cost of producing the power in the first place. 

If the power costs a dollar to make and you are selling in any market – the spot market or to Hydro-Quebec  - for less than a dollar you are losing money.

Losing money is a bad thing at the best of times.  If you are talking about losing billions and billions and billions of oil dollars that belong not to you but to the poor benighted people of Flower Hill and Flower’s Cove then it is something way out beyond the baddest sort of bad that there is. 

And if you are talking that sort of complete shite with the legacy of Sprung and Churchill Falls and all the other bad ideas borne of the same sorts of fundamental ignorance you just displayed, then you should not be allowed to balance your own personal cheque-book let alone run the province. 

It is that frickin’ simple.

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Kremlinology 34: The enemy of my enemy and other weekend amusements

Danny Williams sat in his office in the Paramount Building – converted from an old movie theatre where the roof collapsed in the 1970s – and shot a video message he intended the Dunderdale Party to show at a dinner on Friday night during their two day coronation of a new leader.

They didn’t show it.

Timing problems they claimed.

So Danny’s people “leaked it” to CBC who duly posted it and have made it the centre of their weekend online coverage of the Dunderdale Party coronation.

With the story out there, Dunderdale party organizers claimed the thing was intended for a closed-door party meeting on Saturday or that it would be shown there instead, depending on which version of the story a reporter got.

Note the reference Danny makes to a similar weekend convention where he can show his appreciation.  That plus the party makeover will give you good clues to the problems Dunderdale and her handlers likely had with the idea of Danny being around.

Then think about her dismissive line from earlier in the week about the rift between Danny and his hand-picked successor: something about how transitions can be hard sometimes. The picture should be getting clear to you now as to what this has been really all about.

The leak to CBC is interesting because when Danny tried to slip out of the country for secret heart surgery, his fans attacked CBC for daring to report it.

Only problem was, someone dropped a quarter on Danny and leaked the story to NTV who dutifully broke it.

Not CBC.

NTV.

That didn’t stop the Danny Boys – what do you call members of the Dunderdale Party? – from lacing into the Mighty Ceeb anyway and any time they could.

Now CBC is Danny’s bud for pushing out stories that cause some grief for the Dunderites. 

Dunderheads?

Whatever.

Speaking of that period of great unease with Tory circles that culminated with the secret heart surgery debacle,  wasn’t it interesting to see Trevor Taylor hosting the coronation supper Friday evening for Kathy Dunderdale?

Trevor’s sudden departure and the reaction within provincial Tory ranks are what triggered the series of posts in the Kremlinology series on what seemed to be some pretty significant problems within the provincial Conservative party machinery. 

Turns out that Tony Ducey had a right to be worried.

And if all that wasn’t enough for you, just look at the line from Dunderdale’s speech as teased out by the CBC at the end of their video post.

Talk about your tells.

"Whether you're from Port aux Basques or Cartwright, St. Anthony, Port de Grave or Quidi Vidi, your district is one we are targeting in 2011 and we need your help to make that happen," Dunderdale told delegates, identifying the five areas of the province currently represented by Liberal or NDP members of the house of assembly [lower case in original].

With Danny in place, the provincial Conservatives could be on the offensive in the five seats they didn’t already hold.

With Danny gone, they don’t have that political luxury any more.  The Dunderdale Party doesn’t have Danny’s polling numbers.  heck even Danny didn’t have Danny’s polling numbers, last going off for sure.

The Dunderdale Party is likely going to be on the defensive in a dozen to 15 seats this fall.

You can get a good clue on that by the nasty reaction in some quarters this past week and this past weekend to Dunderdale and to the Stephen Harper visit.

Dunderdale likes her brave talk but how she delivers her lines tells much more.

That will have to wait for another kremlinology instalment.

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dunderdale2011.ca - The Dunderdale Party

People used to joke about how the provincial Conservatives under Danny Williams were a one man band.

Joke no more.

To coincide with the coronation this weekend, the party former known as the provincial Progressive Conservatives have done a makeover on themselves to match the rather dramatic Stacy and Clinton job Kathy Dunderdale herself went through while she was out of the public eye for about a month or so.

Gone is the web address that include any reference to the PC Party.

Now it is “dunderdale2011”.

The logo you see in the upper right hand corner – where eyes go first on an English language webpage – is the graphic that goes with that.  The number 2011 is vertical with the word Dunderdale right next to it.

Basically they are running with Kathy as the drawing card, just like before now they ran a Big Giant Head of Danny everywhere.

That’s an interesting choice given that Kathy isn’t Danny and it is still way too early to tell if she actually has the stuff to carry the party through the election.

The Dunderdale party website has a few new features as well.  There’s a “donate” button and a “get involved” button as well as a “blog” and the promise of more social media features to come.  Those will be fun to keep an eye on especially as the way the Dunderdale party actually operates is the exact opposite of how a party would operate that relies on social media and “get involved” approaches.  That’s not to say there aren’t elements of the party who are active with Twitter and Facebook, it’s just that the political parties in this province generally don’t function as they would need to in order to rely on those methods to the maximum advantage.

And if you look at the closed circle that is the Dunderdale party – how do you get to be a member, again? – you have a gang that are the fundamental opposite of the sort of open, member-driven party that runs on social media and connecting with voters.

Interesting choices.

It will be more interesting to see how works out and how the other parties present themselves in the run up to the fall general election.

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