Kremlinology 10: Ah to be a Tory in Gander in October, when the dogs are fit to wag

When the political going gets tough, what better way to handle it than to launch a phoney jihad against a completely imaginary enemy over a completely imaginary dispute:

The Premier is gearing up for another fight on the national stage. Danny Williams says Hydro Quebec continues to try and block this province from developing the Lower Churchill, now refusing to sign onto a water management agreement for the Churchill River in Labrador.

For starters, Danny Williams is only pissed at Hydro-Quebec because they aren’t willing to take the ownership of the Lower Churchill he offered then. It’s not that they are so interested in the LC and Danny that they are blocking him, it’s really bothering him that Hydro-Quebec just isn’t interested at all.

And that’s after five years of desperately trying:

[Natural resources minister Kathy] Dunderdale told VOCM Open Line show host Randy Simms on Friday morning that over the past five years, the Williams administration “got a path beaten to their [Hydro Quebec’s] door” in an attempt to have HQ become what Dunderdale described as an “equity partner” in the Lower Churchill.

Dunderdale described the Lower Churchill “piece” as a “win-win” for Hydro Quebec. She said that despite efforts by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador there was “no take up [from Hydro Quebec] on the proposal.”

But the biggest thing you have to consider on this water rights agreement thingy is that if the two parties – NALCO and Churchill Falls-Labrador Company – can’t reach and agreement on their own, the whole thing will be settled legally and finally by the public utilities board.

No big public, hair-mussing fuss required.

Danny Williams knows this because that’s what he amended the law to say in preparation for just such an event.

Well, okay first the provincial government tried to screw with the contract – as someone else tried in the 1980 water rights case - but they got caught red-handed in that little bit of tomfoolery.

While Williams and his ministers tried to downplay it at the time, they were caught so far in the wrong they even had to call an extremely rare emergency session of the legislature to deal with the mess created by someone’s childish legalistic game.

Anyway, that’s another story.

CFLCO not interested in the deal on water rights Williams wants?

Well that’s no problemo.

The whole thing just falls along according to amendments made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2007 by none other than Danny Williams’ own administration.

The public utilities board – headed by Williams’ new buddy Andy Wells – just imposes a deal on the two sides:

5.5 (1) Where 2 or more persons to whom subsection 5.4(1) applies fail to enter into an agreement within a reasonable time, one or more of them may apply to the public utilities board to establish the terms of an agreement between them.

(2) Where an application is made to the public utilities board under subsection (1), the board shall establish the terms of an agreement for the purpose of achieving the policy objective set out in subparagraph 3(b)(i).

(3) An agreement established by the public utilities board under subsection (2) is binding on the persons named in the agreement.

Poof.

Job done.

Pas de sweat.

And lookit, the company involved here isn’t Hydro-Quebec, it’s the Churchill Falls-Labrador Corporation. That’s the company in which the provincial government’s energy company – NALCOR - owns a 65% stake.

And if you are still not convinced this is all yet another case of Tory dog-wagging, just consider that this evil foreign demonio Hydro-Quebec hates Williams so much and is working so hard to block the Lower Churchill they were will to sign a deal allowing energy from Labrador wheel across their province.

Wheel power and they make millions off the wheeling charges. Gee, that’s really putting obstacles in the way of the Lower Churchill. Yep, what better way to block the Glorious Lower Churchill project than demonstrating that Danny Williams can wheel power through Quebec to some other market than Quebec without any obstacles.

So what is all Danny Williams’ puffed chest really about?

Not even Ed Martin - the head of the provincial government’s energy company - seems to know.

But if one Ed doesn’t, maybe your humble e-scribbler can offer some easy suggestions on what issues are causing the provincial Conservatives to go hunting for a distraction:

- The by-election in the Straits is really not going well at all for the Tories. Then there’s Terra Nova to fight where the Tories haven’t even got a candidate yet and the Liberals wound up having two to pick from. Eight cabinet ministers in one day and four trips by the premier Hisself don’t seem to be working on the voters, at least not the way it is supposed to work.

Very frustrating when the old tricks don’t work any more.

- It’s really, really, really painful to make one decision and then be forced to make another. Think Danny Williams and the whole lab and x-ray thing. Jerome Kennedy confessed just this past week to what some of us have known all along: the decision to chop service was made by the entire cabinet.

That’s why they all stuck so hard to the line about “improvements.

That’s why they resisted changing their minds right up until the point they had no choice.

That’s why they tried desperately for weeks to try and blame someone else for the shag up rather than the people who actually shagged up.

It really bruises the ego to lose.

- And that’s on top of a string of “losses” including the Gros Morne one. Again, as much as they tried to downplay it, the whole emergency session of the legislature must have deeply embarrassed cabinet.

- There’s also the ongoing embarrassment of Paul Oram coupled with his decision to up and run when the going got tough. A cabinet minister resigns hot on the heels of another, thereby creating a mini-crisis in the government? Not a way to make the leader feel cheery. Paul Oram took himself off a raft of Tory Christmas card lists with his poorly executed exit.

- Unflattering comparisons to Roger Grimes? Lighten up a bit, people. It’s a joke.

- Let’s not forget the admission that the provincial Conservatives haven’t been doing such a fine old job of managing the public purse as they’d claimed. The word Oram used was “unsustainable.” Finance minister Tom Marshall said much the same thing.

- Then there’s the revelation that the government’s satisfaction rate ain’t what it was purported to be by the government’s own pollster. Between the opposition and local media, three recent CRA polls – never released publicly before – show that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador told CRA one thing but CRA told the public something else. The truth is sometimes painful but it does come out.

- Then there is the ongoing frustration of the Lower Churchill. As a story in the Telegram noted [not available online], NALCO has to go back and answer a whole bunch of questions for the environmental review on the Lower Churchill and that is now behind schedule. That’s on top of the lack of partners (see above), lack of markets - think Rhode Island - and the huge embarrassment to the government of being forced to abandon their original plan of slinging power lines through a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On the whole it has been a very rough patch for the ruling Conservatives, at least from their perspective over the last six weeks and a bit more.

And what better place for provincial Conservatives to engage in some traditional Tory dog-wagging than the annual convention in Gander.

After all, that’s where ABC was born, at a time – as the House spending scandal broke in 2006, among other things – when things didn’t look all that rosy for provincial Tories in the short term.

Come to think of it, Loyola Sullivan packed it in not long after that, as did Paul Shelley and a few others.

Hmmm.

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Minister in hospital, “seriously ill”

Revealed at the Tory convention in Gander:  municipal affairs minister Diane Whelan has been hospitalised and is “seriously ill.”

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$10 billion for NB Power

A deal is close according to the Globe and Mail that would see Hydro-Quebec buy all of NB Power for $10 billion.

But the Globe story contains some of its characteristic shit reporting in the sub-head: “blocking access of other provinces' utilities to U.S. markets”.

There’s more the same drivel farther down the story but don’t buy most of it because it just isn’t true.

This sale can’t block access for anyone to NB’s power grid.  It can’t, not if NB Power and HQ want to keep selling power into the US.

And from the looks of it at least one statement could be completely false:  “Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has complained to regulators in Quebec and the United States that Hydro-Québec's transmission arm is not providing it fair access to U.S. markets.”

You see Danny Williams has bitched alright, but he was bitching because he couldn’t get HQ to buy into the Lower Churchill. 

But…

According to Ed Martin, Williams right-hand on any of a number of issues, there is no problem whatsoever with Hydro-Quebec.  Thus it would be very odd if the company Martin runs was doing things – as the Globe reports -  like filing formal complaints alleging some pretty serious unfair market practices against HQ. 

All they have actually done is pursue a tariff through Quebec which they duly got.  Your see – Shawn and Rheal take note – NL Hydro has already been wheeling power into the United States across lines in Quebec in a deal touted by none other than …wait for it…Danny Williams Hisself.

Notice there is no further detail on that in the Globe story.  That’s a pretty good clue that Rheal Seguin and and Shawn McCarthy just didn’t do their homework.   Instead, they seem to have opted for a half-backed paraphrase of an equally a half-baked version of the old Danny story and not rely on what Danny’s energy minister said. 

