The real story of the Ottawa office #nlpoli

Nobody’s been in the job since since January 2010.

There’s no evidence that the two people who held the job actually did anything substantive during the time from 2004 to 2010 that someone held down the position known derisively as the Ambassador or – as your humble e-scribbler preferred – the Premier’s Personal Envoy to Hy’s.

And yet it still took Premier Kathy Dunderdale a full year and then some of her own term as Premier, plus the experience of interviewing a few potential replacements to realise what Premiers before Williams knew:  the whole thing was a foolish waste of time.

Lord sufferin’ dynamite, Old Man.

That is absolutely stunning.

And it tells you so much about how two successive Premiers and their administrations actually work.

They led with their strong suit:  the hyper-torqued official announcement that was long on the bullshit and short on the truth.  As a result, most of the conventional media reports were full of it, too.  Take the Ceeb’s account as an example of the type.

As some media accounts of the Premier’s scrum with reporters make it sound, Dunderdale has found a new way of doing things, what with ministers, deputy ministers and other officials talking to their federal counterparts.  And with communications better now that Kath and Steve are on the same wavelength, the Ottawa office is just not needed anymore.

No sir.  There’s a new energy in town and, by gosh, the release assures us all “it made sense to have our Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs Secretariat assume responsibility, over the long term, for the functions that would have been carried out through the Ottawa office.”

Whatever functions the office did perform – there were no people in it, evidently – they were such that over a six year period, the big job in the office sat vacant for about half the time.  So whatever the crowd in Intergovernmental Affairs are taking on, odds are it wasn’t much.  They will just carry doing what they have done since the 1970s:  deal with their federal and provincial counterparts on a variety of issues.

So you caught that, right?

Since the 1970s, IGA has been doing all the things people claim this personal envoy job did. And they kept doing it all the way through the time this office existed, whether someone worked in it or not.

Now while your humble e-scribbler can say this based on his own knowledge of the provincial government and from seven years in the Premier’s Office, you really don’t have to go by that alone.

Consider the version of events by no less a person than Bill Rowe, the first personal envoy to Hy’s,  Rhodes Scholar, radio host, writer and secret police report leaker extraordinaire.  His insider’s account of things he was outside the room for made it plain Rowe did nothing while he was there.

There is no mention in the book’s of anything Rowe actually accomplished.  Well, aside from wait around for a cell phone and a laptop and arrange to have his used snow tires shipped up to him from Sin Jawns.  Like there was no place up there to buy new ones. 

Now Rowe sold a lot of those books.  Mainlanders are especially gullible, it turns out.  Hopefully, the guy made a few bucks of the book.  But if he only cleared a twonie, then his time in Ottawa at taxpayers’ expense was infinitely more productive for Rowe than it was for the people who footed the bill for his sojourn on the Rideau.

Our man in a Blue Line cab – Rowe’s eventual successor - did no better, although he stayed longer. Danny Williams acknowledged as much when Fitz packed it in at the end of his one and only contract.  Williams found him a nice new job back home.  Williams insisted the office in Ottawa would remain open, to be filled eventually with some other incumbent.

Kathy Dunderdale said the same thing after Danny handed over the Premier’s Office to her. Last June,

“The office serves a great purpose when it’s functioning the way that it should,” she told a Telegram editorial board [last] Wednesday. “And it’s important to me that we maintain that.”

Nothing changed in the intervening six months or so, except Dunderdale’s talking points. The bottom line remains now as it has since Danny Williams decided to give his old alum chum a nice perk;  the job was a total waste of public money.  Public servants in this province and cabinet ministers never stopped doing the work they and their predecessors have done.

The fact that it took the Tories two years to shut the office down and that it took Kathy Dunderdale a full year to arrive at an incredibly simple  - and glaringly obvious – conclusion tells you this is a government that consistently has a hard time getting things done.

In other words, not a thing has changed since the serial government took office.

- srbp -

A room with a view of the pork barrel

The provincial ambassador’s office in Ottawa costs the better part of a half million a year to run, hasn’t had an ambassador in it for the better part of the past two years and so Premier Kathy Dunderdale will keep it open because it is so effective.

The office serves a great purpose when it’s functioning the way that it should,” she told a Telegram editorial board [last] Wednesday. “And it’s important to me that we maintain that.”

The thing is the office hasn’t served any purpose except to demonstrate how completely useless it is or how crap Premier’s have been in finding people to occupy the sinecure.

The first incumbent -  former Liberal cabinet minister, former wannabe Conservative candidate, former Liberal candidate and soon-to-be-former radio talk show host Bill Rowe – stayed in the job for about half a year and accomplished exactly squat before packing it in and coming back home.

Rowe – who left politics in the late 1970s after a political scandal about leaked police reports – wrote about his complete waste of tax money in Ottawa in a book that became a national best seller last year.  The book is a litany of slapstick moments like making taxpayer’s foot the bill for shipping his used snow-tires to the nation’s capital or his inability to get Danny Williams’ political and public service bureaucracy to cough up a Blackberry and a laptop for weeks on end.

Your humble e-scribbler has described the book as an insider’s account of events the author wasn’t inside the room for.

As Rowe documents, Danny Williams offered Rowe a key position in the new administration before the 2003 general election. Rowe stayed in his job on-air during the election and took up his ambassadorial appointment as Williams’ personal representative to Hy’s early in 2004.

The second incumbent  - former Memorial University professor John Fitzgerald  - reportedly spent most of his time not meeting with federal officials, that is when he wasn’t hanging out in the Commons visitors gallery.  His tenure in Ottawa coincided with Danny' Williams’ endless feuds with Ottawa for something or other and after a certain point he reportedly had a hard time getting in to see anyone. Regular readers will recall him as Our Man in a Blue Line Cab.

Fitzgerald quietly left Ottawa when his contract ended.  Williams gave him another contract in St. John’s in the classic patronage holding pen of the protocol office.  His official title is “special advisor.”

Before Bill Rowe, the provincial government never maintained an office in Ottawa.  The job of dealing with the federal government fell to officials and ministers, including the Premier.  And more often than not over the past 30 years there has been an office called Intergovernmental Affairs intended to deal specifically with – you guessed it – relations between and among governments in Canada.

So there you have it.  The office has been vacant for more time than it’s been filled, a point labradore makes succinctly.  And when it has been occupied, the incumbents apparently accomplished nothing.

And yet the current Premier wants to keep spending money on an office that has never worked because it is great when it works.

