The Sir Robert Bond Papers
The real political division in society is between authoritarians and libertarians.
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Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls - Background
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23 April 2015
Another little thing that stood out #nlpoli
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From Tuesday’s throne speech , here’s another little passage buried away, that could prove to be one of the most significant parts of any th...
22 April 2015
The little things that stand out #nlpoli
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Throne Speech 2015 was the kind of document you’d expect from a group of politicians who are out of new ideas. People are making a big de...
21 April 2015
Pre-emptive rebuttal #nlpoli
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This excerpt from Tuesday’s federal budget speech seems aimed at province's like Newfoundland and Labrador where the government promised...
The problem with no problem #nlpoli
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Dwight Ball is the latest Liberal to emerge from the candidate protection program. He popped up on NTV on Monday evening to tell us all tw...
20 April 2015
The Political Game of Stupidity #nlpoli
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Last week, the provincial Liberals came out of the candidate protection program to talk about the Dunphy shooting. Liberal justice critic ...
17 April 2015
Has anyone seen the Liberals lately? #nlpoli
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This editorial by Craig Westcott originally appeared in The Pearl newspaper and is re-produced here with permission. Two of the most ...
16 April 2015
Goldilocks and the three mayors #nlpoli
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Almost a week after we all got a peek at the new provincial electoral boundaries, things have settled down in some areas and the insanity h...
15 April 2015
Minority Report #nlpoli
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One of the police officers responsible for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s Twitter presence did an interview with CBC’s Anthony Germai...
14 April 2015
Politics, the police, and tragedy #nlpoli
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Last October, Premier Paul Davis appointed Lynn Moore to his new advisory council on crime. Moore is in private practice these days but, a...
13 April 2015
Political Boundary Issues #nlpoli
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Some people thought that the electoral boundaries commission wouldn’t get its job done within 120 days. On Friday, those people found out...
10 April 2015
The week from hell #nlpoli
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You gotta feel for police chief Bill Janes and the rest of the men and women of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. All this happened bet...
09 April 2015
The irresponsible rush to judgment #nlpoli
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For those not involved but deeply concerned about the events in Mitchell’s Brook on Easter Sunday, one of the more disturbing aspects of the...
08 April 2015
For the Quebec lovers #nlpoli
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We’ve got two recent pieces on events in Quebec. Don Macpherson explains why the student “strikes” aren’t really strikes at all. And fo...
07 April 2015
The Dunphy Shooting: serious questions #nlpoli
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Question Number 1: Who has been trying to spin the story by feeding both David Cochrane and Fred Hutton with confidential information? Th...
06 April 2015
Soothsayer #nlpoli
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Wade Locke has had a profound impact on public policy in this province like no academic since Parzival Copes . Locke has been intimately i...
02 April 2015
The New Chainsaw Earle #nlpoli
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Carol Furlong had the good fortune to be the head of the province’s largest public sector union at a time when the provincial government had...
01 April 2015
Rumpole and the Judge’s Wage #nlpoli
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How hard can it be to figure out what Provincial Court Judges should get paid to do their work dispensing justice all around the province? ...
31 March 2015
The sky is falling. Or not. #nlpoli
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First they claimed the budget consultation would be way later than usual. So your humble e-scribbler worked it out. Turns out it wasn’t...
30 March 2015
More like a snapshot than a panorama #nlpoli
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Last week, a group called Samara released the results of its research on Canadians and politics. Democracy 360 t hey called it. The media...
26 March 2015
More of the same. It’s the economy. And, … #nlpoli
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Past behaviour is a good indicator of future behaviour. If that’s the case, then lots of people are getting their knickers in a very great...
25 March 2015
The ongoing saga of the remittance economy #nlpoli
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A downturn in the economy in Saskatchewan and Alberta caused by falling oil prices will affect Newfoundland and Labrador. This is hardly ...
24 March 2015
Letto to speak on access legislation #nlpoli
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Commissioner Doug Letto will be speaking to the Newfoundland and Labrador Chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society at the Fluvarium,...
A legacy of secrecy and bad deals #nlpoli
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In response to questioning in the House of Assembly last Tuesday and Wednesday , natural resources Minister Derrick Dalley confirmed that t...
23 March 2015
Budget ignorance abounds #nlpoli
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The provincial government’s own economics and statistics agency conducted a telephone survey for the budget consultations this year. The...