In the process, the bitching morphed into a complaint filed with a Canadian or American utility regulator.  Look farther on in the story and that’s exactly what they do, and as you can see they got the bitching story and the bit about the alternate transmission line wrong too.  That’s what you get for quoting Liz’s thumbs and not doing any real research.

There’s also another completely asinine comment about HQ getting greater access to the US as a result.  If the guys at the Globe even bothered to check their facts, they’d know that HQ already owns capacity on the grid through New Brunswick. The story has been out there since the spring. That’s definitely not the motivation for this deal.

The upside to this story is that New Brunswickers will shed a 90-year-old chronic debt pig and retire in the process what the Globe describes as 40% of public debt in one fell swoop.

Let’s just hope that while about half the story appears to be complete fiction, the bit about New Brunswickers shedding their debt burden turns out to be true.

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That’s likely to impress the hell out of them

Fisheries minister Tom Hedderson, campaigning desperately in the Straits and White Bay North tells talk show host Bill Rowe that he’s having a great time in the district.

Apparently it’s been wonderful to be reacquainted with the district and the local concerns.  In fact, it’s the first he’s been there since 2001 when Trevor Taylor won the by-election.

Hmmm.

And this would be the same district hard hit by the economic downturn, particularly in the fishery.  Where Tom offered people make work at minimum wage in October using a form that evidently had been around since July.

First time back since 2001, eh?

Oh yeah, that’s bound to impress the hell out of the locals in the run-up to what voting day in what appears to be a very tight race.

And Tommy is not the only cabinet minister expressing his surprise at discovering there are actually people who live out beyond that overpass thing.

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Competitive Advantage versus the Albania Solution

New Brunswick and Quebec have some interesting common energy interests, not the least of which is New Brunswick’s electricity interconnection with the United States.

No surprise therefore that the two provinces are talking about co-operation, possibly including the sale of some of NB Power’s assets to Hydro-Quebec.

What  parts of the New Brunswick company might be of interest to Quebec aren’t clear.  One thing is certain, though:  the nuclear division is mired in cost over-runs on the up-grade for the Point Lepreau site.  That might well make it a huge liability for NB Power in any broader sale.

The one competitive advantage the province has is its transmission lines and a strong, continuing relationship with New England customers.  By contrast, Newfoundland and Labrador can’t even figure out if they are still working with Rhode Island.

Expect a local talking point that heads somewhere close to the giant conspiracy theory floated earlier by the Premier.

What you get by putting the real stories together is that NB Power is considerably more attractive than a fanciful project in Labrador that is both far from market and far from existing. A recent Telegram report by Rob Antle [not online] noted that the project is behind schedule in delivering detailed answers as part of the environmental review process.

On top of that it can’t be discounted that political tirades by the current administration have poisoned the relationship with other provinces.  things are evidently so bad that even a willingness by Danny Williams to completely abandon his “redress” position and offer Hydro-Quebec an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill didn’t get even a sniff of interest from the Quebec Crown corporation.

Isolation is not good for Newfoundland and Labrador’s long term interest. The New Brunswick-Quebec connection demonstrates that pretty clearly.

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Kremlinology 9: By-elections

If it seems to you that there have been more by-elections since 2003 than at any comparable previous time in recent political history, you are absolutely correct.

Twice as many, in fact.

On average there was one by-election per year between  1982 and 2003.  But in the period of the provincial government’s greatest prosperity, politicians have been leaving their jobs on average at the rate of two per year.

There have been a dozen by-elections in the six years since the provincial Conservatives returned to power in 2003.  In the six years before that there were only seven and in the entire period of Liberal rule – four Premiers and 14 years – there were 16.

And just to really drive the point home, in the seven years between Brian Peckford’s massive victory and the fall of Tom Rideout’s Tories in 1989, there were just six.

The Conservatives have also shed more cabinet ministers compared to any administration since 1982 and lost them in unusual or controversial situations.

Former Tory leader Ed Byrne resigned to face corruption charges.  Former leader Loyola Sullivan left politics in a complete shocker later that same year. Paul Shelley resigned suddenly in early 2007.  Since the 2007 general election, Tom Rideout packed it in during a dispute over road paving work.  Trevor Taylor walked in the middle of controversies over health care cuts, fisheries and forestry affecting his district and Paul Oram pulled pin a week after Taylor amid controversy over health care cuts.

Here’s the data:

1.   Number of by-elections since October 2003:  13

• Exploits
• Placentia and St. Mary's
• Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi
• Port au Port
• Kilbride
• Ferryland
• Humber Valley
• Labrador West
• Baie Verte-Springdale – 2007*
• Baie Verte-Springdale – 2008
• Cape St. Francis
• The Straits & White Bay North
• Terra Nova

*  Cabinet minister Paul Shelley resigned in early 2007 necessitating a by-election in Baie Verte-Springdale.  In the event, the by-election wasn’t called until late in the year with a date a few days before the general election.  The writ for the by-election was vacated by the general election writ.  The seat was won by Tom Rideout who resigned the next year.

2.  Number of by-Elections in same period before 2003 (i.e. 1997 to 2003): 7

• Trinity North
• The Straits & White Bay North
• St. Barbe
• Port de Grave
• Humber West
• Bonavista North
• Conception Bay South

3.   Number of by-elections between 1989 and 2003:  16

4.   Number of by-elections between 1982 and 1989: 6

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NB Power up for sale?

Hydro-Quebec may be in the market to purchase NB Power, the government-owned New Brunswick power utility.

According to CBC,

In a statement Thursday, his communications director, Elizabeth Matthews, said Williams "can't imagine the people of New Brunswick would allow their government to sell their energy asset and put that power into someone else's hands."

Odd idea, that, selling an energy asset or even a chunk of an asset to Hydro-Quebec.

Surely Danny Williams would never do anything like that especially since he supposedly wanted “redress” on Churchill Falls first.

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Kremlinology 8: Honestly, we’re so f*cking sorry

Count the number of Tory cabinet ministers lining up to tell the people of the Straits and White Bay North this simple little message:

We screwed up.  We are sorry.  Please, puhleese vote for our guy.  We are sorry.  We have spent a lot of money on you.  We are sorry.  Oh and did I say how sorry we were?

Jerome Kennedy.  Tom Hedderson. Two classic examples.

Could make for an interesting audio compilation, but in the short term it’s a huge clue as to how desperate things are getting for some people in the current by-election.

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Kremlinology 7: Desperate in the Straits

Signs that things are not good in some parts of the province for some people:

1.   The Other One Percent:  Danny Williams rockets into Flower’s Cove a few days after advance polls and announces he’s managed to find the last one percent under the cushions of his Avalanche.  Lab and x-ray will stay in Flower’s Cove regardless of who wins the by-election.

2.  How many shifts of position does that make?  It really depends on how many shifts of position you want to count. 

In Flower’s Cove alone, a suggestion last February from the regional health authority to reduce clinic hours in the community as a way – theoretically – to save money was never implemented because cabinet ponied up the cash.

Suddenly and inexplicably that became a decision - by cabinet as it turned out - announced in August to cut operating hours and take out lab and x-ray service.

On top of that there was a review of x-ray and lab services everywhere in the province.

As the by-election started in the Straits and White Bay North, the clinic hours miraculously reappeared.

Then the lab and x-ray cuts became mere possibilities if savings could be found.

Then the review went into the “Doubtful it will be finished” pile.

Then suddenly the Premier was 99% sure the lab and x-ray service could be saved.

But only 99% sure.

And now it’s 100% back.

That’s eight shifts and it doesn’t even begin to count the finance minister flip flops on whether there is cash for everyone or things are tight and previous decisions were unsustainable.

3.  Who actually made the decision?  Paul Oram claimed he made the fateful decision in late August.  No one really contradicted him directly but the Premier said early on that the decision were know before Oram became minister.   Maybe Ross made it. 

After Oram resigned, the Premier told someone on the campaign trail that “Paul Oram had proceeded on the basis of recommendations made to him by the health authority.”  The story was picked up in the local paper.

Now it turns out that isn’t true. 

