The Stunnel report and public policy in Newfoundland and Labrador politics #nlpoli

The "pre-feasibility study update" released on Wednesday into a fixed link across the Straits to Labrador (a.k.a The Stunnel) is a really good example of how the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador tackles policy problems and why it keeps making bad decisions.

One way to think about "policy" is problem-solving. We have a problem and the policy is how we are going to solve it. We can look at it as the way of changing a situation that is causing an issue or may cause an issue.

There are some sensible steps to figuring out the right "policy" and they all start with figuring out what the problem is. Once you know what the problem is, you can figure out what your goal is. Now that you have a start point and an end point, you can figure out the policy, which is the way you get from where you are to where you want to be.

Stunnel mania #nlpoli

Right off the bat, let's fess up to a mistake.

The 2004 research into the Stunnel cost "cost a total of $351,674, with a contribution of $281,339 from ACOA and $70,335 from the province." You can find the figures in the original news release from February 2004.

That means that the latest study into the potential for a fixed link between the Great Northern Peninsula and Quebec is a bit more than double the cost of the 2004 study.  But notice that the province is going it alone this time and to the tune of 10 times what it cost the provincial government more than decade ago to get to the same place.

In other words, the fixed link to the mainland is technically feasible but economically nutty.

Hole in ground to give Labrador "advantage of fixed link" to mainland: premier #nlpoli

The provincial government will spend $750,000 this year to study the feasibility of digging a hole from the Great Northern Peninsula to Blanc Sablon, in Quebec.

SRBP told you on Tuesday that the goof-ball idea - last dismissed as a waste of money in 2005 - will get another check to see if any of the stupid has worn off it in the past 11 years.

The goofiness doesn't end there.

The feasibility study came up in the House of Assembly on Thursday.

Apparently, the people of Labrador need a fixed link from the island to the mainland. People are wrong to dismiss the idea as a waste of money. That would deny the people of Labrador of a great opportunity.

Here's Premier Dwight Ball defending the feasibility study:

For the Member opposite to simply to say that it is a waste of money, to give the Labrador portion of this province the opportunity to see the advantage of a fixed link.

Doesn't Labrador already have a fixed link to the mainland?

Just a question.

Province to spend $750K to study feasibility of hole in the ground #nlpoli

At a time when the provincial government does not have any money to spend foolishly, it is hard to fathom why cabinet is taxing books to raise $1.0 million and yet spending $750,000 through the Environment and Conservation department to update a feasibility study done in 2004 into building a tunnel to connect the Great Northern Peninsula to Labrador.

It is putting a tax on knowledge to pay for stupidity.

We are talking about the Stunnel, or Stunned Tunnel. Regular readers will recall the Stunnel idea got some powerful support in 2003.  You'll find a post in 2005 that described the project as it stood a year or two earlier:

The Stunnel "would cost $1.3 billion or thereabouts. It would need an average of 1400 cars travelling across it per day, with a peak of 3, 000 per day, in order to be viable. Proponents also claim it would produce upwards of 40, 000 direct and indirect job during construction, although this would last for a total of three years. Using the ever popular argument, proponents say the Stunnel would be an engineering marvel and attract tourists from around the world. "

The original feasibility study cost only $100,000. As SRBP summarised in early 2005,  the study concluded you could build the cheapest option - a bored tunnel that ran an electric train back and forth - for about $1.7 billion. The government would have to put in pretty much all of that and it would take 11 years to finish.

We don't need to spend seven and a half times that much to figure out how crazy the Stunnel idea still is.

The Stunnel Reborn #nlpoli

There’s a story about Danny Williams before he became the Old Man.  It was either in 2001 during the by-elections on the Great Northern Peninsula or later during the 2003 general election.

As the convoy of Winnebago and media drives down the highway, Williams suddenly pulls over and points across to Labrador.  Then he says something to the effect that there is no reason why we couldn’t build a tunnel across to the mainland.

Some ideas never die, no matter how implausible they might be or no matter how many sensible arguments there are not to do them.

One of them is the idea of building a tunnel from Newfoundland to Labrador.  Technically, it’s possible.  But, as SRBP pointed out in 2005,  a pretty simple look at the economics of the project make it as loopy an idea as Muskrat Falls.

That’s why people call it the Stunnel:  a stunned tunnel.