20 March 2015
The Next Question #nlpoli
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Scott Andrews’ political career ended last fall. He may not have realised it at the time. His bizarre news conference on Thursday made p...
19 March 2015
British VC Memorial Dishonours Former British Dominion #nlpoli
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As part of its commemoration of the Great War, the British government unveiled a memorial to Victoria Cross winners who were born in other...
18 March 2015
The Endless Supply of Sacred Cows 2015 #nlpoli
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On the first day of the session in the House of Assembly, the finance minister tabled an interim supply bill for slightly more than $2.7 bil...
17 March 2015
Oil and polls #nlpoli
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Two things for Tuesday after a monster snow storm. Oil: Brent crude hit a low of $52.50 before rebounding to finish Monday at just belo...
16 March 2015
Felix the Half A-G #nlpoli
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If politicians are good at one thing, they are usually good at telling a story that serves their purpose even if it isn’t, strictly sp...
13 March 2015
Constable Contempt #nlpoli
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Paul Davis fired Judy Manning from cabinet on Wednesday. He didn’t meet with her in person. Davis called her on the phone. Short of se...
12 March 2015
The Salvation of Bell Island and Other Fairy Stories #nlpoli
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The Conservatives rode to power in 2003 by accusing the Liberals of not being able to manage anything. Ferries played a big part of their ...
11 March 2015
The Other Other March Madness #nlpoli
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Premier Paul Davis mentioned the prospect of privatizing some public services last week. This week, the Liberals started running ads decl...
10 March 2015
Gimme that Old-Time Religion #nlpoli
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Kim Keating is the president of the St. John’s Board of Trade this year. In her Telegram column on Saturday, Keating offered some advice ...
09 March 2015
Gimme that Old-Time Reaction #nlpoli
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The only news to come out of the New Democratic Party convention this past weekend is that the party now has not one but two leaders. Earl...
06 March 2015
Federal Presents, the 2015 edition #nlpoli
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November 2005. The Harris Centre at Memorial University issued a report on the number of federal public servants working in Newfoundland a...
05 March 2015
The Offshore Ownership Fight Examined #nlpoli
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Last year was the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant events not only in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador but of Canada ...
04 March 2015
The Abacus Insight #nlpoli
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[Updated: 1715 hrs] By lunch time today, you’ll have Corporate Research Associate’s latest quarterly omnibus poll. Odds are the overall ...
03 March 2015
Class Conflict #nlpoli
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The former Premier. The premier wannabe. -srbp-
Obesity in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli
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A study published in 2014 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal projected that 71 percent of people in Newfoundland and Labrador wou...
02 March 2015
The Elephant in the Room, the Astigmatic Seer, and other horrifying budget tales #nlpoli
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Has anyone noticed a small problem in all the discussions about next year’s budget? On Point’s David Cochrane had both NAPE’s Carol Furl...
27 February 2015
Language Problems #nlpoli
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“Increasing taxes is not about solving the deficit, it’s about maintaining our programs and services that we have.” That’s what Labrador a...
26 February 2015
Nova Scotia won’t get Muskrat Falls electricity #nlpoli
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As part of its deal with Nalcor, Emera will get its electricity from Bay d’Espoir, not Muskrat Falls. The Business Post’s March 2015 ed...
25 February 2015
Bond Raters and other things to wonders about #nlpoli
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Cast your mind back a couple of years and you will probably remember finance minister Jerome Kennedy told us a couple of things. One was ...
24 February 2015
The Unsustainability Problem #nlpoli
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The annual budget consultation farce started on Monday with a couple of sessions. This year the provincial government has turned out a bud...
23 February 2015
The theory of everything #nlpoli
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People are talking about the budget. People are talking about Bill 42, the politicians’ decision to cut public representation in the House...
20 February 2015
A cunning plan it ain’t #nlpoli
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The whole “Paul-Davis-Decisive-Leader” thing doesn’t seem to be working for the provincial Conservatives. The latest NTV/MQO poll puts th...
19 February 2015
Stragedy and Polls: Chop House version #nlpoli
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Public opinion polls are a really useful thing in politics. The Liberals did a poll the weekend before the Liberals and Conservatives vote...
18 February 2015
St. Pierre shifting health care to Moncton, Halifax #nlpoli
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Rising costs are forcing the government of St. Pierre to look at shifting health care for its residents to Moncton New Brunswick from St. Jo...
