And he is still wrong #nlpoli

The guy who helped create the monster called Nalcor thinks Muskrat Falls is a great idea.

But Lieutenant Governor John Crosbie backs it for a completely wrong reason.

The Premier and her glass house #nlpoli

One of Kathy Dunderdale’s more obnoxious qualities is her love of insulting other people.

She couldn’t let the House close without doing it a few times just for good measure.

There’s nothing witty in Dunderdale’s insults.  Nor is there anything that could pass for clever in her jabs.  That’s part of what makes her comments obnoxious:  they are just crude.

There’s another part to it that, like her predecessor who loved the same sort of crap-talk,  Kathy is the Premier of the province.  When she carries on like that she winds up setting an abysmally low standard of behaviour for public officials.

It’s undignified. It’s degrading to the province and to the people she should be honoured to represent. 

Muskrat Falls Policy Shift: The Audio #nlpoli

You read the post.

Now listen to Tom Marshall.

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Shifting from non-renewable to renewable #nlpoli

Scan through the official record for the House of Assembly for the spring 2012 session and you will find example after example after example of a variation on this theme:  “…our vision for a prosperous future is the use of our non-renewable resources to secure a renewable future.” 

St. John’s West MHA Dan Crummell said those specific words on May 8.  But over and over again, the provincial Conservatives in the legislature tied oil money to things like Muskrat Falls.

Steve Kent (Mount Pearl North) on May 8:

The returns from this non-renewable sector are actually being used to build a renewable energy future for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Wade Verge (Lewisporte), May 8:

That is one of the reasons that as a government we are looking at Muskrat Falls and we are looking at the Lower Churchill. We have a vision for the future. Muskrat Falls is one of those projects that will help us as we give up our reliance on non-renewable resources in the future.

Keith Russell (MHA Lake Melville), May 8:

By using our non-renewable resources, Mr. Speaker, as a means of catapulting us into a renewable resource-based economy, this will in effect liberate us from the dependence and exposures to the realities of oil and oil markets and pricing. This, Mr. Speaker, is what it takes to be successful.

But that flurry wasn’t the only time.  Just look at these examples:

Municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien, Hansard, March 6, 2012:

I heard the Leader of the Third Party yesterday, as well, and I took it as an endorsement of Muskrat Falls, because she talked about moving from a non-renewable to a renewable economy. That is exactly one part of Muskrat Falls. Even though we have said categorically, time after time, that project has to – has to – stand on its own, it moves us from that non-renewable economy to a renewable economy. That is exactly what it does.

Paul Lane, MHA for Mount Pearl South, Hansard, March 12, 2012:

I will not sit on the fence. Muskrat Falls certainly is a great project for our future. It ties in to the Province's energy plan of taking the non-renewable resources we have and investing them into renewable resources for the future, for our children, for our grandchildren. I am pleased to be part of that. Again, it ties in to the great leadership that this government has shown right throughout the whole process.

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, Hansard, March 13, 2012:

What we are doing, Mr. Speaker, we are taking our non-renewable resource monies, our oil money, we are building schools, infrastructure and hospitals leading with Muskrat Falls and Gull Island, hopefully, to the development of a renewable resource economy.

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, Hansard, March 15, 2012:

As we utilize our oil, the non-renewable energy is used to develop a renewable energy economy, Mr. Speaker, consistent with the energy plan.

Glen Littlejohn, MHA for Port de Grave, Hansard, June 6, 2012:

Mr. Speaker, one of the central commitments in our provincial Energy Plan is to reinvest the portion of our non-renewable energy money into our renewable energy developments. Mr. Speaker, doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that make sense to us, and doesn't that make sense to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, that while we are reaping some of the best benefits we have, the resource we have now is non-renewable, so let's inject some of that non-renewable money into planning for the future and giving us clean, green, renewable energy, Mr. Speaker.

Still, for all those examples of what the Conservatives thought was their strategy, somewhere along the line they shifted their plan from using money from non-renewable resources to build Muskrat Falls to borrowing all that money.

Interesting.

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Major Policy Shift on Muskrat Falls, or Uncle Tom's Problem #nlpoli

Finance Minister Tom Marshall called VOCM Open Line on Wednesday morning to talk about Cabot Martin and the pile of cash Tom is sitting on.

Poor Tom.