Says more about Kathy Dunderdale’s judgement than anything else, apparently.

- srbp -

With friends like that…

Around these parts, the former Ambassador to Disneyland on the Rideau, the successor to the Premier’s Personal Envoy to Hy’s has been know as Our Man in a Blue Line Cab.

That goes back to an old comment by a former minister who said that whenever he visited Ottawa, the provincial representative – Dr. John Fitzgerald – would come to the airport and pick him up and show him around to his various meetings.

Poof!

A name is born.

What started out as a humorous jab turns out to have some disquieting  accuracy in it.  During at least one year on the job, the good doctor took a few cab rides back and forth from the office and his home, 72 such rides if the Opposition has its numbers correct, and then expensed them to the taxpayers:

Mr. Speaker, we requested travel claims for the former Ottawa representative through FOI and we were charged significant fees; however, we did pay for his 2007 travel claims to get a glimpse of his activities. As outlined in the documents, the former Ambassador charged the people of this Province seventy-two taxi trips from his private residence to work. There is nothing in his employment contact that permits such claims and no other public servant is permitted to claim travel to and from work each day.

Now while that is bad enough, Our Man didn’t exactly get what one would call a truly ringing endorsement from the Old Man.  Opposition House leader Kelvin parsons calls Fitzgerald Dr. Feelgood, going back to the  whole cabinet minister driver thing but here’s how the Premier replied to one question:

I had conversations in Ottawa whereby people in Ottawa on the ground spoke extremely – very, very highly of Dr. FitzGerald, who is referred to as Dr. Feelgood by the Opposition. I refer to him as Dr. Sealgood because of all the fantastic work he has done with regard to promoting the sealing industry in Ottawa.

Dr. Sealgood?

Holy crap, what a lame-assed remark.

Poor old Fitzie deserves way better than that, especially if, as the Premier claims, the fellow was doing more than hanging out in the gallery at the House of Commons, being ignored at the Prime Minister’s Office or when he wasn’t scarfing down the canapés at this reception or that.

After all that time in Ottawa and the best thing Danny could do is connect Fitz to the whole seals are better than billions in trade nonsense last year?

There’ll be no Latin words and phrases on facebook from this corner.

No references to Machiavelli.

Because if that’s the very best that the Premier can come up with to defend his loyal advisor, then all you can say is gotterdammerung.

-srbp-

The Screaming of the Banshees

This week Newfoundlanders and Labradorians found themselves embroiled in yet another political psychodrama in the endless series of psychodramas that are Newfoundland politics these days.

The members of the Fan Club -  the Cult of Personality - deployed, en masse, over the past couple of days all screeching the same tune of self-righteous indignation at that favourite target of the political right, the news media.

They started on Day One with a strike at Ramona Deering and John Soper in CBC radio’s lunchtime phone-in show.  Now there are two things to note here.  First of all, the show has ratings which – to be truthful – are nothing to write home about. This is not an opinion-driver of a show by any stretch.

The usual sort of call-in fare would be the show on Tuesday, the one pre-empted by the Premier’s health crisis.  It was about the challenges and choices for women in changing their name after they marry.  Not an insignificant topic, but not exactly one to raise the blood-pressure either or suddenly cause an outbreak of the vapours in Botwood.

Second of all, the topic for the show gave callers a chance to express publicly their concern for the Premier's health.

And do that they did.  Caller One.  Then Caller Two  - the now well-known Minnie, she of her own considerable medical burden and ardent admirer of the Premier - and then Three and then Four.  All as respectful and as courteous as the two hosts, both of whom – incidentally – are well known for their professional and sedate demeanour.

And then the fan-blades started spitting the crap.

Caller after caller and e-mailers to boot all lambasting the Ceeb for having the gall to invade the premier’s privacy by discussing the fact he had a health care problem in the first place.  What other people said didn’t matter;  these people were angry that “it” was being discussed at all.  They all used similar words and generally expressed similar sentiments in such a way that made it unmistakeable that every single one of them had been organized into some sort of vox putz.

One thought there should censorship of everything anyway. Another said  – with absolutely no sense of irony  - that there was too much focus on personality these days.  What should be reported was somewhere between nothing and what we see today.  Do not merely accept this characterisation of the show.  Listen for yourself.

What made the calls after Number Four stand out is that they all said the same thing, in so many words, and, what they said bore no resemblance in any way to what had actually been said by anyone else.

Incidentally, the only thing more amazing than the heaps of scorn these planted callers piled on the media in general is that so many people at the Ceeb still don’t seem to realise they were apparently the victims of a concerted attack.

The meek at the Ceeb aren’t the only ones to inherit a biblical whirlwind of vengeance from the local personality cultists.

Charter Fan Club member and alleged positive thinker Dave Rudofsky made at least one call  - to the drive-time show – to spew an amazing lot of negativity in curiously familiar words about something heard on the Morning Show from former CBC television producer Bob Wakeham.  Unconfirmed reports, by the by, have it that Wakeham’s temerity in mentioning a certain subject right up at the top of the cult’s extensive AbsolutVerboteneliste prompted a torrent of bile aimed solely at him via the Mother Corp’s local e-mail and telephones.

So intense is the anger among the Fanboys and Fangirls that even The Voice of The Cabinet Minister has been getting a heaping of orchestrated outrage and concern.  In the afternoon slot at the semi-official government information dispensary, Our Man in a Blue Line Cab: The Original Series found other things to talk about so  for the most part Lord Haw Haw of Hy’s has been relatively unscathed.

Not so Randy Simms.

Simms has been subjected to the barrage e-mails and telephone calls intended  - as with all the calls, e-mails and comments to and about local media – to bully him into silence.  The whole thing got so intense so quickly that by the end of the Wednesday show, Simms politely told the lot of them to shag off and just stop listening.

The most startling expression of the cultish line came bright and early the next day from none other than the guy who runs The Voice.  Broadcaster John Steele – also a cabinet appointee to look after those precious government oil stakes, by the way - shat on broadcasters for reporting stuff so that other people might know it.

Simms - a Williams target of old - handled him deftly and with undeserved restraint.  Simms posed a few simple questions to his boss which left Steele rather obviously stuck for an intelligent response.  He fell back on the talking points.

Now if the Premier and his associates genuinely didn’t want any attention drawn to his personal health problems, then they went about handling this in a way that seemed calculated to generate the maximum amount of attention and controversy. A number of news media editorials and comments – including ones from Simms – have noted this.