17 February 2015
Lighter and Lighter #nlpoli
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Three separate stories over the past three days highlight changes to the local media world. On Saturday, Telegram editor Russell Wangersk...
16 February 2015
Money and Politics – the Chronic Enforcement Problem #nlpoli
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We can have all the rules in the world about how political parties and political candidates receive and spend money in Newfoundland and Labr...
12 February 2015
Money and Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli
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Some people are making a big deal over the fact that the judge heading the boundaries commission made political donations to both the Liber...
11 February 2015
The Boundary Commission Fun is closer #nlpoli
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The Chief Justice has named Justice Robert Stack as the chair of the boundary commission appointed under the Electoral Boundaries Act . We...
10 February 2015
The Other DarkNL #nlpoli
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For as long as anyone can remember, some people in Newfoundland and Labrador have had a love of conformity. They loathe discussion and de...
09 February 2015
Reforming the budget process #nlpoli
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We already know that the provincial government won’t unveil its budget for the new year until late April or early May. That’s not as unusu...
06 February 2015
Government by Committee #nlpoli
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Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 5 In the fifth and final instalment in this series on politics in Newfoundland and ...
05 February 2015
Elections and Voting #nlpoli
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Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 4 The politicians in the province share a lot of common views and tend to agree on m...
04 February 2015
The Dysfunctional House of Assembly #nlpoli
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Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 3 In the third instalment in the series, SRBP looks at the way the House of Assem...
03 February 2015
One Big Party #nlpoli
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Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 2 The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attenti...
02 February 2015
Making the rich richer #nlpoli
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Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 1 The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attention...
30 January 2015
Gil Bennett: fact checker #nlpoli
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Gil Bennett, Nalcor vice-president in charge of the Lower Churchill project, took some exceptions to comments in yesterdays posts on Muskrat...
29 January 2015
Nalcor: the power of hubris #nlpoli
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On the last electricity bill to arrive Chez Scribbler, the price per kilowatt hour was a little over 11 cents, all in. On Wednesday , Ne...
28 January 2015
Acting Like a Leader #nlpoli
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In his first major public appearance since cutting public representation in the House of Assembly last week, Premier Paul Davis flatly reje...
27 January 2015
Opposition grows to antidemocratic House cuts #nlpoli
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Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador, the umbrella organization that speaks for the province’s towns and cities, doesn’t like the plan ...
26 January 2015
A swing and a miss #nlpoli
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The usual round of Saturday chores this weekend brought with it the usual accidental meetings with all manner of friends and acquaintances. ...
23 January 2015
The Fraser Institute and Laughably Flawed Analysis #nlpoli
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The latest Fraser Institute assessment of the financial management prowess of premiers is to sound economic analysis what homeopathy to cur...
22 January 2015
Review faces stiff competition from province’s politicians #nlpoli
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If Paul Davis and his beleaguered band of provincial Conservatives started the week on a high, it didn’t last very long. They opened the ...
21 January 2015
Abbott and Costello meet the Trade Deal #nlpoli
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If you are confused by the provincial government’s struggle over free trade with the European trade, find comfort in the fact you are not al...
20 January 2015
Ballsiness #nlpoli
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Before Christmas, Liberal leader Dwight Ball had been calling for an election as soon as possible. After Christmas, faced with the chanc...
19 January 2015
Not fit for it #nlpoli
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It’s not surprising that the provincial Conservatives and their supporters want to reduce the representations the people of the province hav...
16 January 2015
Anti-democratic, regressive, and unprincipled #nlpoli
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The idea of reducing the size of the province’s legislature because the provincial government has a massive financial crisis didn’t get any ...
15 January 2015
Separated at birth: Boyle edition #nlpoli
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Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle
NDP leadership rules screw local businesses #nlpoli
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Any of the small, local printing companies who usually make a fair bit of cash from political campaigns can keep their printing presses chil...
14 January 2015
NDP votes for “More of the Same” #nlpoli
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Gerry Rogers is smiling again now that Earle McCurdy has agreed to be the NDP Kevin Aylward. If Earle had decided to stay retired, Gerry ...
13 January 2015
All NL parties agree to anti-democratic, regressive cuts to legislature #nlpoli
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Whenever the provincial government gets into financial trouble, someone will suggest that one great way to save money would be to cut the nu...
12 January 2015
Roger Grimes: savage political attack dog #nlpoli
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Maybe it was the headline on John Ivison’s opinion piece in the National Post that threw them off. Spat over $400M N.L. fund could mak...
