A sitcom about nothing:
"Are you Master of your Domain?"
A certain blogger:
Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Budget Speech 2008:
We are standing tall as powerful contributors to the federation – as masters of our own domain, stronger and more secure than we have ever been before…
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A well-known politician, in a recent speech:
Never standing still, never going backwards and never giving ground to anyone.
A well-known Internet prank:
Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, Never gonna run around and desert you, …
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On a certain level, you can’t blame Danny Williams for saying the same stuff over and over.
After all, audiences like today’s gathering at the Board of Trade keep lapping it up. They turned out in force, chuckling and applauding in all the right places as if they knew the script by heart.
As the scrum video shows, local reporters from the province’s two television networks never tire of asking him the same old questions over and over, getting the same old answers over and over, and then passing them yet again to the audience at home as if they heard it for the first time.
But while some people never seem to tire of re-runs, there are likely an ever-increasing number of people in the province for whom the province’s political news is starting to look like watching some borscht-belt comedian on a 1970s American talk show. Decades ago, the guy had one joke that sort of worked, yet the host thinks the old codger is a comedic genius. So he flies the guy back from Florida to inflict him on his audience over and over again. In the two channel universe of the 1970s or even the 13 channel cable world of the 1980s, audiences didn’t really have much choice.
Just to make sure you have a clear picture in your head, though, think Bobby Bittman from The Sammy Maudlin Show.
Then think of a parody of Bobby Bittman on The Sammy Maudlin Show.
Now you are getting close to the reality that is Wednesday’s vintage Danny Williams speech. Take an endless recitation of how much money government spent on this that or the other. Rattle off supposed triumphs. Talk of a new attitude of “confidence, courage, maturity and integrity”. Cliches and pat phrases interspersed with random quotations from Bartlett’s. As formulaic as The Ropers.
The result is jarring even beyond the idea that merely spending increasing amounts of cash is the only measure of success, that running massive deficits displays “fiscal discipline” or that calling Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney “a very powerful individual” is not trite. With all the bravado and self-praise thrown liberally around as well, one has a speech that reeks of insecurity, fear, and childishness.
For Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, the speech was surely embarrassing. What else could it be when anyone - let alone the Premier of a province – speaks of noble virtues, promises to “take no prisoners” in a political war with Quebec over the Lower Churchill, then immediately afterward quotes Mohandas Ghandi and yet remains completely oblivious to the stupidity of doing so in such a context.
On one level no one could blame any politician for doing what appears to work politically, but on another level, the Premier’s performance at the Board of Trade was also a sign of an administration that has – to put it plainly - run out of ideas.
That lack of ideas is hurting the province. The Premier has neither the markets nor the money to erect his $14 billion wet dream. If he did, then Danny Williams would be building it instead of talking about it. In the meantime, his obsession blocks out any development of wind or other energy power in the meantime. That – as strange as it seems – is the government’s energy policy.
What’s more, the opportunity that does exist south of the border is being squandered in imaginary political squabbles. Neil Leblanc just finished his appointment as Canadian consul in Boston. As he noted in a recent interview, the northeastern United States is a ripe a lucrative market.
But, Leblanc noted, it is not good enough for Canadians to say simply that we are here so “Come buy from us”. In other words, it is not enough to say we have the most phantasmagoric undeveloped green energy planet in all Creation. Canadian provinces cannot sit and wait for business to fall into their laps. The New England states themselves are also building new energy sources. Other American states are already building new generation and transmission facilities to supply the eastern seaboard.
"There is time for the Atlantic provinces and Quebec to put their best foot forward. We have a lot of natural resources here, which we can hopefully take advantage of," he said. "It's a win-win situation if we can do it."
It could be a win-win situation.
Unfortunately, as long as Danny Williams uses the same speech over and over again, the best foot is not going forward.
Far from it.
It’s time for the old schtick to retire.
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Related:
A well-known politician, in a recent speech:
Never standing still, never going backwards and never giving ground to anyone.