On the other hand, if they wanted to generate international media attention for some unfathomable and insane reason, then the way they handled this only guaranteed the story rapidly became a firestorm over which the people at the centre had no influence whatsoever. That is simply the way the world is these days;  to decry it is to waste energy complaining that dogs bark or that the sky is blue.

But if either secrecy or adoration was the objective, the media line fixed on Day One wouldn’t be to send out any and all Blue Dart Irregulars to pummel anyone who mentioned heart or surgery in a public forum.

Go back to that CBC Cross Talk and you can see exactly the point:  a respectful show in which the first four callers expressed nothing but concern for the Premier’s health followed by a string of pompous negativity from a bunch of planted callers.

Simply put, the two things don’t fit together at all.

What the people of Newfoundland and Labrador have seen the past few days, though, is not the product of any deep thoughts.  There are no complex plans at work.  There is nothing more substantive than what the legion of fanboys have consistently brought to politics over the past decade or so.

What there has been is what last fall’s political crisis brought:  fear and insecurity.

There was plenty to be jittery about.

Most obviously, someone with some pretty good inside information opted to bust the whole thing wide open.

On the face of it, it seems that those in the know hoped to scoot the Premier out of the country for one of his now legendary holidays this time of year.  If it had worked, the job would have been done and no one would have been any the wiser.

But that isn’t what happened.

First there was the leak to NTV – and not CBC – about the trip and the surgery in the first place.  Then a couple of days later, there was the leak about the date of the Premier’s surgery.

Bits and pieces of a story are now floating all over town but the sources are never traceable.  Make no mistake though:  the stories have – at their heart – some kernel of truth, some nub of authenticity which suggests that someone in the know is very consciously dripping information out.

What makes that all the more striking is that this was a story access to which was very tightly controlled.  
Even the provincial Conservative caucus didn’t hear about it until the day after the story hit the news.

Take a look at Kathy Dunderdale on Tuesday and you can see pure stress. The panicked look on the deputy premier’s face during the briefing told you the scrum was not not part of any plan. Gone was her usual – and always unjustified -  smug demeanour,  replaced by something that spoke of tension.  Her angst wasn’t caused by the nature of the news she was discussing. Something else was clearly bothering her as she delivered an ersatz Plan B to replace the Plan A that someone had blown to smithereens the night before.

The aggressiveness and bullying of the cult telegraphs their fear.  It’s like their reaction to the political turmoil last fall.

Some wag said this week that the Tory caucus Tuesday morning was  - like all caucuses faced with such news - likely made up of two crowds.  There were the rabbits huddled in the corner, shivering.  Those are the ones who took to the airwaves and helped bring out the other fanboys.

And there were others looking to capitalize on things if not now, then down the road a ways.

Like say the one(s) who spilled the beans to NTV.

Likely they can see how times are changing across the province, how things are just a wee bit closer to normal, how the same old schtick just doesn’t work any more.

They can hear that the tune from the cult now sounds less and less like hymns of praise and glory and more and more like keening.

Even the banshees themselves know  - in the dark places in their hearts where they are afraid to go - they know what their screeching means.

-srbp-

Dunderdale blunders again: did NALCOR lobbyists give wrong funding figures to fed’s watchdog?

Information provided on the federal lobbyist registry about lobbyists hired by the provincial energy corporation is wrong to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Plus it is also for something other than what the lobbyists are registered to lobby about.

That’s according to Kathy Dunderdale, the province’s natural resources minister.  Presumably, the information was supplied to the federal registry by the lobbyists when they registered.

The province’s natural resources minister claims that the figure $960,000 listed on a federal lobbyist registry entry as cash received by the client for government funds isn’t for fees paid to the lobbyists. 

Dunderdale issued a news release today to refute opposition claims that the provincial energy corporation was dropping almost a million bucks a year on lobbyists while at the same time the provincial government was dropping another bundle to pay for Our Man in a Blue Line Cab who is supposed to be the province’s point man for all things in Ottawa.

Dunderdale says the figure on the federal lobbyist registry was:

…funding received by Nalcor from the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for three specific projects related to the Northern Strategic Plan, a rate subsidy for isolated and remote communities powered by diesel, and energy-related studies for the Department of Natural Resources – all unrelated to Summa. The fact that this was not a payment to Summa was evident from the website of the Office of Commissioner of Lobbying, but was misreported by the Opposition.

Okay. 

So that’s exactly what your humble e-scribbler did.

Right off, here’s one entry for the lobbying firm and here’s a picture of the section of the website where the figures are presented.

The same information is the same as the entry for another lobbyist from the same firm currently working the same file.  Here’s the bottom of the second lobbyist entry which -  incidentally -  is identical to the first:

The information on that financial line is supposed to be government funding received by the client, in this case NALCOR Energy.  You can confirm that by checking the guide provided by the lobbyist registry:

• Source and amount of any government funding provided to the client, as well as information indicating if the client is expecting to receive public funding; and…

Now if Kathy Dunderdale is right, that figure of $960,000 is related to something other than the Lower Churchill and it also isn’t related to the lobbying firm, Summa Strategies.

So why is it there?

Really good question.

Unfortunately, Dunderdale didn’t answer it in her news release.

If that wasn’t bad enough,  the lobbyist entry is about the Lower Churchill and the client is identified as NALCOR Energy, the holding company that includes all the provincial government’s energy holdings.

Under those circumstances, the entry should include  - at the very least - the hundreds of millions paid in the past two years by the provincial government to purchase oil stakes and other money transferred from the provincial government to fatten NALCOR up financially.

Dunderdale didn’t offer any explanation of that in her news release either.

This wouldn’t be the first time Kathy Dunderdale blundered badly on a matter within her portfolio.

In 2006 Dunderdale  was embroiled in controversy over a patronage appointee who violated the province’s public tender act. Dunderdale made repeated statements about the issue some of which contradicted other statements.  in the end, the government was forced to close the legislature early to avoid further embarrassment.

In 2008, Dunderdale said the provincial government was considering a law suit against Quebec and Ottawa over the 1969 Churchill Falls contract.  She later claimed she “misspoke”, a line she maintains to this date despite evidence the government has been considering some form of legal ploy on the contract for some time.

In September, 2009, Dunderdale gave wrong information about the failure of talks with Rhode Island on a potential sale of Lower Churchill power. She said “that they did not have the capacity to negotiate a long-term power purchase agreement with Nalcor on behalf of the Province. Nor were they able, in their Legislature, to do the regulatory changes that were required in order to wheel electricity into the state.”

