Air Canada, the Maple Leafs and sucking

Air Canada sucks.

The Toronto Maple Leafs also suck.

Both suck for the same, basic reason.

They have fanatics who will suffer any indignity, pay any price, endure any privation and bear any humiliation to support them.

One could find evidence of this on the morning after Thanksgiving at St. John’s International Airport. A line up of Air Canada fans  - most of whom had used the online or kiosk check-in system – stood silently in a queue for upwards of an hour in order to check their bags for one of four flights leaving Capital City at ungodly hours bound for destinations on the mainland.

This is proof - in an instant -  of both the stunnedness of the economist's “Rational Actor” model of economic behaviour and proof that the markets work. You see, Air Canada continues to suck because people continue to fly with them despite the inconvenience, cost, indignity, humiliation, privation and apparent indifference of the airline to its customers. 

The airline bosses know the cattle will still line up.

No matter what.

So where is the incentive to change?

Ditto the Maple Leafs. 

Compare the Leafs to the Canadiens.  If the Habs lose three games in a row, the stands look like a Quebec provincial Conservative Party conference.  The team then has to change or face some pretty serious financial consequences.  Bums in seats pay the bills.  Empty seats cause problems.

Politics is a bit like that as well.  In Ottawa, where the three mainstream parties each continue to suck in their own unique way, the voters have rewarded their collective  - and continuing - suckiness with a political pox on all the houses. The parties are each struggling to find the magic solution that will put more votes in their column.  Votes are the key to electoral success and when voters are stingy with their love, the parties have to come courting.

Meanwhile in St. John’s voters prove that politics within the province is pretty much down to perceived popularity.

Tim Powers proves the point in spades the day after Thanksgiving with a little homage to the fellow who created the state-owned energy company that Tim’s been know to lobby for in Ottawa.

Danny Williams is amazing, as we are supposed to believe, because he has decided, in all his magnificence, not to kick the living political shit out of a woman who – as we speak – is battling breast cancer.  “Doses of humanity can pay real political dividends…”.

That’s the sort of sentence that should make the blood run cold. Few politicians could be quite so brazen as to make political hay out of someone else’s personal tragedy.  Fewer still could make such a point so crassly by putting the political ahead of the human:  the rest of that sentence reads “never mind that it [ – humanity – ] is the right thing to do.”

Never mind, indeed.

Tim, it seems, is made of sterner stuff than the rest of us. Either that or he is waging a campaign to have politicos replace lawyers in the old joke about barristers and lab rats.

Powers does note, rightly, that Yvonne Jones wished the Premier well when the Old Man scurried off last winter to get his heart fixed up by an American surgeon.  Tim  does not mention, though, that no one wrote a column or a blog on how wonderful Yvonne was for not kicking Danny in the balls. 

And that’s really the difference in the two situations and the difference between Danny Williams and his Reform-based Conservative Party and all other parties.

Tim likes Danny Williams and his Reform-based Conservative Party just as he likes the Ottawa version of the Reform-based Conservative Party.  Both are characterised by an over-weaning emphasis on central control and secrecy.

Unlike Danny Williams, Stephen Harper lacks a gang of ruthless fans who will go anywhere and say anything to perpetuate the illusion surrounding their guy.  From Open Line shows to Policy Options to the Globe – the Newfoundland nationalist’s newspaper of record – they are there to keep the myth alive. When it comes to polishing their own guy’s knob or pettiness and viciousness in attacking enemies, Stephen Harper and any of his communications directors are toddlers compared to Williams and his fanboys. 

Air Canada, the Maple Leafs and Danny Williams are successful business ventures, each in different fields.

The reasons for their success are not necessarily what is advertised.

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Sins of omission

“Five key bridges in the western portion of the T’Railway Provincial Park that closed in 2008 are now re-opened to park users. … [The five bridges are being ] replaced as a result of a $3.6 million allocation in Budget 2010: The Right Investments – For Our Children and Our Future.”

That’s part of the first paragraph of a happy-news release from the province’s environment.  It’s one of dozens issued every week in July as part of the happy-news offensive mounted by the provincial government in the run up to August’s scheduled polling by the provincial government pollster.

