The changes at Humber Valley

1.  Layoff of 40 staff, as Newfound NV looks to stick to its core business lines.

2.  A brief profile of the new boss at Newfound NV.

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Some Harper observations

1.  Anyone else notice that the not-campaigning Stephen Harper spent all his time in Fabian Manning's Avalon riding?  Seems a bit odd since there are supposedly two Connie incumbents seeking re-election.  H Harper never did anything with St. John's South-Mount Pearl except pass through it.

2. Harper's comments at the Renews-Cappahayden come home year celebrations were remarkably unremarkable.  Like incredibly flat, boring, generic. Still, he got a loud and enthusiastic welcome.  That night be worrying some people in the province who still believe the Anybody But Conservative thing had a meaning left in it [Hint: it doesn't.  Williams will personally stay out of the federal election, restricting himself to making comments favouring the Dippers.  The rest of the local Tories will work for the Connies - as they did in the last election -  if they feel so inclined.]

3. But the unremarkable remarks warranted a news release. Of course there's no chance these guys are worried there'll be an election.

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'The national interest" and marketing imperatives: a jarring symmetry of excuses

Submitted for your consideration:

“I think the viewers should be able to understand that, in the national interest, for the perception of the country, this was an extremely important and serious matter,” Chen Qigang, the ceremony's chief music director, said in an interview with a Beijing radio station.

compared with:

“But we also believe strongly in ensuring strong and visionary leadership for the people’s university. I cannot stress enough the importance of Memorial University to the educational, social and economic future of Newfoundland and Labrador. Just as the Board of Regents has an obligation and a duty to find the appropriate candidate, so does the government as mandated by the Memorial University Act. We take this obligation seriously."

and...

During a scrum on the search for a new MUN president last week, Danny Williams told  reporters that the province puts $300 million into MUN and that he's asked past presidents "to get more involved with government to promote the interests of the province."

Apparently, coupled with marketing considerations, the national interest can justify fakery and a bunch of other things too.

The Chinese just have more practice at rationalising these things in fewer words.

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Memorial University crisis: it just keeps getting worse

Danny Williams, former Rhodent, should have known that academics are not ones to take his usual blather as if it were gospel.

No surprise therefore, that Memorial University professors are turning the Premier's lack of logic against him in the Memorial University crisis.

And just to really make it bad, they even point to academic freedom:

"If, in some way, we're supposed to be doing specific, applied bits of research, you know, for the province rather than following our interests then there are questions of ... academic freedom looming," says [politicial scientist Steve] Wolinetz.

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Nothing says federal election, the Harper version

When the Connie head honcho comes to town bearing public cash, you know there's an election on the horizon.

Related: Clyde Jackman may want the feds to dump $3.0 million into the Cupids celebration, but the people from Cupids are likely wondering why Jackman and his cabinet colleagues have been so stingy on the provincial contribution.

The provincial government contribution to this monumental event is a paltry $2.0 million.

Given that the feds like to fund these things on a 50/50 basis, Jackman knows up front that the feds will only match the provincial cash. If he's got a beef, then he should take it up with himself.

Update: Harper dropped $3.14 million on the Cupids celebration. That's $1.14 million more than the provincial government committed - but only contingent on federal cash coming..

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Some political creativity

An Obama mash-up [tip of the straw sun hat to John Gushue]:

 

And then there's a Tony Blair one done before Blair resigned:

Bring in the Auditor General

While the crowd at Tammany on Gower are fighting over the recent firing of an internal auditor, they are missing a fairly obvious solution to the problem of ensuring that the City's books are well-watched:  let John Noseworthy have a look at them.

The City of St. John's has been run for far too long as a closed shop without much in the way of public oversight or scrutiny.  The current council - every single one of them - has yet to demonstrate the slightest concern for transparency and accountability particularly when it comes to the way city council spends public money. 