A well-known cartoon character (fake politician):
…we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
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Passengers on a 335 day circumnavigation of the globe that began in March got a surprise on Tuesday as they arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland only to be told the cruise was ending early.
They were put ashore with no word of a refund.
One passenger from the world cruise e-mailed a message to the Seattle Times saying:
“Cruise West's flagship, the 'Spirit of Oceanus,' has been sold to an unnamed party and the passengers (including myself) are being put ashore at St. John's, Newfoundland. No word yet on refunds”
A similar e-mail sent to the website cruisecritic.com included this information:
"So far, we know very little; all we've been told is that the ship has been sold and the around-the-world cruise is over, as of tomorrow morning."
Spirit of Oceanus is currently secured pier side in St. John’s harbour inside a security fence.
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We live in a funny country.
The Clerk of the Privy Council – Canada’s top federal public servant – posts copies of his speeches to the Internet and broadcasts the fact via Twitter.
Meanwhile, a politician who got elected on a platform of openness, transparency and accountability, wants to charge somebody thousands upon thousands – it started at $10K and has dropped downward – for copies of his public speeches.
And – if that weren’t enough – the politician then bitches publicly about the fact somebody wants copies of his speeches.
Come to think of it, the country isn’t funny.
Some of the people in it are.
Hysterically funny.
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Police and news media described two men who escaped from provincial prison on Tuesday as “violent” or as having convictions for offences involving violence.
All media report that someone – presumably provincial prison guards - a small white car acting suspiciously near the prison. As one spokesperson described to CBC Radio’s mid-day show, the suspicious activity involved driving around an area that is basically deserted except for the prison.
If provincial prison officials noticed the car, did they call the local police detachment before they discovered the escape?
And if VOCM is correct, the pair escaped by slipping under a fence. Apparently no one ever heard of burying the bottom part of the fence below ground level in order to frustrate the mile-like behaviour of some criminals.
That’s interesting because a 2008 report on the province’s prisons noted the province’s prison system suffered from weak security, aging infrastructure and management problems. A CBC news story on the report includes a link to a copy of the entire report, complete with the faulty redactions of the version originally release by the provincial justice department. The blacked out sections can be read by anyone with basic computer skills.
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Apparently, a newly elected backbench government member of the House of Assembly who also sports a new title of “Legislative Assistant”. Here’s a story that ran in the Western Star on September 3:
The province is working toward an emergency phone system that meets its needs.
So says Paul Davis, MHA for Topsail and legislative assistant to the minister of Municipal Affairs, adding that a committee of senior officials was struck early in 2009 and charged with the task of preparing a request for proposals for a feasibility study into a provincewide [sic] enhanced 911 system.
The province as a cabinet minister responsible for this. Her name is Diane Whelan.
There is one – there may be two – officially designated alternate ministers able to speak authoritatively on behalf of cabinet when the minister is not available.
In some cases, the deputy minister of the municipal affairs department could speak on the record about government plans.
There is also a very senior official responsible for emergency services - called the chief executive officer, but he’s equivalent to a deputy minister - who would be able to deal with this inquiry about province-wide 911 service.
There’s also an assistant deputy minister for fire and emergency services.
Now if Paul was a parliamentary secretary, then he’d have the to speak on behalf of the government and - in effect - on behalf of cabinet about the government’s policy intention. There used to be a minute of council in the 1980s that set out the duties, responsibilities and powers of a parliamentary secretary.
What about legislative assistants? They are pretty shadowy creatures. There’s not even any official public list of how many government backbenchers carry around this extra title. Sometimes they just pop up attending events on behalf of ministers.
Sometimes, apparently, they can speak about what government is doing.
But on what legal basis do they do anything at all?
One has to wonder as well on what basis backbenchers like Paul Davis get elevated to some sort of pseudo-cabinet job – speaking on behalf of a minister and the government – within only a figurative few days of getting elected while other capable backbenchers just languish.
