Keith Russell: Panic! #nlpoli #nlvotes

Tory candidate Keith Russell must be in a desperate battle to win his seat.

He’s trotted out the old patronage card in a bid to boost his chances.  The district better vote the right way, warns Russell or else no megaprojects for Labrador.

Here’s how the Telegram reported his comments:

we have to be on government’s side to access government coffers…

Candidates who trot out the truth of the way the Tories have been handling things like road paving over the past seven years usually get slapped down not for what they said but for saying it out loud.

Wonder what Kathy Dunderdale will do to Russell now that he has voiced the threat implicit in the Conservatives’ campaign pork-fest.

Incidentally, the Telegram notes that Russell – who used to work for the Innu nation – testified at the joint review panel hearings and raised concerns about the Muskrat Falls megadebt project.  The Telegram didn’t do Russell’s testimony justice, but that’s another story.

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Day 3: #pandermonium roundup #nlpoli #nlvotes

Liberal leader Kevin Aylward promised Wednesday that as Premier he’d cave in and settle a class action lawsuit that is trying to pin financial responsibility for moose accidents on the provincial government.

The provincial Tories did their  pandering before the election with everything from fire trucks to moose fences.

NDP leader Lorraine Michael promised that her party would cut some tax on gasoline. The CBC story doesn’t make it clear which tax Michael was talking about. The NDP platform doesn’t make it clear either, referring only to the tax on tax.

But it sounds good and that’s really all old-fashioned pols like all the rest are looking for when it comes to the pure pandering parts of their platform.

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Election 2011 and the Resource Curse

During the current provincial election you are going to hear a lot about natural resources and the need to spend the money that comes from it on all sorts of things.

The province’s New Democrats wasted no time in bitching that oil money isn’t being poured into rural Newfoundland and Labrador:

"We have to have a plan in rural Newfoundland to make sure that our fishery is maintained as the backbone of rural communities," she said.

The Dippers are also hopped up on spending the cash on education, mostly likely to help Nova Scotians get a cheaper education.

Of course, the province’s Conservatives have been on a spending spree these past couple of years.  They’ve dropping dropping money on everything anything from road paving to hockey rinks.

The provincial Liberals are on much the same sort of kick, especially for the fishery. All three parties want to take over federal responsibilities like the dozen or so jobs at a coast guard marine rescue call centre.  The local pols want to buy the jobs just to keep them in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In fact, if you look at most major issues in the province, the only disagreement among the three parties is how much is enough to spend.  On any given issue and any given day, the incumbent Tories will announce cash for something.  The other two parties will scream:  “not enough!”

A cause for grave concern #nlpoli

The Office of the Auditor General is an independent and reliable source of the objective, fact-based information that the House of Assembly needs to fulfill one of its most important roles: holding the provincial government accountable for its stewardship of public funds.

That’s a paraphrase of the description of the auditor general’s job found on the federal auditor general’s website.

Let’s add a bit of a twist to that description, though. The Auditor General’s office is not just an officer for the legislature alone; the AG office is one of the officers the public must trust to ensure that government spends your tax dollars and mine properly.

Aside from anything else, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador must have confidence that the person who serves as Auditor General is not a partisan for any political party and is functioning free of any favour or threat from the government itself.

John Noseworthy likely shattered that confidence for a good few people in the province on Tuesday when he became the second Auditor General in a row to leave office and enter politics.

In this case, Noseworthy announced his new political career a mere 16 days after leaving the job that he wants to run as a candidate for the ruling provincial Conservatives in the fall general election.

But that’s not the whole story.

Noseworthy had a year or more left  in his term when he announced last June that he was quitting to pursue “other professional opportunities.”  Asked about political ambitions at the time, Noseworthy merely told reporters he was ruling nothing out.

News reports on Tuesday mentioned his role in uncovering the House of Assembly spending scandal.  In interviews, Noseworthy was quick to call his own reports on government spending “scathing” and noted that he was critical of government.

That’s as maybe. The timing alone creates the impression of an unseemly haste to leave his job early in order to enter politics.   His comments appear self-serving and - in light of some of his actions over the past seven or eight years - dubious.

Noseworthy has been a bit of a media darling since 2006 and the spending scandal.  What that means is that local reporters have not questioned him even when there was good reason to doubt his comments, claims and conclusions.