Well, at least according to Jerome! Kennedy it isn’t true.  In an interview with Here and Now on Thursday, the former finance minister and current health minister Kennedy told Debbie Cooper that the decision to cut lab and x-ray service was not made by Paul Oram but by cabinet.  Paul was just the messenger boy.

That means that Jerome and Danny made the decision  - along with every other cabinet minister in the district St. Anthony is in -  a fact they didn’t disclose as they started campaigning and began switching positions.

4.  Who’s fault is it anyway?  Apparently, Jerome was in a fessing up mood on Thursday.  He told VOCM that this has been a useful exercise for government since it forced government to look at the issues and admit they were wrong.

That’s pretty good for a guy who only a few days ago was admitting to the same  media outlet that he and his cabinet colleagues would be playing the whole issue of lab and x-ray and the by-election by ear and see how it went.

Evidently making it up as you go along isn’t a good strategy after all.

5.  How many ministers can dance on the end of a line?  Pretty well all of them, if the radio call-in shows are any indication.

Shawn Skinner was charming if not a wee bit patronising as he recounted how Trevor Taylor had taught him so much about rural Newfoundland in their discussions around the cabinet table and in caucus.

Best of the bunch?  Kevin O’Brien, the minister of permits and licenses for two reasons. 

First he talked about much money this government had spent in the district and allowed that they wanted to keep doing that.  Sounded a bit like a threat, it did.

Second – and the best bit – was when he stumbled repeatedly trying to remember the name of the district he was in.  Finally O’Brien blurted out something like how great it was to be in the district St. Anthony was in. 

Evidently he wasn’t in the same cabinet meeting as Shawn.

6.  Things are that bad, eh?  During his report on Here and Now, CBC’s David Cochrane referred this evening to senior Conservatives who admitted to him that the race was tight in the Straits.  If the Tories are admitting even that much, along with Danny’s win-or-lose-ya-got-it-back, you can guess the Tory campaign shows the Liberals out in front.

That would also explain the steady barrage of cabinet ministers and Jerome’s repeated admissions of mistakes and errors and acceptance of blame.  Odds are good the Tories are trying everything, including backing as far away as possible from their usual arrogance to try and win over  every vote they can.

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Kennedy on Straits by-election: Hail Mary!

Guess what?

Lab and x-ray service is staying in Flower’s Cove.

Former finance minister Jerome Kennedy announced the decision today on voice of the cabinet minister’s morning call-in show.

The Tory candidate must not be doing too well in the by-election.

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Big Oil’s New L’il Buddies and helicopter safety

While the offshore helicopter safety inquiry has given some people a platform for their false statements about search and rescue again, let’s try a scenario that is based on facts and reasonable suppositions. 

Let’s suppose, for example, that after the whole thing is over, former Supreme Court Judge Robert Wells makes some recommendations that – in the opinion of the offshore oil companies – would adversely affect the projects. 

Let’s take the Hebron project as a typical one.

Adverse affect might be cost in this case. 

For example, let’s suppose that Wells decides that – despite the very best and most intense lobbying by everyone from Jack Harris to lawyer Randall Earle – the cost burden for providing search and rescue for the offshore in St. John’s should still be borne by the oil companies.

Let’s suppose that Big Oil’s L’il Buddies fail miserably in their efforts to shift the cost to taxpayers.  Let’s imagine that – contrary to the campaign being waged -  Wells requires that the companies continue to provide SAR support for their own employees and their own helicopters. 

And let’s imagine Wells decides to up the ante arguing that they should do it 24/7.

All of that is either established fact (there is such a campaign underway, even if it is hodge-podge and disorganized) or is a likely outcome of the inquiry.

And further, let’s suppose the oil companies find that – for a whole bunch of arguable reasons – that cost is just too much to bear. 

Maybe oil prices have dropped down again to levels far below the current US$80 a barrel.  And hey, it’s not like oil prices will go up and up and up forever.

So there’s our scenario.

What does the provincial government do?

Well, the provincial cabinet would likely find themselves bound by section 5.1 of the Hebron financial agreements:

The Province shall, on the request of the Proponents…support the efforts of the Proponents in responding to any future legislative and regulatory changes that may be proposed by Canada or a municipal government in the Province that might adversely affect any Development Project, provided such action does not negatively impact the Province or require the Province to take any legislative or regulatory action respecting municipalities.

And before you start arguing that opposing the SAR regulation “negatively impact the Province”, you are really not reading carefully enough.  When the word “province” is written with a capital “P” it means the Government of the place.

So since the provincial government as such would not be negatively affected, they wouldn’t have the one and only ground that applies on which they could slip out from under their legally binding obligation to back Big Oil.

Of course, the provincial government is also really an oil company these days.  Therefore it would liable for the cost of providing those helicopters for SAR.  It  would be in the provincial government’s interest to work with the other oil companies against the Wells safety recommendation anyway. 

If money is really tight - after all  - and these extra costs threaten the Lower Churchill project too, there might be lots of reasons for the provincial government/oil company to fight such a recommendation.

This inquiry might turn out to be very interesting after all. 

Oh.

And we can expect the lobbying effort that benefits Big Oil – Jack Harris is a witness in the schedule, for example – to intensify over the next few weeks.

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When it comes to reckless speculation…

at least CBC commentator Brian Callahan is an expert on the subject.

Since the Cougar helicopter crash this past spring Callahan has been pushing an attack on 103 Rescue Squadron based on the speculation that somehow 103 Squadron could have materially changed the outcome had it not been training at Sydney Nova Scotia at the time of the incident.

Callahan continued his irresponsible attack during a CBC commentary on Wednesday.  Give it a listen, if you will. 

Notice that he actually doesn’t make a case on this.  He never has.   

Rather, Callahan makes false statements.  He claims, for example, that the Department of National Defence will be as absent from the helicopter safety inquiry “as they were on March 12th.”  Callahan knows of course that both coast guard and the Canadian Forces were far from absent on the day of the crash and subsequently during the recovery of the bodies.  Callahan clearly knows nothing about search and rescue as he claims that 103 Squadron left its task to others on that fateful day.

And he suggests – in his reference to 26 years ago – that the recommendations of the Ocean Ranger Royal Commission were ignored.  That too is an utterly false suggestion. 

Words from last spring remain appropriate:

This sort of misrepresentation amounts to an abuse. 

It tortures the families of the victims of the crash by suggesting a hope which is false. 

This attack – and that’s what it amounts to – tortures the men and women of the search and rescue services.  103 Search and Rescue Squadron flies twice the national average in SAR missions.  Hercules from 413 Squadron join them far out to sea.  They all train hard and fly hard and risk their lives in weather when the rest of us are huddled by a fire safe at home. They do it to save the souls whose lives are at risk in the harsh North Atlantic. When lives are lost, as in this case, they will inevitably search their souls to ensure that all that could be done was done.

This attack abuses the men and women of Cougar. The company has an exemplary safety record.  The company has such a record because every single employee is committed to safe service.  Over 48,000 accident free flying hours don’t happen without such a level of personal commitment. The company’s crews also fly search and rescue services every bit as good and every bit as dangerous as the work done by 103 and its sister squadrons.

These misrepresentations abuse the members of the public who are shocked by the tragedy and who share in the grief of those who have lost loved ones. They are misled into believing things which are not true.

In a time of tragedy, it is hard to imagine more monstrous abuses. The tortures will continue until someone decides to put an end to them. Maybe a wise editorial hand needs to rest on someone’s shoulder.

In the meantime,  all that the rest of us can do is hope that somewhere in the midst of their self-absorption, the perpetrators of the abuse can realize the harm they are doing.

Sadly, Brian is not alone.  Some politicians have also taken to building platforms for themselves out of corpses and grief.

Sadder still, Callahan continues to get a paid platform from which to spread his misinformation;  the wise editorial hand is still missing.

Since the perpetrators of the abuse have clearly not realized what they doing, perhaps it remains a hope that Judge Robert Wells’ inquiry will provide enough fact to silence the reckless speculation once and for all.

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Job Vacancy – no experience required

Joan Cook retired from the senate on October 6. 

The Chretien-era appointee hit the magic age to retire from what used to be known as the Antechamber to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Used to be the only way most senators left the job and its lovely salary was to die.