He was so effercited and agimitated that he got lost in his own maze of cash, net debt, infrastructure spending, and efforts to claim that what exists doesn't exist and even if  it did exist, it isn't what it looks like, whatever that might be.  "Foolishness", Tom said at one point, and that is about the most accurate description of what he got on with:  foolishness.

Tom should have just read the SRBP post that lays it all out using the finance department's own information.

Bottom line:  Cabot is right.  There is $2.77 billion in cash and temporary investments.  It comes from oil windfalls.

In addition to that pot of cash, there is money that is in the bank and that Tom and his friends will spend in this year's budget.  In the Public Accounts extract shown above, that is the amount called "Receivables".  Tom talked about this but he seemed to confuse it with the temporary investments.

Tom also mentioned to Randy something about equity in different Crown corporations.  That is actually another amount on top of the $2.77 billion.

Add it all together and at the end of March 2011, it came to nearly $5.0 billion.

Poor Tom.  It is hard to keep it all straight, evidently.

Now what is Tom planning to do with the cash and temporary investments?  

There's where it gets interesting.

Once upon a time, the Old Man and his friends wanted to use cash like that to build Muskrat Falls.  Remember they used to talk about converting revenues from a non-renewable resource into a renewable one.  Well, that was the scheme:  take the oil money and build a dam.

Tom told the Open Line audience that things have changed.  When they changed isn't clear.  On June 21, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the House that "Our whole energy plan is based upon using our non-renewable resources to transition into a renewable resource economy."

Now that policy is apparently gone right out the window. This is a major policy shift for the provincial government with very serious financial implications for taxpayers.

Instead of that old plan,  Kathy, Tom and Jerome and Ed are thinking about borrowing the entire cost of Muskrat Falls.  Nalcor will do some of the borrowing directly and the "equity" portion the banks want Nalcor to find will come from you and me via Uncle Tom and another bunch of banks.  Rather than take that temporary cash laying about in case the arse drops out of Tom's oil revenue projections, Tom will now head to the banks and float a loan for three or four or five billion or whatever it winds up being.  Tom will then hand that money over to Ed Martin to build the dam.

We will know how much money Tom will borrow when we find out and not a moment before.

On top of that, Nalcor has to borrow some cash.  Now here's where it got a bit weird.  Tom tried to claim that this money would not show up on the provincial public debt because the federal government was going to guarantee it.  The accountants at the bond rating agencies might have something to say about that.  Safer, for now, would be to assume that the provincial taxpayers will be on the hook in the first instance for the whole thing, whether it is directly through Nalcor or through Uncle Tom's generosity with someone else's money.

If Muskrat costs a total of $8.0 billion, then Tom and Ed will borrow it all.  We can add all that to the current public debt of $13 billion and marvel at the record public debt of $21 billion.

And, in case you missed it, the only people paying it back will be you and all the rest of the ratepayers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Plus interest.

Plus profit to the companies involved.

-srbp-

Garnishee Tom’s pension first #nlpoli

Spendthrift finance minister Tom Marshall is willing to spend your money and mine to keep the Corner Brook paper mill afloat. As CBC tells us, Tom is keeping the options open:

"It can be a loan, it could be cash, it could guarantees but you know that we've made it clear we are not going to fund operational losses."

Well, you’ve got to admire a guy who is willing to spend public money to help out a bunch of people going through a hard time.

Not even close to a Heritage Fund #nlpoli

A few people likely read Cabot Martin’s opinion piece in the Telegram on Muskrat Falls this past weekend and scratched their heads.

Open Line show host Randy Simms certainly did.

Martin’s piece isn’t available online but here (right) is a screen cap of a chunk of it that had Randy baffled. Writes Cabot Martin:

“…we have the equivalent of a provincial 'Heritage Fund’ of over $2.7 billion built up from ‘excess’ oil revenues over the last four years”.

Well, the amount is right but this isn’t a Heritage Fund of any sort.

Migrants and Migrant Labour #nlpoli

Russell Wangersky devotes his Tuesday column this week to migration and labour.  He starts out with a discussion of the recent quarterly population figures from Statistics Canada, notes that they run against the popular story that things are booming around here, and then segues neatly to a discussion of local labour shortages.

There is a feeling, at least in government, that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians away are somehow a sort of flexible employment pool, skilled workers who are willing to give up their stable, long-time Alberta or Saskatchewan careers to move their families back here at the drop of a job hat. 