For starters, Noseworthy has never accounted for millions of dollars of overspending that took place during the scandal period from 1996 to 2006.  Instead, he looked at other issues.

Nor has he explained why his own reports actually ignored the overspending. You’ll only find reference to the actual degree of overspending here at SRBP and in Chief Justice Derek Green’s report on the spending scandal.

In the parts he did report on, your humble e-scribbler raised questions about his public comments at the time and how he was conducting his reviews.  Chief Justice Green even recommended significant changes to sections of the law governing the Auditor General as a result of the inappropriate - and in some instances unfounded – accusations Noseworthy levelled at members of the legislature.

Then there’s the question of how both he and his old boss, now Tory Senator Elizabeth Marshall never made any comment on the level of overspending in the House of assembly accounts until 2006.  They may not have had access to the House books for a part of the scandal period but they did have access to the Comptroller General’s records for the whole time and he wrote all the cheques used to shell out the cash. And they never raised the issue once, except for the one time when Marshall’s attempt to investigate a single cabinet minister – Liberal as it turns out – got shut down.

Noseworthy’s also been known to polish his own knob and that of his future political associates.  In a 2009 report, Noseworthy actually made up a fictitious report recommendation and credited the government with following it.

A 2007 report claimed that the same agency produced a deficit and a surplus at the same time.

Nothing was quite as bizarre, though, as Noseworthy’s sudden decision to try and audit the offshore regulatory board.  At the time, Noseworthy’s office did not include the board in a list of government agencies the Ag felt he had the authority to audit. 

Noseworthy made quite the stink about getting inside the board offices, issuing a special report.

But once he got in, the whole thing vanished.

No subsequent reports.

No updates.

No letters.

Nothing.

Not until your humble e-scribbler brought up the question of the vanished Earth-shattering issue and reporters trotted off to Noseworthy’s office to see what gives.

Access problems, Noseworthy harrumphed.

But no word on his silence on the whole matter for the better part of two and a half years.

There was just a little cock-up in a story on the whole thing by one local radio station.

Funny thing in that little episode as it turns out. Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner wound up reminding everyone of the sweeping changes to provincial laws that wound up effectively shielding so much of Nalcor’s operations from public oversight.

Noseworthy didn’t say boo about any of that as it sailed through the legislature and it didn’t make any reference to it in any of his comments since June when he announced his retirement.

Maybe Noseworthy will be like his predecessor Beth Marshall who, after entering politics, didn’t find any problems with giving politicians access to bags of cash they could hand out to constituents, often without receipts.

Ah yes, old-fashioned patronage politics and the importance of having a member on the government side to dole out the goodies.

And, by gosh, didn’t John Noseworthy mention just that - having someone on the government side  - as he launched his career in politics.

Incompetence?

Normal practices?

Bias?

Whatever the cause, John Noseworthy’s announcement on Tuesday is the finest example yet of why our province desperately needs a fundamental, democratic revolution.

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Worshipping at the Trough

Patronage politics of the worst old-fashioned sort is alive and well in Newfoundland and Labrador.

VOCM posted a story online within the past 24 hours (hopefully it won’t be disappeared too soon) that makes it pretty clear:

A cabinet minister is unapologetic for the rash of pre-election spending announcements coming from the government. The MHA for Grand Bank, Darin King, announced some money for health care recently. There has been a steady stream of news releases, most announcing money that had already been allocated in the budget, over the past several months.

On VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms, King said he is dedicated to bringing in as much money as he can to his district.

Where patronage thrives, paternalism can’t be too far away.

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Paternalism in Pictures

People are talking about fire trucks, paving and other forms of patronage doled out by the provincial Conservatives for Election 2011.

The always acidic labradore has it in pictures, over time.

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The secret of life in Newfoundland and Labrador

The secret of life and comedy is timing.

In this case, the secret of life in Newfoundland and Labrador would be the curious coincidence in timing of a conference to discuss ways of getting more women involved in the oil and gas industry with the leak that the provincial government passed over qualified female candidates in the industry for a job at the offshore regulatory board in favour of pure patronage.

As much as this sort of old-fashion pork may be the nature of life under the provincial Conservatives, it isn’t very funny.