It’s all very odd.
Very odd, indeed.
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A piece this week in the Hill Times this week conjures up images of a West Wing episode. The night of Jed Bartlet’s re-election, some guy turns up on the major networks purporting to be a Democratic Party insider. The guy claims he advised Bartlet on issues during the campaign that turned out to be crucial to victory.
Only thing is the guy wasn’t really an insider. Rather he was a pollster Bruno Gianelli hired to do some polling in one part of one state. The guy knew nothing but he talked a good game and the networks ate up his story.
The Hill Times story quotes an unidentified ‘Liberal insider” as saying:
"They can't win. If you go province-by-province and riding-by-riding, what does it give you? I know the spin will be that the cross-country tour elevated Iggy, and the long-gun and census stuff pulled Harper down, so now we're tied. But when the crunch comes and people are going to vote, I don't think—whether they had to fill in a long-form census or not—I don't think it's going to be a serious factor…".
Someone actually so far inside any political party as to know what the leadership team is actually thinking:
You can tell the “insider” is full of crap by this simple paragraph:
In Newfoundland, for example, if Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams "goes whole hog" and puts his support behind the federal Conservatives in the next election campaign, the Tories could win five of the province's seven seats, the insider said. Liberal MP Siobhan Coady's St. John's South-Mount Pearl riding and Scott Andrews' riding in Avalon are the most at risk.
Right off the bat, this anonymous character predicts the Tories would gain five seats in Newfoundland and Labrador, but only names two that might change hands. Where are the other three?
Any person who actually knew what happened on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador - as opposed to the bullshit - wouldn’t claim for one second that Danny Williams could turn the tide and suddenly have everyone vote for a party Williams himself savaged not so long ago.
The simple reason is that Danny Williams didn’t do it the last time.
All Danny Williams did in 2008 was strangle the Conservative vote.
Well, for the most part he strangled it. In St. John’s East, Tories turned out en masse for Danny’s old law partner, Jack Harris. The Liberal vote there collapsed as well, giving Harris a giant majority. Don’t count on that one changing hands back to the Conservatives.
In St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, a sizeable number of Conservative voters actually rejected Danny’s instructions and turned out to vote for the New Democrat. That’s right. Even though Danny Williams’ cabinet ministers turned out for Liberal Siobhan Coady, a sizeable number of rank and file Conservatives in the riding actually made a choice for the New Democrat. In other ridings they just stayed home.
But in SJSMP, they voted for the New Democrat as a protest over Conservative ministers actively campaigning for their hated enemy, les rouges. Call it a hold over from the 1949 Confederation racket if you want, but Conservative townies tend to vote for the New Democrats rather than Liberals if the can’t vote for their own guy.
Put a stronger Conservative candidate in play and this riding might change its colours. Then again, it might not. If you apply the current poll configuration to old votes, the riding tended to vote Liberal more than Conservative more recently. What usually made the difference in the old configuration was the solid blue voting along what is now known as the Irish loop. Even losing coming out of St. John’s and Mount Pearl, the Conservative would go over the top as the Southern Shore went solidly Conservative.
One of the other key differences might be the New Democrat candidate. If the NDP run a candidate with a strong enough profile and the right messaging, he could split the blue vote. Yes, that seems counterintuitive for people who think of voting only in left-right terms – like the “insider” apparently - but the distinction could be important in the next federal election.
Another factor to watch would be the impact of migration on the vote. The old Conservative stronghold in Avalon has moved to the metro St. John’s region. Where they live now could have a huge impact on the vote in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl as well as neighbouring Avalon.
In 2008, the fight turned out to be a straight fight between the Liberals and the Conservatives. You’d have to do a poll by poll breakdown to see where the Conservatives lost votes and where they picked up. The New Democrats were a distant third, but they did increase their vote sizeably. They won’t have the Conservative Family Feud to count on this time and those extra 2400 votes the NDP gained last time might swing to one of the other parties.