That means there is a vacancy from Newfoundland and Labrador just waiting to be filled by Stephen Harper.

Who will get it?

There’s a good question.

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Oram and Williams tell radically different versions of departure story

Even in Paul Oram’s political death, he and Danny Williams can’t get on the same page.

Asked about Oram’s resignation, Danny Williams told reporters that when it comes to an individual’s health and family, he doesn’t even try and convince someone to stay. “I just accept it,” said Williams.

But that’s not what Paul says.  As the Gander Beacon put it:

Mr. Oram said the premier asked whether he would consider staying on as an MHA, but he said he felt if he was going to walk away from one aspect of his work, he would prefer to fully remove himself from politics.

"I just felt that if I needed to regain control of my life, I had to walk away from politics altogether."

That’s not the first time that Oram and Williams have been at odds.

On the same day in early September – before Oram’s surprise resignation - Williams said the decision on  cutting lab and x-ray services was made months earlier, long before Oram became minister. 

Williams told a scrum that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew of the cuts some time before July 9, 2009. Williams indicated Verge had the information from both Williams’ chief of staff and from Ross Wiseman when the latter was still health minister. 

Oram told the House of Assembly  - at almost the same time Williams was talking to reporters at another location - that he made the decision after meeting with concerned citizens in Lewisporte in mid-August. 

None of the dates match up since letters released by Oram in early September were part of the pre-budget process.  They were dated in February 2009.

But now even Danny Williams can’t get it straight.

According to the Northern Pen, the Beacon’s sister newspaper, a campaigning Danny Williams said something completely different from his earlier versions:

"Paul Oram had proceeded on the basis of recommendations made to him by the health authority," stated Premier Williams.

Not only did Oram now supposedly make a decisions Williams earlier attributed to someone else but the health authorities actually didn’t make the recommendations.  They were simply asked for options to save money, money that – as it turned out – they actually never had to save anyway.

No wonder some people don’t trust some politicians.

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Oil and the budget

The provincial government seems to be in one of those strange places it goes every now and then.

It’s a world where the messages are decidedly mixed, if one picks a generous way to describe it.

Totally confused would be another way of saying there are two completely contradictory messages rolling at the same time.

Both of them are coming from the current finance minister who is also a former finance minister and notorious for running an open cheque-book department.

In the latest incarnation, Tom Marshall is seen supporting a CBC news story that rising oil prices are wiping out the projected government deficit.

Just yesterday it was a tale of looming financial woes. Tom Marshall even repeated the message that government spending  - i.e. the spending he oversaw in the job before - is unsustainable. 

In the CBC story, though, Marshall tries desperately to avoid giving any firm indication of the province’s current financial state:

If the price averages $70 a barrel for the entire year, it could wipe out the provincial deficit, but Marshall cautions against such predictions yet.

"It's not just the price," he said. "It's the volume. It's the exchange rate and of course we don't know what's going to happen in the future in terms of production numbers."

There are a couple of things to note here.

First of all, Marshall knows exactly where things are at this, the midpoint in the fiscal year.  he also knows where things are likely to wind up within a relatively narrow range of possibilities.  Marshall just didn’t want to share, even if CBC actually asked, and he likely won’t share until December if recent practice holds firm.

Of course, there’s a reason why the government holds on to information.  They clam up so that people who ought to have accurate information can’t get it, but that’s another issue. 

Second of all, we can fill in some numbers but not others. 

The stuff we are missing includes revenue figures like sales tax, mineral royalties and personal income tax.   If those are lower than expected, then it would take more than high oil prices to deliver a balanced budget. It’s unlikely those figures will turn out lower than estimated since the finance department routinely low-ball revenues these days.  But still, we don’t know because they aren’t saying.

We also don’t know what government spending is actually like. Operational spending may be up or it may be down.  Ditto the capital budget, or the “stimulus” as it is known currently.  If projects are behind schedule or delayed – as many are – then the cash budgeted for those projects will reduce the overall spending part of the budget.  A healthy chunk of the massive surplus in the last couples of years has been coming from forecast spending that just never happened and wound up not happening for two or three budgets.

As for oil, we can get a fairly good idea of what that looks like. 

Price is one element.  The 2009 budget used a figure of US$50 a barrel and an exchange rate that put oil at the equivalent of around Cdn$60.  Oil is currently almost $20 a barrel higher than that, even allowing for the lower exchange rate with the American dollar.

Production is another element.  Last year, oil production exceeded 125 million barrels.  This year, the provincial budget used a figure of  98.5 million barrels or a decline of  21%.  As it stands right now production in the first five months of the fiscal year is down about 27% compared to last year.  A 27% drop in production would mean a total production of about 93.75 million barrels.

But that’s not the whole oil picture.

The other bit is the percentage of each barrel the treasury gets and neither the budget documents last March nor Tom Marshall these days will talk about that publicly either. 

Thanks to the 19 year old Hibernia royalty regime, the provincial government take at Hibernia jumped to between 30% and 42.5% this year when the project hit pay-out.  Terra Nova and White Rose are already in pay-out and are pumping 30% royalty rates based on the original royalty regimes from before 2003.

And that’s where it gets interesting.

The budget figures don’t appear to include the higher royalty rates. factor those in and even the lower production total of 93 million barrels would produce provincial royalties of at least $1.9 billion. When your humble e-scribbler ran the numbers in August - estimating the revenues from each project -  the figure came out about the same as last year’s oil royalty. 

What all this means is that even allowing for some variation in other revenues and in overall spending, the books will likely be balanced this year on an accrual basis even at the low-end estimate.  On a cash basis there would a shortfall;  the budget forecast $1.3 billion. 

On the upper end, the forecast accrual deficit would turn into a surplus of something on the order of $500 million.  On a cash basis, the books would be balanced.

All in all, though, one must wonder why there is some much confusion coming from the current and former finance minister(s).  They could be letting the rest of is on their own projections since, the only negotiations going on right now are with voters.

Voters have a right to know how their own finances are looking, don’t they?

Oh yes.

And let’s not forget in all this that the budget last year included $1.8 billion in temporary investments that no one wanted to draw any attention to.

Makes you wonder why Tom and Jerome and Danny have been putting on the poor mouth again, even if just for a minute now and then.

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The Secret of Success

In any major business venture, it is important to ensure that the product will meet demand in the marketplace including consumer preferences.

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A new - if idiotic - tourism idea

Check out Lee Hopkins’ blog post on his latest podcast with fellow communications consultant Allen Jenkins.

This is worth checking out for two videos, both of which turn out ultimately to be really cheesy marketing stunts.

One is from Denmark and involves a young woman who is supposedly looking for the father of her child.  The child is supposedly the result of a drunken one-nighter with some unknown tourist.

While it looks a bit pathetic, the video is apparently a tourism board idea.  Allan and Lee discuss the cost and the target market, one of which is outrageous while the other is imponderable. They also discuss the complete failure of the campaign. At least two senior officials – one with the tourism board, the other with the agency – wound up leaving their employment over the fiasco.  According to the lads, there were more in the sequence which have since been shelved.

The inspiration for this bit of tomfoolery was a stunt in Australia involving a jacket and a supposed chance encounter in a bar.  The subsequent controversy  - based on alleged misrepresentation of the video - saw one of the creative geniuses behind the thing leaving his company to pursue other opportunities.

Oh yes, the Danish one also generated another version of the  Hitler meme.

Great podcast on a great topic from two guys who know their stuff.    lee and Allen discuss viral videos and ethics at some length.  it’s all good stuff.

And when you are done with that, enjoy once again a fine example of the viral art featuring none other than NTV’s own Glenn Carter.

 

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Inconvenient questions, H1N1 update version

Okay.

The latest H1N1 update from the provincial medical officer of health says there have been seven confirmed cases of H1N1 in the province over the past week.  This is the second wave.

So how does she know it is seven confirmed cases of H1N1?

You see the official advice from the health department is that if you get sick you don’t go to the doctor or to a hospital emergency room:

If you get influenza-like symptoms, but are otherwise healthy, stay home to avoid infecting others and treat the symptoms.

So how exactly do they know that there have been seven confirmed H1N1 cases in the province in the last week?