The release leaves out much relevant detail.

Not surprisingly, that detail is embarrassing to the provincial government and especially to the ever-embarrassing minister, Charlene Johnson.

For starters, the bridges in questions were all former railway bridges inherited by the provincial government in 1988 when the railway closed.  The provincial government took responsibility for the bridges but until 2008 – apparently  - did nothing with them.

No maintenance.

No repairs.

No inspections either, apparently.

At all.

That is until the federal government inspected a few that crossed over federally-monitored waterways.  They found a raft of them in what appeared to be perilous states of disrepair. 

In one case, one of the bridges had vanished entirely.  When inspectors showed up to take a lookee-look, they couldn’t find anything except the footings on either shore.

So basically this splendiferous investment of more than three and a half millions could have been avoided or at least spread out over time if someone – anyone – at any point along the way had decided to do some regular maintenance on the bridges.

Or even taken a peek at them once in a while.

Even an auditor general’s report in 2003 on inadequate inspection of road bridges seems to have prompted any action on the former railway bridges, the ones now used by pedestrians, snowmobilers and ATV operators.

None of this, by the by, stopped Johnson from claiming that her department prized public safety. As your humble e-scribbler noted at the time:

We understand the inconvenience of the closure of these structures; however, public safety has to be our number one priority," said Minister Johnson.

But...

Environment Minister Charlene Johnson said today the province does not conduct routine safety assessments of structures on the T’Railway, which is a provincial park.

“There’s no regular inspections, no,” Johnson said in response to questions from reporters.

That sort of bumbling is why some people find it odd that Charlene has adopted a tone of haughty arrogance when dealing with issues like the Abitibi expropriation fiasco or offshore oil.

That sort of bumbling is also likely why Charlene’s publicists decided to torque this release without any reference  whatsoever - an omission in other words - to the mess that started it all.

But all of it doesn’t explain the real sin of omission here:  namely the explanation of why the Premier keeps this minister in a job for which she is clearly unqualified and at which she has clearly been a disaster of BP proportions.

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Inaccurately accurate university enrolment trends

This past week, CBC Radio’s Morning Show interviewed Reeta Tremblay, Memorial University vice president (academic) about a Statistics Canada report on university enrolment for the period 2005-06 to 2008-09.

They did the interview – as host Jeff Gilhooley said in the introduction – based on CBC’s belief that enrolment was  going up.

Now where they got that idea is a mystery since the Statistics Canada figures – taken directly from enrolment figures at the province’s only university – have shown the trending consistently in every annual report they’ve delivered for the past three or four years. The trend is unmistakeable:  enrolment at Memorial University declined in the period.

In fact, the trending was so clear and undeniable that some of us wondered how the two foreign experts who delivered the report on Grenfell autonomy could have possible come up with their bullshit ideas about increasing enrolment when the trends (and the potential student population) were headed downward).

Turns out, those of us who questioned their report were right since even the Old Man himself had to abandon his 2007 election commitment in light of the facts.

But that’s another story.

The crowd at CBC must have been a bit surprised that Reeta Tremblay didn’t actually dispute the Statistics Canada numbers.  The CBC web story has a lede saying Tremblay contradicted Statistics Canada but the fact is she didn’t.  Tremblay just said that the more recent figure for 2009/10 would show a small increase in enrolment.

What Tremblay did do, though, is give credit to aggressive recruiting both at the graduate and undergraduate level for the change in direction. Where to begin untangling that foolishness?

Well, firstly, Tremblay might want to credit the recession with the uptick.  Once the rest of us see the full set of numbers, it might confirm a usual trend, namely that some people who get laid off go back to school. If there is an uptick in Memorial’s enrolment, the recession might have helped a wee bit.

Secondly, and more importantly, that increase in graduate enrolment actually is a mess in and of itself, as Reeta well knows.

Bond Papers readers will recall the sorry tale last March of grad studies dean Noreen Golfman trying desperately to paint lipstick on the pig of a problem she has with fellowships for her academic charges.