Sure there has been plenty of talk, especially from Ron Ellsworth.  But Ellsworth's already shown himself to be good at talk, but not much when it comes to the action of disclosure.  Heck, when confronted with a simple question about a political poll he'd commissioned, Ellsworth couldn't figure out whether to fib or fess up.  So he did both, first fibbing and then confessing he was behind it.

Talk is cheap. 

If Ellsworth and his cronies at ToG want to earn public confidence, they'd start by letting John Noseworthy audit the city books. 

At the same time, since they've made such a public spectacle of the internal auditor, it is incumbent on city officials to disclose the details of what went on. They will howl at the prospect and try and find every legal means to keep the whole mess under wraps, but the whole episode stinks to high heavens.

A little sunlight will help disinfect the place.

Something says, though, the council and senior officials will be doing everything possible to put up blinds, all the while talking a good game about the benefits of solar energy.

It's what city council does.

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Come by Chance expansion in works

It is far easier to expand an existing refinery than to try a greenfield project.

That's something Bond Papers has contended since NLRC first floated its plan for a 300,000 barrel per day project that is now in bankruptcy protection, without having turned sod one.

Meanwhile, Harvest Energy is looking at a $2.0 billion expansion of its existing Come By Chance refinery that would take production from 115K bpd to 190K bpd.

Harvest Energy is now looking for a partner in the project. 

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The Great Government Consumer Rip-Off

The 2003 general election did not herald a new approach, a new era in public policy or much "new" of any other sort except elites.

That's a point your humble e-scribbler has made several times and it bears repeating. In many respects, the Progressive Conservatives under Danny Williams have continued policies from Roger Grime's Liberals often times without any changes at all, let alone even cosmetic ones.

One of the most obvious examples of the continuation of Grimes policy is the consumer rip-off otherwise known as petroleum products pricing.

Regular readers will be familiar with the view around these parts of the provincially-run price-fixing scheme that masquerades as some sort of consumer protection.

It doesn't protect consumers from anything at all, since by interfering in the marketplace, the price fixing scheme serves only to slow the benefit to consumers of falling gasoline prices.

Like right now.

On Tuesday, crude oil hit US$112, its lowest close in three months.

Consumers are not paying the same price per litre for gasoline that they were three months ago.

In fact, oil dropped dramatically just last week, but the petroleum office did not lower prices a single penny. gasoline sits, on average about 12 cents per litre higher in Newfoundland than across Ontario, but if you look at the localised breakdowns the price gap is disgustingly wide.  In glorious Kingston, Ontario, where your humble e-scribbler is currently enjoying the rain, gasoline is retailing for $1.17 per litre.

The situation is not far off what obtained three years ago but even then it was fairly obvious that the marketplace was delivering price breaks to consumers that the government-orchestrated scam could not.  heck, at a time when prices were dropping across North America only a few weeks ago, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians enjoyed a price increase, courtesy of the government folly.

Now when this whole fraud was foisted on the public, the politicians could be forgiven if they were simply suckered into it as a vote ploy.  Some of them might have even been fooled into believing the silly arguments used to justify it that somehow consumers would be protected from the "evil" oil companies if the provincial government established maximum prices for (some) petroleum products,

There isn't really the same excuse any more and there certainly hasn't been since 2003.  After only a couple of years of operation, the folly of government-organized oil price fixing was evident, at least to consumers.

The argument for government price-fixing is even harder to swallow now that the provincial government has joined the ranks of the oil companies. 

Consider if you will, that simple point when (if?) the Hebron deal gets signed.  Sitting at the table will be major oil companies who produce crude oil and who retail gasoline across North America. The petroleum pricing scheme was supposed to protect consumers from their supposed "gouging".

Sitting right next to them will be a new oil producer who, at least in this province, not only produces crude oil but who also legally fixes the retail price for gasoline products.  We just don't know where the government share of the crude will be refined and sold, but what's to stop it from coming back to this province or - if the provincial government gets involved further with NLRC - never leaves it?