Just wondering.

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Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry - links

The offshore board’s inquiry into offshore helicopter safety started in St. John’s on October 19.

You can find the inquiry website via the offshore board website or here: www.oshsi.nl.ca.

For the record, you can also find:

• A schedule of witnesses;
• transcripts and exhibits; and,
• live video streaming.

Transcribing is fast.  You can find the testimony from this morning already posted.

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Politics and Language in Newfoundland, Corner Brook version

Someone writes a letter to the Western Star commenting on Danny  Williams’ use of language.

Some members of The Fan Club take issue in predictable ways.

More comments follow, pro and con.

Fascinating.

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Great Moments in Sound Financial Management

Tom Marshall in 2008 on the need for balanced budget legislation:

“I would like to see us come forward with some fiscal responsibility legislation that would make it a commitment of every government to ensure that, as a principle, we budget for a balanced budget, recognizing it won’t be possible to always have a balanced budget,” said Marshall. “And, if we can’t balance the budget, there would be an obligation on the government to explain and disclose to the people of the province why it didn’t happen and to disclose a strategy to ensure we get back to a balanced budget over a certain period of time.”

Marshall prefers to have balanced budget legislation that doesn’t require balanced budgets.

At least Tom is consistent.  From 2007:

"I don't know if I agree with balanced budget legislation," Marshall said.

"I certainly would agree with fiscal responsibility legislation … but I'm not prepared to be locked in automatically to a balanced budget every year," he said.

Not surprising then that government spending up to know has been unsustainable and  - dare one say it? – not very sound or responsible.

We know because the current finance minister told us.

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When politicians become ghouls

My grandmother used to tell the story of going to a funeral in a small community where one her distant relatives had passed away. 

The story happened so long ago that neither the place nor the time was important.  What is worth recollecting is her account of the people who attended at the cemetery for the committal of the body to the ground.

They didn’t stand around, a lot of them.  The onlookers  arranged themselves sitting along the top-most rail of the little white fence with the heels of their shoes hooked in the bottom rail.  My grandmother described them as being very creepy and ghoulish.

That image has come to mind several times over the last few months.  Too many politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador have tried to make a political platform out of the tragic deaths of 17 people on Cougar 491.

They were quick to rush forward with a bunch of ideas that all turned out to be completely false and they have persisted, especially in attacking the federal government generally and the brave men and women of the Canadian Forces search and rescue service.

These politicians want to have search and rescue service in St. John’s.

But here’s the thing:  their entire argument is based on the case of Cougar 491.  In that incident – as the events themselves showed – the passengers and crew died pretty much on impact. 

There is virtually no way – even in the highly unlikely situation that a rescue helicopter had been flying alongside the ill-fated Cougar helicopter – that a single additional life could have been saved.

Sad. Tragic, even. 

But true.

Now that the consensus among politicians of all stripes has taken hold, it is apparently spreading to some of the lawyers at the Wells helicopter inquiry.  To wit, we have the bizarre case of the lawyer representing offshore workers at the inquiry.    The lawyer claims that “if DND does not have the resources or the federal government is not willing to alter the distribution of  search and rescue resources,” then the oil companies will have to do the job.

That’s an “if” that is based on the false premise that additional Canadian Forces equipment would have made a difference in this case or others like it and that the only solution worth talking is that the federal government  - correction – the taxpayers like you and me - must pay instead of perhaps requiring that the offshore operating companies bear a heftier burden for life safety, including a SAR service that doesn’t take an hour to get ready and that can fly when the weather is bad or it’s dark.

That’s actually one of the rather interesting things about the position taken by politicians, Liberal Conservative and New Democrat, who have taken up the position on the fence-top calling out advice from the sidelines:  they’ve all leaped to a conclusion that doesn’t involve the offshore operators and instead fingers the feds.
And now their argument has reached one of the lawyers involved.

Maybe people should hear the evidence before they come to conclusions.

And maybe, just maybe, politicians should stop trying to make political platforms out of corpses.

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Dumb and Dumber, the fin min version

Reborn finance minister Tom “Marshall's challenge now is balancing declining revenues against increasing needs” to quote the Telegram story from today’s from page.

He said the key is "spending wiser, and spending smarter."

Okay, sez your humble e-scribbler, so does that means Marshall’s previous tenure as finance minister involved spending dumb and dumber?

Interesting line to take during a by-election, incidentally.  Cuts to spending by Marshall’s predecessor are what got the governing party into this by-election in the first place.  Jerome! Kennedy the high-pitched predecessor – now the higher pitched health minister – has been busily backtracking on the cuts Marshall, Kennedy and their boss approved in cabinet.

Curious.

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“Feeling queasy”: Is quieter better?

People in Newfoundland and Labrador must surely be looking with some puzzlement on the flap over federal Conservatives handing out government money as if it was their own.

In this province, their provincial Conservative cousins have the thing down to a science. The use of public money for partisan benefit is an old one in Newfoundland and Labrador but this current crowd have raised it to a fine  art. 

The House of Assembly spending scandal was – for the most part – a scam worked up to push free and untraceable cash that politicians could hand out to all and sundry in their district for any purpose the politician could think of approving.

So pervasive was the practice that a review by the auditor general found scarcely a single politician from any political party who sat in the House after the scam started in 1998 who did not use it to some extent. 

The review also revealed that the politicians elected after 2003 used it with an enthusiasm their federal cousins could only envy.  Of the top ten spenders as a percentage of their constituency operations allowance, six were elected after 2003 and all but one was a Tory.

As it turned out, one of the biggest supporters of the public cash for partisan benefit scheme was a former auditor general.  Ironically, she was the one the House management commission blocked from looking at some aspects of the scam while it was first organizing.  Beth Marshall also felt no qualms about handing out cash in small and larger amounts, nor did she feel any difficulty that there was a skimpy audit trail for the cash or that money was going to duplicate  existing government programs in some cases.

The use of public money for partisan purposes was not confined to individual members of the legislature and that’s where the parallel with the federal Conservatives really becomes apparent.  Since 2003, the Provincial Conservatives have worked to make sure that local partisan benefit came from any available pot of public cash:

-  As we found out when Tom Rideout packed it in, road paving and construction is over-seen by a political staffer in the Premier’s office.

Since 2003, it has been consistently managed in a way to maximise the benefit to Conservative districts and to punish those that voted for another party.

-  Fire trucks are a recent favourite for the spending announcement with the local MHA. With the recent by-elections and political upheaval, the fire truck announcements are coming about one a week.

The one they’ve consistently used is the small time cash being handed out by one department or another.  The money is from a legitimate departmental program but when the cash is handed out someone from the government caucus gets the credit.  It is inevitably called a “donation” or a “contribution” to make the free cash sound like anything but what it is.

There’s nothing new about it.  Back in 2007, Bond Papers linked to an old CBC news story that dates from the early 1970s that mentions the same practice dating back three or four decades and more.

But just because something is old is not a reason to think it is okay.  Not all traditions are fine or honorable.

Nor is it any better that it is done quietly in these parts as opposed to brazenly at the federal level.  The quiet nature of the local practice makes it all the more insidious.

Done loudly or quietly, though the practice is enough to make anyone concerned for the state of our democracy feel very queasy indeed.

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Paul Oram: busted

We knew Paul Oram’s comments the day he left politics were complete hogwash.

labradore refutes him, point by point.  And he adds the picture of Oram and his wife from 2006 that puts paid to the whole pack of nonsense Oram spouted about not wanting his family in the media.

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The positives of negativity

The much-feared inflation demon continues to shrink away.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, inflation hit  -0.9% in September 2009 compared to a year earlier, down from –0.7% in August.

The figures come from the latest Statistics Canada release.

Back just before the collapse last year, some people were speculating that it might be time to take action to fight the largely imaginary inflation demon. Subsequent events seem to have taken care of that little problem nicely.

Then again, there are other issues which some people seem hell bent on ignoring.

Kinda funny when the guy responsible for both the largest spending increases and one of the largest budgeted deficits in Newfoundland history accuses others of going on a wild spending spree.

And then re-appoints to run finance the guy who oversaw the real open cheque-book government in the first place.