What it does make clear, though, is that anyone hoping to increase the number of women involved in the province’s offshore industry is going to have a long way to go.

First you’ve got to get rid of these very old, very backward ideas about patronage and entitlements and get government to make appointments based on merit first.

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HMV

Danny Williams, on why he got into politics:

I was tired of the patronage and the corruption.

Well maybe he as tired of half of that.

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Low Turn-out

As the Telegram editorial pointed up on Thursday, the winners in a series of recent by-elections took what is ostensibly one of the province’s most important and prestigious jobs based on the endorsement of the less than 30% of the eligible voters in the districts involved.

The Telegram blames the voters for this problem:

If you couldn’t even get off your backside to vote, you have no right to complain about how lousy, venial or downright pathetic your representation turns out to be. Heck, if they steal from you (as some of our politicians recently did), you hardly have a right to complain; you took no part in picking them, so they hardly betrayed your trust.

With possibly one brief period, politics in Newfoundland and Labrador has never been based on mobilisation of voters around a common goal or agenda based on their fundamental equality and on their shared and equal right to determine the future of the province.

Typically politics in Newfoundland and Labrador is based on the idea that citizens surrender their power to the patron who will deliver such benefits to the district – in the form of jobs and public spending – as he might be able.  Typically that sort of idea is reinforced by the sort of politics we’ve seen in the recent by-election in Humber West. 

In his campaign foray, Danny Williams took pains to remind voters how good he and his colleagues had been to the region.  That’s none-too-subtle coded for “look how much pork we brought” and now pay us back with a vote for my guy.  That’s pretty much the same sort of thing he said after the embarrassing defeat in the Straits.  Williams famously expressed disdain that voters could be so ungrateful to him – perhaps personally – for not electing his candidate after all the money that Williams and his colleagues had delivered to the district.

That basic message in provincial politics is what lay at the heart of the spending scandal.  Individual politicians got to distribute pork to their districts or to withhold it as they saw fit.  No one pretended to distribute the money fairly.  No one, including a former auditor general, thought that government programs – administered impartially by departments – were the right way to handle health and social services assistance of the kind many politicians claimed to be delivering out of money meant to maintain constituency offices and the like.

The current Conservative administration isn’t doing anything radically new in comparison to most of their predecessors. Like poll goosing, they are just doing it more aggressively and much more blatantly.  Fighting public disclosure of information? Discouraging public debate?  Closing and restricting membership in a supposedly open party?  All reflect the basic attitude that the majority of citizens have no role to play in the political system except to obey and acquiesce.

It is hardly surprising in that sort of political environment that people don’t participate in by-elections:  they aren’t supposed to turn out, beyond the identified party faithful.  And beyond the incumbent party, it takes a certain level of courage to swim against the stream.  The shouts of quisling and traitor aren’t designed to encourage discussion and it isn’t surprising that this sort of thuggery and intimidation has been as prominent as it has been during one of the most paternalistic regimes in the province’s history.    

It’s also not surprising that the most recent general election produced one of the lowest participation rates in the province’s history, right in line with the last time a paternalistic and patronage riddled party ruled the province.

So perhaps the next time the telegram editorialist is penning a finger-wagger, he or she might explain how it is the voter’s fault for not being braver when  the local political culture discourages participation.

Well, discourages participation beyond tugging the forelock.

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Dunderdale admin awards lucrative government legal work without tender

Danny Williams’ former law firm got potentially lucrative provincial government legal work without competing in any way. 

The information is in Telegram editor Russell Wangersky’s weekend column. The Telegram didn’t turn it into a news story.

Last week, the Dunderdale administration announced that Roebothan, Mackay and Marshall would head up a law suit against the tobacco industry.

According to Wangersky, there was “no tender call, request for proposals or other competition. As for whether other law firms were considered or offered a chance to bid on the work, the Justice Department replied:

The province felt Roebothan McKay Marshall was the local law firm that best met the requirements for this work. As well, a number of local firms are conflicted as they represent the tobacco industry.”

The Dunderdale administration also refused to disclose the financial aspects of the deal.  The provincial government has new contractual arrangements with both Roebothan, Mackay and Marshall and an American firm retained in 2001 to handle the litigation.

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A rose by any other name would still stink to high heavens

Pity Clayton Forsey.