None of that takes into account the value of incumbency.
Nor does it take into account the fact that in 2004 and 2006 – when Williams and his party actively supported Conservatives across the province – the best the Conservatives could do is win the same two seats they usually win. In 2008, though, Williams wiped out the Conservative vote and In St. John’s East in particular he may have locked that one in New Democrat hands for a while. Conservative insiders –real insiders – are likely thinking that with friends like that…well, you know where that goes.
So that none of that looks even remotely like a scenario where the Old Man is going to hand his old enemy Steve five easy seats. And it gets even harder to see the “insider” scenario if you realise the farther one gets from St. John’s, the harder it is to elect a federal Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, even with the enthusiastic help of a guy whose strongest supporters are still found among townies.
Of course, the “insider’’ assessment only works on any level if you continue to think that Danny Williams remains as popular as he ever was, even within his own party. As the insider aptly shows by his or her appearance of knowing things, appearances can be deceiving.
The 2008 Family Feud did its most damage within the Conservative Party itself. Even having Danny Williams call off the feud or claim that he leads a Reform-based Conservative Party might not be enough to win back the enthusiastic support of Conservatives who voted Blue long before Williams was a gleam in his own eye. Those are the people he screwed with in 2008 and those people didn’t like it one bit.
Williams himself also hinted recently at internal political problems with his party. And let’s not forget that earlier this year, someone dropped a dime on his little plan to scoot south secretly to have heart surgery.
To be fair, though, the one part of the scenario the Liberal “insider” didn’t mention is another one: what might happen in one of the ridings if Danny Williams himself decided to take a shot at federal politics.
That wouldn’t change the federal Conservatives’ chances a great deal in Newfoundland and Labrador, but it would make the nomination fight in one riding a lot more interesting than it might otherwise be.
Wonder which riding it might be?
St. John’s East is already safely in the hands of his old friend and law partner. Odds are the Old Man wouldn’t run there.
But he does own a sizeable house in Avalon, the seat once held by his political nemesis, John Efford.
Hmmm.
The Old Man jumping to federal politics.
Maybe the Hill times wasn’t speaking with a Liberal after all.
Their assessment sounds more like what one would get from a member of the Old Man’s crew.
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A mix of old and new and for the first time a double tie for rankings.
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…from June 2008 to July 2010 the health authority transferred 15 mothers and nine babies out of the province…Over a two year period, Eastern sent a total of 15 women and nine infants to other hospitals. The CBC online version of the story gives the same information at the end of the piece. They just broke it down into two periods of 12 months each.
From July 31 to Sept. 1, 12 mothers and three babies have been transferred to health care facilities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.CBC gave the information by talking about what happened “since July 31.”
Since implementing divert on July 31, up to September 1, Eastern Health has transferred 12 moms and 3 babies to facilities outside of the province.The release itself is a curious mixture of sterile jargon on the one hand – calling the practice “being on divert” – and the rather folksy and familiar practice of calling the pregnant women involved “moms” on the other. It also follows a fairly standard provincial government formula of not putting substantive information in the first few paragraphs. News releases, you may recall, should follow the convention of putting the big idea right there at the beginning, usually in the first sentence.
The president and CEO of Eastern Health says it will likely be December before pressure eases up on the Janeway Children’s Hospital neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU).CBC put it this way:
Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority is reassuring expectant mothers that everything is being done to protect the health of their babies despite a shortage of equipment and staff that is forcing pregnant women and newborns out of the province for care.NTV – and the biggest audience in the province – led with a statement in the introduction that the health authority will cover costs.
Eastern Health is working to ensure both nurses and mothers are well in light of a situation at the Janeway's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.One newser.
I want to assure all expectant mothers that their safety and the safety of their babies are of utmost concern for us. We are closely monitoring the situation and will arrange a transfer if required, to ensure that the appropriate level of care is provided to mothers and their babies.”The release should have started with the assurance because Care is Job 1.