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The Marine Atlantic Disconnect

Consider if you will, the number of times a provincial government official – usually the tourism minister du jour – has bitched about the ferry service between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

The fares.

The schedule.

The ships.

Doesn’t matter:  Marine Atlantic supposedly sucks.

Now for the poor folks running Marine Atlantic, they just can’t win.  One minister refers to the ferries as constitutional cattle-cars.  People clog the open line shows to chime in their agreement.

So the company invests in a new boat with plenty of modern, trendy conveniences.

The same people bitch that it is too grand when all they need is the marine equivalent of a cattle-car.

Anyways, the latest round of bleating is about a fare increase to offset rising fuel costs.

Clyde Jackman issued a news release on October 6 predicting possible dire consequences resulting from the latest fare changes.

Diane Whelan did the bitching in June 2008.

In 2007, there was a bevy:

• December
• September, and
• February.

Okay.

Still following?

But, just a few weeks ago, Clyde was out there trumpeting the fact that “[n]on-resident traffic on Marine Atlantic is up 4.4 per cent over 2008, while resident traffic exiting the province is down almost one per cent…”.

So despite all the supposed problems, there are actually more people using the service this year compared last year.

That wasn’t good enough: by October 16 Jackman had decided that traffic on the ferries was actually up 5.2% from last year  And, said Jackman, “…we cannot continue to grow this industry without a reliable, affordable Gulf ferry service.”

But hang on a moment.

There is a problem here with the minister’s logic:

If the current ferry service is not reliable and is not affordable – according to the bitching to date – how can it be that the ferry traffic is growing?

Tut. Tut.

It’s really terrible to see this sort of pessimism coming from a provincial cabinet minister.

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Python at 40

The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired 40 years ago this month on the BBC.

Taped first but according to some sources aired third was the original premiere episode titled “Whither Canada?”

It seems appropriate.

Curiously enough, this was also the title of the final major assignment at the National Defence College.  Maybe there was some thus far undiscovered connection.

The first episode aired October 5, 1969.

Graham Chapman died one day shy of 20 years later, on October 4, 1989.  

John Cleese delivered what has become a legendary eulogy for his old writing partner at a memorial service held in December that year.

He very quickly manages to change the tone of the event, as can be seen by the crowd shots as he begins speaking and then hits the jokes.

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The shrimp industry explained

Derek Butler in the Telegram.

As usual there’s way more to the issue than meets the eye.

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The search for a university president: compare and contrast

At McMaster, they started hunted in January and 10 months later came up with a winner.

At Memorial,  it has already taken almost 10 months just to go through the bullshit at the front end designed solely to get people to forget the sheer sh*t-wreck made of your humble e-scribbler’s alma mater in the first go- ‘round.

The only way the Memorial University search committee will find a president before the end of this year is if John Fitzgerald  - Our Man in a Blue Line Cab, seen left, hard at it on the diplomatic circuit - tells Danny he wants out of Ottawa pronto.

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If only they’d read their briefing materials…

While health minister Jerome Kennedy busily backs off decisions he took only a few weeks ago on health care, there is something obviously haphazard and chaotic about the way the current administration is approaching virtually everything they do.

Your humble e-scribbler has noted this before in other policy areas. Equalization is the most obvious subject and, as it turned out, that was a post that was extremely popular.

But in the case of health care, word of the on-again and possibly off-again review of some services makes one want to turn back the clock to 2002.

That’s the year a provincial government with no cash to speak of - and certainly far less than the billion dollar surpluses Jerome! and his buddies have turned up – laid down a simple set of practical guides to health care delivery across the province.

Healthier Together (2002) was touted as a strategic health plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s still available on the health department website. Read together Along with regional profiles produced the following year, you get a very good picture of the health issues in each part of the province and the solutions needed.

If you want to get a sense of how the document could help the government of today, take a look at the section on the organization of the health care regional authorities:

Newfoundland and Labrador is a large geographic area with a highly dispersed population where regions often have different circumstances and needs. This is partly the reason why the province has 14 health care boards.

It is not possible to compare the diversity of this province to the relative uniformity of Winnipeg or Edmonton, where populations which exceed that of Newfoundland and Labrador are serviced by a single health authority. However, if the number of health boards in this province create barriers to proper patient care, then re-examination is needed.

One of the problems both the Premier and the current health minister pointed to was a lack of accurate information they had when making decisions.

Well, the 2002 approach affirmed that decision-making authority on delivery of service belonged to the regions, not to people far removed from where the service was delivered. It also noted that the number of boards allowed gave a system that could take into account the local issues that could get lost in a larger system.

But when you turn to the section on where services would be located, there’s a simple model for health care that could work very easily today. After all, this thing was drafted only seven years and and, as it notes, the health care system currently in place goes back 20 and more years:

Primary health care sites will be the common denominator of service for the whole province. These sites will provide a cluster or network of basic services, plus public health and social services consistent with the mandates of the health and community service boards. Each site will serve a defined geographical region designed to ensure the right number of health professionals to service the population. For example, a minimum of five family physicians will be needed in a primary service site so that coverage can be provided 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. Therefore, a region should contain no less than 6,000 people and the site should be located so that 95 per cent of the population within that region are within 60 minutes driving time to the site. Depending on the geographic shape of a region or the remoteness of some communities, additional facilities may be located outside the main primary health care site to be serviced by a small complement of staff or by providers who make routine visits to the area.

Doesn’t that sound just a wee bit like Lewisporte?

All this makes you wonder if the turn-over at the senior levels in the current administration has served to rob the government of much-needed corporate memory, the kind of memory that would serve a cabinet well in tough economic times.

That turn-over didn’t come as a result of retirements and normal job changes-over. Rather there seems to be some other force at work producing a parade of ministers in some departments and the ping-ponging of others (finance and justice) while at the public service level there is an equally high level of change. All of it must surely make it very hard to implement a coherent and sustained set of policies over time.

And when people making decisions don’t have a clue about what happened relatively recently or when it is official policy to denigrate everything that occurred before October 2003, it makes the job of running government all that much more difficult.

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Will Danny expropriate this one too?

Kruger is talking cuts and concessions at the major private sector employer in the premier’s own district.

So far, not a peep from the provincial government.

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The Alberta Deficit Fighting Strategy

Where would Albertans be without such sound guardianship of the public purse?

In 2008, give yourself a 30% wage hike.

In 2009, set spending to run a deficit of 11%, later jumping to 20%.

Later in 2009, cut your own salary by 15%.  Cut cabinet pay by 10%.

Freeze the salaries of top civil servants.

Preach restraint.

Easy enough when you are still looking at a net gain of between 15% and 20% on your own pay.

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Randy Simms can relax

So if Randy Simms can get himself into a load of hot water with some people, then we can only wait and watch to see what will happen to Gene Simmons for uttering these bon mots  - among others - about his partner, Shannon Tweed:

Look, it’s the 21st century, and the thing women have been clamouring for is finally upon us: you’re free. You’re no longer indentured slaves. You no longer have to be in the kitchen, or leave the smoking room so the men can talk. And the greatest asset Shannon has is that she’s a modern woman. Besides being stunning, six feet tall and, of course, a Newfie, I worship the ground she walks on. But part of the relationship is that it’s no-nonsense. We don’t call each other “honey” and “sweetheart” and all those clichés. That’s television talk, just a paint-by-numbers relationship. When I talk to her, it’s straight ahead, like an equal partner, and she to me.

Apparently, Gene is smitten because:

This is the hottest woman on earth. And she’s an alpha female. She doesn’t talk about whether the vacuum cleaner works or not. Doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Has a strong moral centre, no drugs, no booze. No whining. No bad hair days.

This should be interesting.

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Fuzzy Logic, cabinet ministers version

Just to recap:

So the Lewisporte health care centre started out as a chronic care and acute care centre at a cost of $22 million.

Then it ballooned to $42 million even before anything got built.

Paul Oram told us all before he quit that government – i.e. cabinet, which presumably includes Jerome and Danny – chopped out all the acute care bits and cut the building cost to $32 million.

That acute care bit included lab and x-ray.