He’s the Conservative member of the provincial legislature from the district of Exploits. Like many of his colleagues, he visited a town in his district recently and handed out a cheque from the provincial government as a “donation” toward the town’s up-coming tourism festival.

The regional weekly newspaper covered the event and described it this way:

Denise Chippett is the chairperson of the Come Home Year committee. She said the celebrations was enjoyable for all; what also helped were substantial donations from Exploits MHA Clayton Forsey and the town's volunteer fire department.

This week the Telegram picked up that line and started poking into it. The story appeared in the Saturday edition this weekend but sadly it isn’t available on line. The Telegram noted that Chief Justice Derek Green’s report into the House of Assembly spending scandal recommended that members of the legislature not make “donations” from their constituency allowances or with other government money.  If they did so out of their own pockets,  the politician is supposed to make it clear where the money came from.

Forsey is clearly bothered by the Telegram’s questions and, as the Saturday quotes him,  Forsey is quick to distance himself from that scandal.  The money is from a government department, Forsey says.  There’s a small fund in the municipal affairs department to help out with anniversary celebrations, as in this case.

"I've always presented cheques on behalf of departments. Ministers
don't always get out to these districts," Forsey said.

Of course you have to pity Forsey on two counts.  On the the first, he is merely getting nailed publicly for what his fellow government caucus members do on a regular basis.  As Forsey says, he “always” hands out government cheques. it isn’t really fair that he gets singled out in this way.

On the second, you have to pity Forsey for not appreciating that what he and his Tory buds are doing is exactly what the House of Assembly mess was really all about;  they are just using a different means to get there. You see, the main problem with the spending scandal was not that a few fellows defrauded the Crown, although that was bad enough.  The allowances system that existed in the House between 1996 and 2006 allowed individual members to engage in the old political practice of doling out goodies to constituents.

In his report, Green calls it “treating – providing food, drink or entertainment for the purpose of influencing a decision to vote or not to vote.”  That’s not exactly what this is, but the idea is related to the term more people know:  “patronage”.

As George Perlin described it nearly 40 years ago, “the dominant factor in Newfoundland politics has been the use of public resources to make personal allocations or allocations which can be perceived in personal terms….” The objective of this exercise is to connect the politician personally with the distribution of government benefits and garner political support in the process.

Consider that in this example, Forsey holds no government office and therefore has no right to hand out a cheque for government funds in preference to anyone else. Do opposition politicians get the same consideration?  Doubtful.  It’s more likely that a backbencher from the majority party caucus would carry the cheque.

In truth, the money did need to come in a cheque at all.  These days, the money could just as easily have come in a bank transfer from the department to the town.  Nor was there any need for a politician to have anything to do with it.  After all, as Forsey explains, there is a small fund available to any town holding some sort of anniversary celebration.  All the town had to do was fill out a form and wait for the bureaucrats to process it. The same thing should happen no matter where the town is, that is, no matter the political stripe of the person sitting in the legislature for that district.

But there’d be no political value in that, hence Forsey and his colleagues carry right on in the fine old tradition of pork.

The real value – the political value  - of the whole set-up, after all,  can be easily seen in the comment the chairperson of the anniversary committee gave to the paper.  It tied the money to Forsey.  And as Forsey noted he does this sort of thing all the time. Of course he does; so do his colleagues.  The money comes from municipal affairs or from the tourism, culture and recreation department where a bunch of small grant programs keep Tory politicians busy with cheque presentations.

There is absolutely no difference in what Forsey and his colleagues are doing and what virtually all of his predecessors  - leave the convicted criminals out - did with their constituency allowances between 1996 and 2006. All that happened in 2007 was that the pork-barrelling and patronage became the exclusive domain of the majority party in the legislature.

And in the end, that wasn’t really much of a change at all.

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The old hum on the Humber

Politicians running for the government party in Newfoundland and Labrador usually have a simple message;  vote for me or the district won’t see pavement again. 

Now they often get more sophisticated in the presentation these days:  Vaughn Granter, for example, is telling voters in Humber West that he will be their strong “voice” but the idea is basically the same.  Having someone in government will help to bring home all the pork you need.

In Granter’s case, his comments give new meaning to Squires-era political slogan about putting the “hum on the Humber”. 