Information commissioners, privacy commissioners and ombudsmen from across Canada issued a call on September first for government sin the country to adopt open government principles.
They issued the call from their joint meeting held this year in Whitehorse.
Specifically, the commissioners resolved:
1. The Commissioners endorse and promote open government as a means to enhance transparency and accountability which are essential features of good governance and critical elements of an effective and robust democracy.
2. The Commissioners call on the federal and all provincial and territorial governments to declare the importance of open government, including specific commitments for stronger standards for transparency and participation by the public.
3. Governments should build access mechanisms into the design and implementation stages of all new programs and services to facilitate and enhance proactive disclosure of information.
4. Through ongoing consultations with the public, governments should routinely identify data sources and proactively disclose information in open, accessible and reusable formats. Public access to information should be provided free or at minimal cost.
5. In implementing open government policies, the federal and all provincial and territorial governments should give due consideration to privacy, confidentiality, security, Crown copyright and all relevant laws.
Geologists exploring western Newfoundland have discovered a fossil belonging to an amphibian that live about 325 millions years ago. (cbcnl)
The 12 to 15 centimetre long bone is the first find of its kind in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Gulf News quoted Dr. Liam Herringshaw, one of the researchers, who explained why:
“In terms of land animals, there’s almost nothing. Partly because most of the rocks are too old, there are no dinosaur-bearing rocks on the island of Newfoundland,” he said. “ This would seem to be the first evidence we’ve got of really ancient land animals. The rocks we were looking at were 325 million years old and that’s 75 million years before dinosaurs appear, so it’s a pretty early vertebrate.”
Meanwhile, in Sheshatshiu, workers building new homes in the Innu community unearthed evidence of aboriginal inhabitation of the community 3,000 years ago. The artifacts, including weapons and tools, add to modern knowledge of human presence in the area.
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On August 27, 2010, the consortium developing the Hebron oilfield offshore Newfoundland and Labrador awarded the project’s front-end engineering and design contract to WorleyParsons.
ExxonMobil is the lead partner on the project.
Under the contract, ExxonMobil may, at its discretion, award WorleyParsons with the project’s Engineering, Procurement and Service contract.
According to the project timetable, the consortium are anticipating project sanction in early 2012.
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While Gus wanted to put window cleaner on everything, Gus’ imaginary brother in the provincial government likes to throw money at it.
The most recent example is a fund set up with a research centre at Memorial University. There is now $300,000 available to probe garbage.
Apparently, there are “unique waste diversion challenges” in Newfoundland and Labrador.
So now the fine folks at the province’s university can get up to $15,000 to study ways of “reducing the amount of waste created, reusing materials and products, recycling or reprocessing waste, recovering some useful benefit from waste, and disposing of waste that has no further economic or environmental benefit.”
Ummm.
Right.
And these sorts of thing, the sorts of thing they’ve been doing everywhere else for decades, are not only unknown to people in Newfoundland and Labrador but we must fund university-level research to crack the garbage code that apparently bedevils us.
Once the researchers produce answers to the refuse puzzle, the second pillar of the anti-trash strategy will cut in: they will tell people about it. And maybe, once they’ve told people about it, those people might come up with suggestions to – in the words of the guy running the research centre - “shape research questions, leading to new ideas which then encourage further research to achieve implementation.”
So they’ll think about something. Then they’ll tell people what they thought about. And then the people they told will come up with new things to think about. So the people doing the thinking will go back and think some more about the stuff they’ve been told to think about.
And maybe at some point, after all this thinking and talking and thinking and talking, someone might be able to do something with the garbage.
The technical term for this approach is GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.
People unused to the refined language of the government and the university will only look at the complete lack of action on waste reduction since 2003 and think “circle jerk”.
And they will be right.
This is the administration, after all, that is now renowned for its inability to do stuff.
