Roger Grimes: the unlikely reactionary #nlpoli

What is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador is not merely polarization in public opinion.  Polarization implies that people are within the same community or see themselves as being within the same community.   

What we are seeing increasingly is the tendency to fragmentation. People do not listen to differing opinions.  They do not see or understand what is happening in their own province but identify with and frame their world in the context of what is going on elsewhere. 

If you think Roger Grimes is a reactionary, then we are in a far darker place as a society than anyone currently realises.

 Roger Grimes used to be head of the provincial teachers’ union. He got into politics after that, served in several cabinet posts, including natural resources and then wound up as Premier for three years.  This past summer, the provincial and federal governments appointed him as chair of the organization that regulates the offshore oil and gas industry.

Given his experience, Grimes is a logical choice.  In the new role, he chairs the board and that’s all.  The job used to be combined with the administrative head of the organization but the two governments who share management of the offshore through it decided it was a good idea to split the two jobs. That gives him a bit more latitude to speak his mind on subjects, something Grimes has never been afraid to do.

He spoke to an oil industry meeting on Thursday.  His message was simple:

“Don't ignore them [climate change activists].  Engage with them. Educate. Make sure that everybody understands — and I'll say it one more time — everybody needs to understand that it's not an either-or proposition.” 

“You can [develop oil and gas resources] and save the planet at the same time.”

Wanna talk loopholes? #nlpoli

Regular readers shouldn't be surprised to discover the Liberals put a giant loophole in their independent appointments commission law that said, in essence, that they didn't have to use the commission if they didn't want to do so.

Danny Williams did exactly the same thing in 2004.

In fact,  the very first words in the fixed-election section of the House of Assembly Act say that nothing prevents the Lieutenant Governor from calling an election or proroguing the House of Assembly whenever he or she wants.  So election dates are fixed except when they are not fixed, which is all the time.

How government decides - From Bow-Wow to Basenji #nlpoli

The Liberals' signature policy initiative is Bill 1.

It is so important that it is the only piece of new legislation the Liberals have introduced in this session that is directly connected to their election promises.

Bill 1 creates a new appointments commission that is supposed to ensure individuals appointed to positions by cabinet will be selected as the result of what the proposed law calls a merit-based process.

A merit-based appointments process for every appointment is such an important policy for the Liberals that, when faced with their first significant appointment,  they abandoned their own process last week.

Making them answer for their actions #nlpoli

Anyone who wants to understand the value of the House of Assembly need only look at Question Period on Tuesday.

Liberal Andrew Parsons threw question after question at child, and family services minister Paul Davis about a report by the Child and Youth Advocate into the case of a young man, aged 16 years, who went to jail a couple of years ago for killing a man in a fire.  The young man was living alone, unsupervised, at the time, having been taken into custody by government officials.

Parsons asked question after question and Davis through out anything but a direct answer in reply, time after time. 

The value of the House in this instance is not in getting important information.  Rather, the value lay in exposing Davis’ weakness in not having good answers in reply to the Advocate’s damning report.

Federal Liberals fear SRBP #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Well, not just the Sir Robert Bond Papers but all bloggers.

Idiots.

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“…particularly hypocritical…” #nlpoli

Tories bums in the province must be a wee bit tighter than usual this week.

The province’s Dippers – new Democrats to the uninitiated – filed a lawsuit this week challenging the constitutional validity of a Troy law passed in 2007 that lets people vote when there are no elections.

You can tells Tory bums are tight.  No, it’s not because of because of the agitated yelping of the local dogs who, alone among God’s creatures, can hear hypersonic flatulence.

Rather it is because of the number of Tories belching verbal flatulence against the New Democrats.

For starters, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the Telegram that

“Ms. Michael’s about-face is disturbing on a number of fronts — first of all, her flip-flop on this matter shows a lack of principles and, secondly, rather than taking responsibility for her actions, she tried to blame her staff for not doing adequate research….”

An argument that starts by tossing aside a cabinet minister’s usual reluctance to comment on matters that are before the courts.

And then to start by impugning the personal integrity of one’s opponent.  The vicious, petty ad hominem slur:  there’s something you usually don’t hear from Tories in this province. 

So sad are these comments:  sad because Jerome Kennedy, the leading light of the administration, and one of the better cabinet ministers of the past couple of decades, has nothing of substance so he must instead rely on this sort of foolishness.

Sadder still are his words because Jerome knows that in the Tory version of the house of Assembly,  opposition parties do not have the time to research bills properly and investigate them.  the Tories won’t open the House or allow any time for such things. 