After all, Humber West has been represented in the House of Assembly by more Premiers than any other district in the province.  Period.  If the good burghers of  Corner Brook are missing something it is not from a lack of patronage, pull, pork or anything else.  Face it: it’s doubtful that Vaughn could succeed where the likes of Joey, Frank, Clyde, Brian and Danny failed miserably.

That’s not all. Over most of the past 20 years Corner Brook has had not one but two senior cabinet ministers.  For the past seven alone, they’ve been pork-teamed by none other than a townie who never lived in Corner Brook for more than a couple of nights at the Glynmill in his life and local boy Tom Marshall.

If this much isn’t clear by now make no mistake: Corner Brookers who might be persuaded by Granter’s truly pathetic appeal can rest easy on the future of their city.  Vote for Mark Watton.  If Tom Marshall, the province’s finance minister, cannot keep the provincial tax dollars flowing for the next 10 months, all by himself then it is only because there isn’t any space left to stuff another ounce of pork inside the Lewin Parkway anyway. 

If none of that makes voters in Corner Brook suck some air between their teeth, then let them consider the sad example of one David Brazil.  He’s the newly minted member of the provincial legislature who replaced the late Diane Whelan.  Brazil campaigned on improving the ferry service to Bell Island, a big voting block in the Conception bay East-Bell Island district.

On January 9, Brazil spoke to VOCM and pronounced himself pleased with his colleagues in government  Great job.  Bright future. VOCM’s disappeared the story but you can still find traces of it via google.

David Brazil won a by-election in Conception Bay East-Bell Island in December, and he feels the PC Party is well positioned. He says they have a good caucus ...

And now as his pal the transportation minister is cutting the service back, all Dave can do is smile and try to foist the blame on someone who had nothing to do with the decision. The best he could say is that the cuts were “unwelcome.”

Voters in Conception Bay East-Bell Island are discovering, likely much to their annoyance, that Dave is not their strong voice inside government.  Instead, he is yet another basenji, a dog that won’t bark.

Is there any reason to believe Vaughn Granter will do any better?  Not really.  There are plenty of decent people sitting on the Tory back benches but take all of them together, plus a buck and a half and you might get a decent cup of coffee somewhere.

Such is the fate of a backbencher in the current Tory administration.

Such will be Vaughn Granter’s fate if he’s elected.

Count on it.

Meanwhile, the people of the Straits-White Bay North voted against Danny Williams himself and look at what happened to them. Not only did they get a member of the legislature who kept the government under close and very public scrutiny, they also got a new health care centre that some would have had you believe would disappear unless there was another basenji sitting faithfully at the feet of Premier of the moment.

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The persistence of patronage politics

Former auditor general Elizabeth Marshall made the news this past week in her new capacity as a Conservative senator from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Senator Marshall racked up $51,000 in airfares in a three month period, making her the senator from the province with the highest spending on travel.  According to Marshall’s staff the whole thing was for business class travel between St. John’s and Ottawa.  It’s really expensive to commute to work these days, especially when you live the better part of half a continent from the office.

Some people might credit Senator Marshall with uncovering what became known as the House of Assembly spending scandal.  She was trying to audit one member of the legislature almost a decade ago when the committee overseeing the legislature barred her from finishing the job.

When the scandal finally erupted into public view in 2006, the scandal shook the province’s political system.  Four politicians went to jail, along with the legislature’s former chief financial officer.  Millions of dollars of public money remain unaccounted for, despite an extensive police investigation, supposedly detailed reviews by Marshall’s former deputy and an investigation by the province’s top judge.

In one of those great cosmic coincidences, a local businessman involved in the scandal found out this week he’d be going to jail for upwards of three years. John Hand pleaded guilty to defrauding the public of almost half a million dollars.

Marshall didn’t actually uncover the spending scandal. She was focused on a particular member of the legislature whom she felt was using public money to purchase win and artwork for himself. A subsequent review by Marshall’s successor didn’t add significantly to what others had already found.

The more significant story, though, lay somewhere else.

Between 1996 and 2006, members of the legislature gave themselves the power to take money set aside to help them do their jobs as members of the legislature and to spend it on just about anything each of them deemed appropriate.  While some enriched themselves, and a few spent public money on women’s clothes, season hockey tickets or perfume, virtually all members of the legislature in that decade gave money to their own constituents.