According to the Rhode Island governor’s office:

As far as we can determine, there is no legislative hold up here in Rhode Island, it is more of a question of cost.  While the power generation is inexpensive, the cost of transmission adds to the final price. The possibility of purchasing power is still alive….

The salvation for Dunderdale in this case is that she scored a minor victory on what the cash was really about.

Unfortunately Dunderdale put the government’s lobbyists in an even deeper spot over the amount they apparently did report to the federal lobbyist registry.

Ouch!

-srbp-

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.

-srbp-

Trade deals and petards

The premier’s excuses for not participating in talks on a European trade deal just get more bizarre as time goes by.

First there was the whole idea that Stephen Harper can’t be trusted to look after Newfoundland and Labrador’s interests so the best solution – according to Danny Williams’ logic – is to let Stephen Harper look after Newfoundland and Labrador’s interests.

Then there was the whole idea of a side deal which, of course is impossible constitutionally, not to mention practically.  As a European Union spokesperson put it:

"The Government of Canada is the only government with the authority to conclude international treaties under the Canadian constitution, so our interlocutor and negotiating partner will be the government of Canada,"…

The spokesperson indicated she’d apparently met with Our man in a Blue Line Cab to talk about seals.

But apparently, nothing else.

Then there was the whole go-it-alone thing, which consisted of nothing more grand than sending Tom Hedderson off to talk to a few ambassadors in a hastily arranged series of meetings on seals.

Now there’s this little gem, from Question period in the House of Assembly on Monday:

So there are other bigger issues. There is also the whole issue of the Atlantic Accord and what is going to happen when European countries do business in Newfoundland and Labrador.

What issue is he talking about? 

Or more accurately, which Atlantic Accord?

The 2005 one – the only one he usually talks about – doesn’t have anything to do with Europeans or trade.

The 1985 one – the real one – establishes a local preference policy for Newfoundland and Labrador companies doing business offshore.  The only way to get rid of that would be for the federal and provincial governments to agree to eliminate it.  That’s because the deal can’t be amended unilaterally.

Well, it isn’t supposed to be amended unilaterally.

Under section 60 of the 1985 Accord, neither party could amend the enabling legislation unilaterally. Until 2007, no one thought they might.  Then Stephen Harper amended the offset provisions in a rather sneaky way.

But the really odd thing is that the provincial government did not raise a single objection  - beyond some generalised gum-flapping about Equalization - to the amendment of the 1985 deal. 

Not a one.

No letters of protest.

Nada.

To the contrary, when they opted for O’Brien 50 this past winter – and pocketed  Equalization cash in the process – they accepted the federal Conservative’s 2007 amendment as part of the deal.  In fact, as the premier has indicated recently, the provincial government decided at least as long ago as early 2008 to flip to O’Brien/50 in early 2009 in hopes of pocketing Equalization cash. Heck, they might have even signalled that privately at the time to the federal government.

So maybe the real reason the Premier is in a snit is because he’s worried that through all of this he’ll just be hoist by his own clever Equalization petard.  Rather than see the local preference rules of the 1985 deal preserved to the benefit of local companies, we’ll see them disappear.

That would go a long way to explaining the sudden about face the provincial government did on this deal back in February.  Maybe the feds made it clear that the local preference provisions of the 1985 deal were up for consideration and one of the things the feds could throw back in the Premier’s face was his own acceptance of the unilateral changes to the 1985 Atlantic Accord.  You can almost imagine the conversation:  “Danny, it doesn’t matter if you show up or not.  We can change the thing by ourselves if we have to – you just told us we could when you accepted the changes from 2007.”

Still, though, it doesn’t explain why he would sit on the sidelines rather than become personally involved.  After all, as he told the legislature: :[w]e are going to do what we have to do here to protect the interests of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and I could not care less what the rest of them do, I have to be quite honest with you.”

Well, to be quite honest with you, if the provincial government was really hell-bent on protecting Newfoundland and Labrador interests, the place to do that is at the table, inside the Canadian negotiating team.

Seal-bashing just doesn’t seem like a reason enough to turn down the invitation to sit on the team.  And like we’ve said before, if custodial management and shrimp tariffs are so important – and they are – the place to deal with those is at the negotiating table.

And look, if you really want to get a sense of how much is at stake for the province just look at what the Premier said himself in the legislature:

There are also a lot of very big, multinational, European companies that want to do business in Newfoundland and Labrador, because of our minerals, because of our oil and gas, because of our fishery, and we have to take the abuse from these hypocrites basically saying that we act in an inhumane and a barbarian manner, when they chase bulls through the streets in Spain, and matadors pierce bulls in a Roman type atmosphere, and we are out trying to earn a living.

So  - if we try and follow the Premier’s own logic – a vote by the European parliament that affects maybe a few million dollars that comes to the province from seal-bashing is way more important than billions in new economic development throughout Newfoundland and Labrador that would come from participating in the trade deal negotiations.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Not.

-srbp-

Fitz can give him some pointers

Former Connie/Tory member of parliament Bill Casey is Nova Scotia’s new ambassador to Hy’s.

Maybe our own Man in a Blue Line Cab can give him some pointers what with that whole embassy thing having proven to be so monumentally effective for Newfoundland and Labrador.

-srbp-

Freedom from Information: Nat Res Two-fer Thursday

The province’s natural resources department had rough day Thursday when it came to answering straight questions with straight answers.

As Dunderdale herself might say, the openness “piece” was missing, “big time.”

First, there was the bizarro refusal by a department spokesperson to discuss anything to do with the expropriation compensation process because there was an expropriation compensation process.

Then the Telegram had more on the recent trip by natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale to Ottawa.  Readers will recall the minister – also the deputy minister – turned up in the gallery of the House of Commons this week.  She got a courtesy acknowledgement from the Speaker.

There’d been no public release that she would be in Ottawa so her sudden appearance raised a few eyebrows.

Dunderdale was attending a meeting of federal and provincial ministers responsible for agriculture. She ducked out of the obligatory team photo at the end claiming she had other meetings.

She did manage to find time to scoot to the Commons though.

Other than that, all her department spokesperson would say is that she “took the opportunity to meet with a number of federal ministers who were available while she was there on issues pertaining to Newfoundland and Labrador and that is the extent of it. She is not commenting further."

No further comment.