This is the administration that took almost four years to take the waste management strategy of their predecessors, photocopy it, move all the target dates back a decade and then announce it as their own, brand-new strategy.
Just in time for an election.
And now three years after that announcement, they toss money at a bunch of people to supposedly figure out what to do with garbage.
This is the same administration that gave a consultant some unspecified hunk of public money to spend 18 months studying ways of keeping young people in the province. The result of the cogitation was truly Earth-shattering in its inventiveness:
1. Create jobs.
2. Put services in major centres. Like maybe St. John’s, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor and Corner Brook?
3. Link education to the labour market.
4. Build “an understanding of the benefits of immigration and diversity through public education, community dialogue and strengthened curriculums in the education system.”
Well, d’uh.
And it even came with a spelling mistake in the bit that talks about education.
Brilliant!
There is no way that anyone could possibly invent this policy. It is, after all, nothing more than a hideous self-parody of an administration that is obviously lacking any sense of direction.
Reductio ad argentum, indeed.
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Were you one of the 12, 969 13,034 people who viewed 18,744 18,828 Bond Papers pages in August? If not, then you missed out on these, the 10 most-viewed pages:
An understandable month and a totally bizarro month at the same time.
The Orcas and minke videos were hugely popular and not surprisingly that came in as the top post of the month.
Whether it’s energy deals, energy non-deals, and the whole racket with Quebec, you can count on those posts being popular.
No surprise, either, that people are still keen to hear deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale on the story the mainstream media have ignored for almost exactly one whole year.
The Number Six post is just a sign of the number of lawyers – or their clients – who visit BP to keep up on the local political and courthouse scene.
But in the bizarro world of Newfoundland and Labrador politics, nothing came as such a shock as discovering that people loved a 2006 post, “Government by Fernando.” In the same vein, the Number 10 post is an old one about a celebrity too, this time Lindsay Lohan.
Every month people find something intriguing or entertaining at Bond Papers.
There’s no way of knowing in advance exactly what they’ll read and that makes it pure fun.
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The Proponent [NALCOR Energy] has failed to justify the Project in energy and economic terms and has not provided an assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction in possible export markets as required in the detailed criteria provided in the EIS Guidelines.
You can find that statement as an attachment to a letter, dated January 26, 2010, from the joint review panel appointed to conduct the environmental review of the Lower Churchill project.
The attachment lists, in painful detail, the areas of the NALCOR submissions to date that come up so short that the panel could not commence full public hearings.
But just look at those words: “failed to justify”. They tell you, in the clearest way possible, why the Lower Churchill project is on hold. That’s something premier Danny Williams didn’t admit, incidentally until May 2010, but it is true.
NACLOR failed to justify the project on energy or economic grounds.
And those deficiencies are the reason the provincial cabinet is not even close to giving the thumbs up to start construction.
Forget the Premier’s claims about Hydro-Quebec. They are simply a diversion, a smokescreen. They are, as noted here many times, a complete nonsense given all that is in the public domain and the Premier’s own comments in April 2009.
As a result of that letter from the joint review panel, NALCOR spent another eight months pulling together more information in an effort to meet the review panel requirements. NALCOR submitted the information to the joint review panel on August 9 and the panel began distributing the information to interested parties for comment on August 12.
Interestingly, that’s the same day Premier Danny Williams held a surprise news conference to accuse the Government of Quebec of interfering in a funding request to Ottawa for a project that, as the public subsequently learned doesn’t actually exist. As it turns out, a power line between Nova Scotia and the island of Newfoundland is merely a hypothetical project that depends on construction of the Lower Churchill. Still, the local media dutifully reported his claims without question and the story went national just like a spark touched to dry embers in the hot, dry woods of a central Canadian summer.
Sheer bunk though, all the same.
You’ll also find that quote from the environmental panel in a Telegram news story, dated Saturday August 21*, under the headline “Nalcor weighs risk and reward”. The article starts out with this line:
The province’s energy corporation has laid out a possible development scenario for the Lower Churchill.
