Three for Thursday #nlpoli

Quebec opposes more federal cash for Muskrat Falls

The Government of Quebec has always opposed federal loan guarantees for Muskrat Falls on the grounds that it skews the hydro playing field.  This week, they just renewed their objections as the provincial government tries to score a second $5.0 billion guarantee.

Speaking of Ottawa and the loan guarantee,  Dwight Ball is skipping the financial update this morning to go to Ottawa.  Ball's doing a Memorial University alumni dinner but is he going to meet with anyone to talk financial aid for the province?

Expect as much sunshine as they can imagine

The midyear financial update is coming at 11:00 AM this morning.  There was supposed to be some word on the gas tax.  Expect some concrete information on when they will start to eliminate it. Invariably the provincial spring budget contains some fictitious numbers.  Over the past decade the government loved to low-ball tax revenues.  This would inflate the deficit and make it look much better at Christmas time, when the Conservatives used to do the mid-year update.  We might see a few of those little surprises.

What you will most definitely not here is any talk of cuts to spending by the government.  Those days are over.  And if finance minister Cathy Bennett hints at cuts, expect a long season of protests from now to the spring as people apply the Mustafa Principle in spades.

Ethnic identity economics #nlpoli

Wade Locke and Don Mills are two of the faces most associated with the current Conservative administration in Newfoundland and Labrador, aside from the politicians, that is.

Mills played a key role in Danny Williams administration.  Mills polling firm provided government with quarterly surveys.  Williams also tried to manipulate Mills’ survey results for questions on local politics that Mills used to market his research company.

The quarterly polling was key to Williams efforts to silence dissent and maximize his own freedom of political action.  The more popular Williams became, the less likely were any opposition politicians or news media to question his decisions. 

And for everyone else, the Conservative message was that any dissidents were out of step with the majority of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.  Mills’ polling purportedly showed that Williams and his party were popular to an unheard of degree.  “He’s right because he’s popular and he’s popular because he is right,”  was a common Conservative talking point.

That’s why it has been so interesting the past few months that Mills has been criticising the provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

How not to promote immigration #nlpoli

The provincial Conservatives currently running the place have finally discovered what pretty well everyone else in government knew 20 years ago.

The population is getting older, on average.   That’s not good for a whole bunch of reasons.

They decided to create something called a population growth strategy, which is supposed to do exactly what it says:  make the number of people in the province get larger.

D’uh.

And there are really a whole lot of other “d’uh” moments when you read their background paper on how to get more people in the province.