It’s becoming the departmental mantra.

Turns out – according to the Telegram’s Rob Antle – that Dunderdale met with federal natural resources minister Lisa Raitt and the province’s representative in the federal cabinet, Peter Mackay.

MacKay's communications director, Dan Dugas, confirmed that MacKay and Dunderdale discussed a variety of issues, including unemployment in central Newfoundland. The AbitibiBowater paper mill in Grand Falls-Windsor is expected to shutter within days, throwing hundreds out of work.

That “shuttering” turned out to be today, incidentally.

As the Telegram notes, Dunderdale’s mission to Ottawa comes shortly after the Premier’s latest Equalization tirade. Maybe they kept her trip quiet in order  to maintain the appearance that things are still tense between the feds and the province.  Maybe they kept their lips zipped at natural resources to avoid building up any expectations that Dunderdale might find some way to ease the tensions or even come up with the missing $400 million from the federal budget Dunderdale’s boss had been banking on.

All in all, the whole thing is a wee bit odd.

At least Dunderdale and her handlers learned a lesson.  When in Ottawa don’t take the minister to hang out in the visitor’s gallery of the Commons. 

Leave that job to the Premier’s personal emissary, a.k.a. Our Man in a Blue Line cab.

-srbp-

Churchill Falls: facts versus stuff that isn't factual

[revised 05 Sept 09]

Justice minister Jerome Kennedy referred to it.

Bill Rowe - former Smallwood era cabinet minister, the first Man in a Blue Line Cab and current talk show host at voice of the cabinet minister - tossed out the supposed refusal by the Government of Canada in the 1960s to grant poor, beleaguered Newfoundland a power corridor through Quebec back in the 1960s. In a conversation with some caller from Ontario, Rowe used the corridor story as an example of one of the Grievances Against Ottawa.

They are factual or based on facts, Rowe insisted, or words to that effect.

Well, there are facts. That is things which have been established to be true and accurate based on research and evidence.

And then there is stuff that isn't factual.

Like the myth of the power corridor and the refusal.

The only - that's right the only - publicly available account of the issue available appears to be a research paper by Jason Churchill for the Vic Young Royal Commission several years ago. Odds are good most of the people running around telling the facts haven't read Churchill's account, which is, it should be noted, based on considerable research.

Churchill argues that "the Quebec negotiators were aided by successive federal governments that both actively and passively failed to enact legislative measures which would have granted Newfoundland and Labrador unfettered access to the North American energy markets."

In making that statement, though, Churchill notes that at the time - chiefly 1964-1966 - the Government of Canada lacked any coherent national electricity policy. As such it is difficult to lay blame or responsibility for subsequent events solely at the feet of the federal government. Incidentally, Churchill's source on the lack of a coherent policy is no less an authority than John Crosbie saying exactly that.

The Diefenbaker administration proposed a national electricity grid in 1962. Quebec - and Newfoundland - opposed the idea as being solely within the sphere of provincial sovereignty under the constitution.

For his part - as Churchill notes - Smallwood preferred to develop Churchill Falls through the privately-owned BRINCO and quite evidently with Quebec as the partner. Smallwood wasn't prepared to have the federal government take control of a provincial area of responsibility.

However, "[f]ormer provincial and federal cabinet minister John Crosbie stated that when Smallwood rejected Levesque’s nationalisation offer, 'a golden opportunity disappeared'. The argument being that had the project been jointly developed, the subsequent profits would have also been shared equitably [between Newfoundland and Quebec]."

At this point in the narrative, though it is worth quoting Churchill's account in it's entirety. His version is succinct even though the issues are complex. Incidentally, the numbers in the text refer to footnotes in the original.

In the summer of 1965, the previous question of nationalisation of BRINCO was solved for Levesque by the federal government. Despite Smallwood’s refusal to nationalize BRINCO, a cheaper mill rate was secured for Hydro-Quebec when the Public Utilities Income [Tax Transfer] Act was changed. There was a 50 per cent to 95 per cent increase in the transfer to the provinces of taxes collected from utility companies. Newfoundland and Labrador passed the additional savings on to BRINCO which consequently allowed the Corporation to sell electricity to Hydro-Quebec at a reduced price.(31)

This federal action did not improve Newfoundland’s disadvantaged bargaining position. In 1966, a frustrated Smallwood lashed out and threatened to bypass the Quebec government and appeal directly to Prime Minister Lester Pearson to declare the Churchill Falls project to be in the national interest. Smallwood drafted a letter for the Prime Minister formally requesting:

the Government of Canada to invoke Paragraph (c) of Clause 10 of Section 92 of the British North America Act. If the Government of Canada would proceed forthwith to build a transmission line from Churchill Falls to a point where it would tie in with power grids in Eastern Canada it would ensure an immediate start on the construction of the Churchill Falls power project itself. In that case the power would be in production and available to consumers in Canada in 1971. (32)

This declaration would have enabled the federal government to transcend provincial jurisdiction.(33) Theoretically, this would have allowed for the construction of transmission lines through Quebec and directly to the markets [elsewhere] in Canada and the New England states. However, based on available evidence, it does not appear that the request was ever formally presented.

Former BRINCO President, Henry Borden, claimed that he and associates convinced Smallwood to defer making the request until news of Quebec’s response to a proposal was received. The positive response from Quebec in October 1966 made Smallwood’s request irrelevant. Another explanation given by former Smallwood cabinet minister and long-time friend, Frederick Rowe, argued that fears of Quebec nationalist terrorism was enough to dissuade Smallwood from proceeding. (34)

Of the various explanations presented, the one most relevant to the potential role of the federal government was related by Newfoundland and Labrador lawyer, Cabot Martin, who had interviewed Smallwood. Martin was told the Premier met Pearson personally to discuss the option but was rejected before he could formally present the request. Smallwood stated:

Mr. Pearson said, ‘Joe, I know why you are here and if you ask me I’ll have to say yes, otherwise we would not really be a country. But I’m asking you not to ask me because we will not be able to keep the towers up.’ Joey paused, then looked at me as if to ask ‘What would you have done?’ and said ‘So I didn’t ask him.’35

There are two major implications of the stories related above. The first is that Newfoundland’s interest was set-aside in the name of national unity and due to fears of nationalist violence in Quebec. If this is so, subsequent ramifications of the eventual 1969 contract illustrate that the province has paid, and continues to pay, a phenomenal price for its contribution to national unity. The second implication is that the ultimate power to make the request still resided with Smallwood who appeared to have the option of pressing the issue further. It was Smallwood who decided to either wait for a Quebec response, and/or not ask Pearson due to fears of the consequences of his request to have the project declared in the national interest.