Beginning in the fall of 2010 – a period neither Reeta nor the crowd at Stats Can yet has figures for – new grad students won’t be getting any financial help from the university in the form of fellowships valued at $12,000 to $15,000.

The won’t be getting the cash because the senior administration at the university  - including coughreetacough – were forced to freeze the budget on financial assistance to masters and doctoral students in order to cope with a $2.0 million shortfall in the budget for that financial aid.

The budget is short because someone or some group of someones allowed grad school enrolment to balloon by 60% in a single year.  Interestingly that balloon came in the year Reeta cited as one that shows the university enrolment is up. 

But anyway, as your humble e-scribbler put it in March,

Freezing spending is not, as Golfman claimed, “sending the right signal about being fiscally responsible.” Rather it sends a signal that someone or some group of someones was so utterly incompetent that they let the situation develop in the first place. The university administration had to freeze the thing in place or face catastrophe.

Now this isn’t a big issue because you read it here.  It’s a big issue.  It’s such a big issue that…well… let’s let the head of the university professors association tell you, as he told people back in March:

"It means that it will be very difficult to attract graduate students to the university this coming year because when you're a graduate student you apply to different universities and see who is going to offer you the best package," [faculty association president Ross] Klein says. "It affects the stature of the university because the graduate programs are one of the things that raise the stature."

So while the issue about enrolment trends at the province’s only university may show an uptick in 2009/10, we do know that one of the causes for that increase produced a corresponding freeze in financial support for graduate students.

That is a much bigger story than the one CBC had.

And, in case, you missed it, the deeper story is a tale of managerial incompetence, not the rosy yarn of super-effective recruiting that the academic vice-president offered up to Jeff Gilhooley one morning last week.

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Math problems at provincial finance

That 60 cycle hum you hear is not the turbines spooling up on the Lower Churchill.

Nope.

That noise would be the intense spin – torque would be a better word – the provincial government is putting on its infrastructure announcement this snowy Wednesday. 

The reason for the announcement:  the provincial pollster – CRA  - is in the field.  With the nurses taking a strike vote and with a certain amount of anxiety out there about how bad the budget will be, the government party must have felt the need to make it appear that something good was happening in the budget to keep those polling numbers high.

Note the word “appear” in that sentence.

This is all about appearance.  If the provincial government actually wanted to do something, then the legislature would be called back and the new budget would be introduced.  They could run with it tomorrow since the thing is settled and has been for weeks. 

If it wasn’t about appearance, a bunch of cabinet ministers wouldn’t be sent to Labrador to announce things already announced.  The hospital in Labrador West is now officially the most announced project that never appears in provincial political history.  The Lower Churchill still holds the record for most costly non-project.

And if they had been really smart, then no one would have been proudly pointing out that all this was just re-cycling old news, as natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale did with CBC last night or one of the political gaggle did at the news conference in Goose Bay.

This budget announcement is apparently not about math.

We are told that infrastructure spending will be about $800 million.

We are told it is a record.

We are told that:

The $800 million the Provincial Government will spend on infrastructure in the 2009-10 fiscal year represents a jump of $285 million – well over 50 per cent – from the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Last year’s “unprecedented” infrastructure spending was valued at $673 million.  An increase of “well over” 50% of that amount would put infrastructure spending this year at $1.009 billion.

If $285 million – the size of the increase – is actually more than 50% of last year’s spending, then we have discovered something very interesting.  Despite announcing $673 million in “unprecedented” capital spending last year, the provincial government may have spent a not altogether unusual amount of somewhere around $500 million. That’s about 25% less than announced.

Based on that precedent, capital spending in 2009 will actually be around $600 million, not the $800 million torqued on Wednesday.

And it’s not like this is the first time something coming from provincial finance didn’t add up. Different figures keep appearing from Jerome Kennedy’s department all the time.  Like Equalization.  Numbers magically appeared all through that fiasco a couple of weeks ago that had never been seen before in public, including in the province’s audited financial statements.

Lucky for the finance crowd and their government publicity machine they can still hypnotise some people with the magic of PowerPoint slides.

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