Along the way, Wangersky hits a familiar point about how some people seem to think that the solution to our economic problems rests entirely with people who are supposedly ready to come home at any price.  They are homing pigeons, supposedly. Before you get too upset at that idea,  just remember that the Old Man Hisself once used that phrase.  Unfortunately, the CBC link in this old post is now dead but it does note that Danny Williams made the comment during a trip to Alberta sometime in 2007.  Maybe someone at the Mother Corp can dig out the link.

The other term that the word "migration" brings to mind is one of the solutions the current crowd running the place have used to cope with their stunning lack of success at economic development.  The term is  migrant labour.  Here's an excerpt from a post - "The Economics of Snuffleupagus" - that should give you a sense of how persistent the migration issue has been for the Conservatives:

It hit some new records in the best years of Danny Williams economic miracle.  That's right.  At a time when the economic miracle was taking hold people were flooding out of the Happy Province in near record numbers. The chart at left gives an idea of how big the problem has been.


There are parts of the province that are almost entirely dependent on migrant labour and remittance workers. 

In others - like Stephenville - the economic disaster of losing a pulp and paper mill on the Premier's watch didn't materialize solely because the workers there could find jobs in Alberta. 

But yes, you say, there has been more people coming back to the province since 2007, you say. 

And yes, that's true, but it isn't because of great economic opportunities in this province. 

Look around, especially outside the overpass.  All those enormous, job-creating projects that were supposedly luring people back don't actually exist.

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The Truth Hurts #nlpoli

For those of us who loved the West Wing, we can look forward to his latest effort, an HBO series about news media called The Newsroom. [video link to Episode 1]

And we can be sure that it will be a finely crafted and savagely accurate portrayal of the news business.

We can be sure because a gang of news types at the mighty Ceeb are shitting all over it from great heights.

Alberta-bound #nlpoli

This graph will likely cause some people to scratch their chins or heads.  The reason is simple:  it isn’t the story they’ve been told, namely the one that holds that all our ills of outmigration and the like vanished after 2003.

In fact, if you look at it, outmigration from Newfoundland and Labrador to Alberta has been greatest over the last 10 years or so.

$#*! Jerome said: Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

Hear what comfortable words Jerome! sayeth, back when he was finance minister (December 9, 2008):

The $4 billion six-year plan is as much as we can handle right now along with the Vale Inco, Hebron, and then hopefully the Lower Churchill. So we are at capacity, there are not enough workers, and there is simply no way that we can do anything more with infrastructure right now.

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More $#*! the Premier said: copper fastened Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

December 16, 2009

Mr. Speaker, their ignorance of this project is staggering, and what is frightening about it is they put this out like they are speaking the truth.

Mr. Speaker, we have commitments on a concrete gravity-based structure, a mechanical outfitting, 4.1 million person hours of work; topsides drilling support module; topsides drilling derrick; flare boom; helideck; lifeboat stations; structural steel riser components and assembly of offshore loading system components; riser bases; rigid risers; tie-in spools and buoys. We have 50,000 hours of GBS feed-phase engineering. We have detailed engineering. We have 1.2 million person hours of detailed engineering that have to be done here in the Province.

Mr. Speaker, the first time ever in a negotiation of an offshore project that these kinds of benefits have been negotiated and copper fastened to the benefit of the people of the Province.

Yeah. 

Right.

In hindsight, they must have been fastened with something other than copper.

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$#*! the Premier said: Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

November 27, 2008:

One of the things that I am proudest of – I mean, the benefits that we negotiated under the Hebron agreement have never been seen in this Province before. They are so comprehensive and they are so detailed, but one of the things I am so proud of is the gender and diversity agreement. [Emphasis added]

In hindsight, that comment seems to be rather telling.

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How Irish are we: Serbian edition

 

It’s the Serbian accent that really makes it.

 

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Caribou over Afghanistan

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.

That’s a DHC-4 Caribou, known to Americans as a C-7, upgraded with turboprops. 

They are indeed 50 years old, but they still do the job dropping supplies to remote locations in Afghanistan. 