When Smallwood did not press the issue of establishing a power corridor through Quebec, the province failed to achieve a stronger bargaining position for BRINCO with Hydro-Quebec. Despite the difficulties inherent in negotiating at a disadvantaged position, a Letter of Intent was signed in October 1966 which allowed construction to begin at the Churchill Falls site.(36)

In his account, Churchill does not make plain how the entire situation can be laid solely at the feet of the federal government.

The matter is, in fact, considerably more complex. Churchill shows in several key places, for example, where decisions taken by Smallwood and others facilitated the bargaining position subsequently taken by Quebec.

Moreover, while Churchill includes original documentary evidence for some of the discussion, his only source for the Pearson refusal is a 1996 article by former Peckford era policy advisor Cabot Martin published six years after Smallwood died and some 15 years after Smallwood had suffered a debilitating stroke.

Smallwood's memoir, I chose Canada, contains a reference (pp.466-467) to such a request. The account notes that Smallwood had lunch with J.W. Pickersgill and John Turner and discussed the request for the Government of Canada to declare the project of national importance under section 92 of the constitution.

There is no reference whatsoever to any discussion with Pearson at that point, September 12, 1966. Smallwood inserts in his memoir - essentially extracts from his desk diary for the period - a discussion of the potential problems with a corridor through Quebec, including safety from attacks by terrorists and it is at that point he makes a comment quoted by Churchill in his footnotes the value of the national designation. Smallwood makes an additional comment, which Churchill did not use, which may give a clue to Smallwood's own preference in bargaining with Quebec:

The threat might, however, be more effectual than reality. It was much like our repeated threat to nationalize (BRINCO).

The letter to which Churchill refers was drafted on September 29 and, as Churchill notes, appears to have gone unsent. In other words, the power corridor idea appears to have been a bargaining ploy by Smallwood.

None of this means that Cabot Martin's account of what Smallwood supposedly told him later in life is wrong or false either. By the time Smallwood and Martin spoke, details of the disastrous 1969 deal had already become part of the provincial political culture as the symbol of resource give-aways. Smallwood may well have mis-remembered events almost two decades earlier for any of a number of understandable reasons.

For example, it would be far better to blame Ottawa - an old provincial politician's trick - or leave the impression, as Churchill suggests as one possible explanation, that Smallwood made the only decision he could in order to save the nation. Subsequent events notwithstanding, Smallwood was not prepared to risk the country he'd chosen for what he had described in his memoir as a risky proposition in the first place. Smallwood's account turns a failed bargaining ploy and its ignoble consequences into the noble self-sacrifice of a statesman and, by extension, his beleaguered people.

No matter how one looks at it, the available evidence does not support the claim, no matter how much the story is handed around, that the federal government refused a demand to invoke a constitutional provision and force a power corridor through Quebec.

The power corridor story has become, like the entire Churchill Falls saga, nothing more than a convenient story to be trotted out by politicians past and present when it suits their purposes.

The story, however, is no more factual than any other fairy tale.

-srbp-

ABC release shows government officials lack google skills?

What was it that St. John's East New Democratic candidate Jack Harris said when the provincial industry department - then headed by Kathy Dunderdale - missed some problems with one of the companies it was dealing with, problems that were easily found by an Internet search?

Oh yeah, he said google was "due diligence for dummies."

Ouch.

Well, that inability to do a simple Internet search  might explain why the provincial government's intergovernmental affairs minister  - Tom Hedderson - issued a length news release Friday to attack the federal government for plans to move the elite anti-terrorist team JTF 2 to Trenton, Ontario not Goose Bay as the provincial government was suggesting recently.

The JTF 2-to-Goose Bay idea cropped up in the latest round of begging letters to Ottawa from the provincial government, to borrow yet another Jack Harris phrase.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is shocked that the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has willfully disregarded another opportunity to strengthen defence presence at 5 Wing Goose Bay. The reaction came in light of the recent announcement of $500 million in funding to support the relocation of Joint Task Force 2 (JTF 2) from Ottawa to Trenton, Ontario. This announcement was released without fanfare just two days before the call of a federal election.

Odd.

The provincial government is shocked?

It's not like it's been a big secret.

But it certainly is shocking to see a provincial cabinet minister admitting publicly he sent letters to the federal defence minister as recently as June 2008  proposing JTF 2 be based in Goose Bay apparently not knowing the decision on JTF 2's future home had already been made 18 months beforehand.

That makes Hedderson look stunned or even incompetent. 

The federal government decided to relocate JTF 2 from its current base at Dwyer Hill, just outside Ottawa, to a new addition to the base at Trenton Ontario back in late 2006.  The story broke in the Ottawa Citizen  - dated January 2007 - in a story by widely respected defence correspondent David Pugliese.

Plans for the expansion were also reported by Pugliese in January 2008:

Defence Construction Canada, a Crown corporation that handles the Defence Department's building needs, is asking for "expressions of interest" from contractors and consultants for the development of what it calls a multi-functional training and administrative campus.

The new facility is to be in "Eastern Ontario," with the specific location considered secret at this point, according to the information provided so far to construction and engineering contractors. But Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier has recommended to cabinet that JTF2's new base be located at Canadian Forces Base Trenton.

Public Works and Government Services Canada has already purchased three properties adjacent to CFB Trenton for the Defence Department.

The operational reasoning behind the move is something Pugliese also covered.  it's worth noting because the provincial government's whole pitch on Goose Bay has been about pork and entitlement rather than demonstrating how Goose Bay fits into the military's operational requirements.

Positioning JTF2 at CFB Trenton, one of the country's main military airbases, allows the unit immediate access to aircraft for domestic and overseas missions. It is also an ideal location because another unit in the special operations command, the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, which deals with nuclear, biological and chemical incidents, is already located there. JTF2 works closely with that unit on counter-terrorism exercises.

And if by some chance the provincial government officials responsible for monitoring this stuff missed it, plans for development at Trenton already made the news in March 2008 when plans for some of the buildings were found in a trash can outside a downtown Ottawa office building.

Of course, even if the local officials are a bit overtaxed, it's not like we don't have Our Man in a Blue Line Cab who is supposed to be watching these files from an office not far from Parliament Hill.