And because the building cost of the project mushroomed and then got cut, the same people decided to slice $200,000 out of the operating budget.

So basically, even before anything got built, lab and x-ray would disappear and would stay disappeared even if nothing got built at all.

And now, even after slicing the building cost to $32 million by eliminating all the acute care stuff, one of the guys who made the cut decision in the first place is now asking the local concerned citizens community to help him find another $2.0 million in cuts so that maybe he’ll give them back the $200,000.

Uh huh.

So the whole thing comes down to finding $2.0 million in savings in a project which already went 110% over budget before anyone could blink and which is still 50% over budget.

Riiiiight.

And so when that $2.0 million disappears in further cost over-runs, what happens then?

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Prissy politics

Anyone ever see a letter to the editor from Dr. Noel Cadigan taking a politician to task for referring to someone as a traitor?

Doubtful you’ll find one.

But Cadigan found a problem with the use of the word “crackie” in reference to health minister Jerome Kennedy.  For those who don’t know, a crackie is a common enough term in colloquial Newfoundland English for a small, yappy dog.  It’s also a common-enough term in Newfoundland politics.

All in all, it is relatively benign.

So benign in fact it that a letter from anyone complaining of its use – save from an elderly maiden aunt who was born in the reign of Queen Anne – stands out.

Cadigan isn’t that pompous, most likely, nor is he quite as sensitive as the letter suggests.  Rather he is using  the coded language of current Newfoundland politics.  Note the lecturing, condescending tone of the letter in the fashion of a prissy school master lecturing an errant lower form boy in a public school. 

Note as well the pointed reference to what the Telegram ought to be doing instead of offering critical commentary in an editorial.

Sound much like Paul Oram?

You get the picture.

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Another tumble coming

People may be cheering the rising loonie.

Some people may be rubbing their hands with glee at the current and forecast prices for crude.

Gold is wonderful, if you own it already.

But, note the references in those articles to “weak fundamentals” and the fact there haven’t been many “signs of a pickup in the underlying oil demand in industrialized countries”.

The same sort of underlying weakness  - particularly in the American economy  - is what fuelled the surges in oil prices before the peak in mid-2008.

Remember what happened after that, right?

Well, get ready again.

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The result of fisheries mismanagement

Once upon a time, Fishery Products International built a state-of-the-art shrimp processing plant that would have provided employment to its work force 48 weeks out of 52.

The project was contingent on the provincial fisheries minister showing some sense in handing out shrimp processing licenses.  It depended on provincial politicians not trying to shift all the displaced cod and other plants with which the province remains grossly oversupplied onto other species like shrimp.

And, as it turned out, it also depended on provincial politicians not actively collaborating with efforts to smash the company that ran the plant and then sell off the bits and pieces – including the highly successful brands and the marketing arm – to anyone who wanted to scoop up the remains.

All it needed was a plant able to complete internationally run by a local fishing company big enough and well enough established to compete successfully around the globe.

That didn’t work, did it?

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Ya got four years, Kurtis

Ralph won this one and he ain’t giving up the seat for  a second try.

Odds are extremely good, though, that this will be his last kick at the political cat.

Bide your time.  Brush up your pitch.  Get some experience under your belt.  Give it another go.

At least you aren’t recycling yourself at the school board.

Ya got four years, Kurtis: 

Use the time wisely.

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Zombieland

Fresh from his humiliating defeat at the hands of Doc O’Keefe, Ron Ellsworth is not content to be politically dead for a moment.

He is playing the political zombie card.

Ron is trying his hand at getting elected – again – to the Eastern School District board. 

He’s running in the zone that matches Ward Four in the City of St. John’s.

Lest you think this makes Ellsworth something special,  Ronnie isn’t alone in being a defeated candidate trying his hand at another elected office. 

Over in the board zone that matches Ward Two, voters can find Scott Fitzgerald.  He ran in said ward just a few weeks ago and was soundly defeated by incumbent Frank Galgay.

Meanwhile, in the zone matching city Ward Three there is George Joyce.  You may recall George ran in the last provincial election against Sheila Osborne in St. John’s West.

And, of course, the guy from Avalon West who is currently the board chair – Milton Peach – is a former Tory cabinet minister from the Peckford years.

Now for people who haven’t held elected office before, the school board can be a way of getting your name around and building up some contacts for a run at something else.

For Scott and even George, then,  there is some sense to this if they have future political ambitions.

But as for Ron, it seems a  bit odd to go backwards  - so to speak - like this.

After all, if he loses this one, where else can he go?

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When all they can offer is an E.A., Terra Nova version

Said it before.

Say it again.

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Yep. Something’s wrong.

Gasoline prices in Newfoundland and Labrador jumped by more than three cents per litre last Thursday.

Interestingly, the prices in this province have taken some wildly leaps up and down over the last while.  But they didn’t flip quite some much on average across the country.

Your humble e-scribbler has always maintained the government gas price-fixing scheme needs to be abolished.  Here’s more evidence.

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Cliffs to buy Wabush Mines

Cleveland-based Cliffs Resources is exercising its right of first refusal to acquire outstanding shares in Wabush Mines from U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittel, according to CBC.

The buy-out comes in response to a bid by Consolidated Thompson for the shares.

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Jerome’s Guarded Language

labradore does yet another commendable job on demographics and recent population increases.

He also dissects the former finance minister’s guarded language when attributing the in-migration trends to a cause.

Basically, Jerome doesn’t.

He talks instead about things that will happen manana.

Tomorrow is a very important concept in the language of Newfoundland politics.  it is when things happen.  Unlike American politics where happy days are here again, Newfoundland politics is a place where good things will come tomorrow. 

We must be ready for a better tomorrow.

Today is a chore to be endured until tomorrow.

Today there must be cuts in health care and so forth, but it will be all worth it, tomorrow.

There are lessons to be learned from here or there that will prepare us for the rapture coming tomorrow.

The Lower Churchill is on the way.  It gets here tomorrow just as it has been getting here tomorrow for 40 years now. Some people aren’t attuned to the local political argot and so get taken for a ride. It’s especially wonderful to read the post on selective perception from 2006 and note the issues that still dog the Lower Churchill three years after the most recent political resurrection of this golem.

Heck, in one sense, Tom Rideout can hardly be faulted for thinking one June that tomorrow was actually four months away.

And tomorrow as we all know is a day that never arrives anyway.  When it does get here it is actually “today”.

Yet for all that, people still wonder why Alice in Wonderland is a good metaphor for Newfoundland politics.

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66 at 6 in 2

Once it was a million dollars, but heck if there was only a half a million there are better things to do with it than give it to Rolls-Royce or any other company that could get along without it and still create jobs in Mount Pearl.

And heck, I wouldn’t be pumping cash into getting more women to have babies. 

I’d put the money into looking after the ones we have and are having. Your humble e-scribbler would support breast feeding in Newfoundland and Labrador.

It’s good, preventive health care.

It helps change attitudes toward women way better than being crude and beating the crap out of Randy Simms for something he didn’t say.

There is a campaign apparently, as this story from The Aurora notes.

"We are launching this campaign in Labrador-City Wabush to highlight the success this region has had in promoting breastfeeding," Ms. Murphy Goodridge said during the launch. "Labrador-Grenfell Health is the first regional health authority in the province to implement a comprehensive regional breastfeeding policy based on international standards. Breastfeeding rates throughout Labrador have always been higher than the rest of the province, so I am here to recognize Labrador-Grenfell Health employees and their community partners on their tremendous success and to encourage them to continue to strive to improve breastfeeding rates. Other areas of the province are looking to replicate your success."

According to the article the province-wide initiation rate is a mere 64%.  That’s up a mere 1.3% since 2006. The old article had an old link to the Breastfeeding Coalition:  here’s the new one.

And initiation isn’t the telling factor.  Three years ago only 11% of mothers who started breast-feeding were still breast-feeding six months later. Women aren’t sticking with it. The rate by 2008 was a mere 12%.  That’s basically no change.

Whatever the ponderous government agencies have been doing ain’t enough.  Maybe we need to free-up the people actually running the programs and get a lot of that health care bureaucracy and stodgie government-ish thinking get out of the way.