That isn’t news, by the way, even though the most important idea is supposed to go right at the start of a news story. The development scenario and the rest of the stuff at the front and in the middle of the article is exactly the same stuff that’s been talked about by NALCOR and its predecessor dating back to the 1990s. It’s the development scenario laid out in the original environmental submission this time around. The complete document record of the review is available online.
You have to read all the way to the end of the Telegram article, though, to find any reference to the environmental panel’s January decision. And even then the fact the panel told NALCOR their work was fundamentally lacking is presented as if it were merely the innocent stimulus to further action by glorious team at NALCOR:
Timelines associated with the joint federal-provincial environmental assessment panel have dragged on longer than expected.
The panel said Nalcor’s previous filings were lacking.
A pesky inconvenience at worst.
But as a result of this little setback, NALCOR did all this wonderful work, which the Telegram has now told us all about. Now the panel will “now assess those filings before deciding how to proceed.”
Yay, NALCOR.
In the news business, they call it burying the lede. That’s a news story that starts out with secondary information and puts the main point farther down the piece. News stories are usually written with the most important thing at the top and the least important information at the bottom. Some call the style an inverted pyramid because the big part is on top.
The style evolved over time and it has a number of advantages. People skimming quickly through a newspaper can get the main point of each story by only reading the first sentence or first paragraph. Editors running the story who are also jammed for space can safely hack off stuff at the end without losing the important information.
What makes this Telegram story stand out is that it doesn’t just bury the news, it puts the kernel of hard news in a place where editors would normally cut. Not only that, but people may not even read all the way to the end. And if they only read the first bit, they’d be fooled into believing that everything is hunky dory with the Lower Churchill when – as a matter of fact – it isn’t.
This Telegram story could easily have been written in the provincial government’s communications department. But it wasn’t. And that’s where an article like this gets it’s persuasive impact on readers.
In the marketing world, a favourable news story is worth considerably more than any amount of paid advertising. That’s because the news story comes with the perception that the news is vetted by a reporter and a layer of editors and ultimately the producer or owner. If it is in the paper or on the air, it must be newsworthy and the information in it implicitly comes with a stamp of truthfulness.
Research tends to bear out that perception. A 2008 Ipsos poll of Canadians reported that 69% of respondents had trust and confidence in conventional Canadian news media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly”. A more recent Gallup poll of American audiences suggests that Americans have considerable faith in conventional news media, even if it is lower than Canadian.
The distortion of reality, the burying in a wider sense, isn’t just confined to this sort of writing. You can find it as well in the stuff that doesn’t get reported locally at all, ever. A good example of that more recently was a story in the Toronto Star on energy issues. It appeared five days before the Telegram puff piece on NALCOR and it goes to one of the major problems with the Lower Churchill project: a lack of markets.
The massive, state-of-the-art Bécancour cogeneration electricity plant is capable of powering 550,000 homes. At the moment, however, the only action its gas turbines are getting comes from the dehumidifiers that prevent them from rusting out.
Apart from providing steam for an industrial park neighbour, the plant, 150 kilometres northeast of Montreal, sits largely idle, victim of policies and planning in a province overrun with electricity.
Such is the extraordinary electricity surplus in Quebec that several hundred million dollars are being spent and lost each year dealing with the problem, and consumers are footing the bill.
Hydro-Quebec has so much surplus capacity that it can afford to shutter this plant and others. The company is still building more hydro and wind capacity. it forecasts a surplus for 2011 that is enough to power 77 billion 100 watt light bulbs for an hour.
Try and think of the last time any one of the conventional local media reported any discussion of the Lower Churchill that did anything but report government pronouncements or reaction to government pronouncements?
Keep trying.
There might be one or two, but by far they are outweighed with the sort of stuff the Telegram ran in late August burying the news about the Lower Churchill from last January under a mountain of cotton-candy fluff.