Some things - like say keeping on top of important files - are not as easy as ABC.

-srbp-

Oram blames Danny for JSS cancellation

When Newfoundland and Labrador becomes the focal point and our shipyard becomes seemingly the best and only shipyard that can be used to do this particular contract, all of a sudden they first talk about going offshore and now they decide to cancel the project.  There is something going wrong somewhere.

"Something wrong with JSS contract, Oram says", Telegram, Tuesday, 25 August 2008

Newfoundland and Labrador business minister Paul Oram is blaming the strained relationship between his boss and the Prime Minister for the federal government's decision to scrap the joint support ship contract.

Premier Danny Williams said much the same thing in a radio talk show Tuesday.

Now of course that isn't what they meant, but, in truth, the very notion that the federal government would deliberately scrap an important contract because Danny and Steve don't get along is ludicrous in itself.  Silly as the thought is, both ministers offered it up to news media with a completely straight face.

In the Telegram story quoted above, Oram related a conversation he claims to have had with federal industry minister Jim Prentice while both ministers attended the Farnborough air show in July.  In the conversation, Prentice reportedly said that the federal government was considering having the hulls built outside Canada and the topsides and other fitting out work done in the country.

That part of the story is likely accurate since it jives with media reports that predate Oram's junket to the world's premiere air show. Oram would have had those reports long before Farnborough if his media clipping service and Our Man in a Blue Line Cab were doing their jobs.

Ottawa Citizen defence columnist David Pugliese reported in late May that both finalist shipyards had advised government they could produce only two of the three required ships for the $2.9 billion budgeted by treasury board for the project.

Pugliese blogged in early August that National Defence was examining a number of alternatives, including building the ships overseas.  That was seen at the time as politically unpalatable given that two shipyards in the country were technically capable of doing the work.

That's where Oram's account of the Prentice exchange and the likely one start to diverge.  While Oram claims the offshore option was considered because yards couldn't do the work, the thread that runs consistently through the story - and the one devoid of the political silliness Oram was trying to flog - is that there was enough money budgeted for either of the Canadian yards to be able to complete the project as tendered.

Big difference.

The joint support ships contract will likely come back and come back quickly since the vessels are needed urgently to replace the worn-out auxiliary oil replenishment vessels currently in service.  One of the consistent criticisms of the project is that the ships were supposed to do too many jobs for one hull.

In addition to providing logistics support for deployed naval forces (food, fuel and ammunition resupply), the JSS was supposed to serve as a transport ship capable of carrying an infantry company plus equipment to an overseas deployment.  At one point, the navy reportedly considered leasing a mothballed American amphibious assault ship for army support role while building conventional stores ships to replace the existing vessels.

There's no question these ships are needed, no matter what the configuration involved. Whatever the reason, the project was dealt a serious blow with the cancellation.  Coupled with the reported financial problems inside the current federal administration, it may not be back on track for some time to come.  In the meantime, the existing hulls will reach the end of the workable life in 2012. 

Something needs to be sorted out and sorted soon.

That will likely need to be done by federal politicians.

This contract may well serve voters as a good test to use when sorting through their federal candidates in the next election. If they are toeing a line - especially the childish ABC one - it might be an idea to leave them on the bench and look for a better alternative.

Unfortunately, the provincial government - through administrations of all stripes - doesn't seem to understand either the importance of defence industries to the provincial economy or what it takes to be effective in dealing with the federal government on defence issues.  Oram's not the first provincial cabinet minister to make asinine comments and sadly he likely won't be the last.

When politicians leap into complex issues they clearly know nothing about - as Oram clearly doesn't - they only serve to bugger up the works at worst or get ignored at best.

The men and women of the Canadian Forces, a great many of them from this province,  can do without that kind of "help".

The men and women of businesses like Marystown can do without it as well.

-srbp-

Hillier to join law firm

For all the hype about Rick Hillier's appointment as chancellor of Memorial University, people seem to forget it's not a full-time job.

To pay the bills, Hillier will be joining a law firm.

Meanwhile, has anyone figured out why Eddy didn't meet the provincial government's standards for university president, the full-time gig?

Would Our Man in a Blue Line cab be their choice?

-srbp-

And this took three weeks?

New provincial cabinet.

No major change in major portfolios.

There are a few demotions, most notably John Hickey, Tom Hedderson and Kevin O'Brien.  The latter goes from being a potentially high profile minister in a high profile department with lots of big announcements to the minister of licenses and permits.

Hedderson goes from a lead portfolio in the arts and tourism to being, essentially, the guy who sends pay cheques to our man in a Blue Line cab on behalf of the guy he really works for, namely the Premier. Intergovernmental Affairs doesn't have the profile it once had and it doesn't look like it will become a Action central in the near future.

The table - shamelessly lifted from labradore -  shows the number of ministers and parliamentary secretaries from 1996 to the present.  The figures between 1989 and 1996 are comparable to the early Tobin period on the chart.

The official excuse is that these are new times and the province's finances are in better shape.

The real reason for the increased size of cabinet, largely through the creation of minor ministries, was politics. 

The enlarged cabinet wouldn't look so obviously political if there had been some changes to the arrangement or to the faces.

Then again, given the lack of significant change, one wonders why the House of Assembly hasn't been called back into session or why this shuffle took three weeks. Deputy premier Tom Rideout's excuses offered up when he announced the cancellation of a fall session don't seem to hold much water in light of events. 

Keep an eye on municipal affairs.  Rumour has it there is a cabinet paper on amalgamation that was put on hold pending the election;  there's a strange line in the Tory campaign platform about "no forced amalgamation."  In the absence of any discussion of municipal amalgamation, the comment just stood out. St. John's and Mount Pearl won't be dragged to the altar but on the northeast Avalon, there's always the chance a new supercity will be crammed together out of the other towns or the existing cities will swallow up bits of their neighbours. One prime candidate for elimination:  Paradise. 

One interesting observation:  With the exception of Danny Williams, Tom Rideout and Trevor Taylor, there is no one in cabinet who was elected before 2003. Keep an eye to see if the House opens only once a year in the future. The majority of members - Opposition benches included - have such little interest in the House and display such an obvious lack of interest in being there, that they'd just as soon keep it locked tight. If that happens, democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador will take another body blow.  Don't look to the opposition benches for too many voices of genuine dissent.

Big surprise:  despite all the signs of a rapprochement and much media speculation, Beth Marshall still sits on the back benchers.