09 January 2015
The challenge of Hebron and old people #nlpoli
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The C.D. Howe Institute released a policy brief on Thursday that argues that demographic changes will hit the people of Newfoundland and L...
08 January 2015
Cluck, cluck, cluck #nlpoli
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Say what you want about Lorraine Michael, but you have to admit that she knows what she wants to do. Lorraine has spent her adult life as...
07 January 2015
Lorraine says good-bye, sort of #nlpoli
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Her voice tinged with emotion, Lorraine Michael announced to a gaggle of reporters and her supporters at Confederation Building on Tuesda...
06 January 2015
Comparative Hydro Costs #nlpoli
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Konrad Yakabuski’ s column in the Monday Globe is an interesting one for people in Newfoundland and Labrador for a couple of reasons. ‘ ...
05 January 2015
Fishing for support #nlpoli
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When the going gets tough, the tough go fishing. In this case, a bunch of politicians in a tough spot with voters are fishing among a sma...
03 January 2015
10 years later #nlpoli
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Today marks the 10th anniversary of the first Sir Robert Bond Papers post. In July 2004, I wrote and released a paper that tried to “exam...
02 January 2015
The Void #nlpoli
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For its last editorial of 2014, the Telegram decided to discuss the fate of the province’s New Democrats. A quick summary: things were...
31 December 2014
The Legacy of Faulty Assumptions: Hebron Revisited #nlpoli
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Hebron is the last of the four, big, offshore discoveries from the 1980s. It’s due to come into production in 2017 based on a development ...
30 December 2014
The Legacy #nlpoli
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There is a lengthy list of political stories in contention to be the top political story of 2014. Start the year with #darnknl, the failur...
29 December 2014
Great Unposted Predictions #nlpoli
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Sometimes you find the strangest things among the draft posts. Here’s a sample from a January 2012 draft post that never saw the light of ...
The Top 10 SRBP Posts of 2014 #nlpoli
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People love to read posts that contain nothing more than lists. You know this is true because every self-appointed guru of the Internet w...
24 December 2014
Churn dropped sharply in 2014 #nlpoli
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Orders-in-council show that cabinet made a total of 20 appointments in 2014 at the ranks of assistant deputy minister and deputy minister ...
23 December 2014
Better more, and better #nlpoli
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The provincial government has a very serious financial problem. The forecast deficit for the current year is the second highest on record...
22 December 2014
All they need for Christmas is new talking points #nlpoli
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Keith Hutchings - the provincial cabinet minister leading talks with the federal government on European trade - issued a statement on Decem...
19 December 2014
PEI buying Quebec electricity #nlpoli
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Prince Edward Island is in the market to buy 100 megawatts of electricity from Hydro-Quebec, according to media reports on Thursday. -srb...
18 December 2014
Moose Party to enter race in Avalon #nlpoli
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Munn E Moose announced today that he will carry the Moose Party banner in the next federal election in the riding of Avalon. "Harper ...
The Lunatic Fringe #nlpoli
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If the provincial Conservatives have done nothing else with their European trade charade, they have breathed new energy into the political ...
17 December 2014
Worry more about next year #nlpoli
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Provincial revenue from oil will be $791 million less than forecast in the spring budget, according to the provincial budget update . A fe...
16 December 2014
Our Gift to Nova Scotia #nlpoli
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As of March 31, 2014, Memorial University had an annual deficit of about $330 million. In 2013-2014, the annual cost of subsidising tuit...
15 December 2014
Province increased CETA demands after crucial agreement #nlpoli
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Almost a year after reaching an understanding with the federal government on a joint federal-provincial fisheries fund related to the Europe...
12 December 2014
Opportunity knocks #nlpoli
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CBC’s David Cochrane took a break from his parental leave Thursday evening to let the world know that On Point is dead as of next June. P...
Bill 28: missing in action #nlpoli
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It’s an unknown amendment to the Hydro Corporation Act. Natural resources minister Derrick Dalley gave official notice he’d be introduc...
11 December 2014
Time Lag #nlpoli
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On Wednesday, Premier Paul Davis announced that Ken Marshall had been appointed chair of the board of Nalcor and an unspecified number of ...
10 December 2014
Recurring Behaviour #nlpoli
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Exactly one year ago, the provincial government was in a controversy over its part in the European free trade deal. The Conservatives were...
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