And lookit, nothing would work to start our children out healthier than to encourage breastfeeding.

The BFC has a campaign to boost breastfeeding but frankly a few posters ain’t gonna do the job.  The campaign needs to have a much higher profile.  For one thing, there could be a group of prominent local someones in addition to all the other stuff outlined in the BFC strategic plan to help reinforce the message about breastfeeding.

And rather than just talk about the need for supportive environments, people need to start initiating action.  There needs to be a concerted effort to make the workplace more tit-friendly, for example.  There needs to be a much wider effort to make more parts of society accepting of breastfeeding.

So there’s an idea.

Rather than kick Randy Simms in ‘nads for something someone misheard or deliberately misrepresented, maybe someone could have done something positive like asked him about the City of Mount Pearl’s breast-feeding policy. 

Are women councillors who are breastfeeding their children able to do so during a council meeting or a committee meeting? 

What about the provincial government?

Was Charlene Johnson able to get her little one to latch on while Danny was in full rant around the cabinet table?   Not ideal for the digestion, admittedly, but still,  you get the point.

And what was all that with her having to get back to work a mere month after giving birth supposedly – and the emphasis is on supposedly – because there was no maternity leave policy in the House of Assembly?

Pish-posh.

Talk about your unfriendly work environment for women.  Now I may have missed it but I don’t recall anyone from PACSW championing that cause at that time.  There’s one for the government appointed pseudo-bureaucrats to tackle.

But there’s an example of simple issue that directly affects the ability of women to get involved and/or stay involved in many more aspects of life outside the family once they start having children.

Simple.

Practical.

Effective.

And everyone wins in so many ways.

People in Newfoundland and Labrador need to get involved in an effort to dramatically increase the breastfeeding rates in this province.

What’s been going on already is great but it isn’t enough.  Clearly.  Not enough.

So on this thanksgiving weekend, let’s applaud the efforts of the provincial Breastfeeding Coalition.  Let’s applaud Labrador West with the highest initiation rate – 75% – in the whole province.

But let’s recognise that that 75% is still 15% below the national average.

And we need to get some kind of “66 at 6 in 2” drive going to ensure that  within two years, we have 66% of mothers in the province still breastfeeding their infants six months after giving birth.

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Some ideas for 66 at 6 in 2

-  A better website.  It’s do-able and younger families are more likely to use the Internet for information.  The current one is buried away and it doesn’t have the kind of simple stuff you’ll find elsewhere.  A good example of a BF supportive site:  the US government one.  There are lots of others.

-  Paul Daly’s shot is great but there is a need to use a much more aggressive approach with messages tailored to different audiences.  And for mercy sakes don’t post the poster as a pdf.   You can get some ideas from this approach mapped out by students in the UK.

-  Nothing work better at changing attitudes and behaviour than making it clear that the dominant attitude has shifted.  People openly supporting breastfeeding – highlighted by some prominent locals – would start the ball rolling.

-  And just do it.  Nothing will work better than having the women who are breastfeeding just doing it.

Blooms and roses

News reports about a climb in the number of jobs across the country buried a key aspect of the story, as in this example from the Globe.

But there was a catch. Much of the private sector has yet to start hiring again. The job growth was due to 36,000 positions added in the public sector, while the private sector shed 17,100 jobs, in sectors such as transportation, professional services and accommodation. Private sector employment has dropped 3.9 per cent over the past year.

That was paragraph four, long after the stuff about huge gains and ones bigger than expected.

Now this is a rather interesting revelation in light of economic developments in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You see the boom on the northeast Avalon isn’t being fuelled by the offshore.  It’s coming entirely from massive increases in public sector hiring, public sector wage increases and a huge jump in public sector spending.

The most recent round of ‘stimulus’ spending for capital works is just more cash in on top of the gigantic increases in public spending over the past four years. That would be the “unsustainable” ones for those who missed the drama of the past few weeks.

Incidentally, the guy who revelled in boosting spending beyond the levels that the economy could support is back in charge of the cash box.  He proudly noted for listeners of one local call-in show that the province currently outspends Alberta on a per person basis just as it has done for most of the past decade and a half.

Yet for all that, the province just shed 4200 full-time jobs between August and September 2009 and there are 3100 fewer full-times jobs this September compared to last.

All this should lead people to be a bit cautious about predicting the end of the recession and the quick return to happier times. 

Here in this province, the current provincial economy is sustained by huge levels of public sector spending.  But that just isn’t going to work given the anticipated drop in oil production over the next four years.  Even if the global economy rebounds, crude oil prices aren’t likely to hit levels double and triple what they are today:  that’s the sort of prices the provincial government would need to keep up its current spending.

No one should be surprised, therefore, that the premier and his new health minister – the guy who used to be finance minister – just headed out to a by-election and pulled a fast one on the locals.

Come help us figure out cuts to the building cost, they said, so you can keep lab and x-ray services.  What they didn’t point out is that the savings needed are not the $200,000 in annual operating costs but the millions in construction costs.

In Lewisporte, for example, estimated costs for the new combination seniors home and acute care clinic skyrocketed from $22 million to $42 million before they even got to thinking about putting the first shovel in the ground.  In order to contain costs, government scrapped the acute care bit for a saving of $10 million.

But do the math. 

In order to restore the acute care centre and its anticipated cost of $10 million, the locals in Lewisporte will have to cut out one third of the beds – at least – in the new chronic care centre in order to get laboratory and x-ray service back.

So where are those old people supposed to go?

That’s a very good question.

Too bad the current administration doesn’t have an answer even though the problem and a viable solution have been available  - but ignored - for over a decade.

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Darrell Dexter: sucker

From the Chronicle-Herald:

Premier Darrell Dexter had a private meeting Monday with the president of Newfoundland’s energy corporation in an attempt to have electricity from the Lower Churchill Falls hydro project go through Nova Scotia.

Dexter apparently thinks the project is going somewhere and that there is any intention to run a power line through Nova Scotia.

Danny Williams hasn’t even been able to convince Hydro-Quebec to take an ownership stake in the project currently valued – not at $6 billion as claimed by the Herald – but at more like $10 billion. Heck, he even got bitched slapped into an emergency session of the legislature after his legal drafters tried a childish bit of word-play to screw with the 1961 Churchill Falls lease.

On top of that, the province’s finances are apparently so tight they have to cut health care despite having billions flowing in oil revenues. 

There are no – that’s right:  no – customers for the project.  A potential deal with Rhode Island has been buggered up. And that’s something the Premier once described as being “very,very” crucial to the project.

The land claims deal vital to getting the project going is lost in the wilderness.

The timetable on the project has been pushed back repeatedly and there are even rumours swirling now the thing will be sent back for a major environmental overall because the first set of environmental documents submitted to the federal assessment process were grossly deficient.

And, most amazingly of all given Dexter’s efforts to get in at the front end, there just are no plans whatsoever to run a power line from Labrador anywhere near Nova Scotia. 

If the Nova Scotians is fronting any money for this thing or even thinking of dropping cash on the Lower Churchill, he is being snookered, big time.

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Coming soon: the book they tried to suppress

When you care enough to send the very best

As David Pugliese notes, the Americans are speeding up work on the Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

Basically, it’s a honking great non-nuclear bomb that buries itself in the ground before exploding.

It’s purpose to reach down to the big, underground concrete shelters of the kind you might find in places like Iran or North Korea.

Let’s just say that it would f*ck up the day of the people inside.

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coughsoundsfamiliarcough

Jeff Simpson sayeth:

In Alberta, swimming in oil and natural-gas revenues, the Conservatives after Peter Lougheed (an old-style conservative) put next to nothing into the Heritage Fund, spent like drunken sailors (as conservatives often do, rhetoric notwithstanding), handed out tax rebates and left the province on its fiscal knees when commodity prices fell.

Boy.

That sounds mighty familiar.

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The Yiddish of Newfoundland Politics: the chutzpah of political hackery

Tory MHA Ed Buckingham reads a prepared talking point on CBC Radio praising Jerome Kennedy and attacking – of all people – the politically deceased John Efford for his comments about recent events in the province.

And Buckingham calls Efford a political hack?

That’s chutzpah.

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