It's a sweet set up.

But not for consumers.

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When the last seam is welded...

Passing environmental approvals is one thing, but as the NLRC refinery project showed, there's a lot more to building a greenfield project than some might have you believe.

Let's just wait until the last seam is welded before we get too excited about a liquid natural gas project that - as of right now - exists only on paper.

NLRC passed the federal environmental milestone on April 30 2008 and was under bankruptcy protection less than two months later.

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Oil prices continue fall

Crude oil hit US$114 a barrel Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange down from the record high of $147 set only a month ago.

The Monday price was the lowest closing price for crude since May 1. It continued the fall in price from last week.

The folly of budgeting based on volatile energy prices would seem obvious. Crude oil prices have dropped 22% in four weeks.

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New headquarters and military info system for CF by 2014

The Canadian Forces will have a new operational headquarters complete with an integrated information management system by 2014, according to a story by David Pugliese in the Monday Ottawa Citizen.

The computer network to be acquired will "fuse" intelligence data and information into a package easily accessible by commanders in Ottawa, across the country and overseas.

That project, known as the joint information and intelligence fusion capability, will merge large amounts of information, including video, photographs, map displays and other data as it is transmitted from various sources.

In some cases, officers would be able to watch live imagery from robot aerial drones flying on missions in Afghanistan.

Estimated combined cost of the projects are upwards of $150 million.

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Pull the other one, the MUN version

His latest version of events doesn't match any of the other versions, including his own earlier version.

There is no effort to pull back fro Joan Burke's insistance that the new preisdent will be appointed by cabinet.

Still, the implausibility of the different versions of government interference in the MUN crisis doesn't stop the faithful from crowing that it "does clear the Premier of any allegation of interfering with the process."

Nope.

Not even an attempt to reconcile the new story with the old ones; just blind acceptance at face value.

Take it with a grain of salt.

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Cameron Inquiry deadline extended to March 1, 2009

The order-in-council was gazetted on July 28, 2008 with absolutely no mention from the provincial government.

The commission must hand in its final report by March 1 and conclude all business by April 1, 2009.

The original deadline for both the report and work was July 30, 2008.

If memory serves, justice minister Jerome Kennedy still hasn't released the correspondence related to the Hughes Inquiry he was using to justify the Premier's earlier attacks on the inquiry.

Could it be that, as the Telegram editorial recently noted, the correspondence doesn't support Kennedy's version of what occurred?

Bond Papers will gladly post the entire correspondence record, if the justice minister will supply the documents.

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Eddy shoulda bought tickets

From the voice of the cabinet minister, last week, as the Memorial University crisis ramped up:

Premier Danny Williams has not been available for interviews this week,  but a spokesperson says he supports Education Minister Joan Burke. [Emphasis added]

From the Telegram's Monday editorial:

CBC reported the minister [Joan Burke] had departed Thursday for an urgent attendance at an Eagles concert in Moncton, N.B. - VIP grandstand tickets $249, "plus taxes and applicable service charges." The CBC concluded a radio interview with Burke on Thursday by playing the Eagles' "Desperado," which starts with the line: "Desperado - why don't you come to your senses?" Nice edgy touch, national broadcaster. [Emphasis added]

From the Moncton Times and Transcript:

Four private jets, three for bands and one belonging to Newfoundland Premier and multimillionaire businessman Danny Williams, brought more than $100 million worth of glamour to the humble tarmac of the Greater Moncton International Airport Saturday night. [Emphasis added]

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What happens after every climax?

Quick.

Without looking it up or asking your own yaks-milk-is-pink fountain of otherwise useless information:

1.  Name the three astronauts on Apollo 12.
2.  Name one of the astronauts on Apollo 14.
3.  How about the three on Apollo 18? 
4.  Was there an Apollo 18?

Don't feel bad. 