-srbp-

The Newfoundland Nationalist orthodoxy

Given the nationalist rhetoric permeating the latest provincial throne speech, it might be useful to examine the writings of another Newfoundland nationalist.

The following piece appeared in the St. John's Telegram in 1998 under the title "Confederation orthodoxy". It's author, John Fitzgerald, today serves as the provincial representative in Ottawa, or as it might seem to some "our man in a Blue Line cab."

While his doctoral thesis was on the Roman Catholic church in Newfoundland in the middle of the 19th century, Fitzgerald's master's thesis was titled The Confederation of Newfoundland with Canada, 1946-1949. His interpretation has been criticised by other historians, but it did serve as the inspiration for the entertaining but fictional movie Secret nation.

The film contended that Confederation was the result of a giant plot involving foreign powers that included falsifying the final referendum result. Fitzgerald's account below does not come to that conclusion, but there is no doubt that he leans heavily on a peculiar interpretation of selected information to attack what he views as Confederate mythology. It is all to common for self-proclaimed myth debunkers to propagate a few myths of their own and Fitzgerald is no exception. He recites neatly the townie anti-Confederate catechism.

For that reason, and given Fitzgerald's current position as a senior advisor to the Premier, here is Fitzgerald's 1998 view:

Confederation orthodoxy
John Fitzgerald
The Telegram
St. John's, NL
April 6, 1998
Page 6

The Telegram editorial of April 1, celebrating 49 years of Confederation as a "qualified success," claimed that Newfoundland would have been much worse off as an independent country than as a Canadian province, and that without Ottawa, Newfoundland might return to the "grinding poverty" of the 1930s. This is the same tired orthodoxy that The Telegram and Smallwood preached in 1948: Newfoundland would not survive without Confederation.

Newfoundland very likely could have prospered without Confederation. For nine of the 10 years before Confederation Newfoundland had a balanced budget. On the eve of Confederation, Newfoundland had two-per-cent unemployment and a per-capita debt which was one-tenth of Canada's. On the eve of Confederation, Newfoundland had an accumulated surplus on current account of $43 million and $12 million in interest-free loans to Britain. In 1998 dollars this would be close to $1 billion. Was this prosperity temporary? No. Newfoundland changed forever in the 1940s. If the absence of a House of Assembly at the time prevented Newfoundlanders from knowing it or doing anything about it, then Canada certainly did know the wealth and value of Newfoundland.

Confederation may have been an qualified success for Canada, but not so for Newfoundland. Canada feared that Newfoundland could have used its resources to survive and prosper independently. The Ottawa mandarins realized that Confederation would help extract the Americans from their bases in Newfoundland. Newfoundland also had two of the largest airports in the world, situated on the Great Circle air route.

Canada wanted them, and acquired them with Confederation. It then used the control of the airports and landing rights to force its own way into American markets which had previously excluded Canada. In 1946, Newfoundland had an estimated 300 million tons of iron ore in Labrador, which Canada was interested in exploiting. (In March 1996 the IOC blasted the one billionth ton of iron ore out of Labrador, while Newfoundland still collects revenues under the 1944 royalty regime established by the Commission of Government which allows Newfoundland five per cent of what the IOC tells us their profits are.) Ottawa knew that controlling Newfoundland's fisheries would eliminate Newfoundland from competing with Nova Scotia for markets for its fish. (Could Newfoundland have managed its cod stocks any worse than Canada has?)

On Oct. 17, 1946, the Canadian High Commissioner in Newfound land, Scott Macdonald, wrote Ottawa about the benefits Newfoundland would bring to Canada. Newfoundland had "very considerable mineral and forest resources as well as easy access to the finest fishing grounds in the world." Confederation "would solve, permanently, all questions of post-war military and civil aviation rights which are at present terminable after March 31, 1949, on 12 months' notice. It would make possible a common jurisdiction over North Atlantic fisheries. ..."

And would Newfoundland return to poverty? Not likely. "Moreover," Macdonald wrote, "(Newfoundland) is richer by the investment of at least $100 million by Canada and at least $300 million by the United States primarily for defence but much of which was spent on roads, wharfs (sic), telephone lines, warehouses, similar buildings, radio ranges, airfields, the training of Newfoundlanders in various technical jobs, etc. and has redounded to the general development of the country." In Macdonald's view, Newfoundland thus had the infrastructure to sustain prosperity.

For Canada, Newfoundland's Confederation was not about the welfare state or about helping Newfoundlanders "out of poverty" (for which, The Globe and Mail tells us, we must be eternally grateful). Rather, it was about acquiring valuable resources, eliminating competition, acquiring very valuable aspects of Newfoundland's sovereignty, and doing it all rather deeply [cheaply?]. After all, Smallwood's Confederation campaigns only cost CD Howe and the Liberal Party of Canada a cool half-million bucks.

-30-

Our man in a Blue Line cab

In the House of Assembly Thursday, opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons asked questions about the role being played by the provincial government's representative in Ottawa in developing a productive relationship with the federal government.

For the record, here's the response from intergovernmental affairs minister John Ottenheimer. The best thing Ottenheimer could come up with was that Fitz travelled around with visiting ministers.

On the back of the government business cards, it must read: "When in Ottawa, ride with Fitz in a Blue Line taxi."

Ottenheimer: I have no idea, Mr. Speaker, where the hon. member gets his information. Dr. Fitzgerald plays a very significant role, a role of importance, representing the Office of the Premier, representing the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and representing the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, in Ottawa.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, when any minister travels to Ottawa to meet with his or her federal counterpart, he is at all times accompanied by Dr. Fitzgerald. In fact, only two or three weeks ago I travelled to Ottawa. I met with three or four of my federal colleagues, and on each occasion I was accompanied by the good doctor; so, I say to the hon. member, what he is saying is completely irrelevant. It is not in any way representative of the truth. He plays a very significant role of importance on behalf of the people of this Province.

That's got be the most expensive taxi hailer on the planet.

A doctoral degree in history and the guy's a tour guide?

Surely goodness Ottenheimer could give us a better explanation than that. Then he would have avoided Parson's rejoinder - obviously scripted - about Dr. Feelgood's limousine service.

Incidentally, for those who are curious, Fitzgerald's phone number is listed in the government phone directory under the Premier's Office, not the intergovernmental affairs secretariat where bureaucrats normally work.

Fitz's job is obviously all political, so all that business about ducking interviews because he is a public servant are just a tad overdone.