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* 2009 average paid circulation for the Saturday Telegram was 40,166 according to the Canadian Newspaper Association.
Transcontinental claims the Telegram reaches 78% of adults in the St. John’s census metropolitan area and 88% of “managers and professionals.”
Updated 0848 to clarify a sentence.
Corporal Pinksen was wounded eight days ago while on a foot patrol in Nakhonay, a village 18 kilometres southwest of Kandahar. An improvised explosive device planted by insurgents detonated, wounding Pinksen and another soldier. Both were serving with the battle group centred on 1st Battalion, the Royal Canadian Regiment.
From the Canadian Forces release:
Cpl Pinksen was treated on scene and evacuated by helicopter to the Role 3 Multi-National Medical Facility at Kandahar Airfield then subsequently moved to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany. He arrived in Ramstein, Germany on 25 August and succumbed to his injuries earlier today at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
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Related:
“Back of the envelope calculations”, a recent Telegram story assured us all, “put royalties for the first three months of the [current] fiscal year on pace with government’s $2.1-billion target.”
But, the Telegram headline says, that’s because “surging production” is offsetting “softer” prices.
Unfortunately, the Telegram didn’t see fit to show us the back of the envelope so no one can tell exactly how they came to that conclusion. It must be a provincial government envelope, though because the numbers don’t quite add up.
As it looks, revenue projections are likely to be on target with the forecast.
The provincial government’s oil royalty is a function of oil prices and production. The Telegram reported - quite rightly - that the provincial government forecast oil royalties of $2.1 billion based on total production of 90 million barrels and and average price of oil at US$83 a barrel. The provincial government also allowed the Canadian dollar would be close enough to the American dollar that there wouldn’t be any sizeable windfall from a cheap Canadian dollar.
The Telegram also reported that oil production is on track to come in around 101 million barrels. The offshore regulatory board’s actual figures for the first four months of 2010 (April to August) show oil on track to hit 99 million barrels. Still, that’s 10% above the government’s spring forecast.
As for crude oil prices, they have not averaged US$83. The Telegram puts the average price of Brent crude at US$80 a barrel the week the story appeared. This is where it gets interesting.
For the first four months of the current fiscal year, Brent crude has averaged US$77.71 a barrel. That’s about six percent below forecast. If you take out the April average of $84.98 – because it is the only month averaging above $80 dollars this year – you get an average price about 10% below the government’s forecast average.
With production above and price below, the one pretty much cancels out the other.
Production isn’t actually surging, though. In fact, production at about 100 million barrels is only slightly above last year’s production total of around 97 million barrels. As for price, there’s no surge there either. The average currently showing in 2010 - including April - is only about a dollar above the 2009 fiscal year average.
In other words, everything is tracking to bring in the same average price and the same yearly production as 2009. The provincial government forecast an increase in royalties to $2.1 billion from $1.8 billion.
All three fields should be in payout and according to the pre-2003 royalty deals, that means they’d be paying more to the provincial treasury. Hibernia didn’t hit payout until June last year, so it appears the extra cash is solely the result of having the big field paying higher royalties for a whole year instead of just part of it.
That means that the slightly higher royalties are coming from old development deals, not from something happening to oil prices and production.
And what does that mean for the provincial budget? if you relied only on the Telegram story you might be fooled into believing that the provincial government might balance its books this year. It might do so using accrual accounting, but there won’t likely be a balanced budget on a cash basis.
In fact, the current fiscal year looks a lot like the last one, including the fact everything is on track for another whopper of a cash shortfall.
For some unfathomable reason, the Telegram decided you didn’t need to know that the provincial government’s budget forecasts a cash deficit of nearly a billion dollars. Nor did they mention that last year the provincial government had a cash deficit of about $500 million.
Instead, they left you with the Pollyanna-ish view that everything is looking great.
Maybe it is, but one thing is for sure: it has nothing to do with “surging” oil production or “soft” oil prices.
- srbp -