As amazing as it seems, few people know much about one of the most spectacular achievements of the human species:  putting people on the moon even for brief stays.

Even at the time, public interest in space travel faded not long after Apollo 11 reached the moon and Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong bounced around on its surface in July 1969.

Now think about last spring's provincial budget.  For all the magicality and splendiferousness of it, the whole thing garnered the government maybe 48 hours of half-decent media coverage.  The punters didn't really talk it up much either, except maybe the bootie call of a thousand bucks for every new member of the race brought into the world.

Instead, the news and much public commentary these past eight or months have been filled with less than happy stuff for the provincial government.

Part of that is the natural shift in public expression that takes place with any government that's been in office more than a few months.  By five years people will naturally change gears from cheering to either moaning or indifference. As Brian said to the ex-leper:  "There's no pleasing some people."  And more to the point, people just aren't wired to endlessly praise government or feel good about what's going on.  They like to bitch.

Another part has been the series of events that would actually warrant some public unhappiness.  Pick an issue.  There isn't one of them - contrary to the view of at least one person on the cbc.ca/nl website comments - that isn't a legitimate news story.

Another part of the current media environment, at least when it comes to good news, is the simple fact that when you've already announced good news, the re-announcement of the announcement of the news just loses its grip.

People spent years getting ready for men to walk on the moon.  They followed the development of the project.  The vicariously shared the highs like all the successful Mercury and Gemini missions and they shared the sorrows, like the deaths of three astronauts aboard Apollo 1.  But once Neil and Buzz put toe one on the moon, that was the climax of the whole thing. 

After a climax of any kind, it's all down hill from there.

Last spring's budget was a big unsurprise.  Good news budget after good news budget and astonishing surpluses (even if not quite surpluses after all) piled on surpluses just get a bit repetitive after a while.  Imagine if Cleary and the Red Wings win the cup next year how much excitement there'll be.

Hebron may wind up being kinda the same thing.  When it didn't happen, well that was news.  It had all the elements, good and not so good:  controversy, power, drama, money, conflict, disappointment.

When the Premier announced a memorandum of understanding on the project last August, in polling season and right in the middle of the longest undeclared election campaign in provincial history, there was excitement.  People talked about it for weeks after.

So when the final Hebron deal is announced in the middle of a couple of by-elections and during polling season alter this month, don't be surprised if it is a media flurry lasting all of a couple of days.  Odds are it will lead the news that night, but by the next day expect something else to hit. In short order, it will become the Apollo 12 of government announcements.

Now that's not to say the final deal won't be good news.  It pretty much will be, unless something happened since last August to make - for instance - the local benefits potential is less than first appeared. We won't know the impact of the altered royalty structure until well after first oil, which is likely to take place sometime closer to 2020 than not.

But you see, Hebron's already been announced once last August.  Then it was,  in essence,  re-announced in June. For all the hoopla that will accompany the media event, the people directly affected by Hebron are just waiting for the whistle to signal the start so they can get working.

And unless there's something else coming along behind it that hasn't been talked up and talked over for years, odds are the next big announcement will have the same news impact.

It's just what happens after every climax.

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Oh yeah, Pam's fried...just like a whole raft more

Telegram editor Pam Frampton has been writing about the Memorial University thing for some time now.

Her column on Sunday is not for the faint of heart.

She's fried.

Pissed would be a better term.

And she's got good reason, since she's discovered that sometimes people in government like to dance on the extremely fine meaning of words. They'll answer the question you asked - literally - but not even think about giving the answer to the question they know you were really driving at.

In the media relations business that sort of thing is something you do rarely. It's the kind of stuff you save for when they ask you about invasions from Mars and you are sitting on the body of a Venusian. No sez you, no Martians. The only justifiable motive for that kind of semantic dancing, in other words, is something of supreme national importance.