In his lengthy report on the scandal, Chief Justice Derek Green described the practice  - and the problem - as eloquently as anyone might:

“First and foremost, the practice of making financial contributions and spending in this way supports the unacceptable notion that the politician’s success is tied to buying support with favours. Such things, especially the buying of drinks, tickets and other items at events, has overtones of the old practice of treating - providing food, drink or entertainment for the purpose of influencing a decision to vote or not to vote. As I wrote in Chapter 9, it demeans the role of the elected representative and reinforces the view that the standards of the politician are not grounded in principle. In fact, I would go further. The old practice of treating was usually undertaken using the politician’s own funds or his or her campaign funds. To the extent that the current practice involves the use of public funds, it is doubly objectionable.

Related to the notion of using public funds to ingratiate oneself with voters is the unfair advantage that the ability to do that gives to the incumbent politician over other contenders in the next election.”

For his part, former Speaker Harvey Hodder made plain his own attachment to the system this way:

"Some members, myself included, paid some of my constituency expenses out of my own pocket so I would have more money to give to the school breakfast program ... I don't apologize for that."

And former auditor general Elizabeth Marshall saw nothing wrong with the practice of handing out cash, often without receipt, with no established rules and for purposes which duplicated existing government programs.

What Chief Justice Green called “treating” is actually the old practice of patronage.  That isn’t just about giving party workers government jobs.  It’s basically one element of a system in which citizens trade their status as citizens for that of being the client of a particular patron.  The patron gets political power and the ability to dispense benefits of some kind.  In exchange, the client gives the patron support.  Explicitly or implicitly, as the Chief Justice stated, there's a connection between the favour and support.

In a model government bureaucracy, the rules that govern how a particular program works are well known.  Everyone in the society who meets the requirements would typically get the benefit of the program. 

But in a patronage system, the rules are hidden or there are difference between the formal rules and the ones that are actually used to hand out the benefit. The patrons and their associates control access to the benefits and so can reward people who comply with their wishes or punish those who do not.

There are as many variations on the patronage idea as there are societies.  The notion is well known in Newfoundland and Labrador politics. As political scientist George Perlin put it in 1971:

“Historically, the dominant factor in the Newfoundland context has been the use of public resources to make personal allocations or allocations which can be made in personal terms, in return for the delivery of votes.”

More recently, political scientist Alex Marland had this to say about the House of Assembly:

A final, but perhaps most critical, theme is the politics of deference towards charismatic power-hungry men and an outdated paternalistic ethos. Backbenchers, bureaucrats and journalists are scared to be on the wrong side of the executive for fear of harsh repercussions that can harm their careers. A massive spending scandal  occurred because, unlike Peter Cashin had done years before, nobody in the legislature had the courage or whistleblower protections to speak up about questionable expenses.  Political participation is sufficiently limited that interest groups prefer to meet behind closed doors and family networks continue to hold considerable sway within party politics. There is a historical pattern of democratic fragility and of  Newfoundlanders and Labradorians trusting elites to represent their interests.

Marland is understandably scathing in his criticism of politics in the province in the early years of the 21st century.  His assessment of the contributing factors  - way more than the paternalism mentioned above - is thorough and accurate even if his conclusion is a bit pollyannaish.

What’s more interesting is the way that seemingly unconnected events can relate to each other.  Those relationships explain much about the state of politics in the province.  Next, we'll add another element to the picture and discuss the Conservative leadership fiasco.*

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*  In the original version this sentence read "Tomorrow" instead of "Next".  The second installment of this mini-series on patronage and local politics is going to take a bit longer to complete since so many rich examples can be found in current events.

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Kathy Dunderdale: The New Paternalism

Dunderdale has sought to continue key points of the Williams government, including development of the Lower Churchill megaproject, but she has already shown a different approach on labour relations.

She ordered ministers to settle a 13-month strike involving a small group of support workers on the Burin Peninsula, and later asked ministers to end a nearly two-year negotiation with physicians that concluded last week with ratification of a new pay package.

That’s the way cbc.ca/nl described Kathy Dunderdale on a story Wednesday that did everything but explain that the Conservative caucus met on Wednesday to endorse the deal that had already been cooked up in order to avoid a leadership contest.