More on that later.

Then there is another Tory who did a stint as the last caller on the morning open line show on Friday.  He dismissed the lawsuit as being “particularly hypocritical” of NDP leader Lorraine Michael. Back in 2007, you see, the NDP leader voted for the Tory bill that made their special ballot foolishness the law of the land.

Said Tory claimed that if Michael was “legitimately concerned” then she would have used the “mechanisms available to her’ to suggest amendments to the election law.

Where might she do this?

Why, the House of Assembly, our Tory friend insisted.

This would be the same House of Assembly that has come to resemble a legislative house of ill repute under the Tories.  They ram through a handful of bills through in the scarce number of days they let the place open.  Parliamentary oversight committees don’t exist. 

And even if all that weren’t true, the Tory on the radio knew full well that he and his colleagues would vote down any amendment any opposition politician came up with, just because.

Coming from these Tories, any talk of relying on the legislature would be disingenuous at best

These are the same Tories whose current leader has criticised the House for being useless when it comes to dealing with the truth where the real problem has been her own demonstrable distance from truthfulness in the past.

Their former Glorious Leader routinely made a mockery of accountability, himself, and once mused out loud that it might be time to get rid of free speech in the legislature once and for all.

The thing is, the Old Man wasn’t joking.

What is a bit of a joke though is that this whole onslaught of Tories is in defence of Clyde Jackman, the Tory who won his seat in the last general election by a handful of special ballots. 

Where Jerome might be one of only a couple of high flyers in the current cabinet, Jackman is definitely at the other end of the scale.  He might not be the most incompetent minister to hold office since 2003.  The competition  - Charlene Johnson, Kathy Dunderdale, Paul Oram, Dave Denine to name a few - has been extraordinarily stiff even in a province used to having some especially stunned-arse cabinet ministers.  You’d be safe, though, if you suggested that Jackman would certainly be in the Top Three.

Jackman’s abilities are not the joke here, though.  Rather, the joke is that the lawsuit against the special ballot voting provisions came as a result of the fact that Jackman won a tight race by relying on them, as it turned out.

He wound up in that tight spot as a result of some rather clumsy political manoeuvring by Jackman and his colleagues on the fishery and the Marystown fish plant, the Marystown shipyard and likely the government’s botched response to a hurricane or two.

Now his Tory colleagues are employing equally clumsy  - embarrassingly clumsy - political claims to back him up.

And while that may not be particularly hypocritical, it is particularly funny.

Damned funny.

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The truth hurts #nlpoli

Brace yourself.

Peter Jackson’s column in the Wednesday Telegram is spot on.

Yes.

You read that correctly.

Peter Jackson’s column is spot on the money and the mark and the point and whatever other metaphor you want to use.

The editorial on this page [in the hardcopy layout of the paper] laments how the Canadian electorate seems to be developing more tolerance for less-than-honest statements from our leaders. This is alarming, because cynicism and apathy can only lead to even worse behaviour, and undercut the foundations of our democracy. 

We expect politicians to avoid the unhealthy temptations that come with public office, but we’re not naïve enough to think it won’t happen from time to time. All we can do is remain ever vigilant, and ask those found culpable to own up and move on.

Peter’s especially right on the bit about how the cynicism and apathy that comes out of untruthful political statements eats away at the base of our society.

There’s evidence for this in a recent study that the Star’s Susan Delacourt blogged this week.  The study of voter apathy found that  - as the report put it - “Disengaged people felt that politics is a game that does not produce results for them…. The overall point seems to be that there is very little reason to be engaged.”
You don’t have to go to the United States or mainland Canada to find untruthful politicians.  There’s been plenty of false statements around these parts.  We are not talking politicians who change their position based on new information or a different circumstance.

We are talking unmistakeable falsehoods.

Like the one about the federal government taking 85% of provincial offshore oil revenues. Yes, friends, the entire 2004-05 offshore oil ruckus was founded on a falsehood.

Or, more recently, the claim that the Quebec energy regulator denying Nalcor access to the Quebec energy grid.

Aside from outright falsehoods, there is the cousin:  lack of disclosure.  The current provincial administration is well known for its love of freedom from information for the public.  Access to information debacles?  Failure to produce whistleblower protection laws?  The weakened House of Assembly and its broken oversight committees?

All speak to a political culture that promotes anything but the sort of honesty and integrity that genuine democracy demands.

Ultimately, we are all responsible for the current situation, just as we have to shoulder the burden for change.
The Telegram editorial [board] are right about that, too.

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