-srbp-

Liberal commitments for Labrador #nlpoli

From Yvonne Jones’ Facebook page, posted shortly after midnight:

Full Liberal Platform being released tomorrow. Includes a full section on Labrador. Highlighting the committment [sic] to pave the Labrador Highway, designate the Strait of Belle Isle Ferry service as essential and putting a new ferry in place to serve the people of Labrador year round. The liberals [sic] will look at a fixed link for the Island -Labrador crossing along with committing to 21st century communications, including high speed internet and cell phone coverage for Labradorians and much more. Labrador should be a priority for all political parties in this campaign, after all we are raking in the big bucks for the governments these days.

- srbp -

Quebec interested in lunatic megaproject

Around these parts it’s known as the Stunnel.

As in Stunned Tunnel.

It makes absolutely no economic sense but people like to talk about it.

And now, as CBC is reporting, the Government of Quebec is interested in the idea, but apparently at the behest of the Conservatives ruling Newfoundland and Labrador.

Talk about a place sorely lacking in new ideas.

- srbp -

Super-duper Mega Update:  The Northern Pen two days ago -

The Pen can reveal Quebec’s minister for transport Norman MacMillan wrote to provincial counterpart Tom Hedderson on December 1 agreeing, in principle, to undergo a joint study into not only the 15km tunnel, but the completion of Route 138 on the Quebec side.

The letter proposes “conducting a large-scale socio-economic study to investigate the current status and the potential evolution of economic activity and demographics within the entire territory in question, and whether the existing transport infrastructure is adequate.”

There’s a Radio Canada report as well.

If the Danes can do it…

Maybe Kathy Dunderdale can resurrect Danny Williams big dream of a tunnel connecting Labrador to the island. Remember the Stunnel?

Surely you remember Danny Williams stopping by the side of the highway during the 2001 by-election or the 2003 election – anyone recall which? – and marvelling that he could see the mainland or some such.

Anyway, the whole goofball idea priced out at a few billion dollars and Williams quickly dropped it as unrealistic.

But then people used to say that increasing the provincial public debt by 50% was unrealistic too, until Danny and his successor committed to doing it.

Go big or go home, Kathy!.

So if Danny was planning to rack up the debt by just 50%, go the rest of the way.

And follow the example set by the Danes.

They are planning to build an 18 kilometre tunnel underwater to connect Denmark and Germany.

The estimated cost is  only US$5.9 billion.

Now sure the traffic between Sweden and Norway to Germany and the rest of the continent through Demark makes this much more commercially viable than a link between Blanc Sablon and St. Barbe.  But since when did that ever stop a politician from pissing public money down a hole.

Every great Premier in the province’s history – at least as popularly assessed -  has had at least one gigantic financial mess to his credit. 

This could be Kathy’s.

Just saying.

- srbp -

Great Gambols with Public Money: The Stunnel, Part Deux

The sort of collective insanity that leads people to support incredibly asinine ideas like the Stunnel isn’t confined to any one political party.

Consider these musings from Liberal leader Yvonne Jones in the Wednesday Telegram.  The story isn’t available online.

Jones, it should be noted, just happens to represent the electoral district into which the Stunnel would go to connect the island of Newfoundland with the continent.

That is a mere coincidence, though.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Yvonne Jones said while fixing Marine Atlantic's service has to be done in short order, the long term solution could be reopening a 2004 report on a fixed link between the  Northern Peninsula and Labrador.

"It's pretty much common knowledge that if you're going to have a  strong economy, a functional economy, you need to be able to have good  transportation and communication links to the rest of the world," she said.

"The realty is we are losing business because of the level of service that's being provided. People are turning away at the docks."

Whether it's a tunnel, bridge or some other link, Jones said transportation to the mainland cannot depend on someone else's schedule.

It’s pretty much common knowledge that Newfoundland and Labrador has a strong, functioning economy complete with diverse and very good transportation and other communications links to the rest of the world.

There is a very particular problem with one service that is provided by an agency that seems chronically unable to sort out the difficulties.

The solution to this particular problem is to sort out this particular problem, not peddle some completely lunatic idea to spend untold billions digging a hole through which trains would run. 

The solution isn’t even to dig a hole through which people might drive their cars at a cost of billions which will never – realistically – be repaid or otherwise recovered.