Even then a simple response like "we don't discuss national security issues" is way better than what amounts to a lie by omission:

In June, long before the Globe and Mail published its speculative piece about what was going on behind the scenes of the stalled presidential search process, I asked Joan Burke straight out: "Has MUN's board of regents, acting on the recommendation of the presidential search committee, brought any names forward for cabinet's/the premier's consideration?"

Her response: "We have had no correspondence from the board of regents and the presidential committee."

Really? So how did Minister Burke know there were two shortlisted candidates winnowed out from a longer list by the search committee?

According to Burke's public relations specialist, Nora Daly, "The minister became aware of the short (list) last winter/spring through routine contact with the chair of the board of regents."

Well, golly, I'm no education minister, but to me "routine contact" certainly falls under the definition of correspondence.

The problem with this sort of too-cute-by-half stuff is that it doesn't erode credibility, it smashes it with a battle axe.

Pam Frampton just won't trust Joan Burke and her colleagues ever again on anything. Sure there have been plenty of examples of other people being jerked off over the past few years, but until it happens to you, there's always the temptation to think it isn't really as bad as others portray it.

Then it happens to you.

And you wind up being done browner than a wedgie left in the deep fryer too long.

No amount of malt vinegar and ketchup will make that taste disappear.

And it won't disappear.

Part of what the public have been seeing over the past six to eight months in Newfoundland and Labrador has been the dismantling of the very comfortable situation between the news media and the government. Some would say it's lasted too long anyway, but basically, it stayed extremely positive for government civilized as long as reporters didn't feel they were being frigged with too much.

In some respects the change in reporting mirrors the considerable volume of critical public comment coming in the online spaces. Some of it might be planted, but with the opposition parties in the state they are in, they'd be organizational miracle workers if they could sustain the variety and intensity of the stuff turning up so far in 2008. People aren't shy to voice their disquiet as they might have been before 2007. The cause is irrelevant; it's just notable that there's is such a change.

None of this means that the government will collapse tomorrow. it just means the news media and the public have changed. Government will have to shift itself and start responding differently to the new environment than they have been.

Otherwise we are witnessing that start of something which could get quite ugly. It's not like we haven't seen that happen before. Reporters who haven't been able to get the Premier on the phone even though they know he's in town might ask their gray-haired colleagues about the days when they couldn't get Peckford at all even the Premier's press secretary didn't answer his phone messages.

Much depends on the man behind the curtain and whether he really plans to pack it in next year, as he suggested in 2006. Danny Williams might just tough the whole thing out for a few months and leave everything to his cabinet to cope with, if they wanted to. That would possibly meet his needs but, frankly, the long term prospects for his party would just get dimmer with each unanswered e-mail.

All of that just remains to be seen.

All we can say today is that Pam is fried. And if Pam is fried, things are not good for government and its relations with news media.

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The pack politics of ambition

Politics is a strange thing.

There's a lot of individualism and ego but at the same time there's some really obvious group behaviour within the party pack.

The ambitious ones are always hungry to move up in status. 

Nothing surprising in that.  That's what ambitious people do.

There's nothing wrong with ambition. That's what keeps the blood pumping in a party that otherwise might be mistaken for dead.

Joan Burke for example, is one of a couple of the current crowd who fancies herself and is fancied by some as an eventual alpha to replace the alpha currently running every pack around the province.

Jerome is another one.

These ambitious betas will not challenge the alpha outright. Rather, they actually copy the alpha in many respects, especially speech patterns and attitudes.

Most obviously, they become supremely loyal:  they will do and say anything the alpha demands, no matter what, since currying favour with the alpha raises their own status within the pack in the meantime. 

They'll even try to anticipate the alphas demands so they can be ready to satisfy him immediately and appear therefore all that much more loyal within the pack.

No surprise then that someone familiar with Joe Smallwood would consider Burke to be aping one of the biggest political alphas in the province's history.

"The way Burke is acting is as if the 1973 amendments never took place," says [retired Memorial University head librarian Richard] Ellis. "It's a little bit ironic for a Progressive Conservative to be harkening back to Smallwoodian legislation."