Note that last paragraph, though.  It shows how readily conventional news media are already absorbing the new Conservative Party political narrative about the kind of leader Kathy Dunderdale will be.

It’s right in line with a comment by Conservative parliamentary assistant Steve Kent, as reported by VOCM:

Kent describes Dunderdale as a compassionate, thoughtful, and principle-centered leader.

The new premier may well be all those wonderful things but the point to notice here is that in the construction of the whole idea Dunderdale personally directed that ministers clear up not one but two embarrassing situations.  She has the positive qualities.  She personally bestowed benefits.

Incidentally, this is exactly how Dunderdale described her role at the news conference in which she announced the deal with doctors.  There’s no accident to this:  lines like that are worked out in advance and comments don’t wind up on the page in some sort of arbitrary fashion.  They are selected to convey very particular ideas.

Dunderdale’s prepared statement describes opening the lines of communication with doctors as “my first priority…”. According to Dunderdale’s prepared remarks, the two ministers directly involved in the negotiations merely played a role.

This is essentially the same construction used by Danny Williams:  he did things or directed them, especially when they were beneficially. Ministers took orders in a clearly subordinate role.

You can see the same sort of construction in the way his most ardent supporters describe Williams:  he personally bestowed pride, courage and so forth on the poor benighted people of Newfoundland (and Labrador). Take as an example this comment on a post by Nalcor lobbyist Tim Powers over at the Globe and Mail:

2:12 PM on November 27, 2010

I know we have to believe there are strong leaders out there who will step forward and continue the work of Danny Williams. Quite frankly, with the news of his departure, I felt somewhat orphaned, a sense of being left alone surrounded by those who will, again, try and rob us of what we have achieved. …

Williams is a father figure, in the classic paternalist sense.  His departure orphaned his children.

What this political line ignores, of course, is the role that Kathy Dunderdale played in the Williams administration,  She was Williams’ hand-picked Number Two and his hand-picked successor. Like Tom Rideout before her, she represented a direct link to the older Conservative Party and its supporters who predated Williams.

Had she felt strongly about the doctor’s dispute or about the Burin situation she was in a position to change the government’s position. She didn’t. She supported it consistently. Similarly, both Tom Marshall and Jerome Kennedy held ministerial portfolios that gave them both legal and political power to resolve the matters long before the government finally settled both. The truth is that cabinet changed its approach to these two issues for reasons other than the arrival of a new leader who is compassionate.

In other words, the reality of how political decisions get made is considerably more complicated.  It’s also not something politicians really want people to know about, let alone discuss.

Instead, politicians fall back on time-worn attitudes to politics that people quite readily accept without even realising what the words actually mean.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale is no change from the resurgence of paternalism in Newfoundland and Labrador politics.

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Connies, pork and electoral ridings

On the federal level, the Globe and Mail reports that the federal Conservatives directed federal spending cash from the stimulus program heavily toward battleground ridings.

Wow.

Connies, pork, patronage and polls all tied together.

Quel surprise.

Meanwhile, in a small province to the east ruled by a Reform-based Conservative Party,  nothing could be further from the truth.

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Nothing could be further from the truth: political pavement pork punishment version

As labradore documents yet again, the Premier can deny all he wants that things like paving is apportioned on a partisan basis, with the most money going to districts that vote the “correct” way.

The facts tell a complete different story.

When it comes to Danny Williams’ claims that he doesn’t do political retribution, you might say that nothing could be further from the truth.

The first set of tables show the simple distinction of Tory versus Grit and Dipper.

The second set of tables colour cabinet ministers in a darker blue.

Here’s the 2008 figures:

There’s only one quibble.  Labradore claims that the minister of pavement, as he calls it, is the transportation minister.

As the people of the province discovered during the Rideout resignation fiasco, the whole pavement program is supervised by a political staffer in the Premier’s Office. Some people described this sort of thing as “normal” at the time.

Oh, yes, one more thing:

As labradore also notes, the provincial government no longer gives dollar amounts for road paving done in each district.  They hype the heck out of the cash but they hide the amounts involved.

Purely coincidentally, they stopped giving the dollar figures last year after labradore’s analyses started making the rounds.