All that Jones has offered up here is just more of the same old ideas that haven’t worked to solve the Marine Atlantic problem before. 

One very plausible solution would be to end Marine Atlantic’s monopoly and allow competition on the run.  A similar idea would be to dispose of the Crown corporation altogether and let a private sector company enter the picture. 

After all, if there is that much business being lost – as Jones claims – there’s likely room for another carrier.

Maybe that other carrier can run between Halifax and the Port of St. John’s.  Maybe that carrier would run between Montreal – for argument sake – and Stephenville or Corner Brook.

But wait.

Even in the absence of a competitive ferry service, there is an alternative already.  There are other cargo ships that ply the waters between the island of Newfoundland and the mainland of the continent.  Tourists can fly into airports located conveniently near the major attractions.

Any of these are viable options to digging a hole in the ground and pouring public money in behind it.

On some level, though, the longer Marine Atlantic continues to screw up, the more it is just useful political fodder for everyone from provincial opposition politicians, to federal ones like Gerry Byrne to St. John’s city councillors. If Marine Atlantic stooped being a problem, they’d have to find something else to talk about.

Now to be fair to Sandy Hickman, he is just following on the time honoured tradition of St. John’s city politicians talking about anything but stuff they can do anything about or should be worried about.

The current mayor – Doc O’Keefe – rose to prominence by advocating for the province-wide gasoline price fixing scheme taxpayers in the province now pay for.

Wannabe deputy mayor Keith Coombs is a teacher who liked to use public money to run a hockey rink and failed entertainment operation, better known as the Wells-Coombs Memorial Money Pit.

You’d hear both of them on radio or television talking about that stuff long before you’d hear them talking about capital works plans or garbage collection.

At least Hickman offered up a half-ways sensible idea that might just work and at no cost to the taxpayers.

On that ground alone, he should get re-elected to city council. 

Heck, on that ground alone, he should enter provincial or federal politics.

At least his head is screwed on straight.

-srbp-

Great Gambols with Public Money: The Stunnel

Normally, governments in Newfoundland and Labrador don't turn to the freakishly large, insane, totally whacked out, over-the-top, no-evidence-to-support-it kind of ideas until, like the Peckford crew, they are at the end of their time and have run out of all the good ideas.

That's what happened with Sprung, basically.

Smallwood didn't get into them - including the Stunnel, incidentally - until he was at the end of what for most people would have been a normal political lifespan.

Some, like Wells, for example, never got into them. Tom Rideout, Roger Grimes, Beaton Tulk and Brian Tobin just weren't around long enough for the air to get a little thin in the New Ideas department.

Not so with the current crew.

They endorsed a tunnel across the Straits of Belle Isle from Day One. They even commissioned a feasibility study of the whole idea even though - on the face of it - the thing just didn't add up.

Well, the nutty ideas haven't gone away. The stunned tunnel - or Stunnel - is good enough to get ministerial junkets to Norway and prompt the odd letter to the local papers. No word, incidentally, from transportation minister Trevor Taylor on what he found out from his fact-finding mission to Norway.

Take a look at that letter to the Telly by the way and you'll see all the classic warning signs of megaproject proponents. You got your gross and unsubstantiated claims of benefits and pretty much no talk of costs, risks or alternatives.

Don't take Dave Rudofsky's letter in isolation, by the by. It comes hot on the heels of a mention for the project in an interview the Premier gave to yet another safari journalist. If the Big Guy is still talking about these things, others will take the cue.

Megaprojects are like the crack cocaine of ideas: all hype, buzz and spin and a great feeling on the way up.

Followed by a hideous crashing sensation when the high wears of and reality returns. They are highly addictive too, especially in places like Newfoundland where there has been so much of this crap going on that short-term memories have been affected. In Newfoundland (not so much Labrador) some people can't remember what they did politically yesterday so the peddlers of the nuttiest of schemes can find a willing buyer for their wares.

Way back in those early days, your humble e-scribbler took a look at the whole Stunnel idea and put some numbers on it. Since the nutty idea never went away, here's the link to that again for your mid-August reading enjoyment.

And if you want something even better, try Megaprojects and risk, a devastating study of megaprojects by three Scandanavian academics. One reviewer described it as "a warning against the betrayal of public trust when hubris and profit come together." The book could have been written in Newfoundland and Labrador.

-srbp-