Ellis had responsibility at one time for the Smallwood archives, among other things, so when it comes to the recent past, Ellis would know a thing or two.

He's off by a few decades but the idea's the same.

Danny Williams is the one channeling Joey Smallwood, either deliberately or inadvertently.  And, by the transitive property, Burke is channeling Smallwood, but only doing it through Williams.

She's adds some ruffles and flourishes of her own to her public speaking - the completely flat affect in her voice, for one -  but the attitude behind the words is unmistakable:  this is the way things are because I said so.  Period.

We likely won't be seeing any ticking right shoulders on the education minister soon and neither will she likely develop less harsh speaking voices  - at least without professional coaching.  But that's really just packaging.

What you can expect are more of what we've seen over the past couple of weeks.  It's really the same Joan Burke we've seen in other cock-ups or controversies in her department already - like the Eastern School district alleged fraud case that cropped up while her current parliamentary assistant was running the school board -but for some reason it just stands out more in the current Memorial University crisis. 

Joan Burke, the alpha wannabe will stick even harder to her guns under pressure because that's what the alpha would do (or what he wants) and in order to be loyal and eventually replace him, the covetous beta must be more alpha than alpha.

And like all ambitious politicians, Burke like knows there a pattern to how the future alphas move around government and move up within cabinet.

If memory serves, she has done or is doing her stints in financial management on treasury board.  She's the government House leader which gives her more parliamentary experience - such as the House is these days - and more experience managing her colleagues in cabinet.

Running the big social departments would be crucial to her future.  Having run education for the past three years, Burke is likely angling to replace Ross Wiseman in the next shuffle, whenever it comes. 

And if she gets the promotion to health, as a number of future alphas and presumptive alphas did in previous administrations  [think Grimes and Aylward most recently] putting Burke in charge of health care would be a sign of her heightened status within the pack.

There's no guarantee health is a stepping stone to greatness.  Look at poor Tommy Osborne.  From minister of the largest department in government one day where all he had to do was follow orders and not shag up, to government backbencher the next via a castrated justice department in between.

The only way Osborne could have been handed a bigger slap in the goolies was if he'd been given permits and licenses instead of justice on the way out the door.

But in the current crisis in education, Joan Burke has really done anything to diminish her status as one of the betas most loyal to the alpha.

She's done all the things she needs to do to prove her status.  Burke will be rewarded, at least in the short term with an alpha who will back her to the hilt.  He will go to the ends of the Earth for those who follow his orders tirelessly.

When he emerges from escorting second place essay winners around, the Premier will likely lash out at everyone and everyone.  Everyone that is, except Burke, who will be commended for her hard work in the best interests of the province and the people.

Yada, yada, yada.

In the politics of the pack, loyalty counts above all else.

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The market for oil and gas support industries

The real key to long-term economic benefit from oil and gas is not in revenues flowing to a state-owned oil company, but from the development of a healthy, innovative support and service sector.

Oil industry consultant Gerrit Maureau thinks the overseas opportunities for petroleum service companies have never been greater.

The hungry market is with foreign national oil companies (NOCs).

Foreign NOCs are so hungry for technology and training that Maureau believes a good service company will almost certainly find a market overseas if its sales effort is well-informed. But success is unlikely to come cheap, he warns: "Above all, be persistent. Canadians have developed an unfortunate reputation overseas for showing up once and never coming back." In his experience, a half dozen visits may be needed before a significant breakthrough occurs.

The rest of the Maureau profile can be found at

DOB Magazine.

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The best and the worst

From the Star Phoenix (Saskatoon), a perspective on the province and its politics:

It did not present a very becoming picture of the premier, certainly not of one who until recently at least, commanded the support of 70 per cent of the province's population.

The premier's less attractive side recently re-emerged when his government intervened in the selection process for the new president of Memorial University.

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