Transparent and accountable sounds like “Canada’s New Government”.

-srbp-

Pork appointment at PUB

Another one of the Tory faithful has gone to his reward as a full-time commissioner of public utilities.

Jim Oxford will start work on September 9th.

Regular readers will note that just before the last provincial election the governing Conservatives announced a public competition for both the chair and commissioners jobs.  They collected a few resumes but then scrapped the whole idea shortly afterward.

The Public Service Commission, the crowd that supposedly ran the competition, refused to provide any substantive information to your humble e-scribbler when he inquired about the whole mess last year. They would confirm a competition had started but beyond that, there was nothing but stony silence.

The absence of a genuinely impartial process for selecting commissioners might be the reason why the minister making Oxford’s appointment had to go to the lengths of pointing out that the public utilities board is an independent body.

Either that or Tom Marshall was sensitive to the fact that Oxford was not only a career public servant in Mount Pearl but the guy who managed the Tory party finances since the year A.D. Naught. 

Oxford joins Andy Wells, the chairman appointed last year.

-srbp-

The joy of giving

The new chair of the board of governors at College of the North Atlantic – headquarters in Stephenville – just happens to be the top contributor to the past two election campaigns of Joan Burke, education minister and member of the provincial legislature for Stephenville.

There’s a story on the front page of the Saturday Telegram.

Appalachia Distributing – the company listed as making the donations - has a record of political giving:

Year	Party	Candidate	Annual/ Election	Amount
1998	Liberal		Annual	450.00
1999	Liberal		Annual	450.00
	PC	Leonard Muise	Election	150.00
2000	Liberal		Annual	450.00
2001	Liberal		Annual	450.00
2003	Liberal	Gerald Smith	Election	170.00
	PC	Joan Burke	Election	1,000.00
	PC	Joan Burke	Election	192.50
	PC	Jim Hodder	Election	200.00
2004	PC		Annual	375.00

The Telegram also reports election contributions for 2007 - $1,000 to Joan Burke’s campaign - but those still aren’t available on the provincial elections office website.

Government corporate registry records show the company was dissolved in 2005 and revived a year later. The corporate registry lists Appalachia Distributing Limited with two directors, Terrence Styles and Darlene Styles.

That makes the political giving totals (including the grand listed by the Telly for 2007) as follows:

Liberal (ended 2003) : $1,560.00

PC (1999, 2003-current) $2,577.50

-srbp-

"Solidarity, Reg", patronage appointment version

Somehow this slipped your humble e-scribbler's notice.

Provincial New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael knew back in September what most New Democrats would understand:  a conservative is a conservative is a conservative.  That's what she said back in September when the who Family Feud thingy was on the go during the federal election.

Well, for all those who think that labour is aligned with the New Democrats, think again.  Outgoing labour federation boss Reg Anstey stood four-square behind the Provincial Conservatives in September.

That's not the first time Reg showed his solidarity with the current administration.

Remember the Rally for Danny?  There was Reg.

How about attacking the Liberals and New Democrats last spring for daring to suggest pattern bargaining in the public service should go the way of the dodo?  Reg was there to slice into the government's political opponents.

He took his leave of the labour federation in the first week of November, telling reporters he didn't know what he was going to do with himself now that he'd retired.

Less than two weeks later he had a sinecure on the offshore regulatory board, courtesy of the Provincial Conservative cabinet.

Loyalty clearly has its rewards.

-srbp-

The politics of pork

Surely someone has noticed two things about the weather and the weather offices lately.

1. As this story notes, people are not happy in Goose Bay at getting their forecasts from Gander. Lack of timeliness, accuracy and similar matters are at issue.

2. To the legion of pork-chasers who pretended that returning the weather office to Gander was about public safety and accuracy in forecasting and not about stick noses into public troughs, did any of you notice the gross inaccuracy of last Monday's forecast in St. John's?

5 cm of snow morphed into 13.8.

Wow, they must have hired the provincial government deficit/surplus forecasters to do weather in their spare time.

Oh and while we are at it, has anyone who reported on the Great Pork Chasing Caper bothered to ask where marine forecasting is done for the Newfoundland and Labrador region?

And aviation?

Yes, it was all about public safety.

In a pig's eye.

-srbp-