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444 Squadron: answers to questions #nlpoli

As a general background on 444 Squadron at Goose Bay, here is the text of a question posed in the House of Commons by member of parliament Marc Garneau and the reply from defence minister Peter MacKay dated June 19, 2012:

Marc Garneau Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC : With regard to 444 Combat Support Squadron: (a) how many aircraft were in the squadron on April 10, 2012; (b) how many aircraft were in the squadron on April 12, 2012; (c) is the aircraft which the Minister of National Defence references in his press release of April 12, 2012, an aircraft allocation which was not previously present at the squadron, or is it the restoration of an aircraft allocation which was previously seconded to other duties; (d) if the aircraft referenced in (c) was previously seconded to other duties, what were the nature and duration of those duties; (e) what is the mandate of the squadron; (f) in what orders, instructions, or other documents is that mandate set out; (g) what is the date or what are the dates of those orders, instructions, or other documents; and (h) did the mandate of 444 Squadron change at any point during the present calendar year, and if so, what was the nature and date of any such change in the mandate?

Peter MacKay Minister of National Defence: Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), on April 10, 2012, 444 Squadron had two CH-146 Griffon aircraft on strength.

With regard to (b), on April 12, 2012, 444 Squadron had three CH-146 Griffon aircraft on strength.

With regard to (c), the aircraft that the Minister of National Defence references in his press release of April 12, 2012, has restored 444 Squadron to the full establishment of three helicopters for which it was originally created.

With regard to (d), in October 2005, a CH-146 Griffon was transferred from 444 Combat Support Squadron to 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron, 8 Wing Trenton. The Griffon referenced in (c) was transferred to 424 Squadron to support the CH-149 Cormorant search and rescue fleet when it was recognized that the Cormorant fleet was not able to sustain primary search and rescue operations at four main operating bases alone. CH-146 Griffons continue to be stationed at 424 Squadron to support search and rescue. The aircraft that is now being used to provide a third CH-146 Griffon to 444 Combat Support Squadron was provided by 438 Tactical Aviation Squadron, Saint-Hubert.

With regard to (e), (f) and (g), the mandate of 444 Combat Support Squadron is to provide support to air operations at 5 Wing Goose Bay. This role is set out in Canadian Forces Organization Order 7697, dated October 18, 2001, which superseded Canadian Forces Organization Order 2.2.5.2, dated May 15, 1993.

The roles, tasks and responsibilities of a combat support squadron are further defined by the operational document 3010-7, A3 Tactical Aviation Readiness, Concept of Operations--Combat Support Capability, dated March 25, 2002. This document provides that combat support squadron roles are as follows: primary role, to provide rapid search and rescue response to air emergencies resulting from local military flying operations; secondary role, to provide administrative and utility airlift in support of Wing operations; and tertiary role, to provide national secondary search and rescue and civil assistance capabilities.

In its tertiary role, a combat support squadron can be expected to respond within 12 hours of notification. However, within the context of the Canadian Forces search and rescue response, this does not imply a mandated response posture. Such secondary search and rescue resources are considered for assistance only when circumstances permit, and are not accountable to the search and rescue system for the provision of a dedicated resource.

With regard to (h), the mandate of 444 Combat Support Squadron has remained to provide support to air operations at 5 Wing Goose Bay.

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Looking beyond the Hebron sandbox #nlpoli

ExxonMobil drew a line in the sand this morning, and the minister and I are here to draw another line in the sand, as far as this project is concerned.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, 21 June 2012

Premier Kathy Dunderdale and natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy spent more than a half hour meeting with reporters on Thursday to talk about the provincial government’s position that a major module for the Hebron project must be built in the province.

Take a look at the scrum video.  There is a lot of talk.  There is a whole lot of talk.  Some of it tough-sounding.  There are threats.

But there is so much talk, and so much rambling, and so many threats that most of the talk is unconvincing.

A closer look at the history and the agreements pulls you toward the same conclusion.

More to it than oil prices #nlpoli

Politicians spent a few hours this week harrumphing about the impact falling oil prices might have on the provincial budget this year.

The problem for the provincial government is not whether they got the price of oil right in their budget.  They’ve been underestimating for years.  This year might be an over-estimate.  In the short-term, they’ve still got lots of budget smoke and mirrors to cover off most of the likely outcomes. There’s no cause for panic, yet.

The problem for the provincial government is bigger than the current price of oil.  Most of this will be familiar to regular readers, but at times like this it is worth pulling it all together in one spot so that people can see the big picture.

Dear Jack: Turn off your frackin’ phone #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Talk about making an arse of yourself in public. 

Here’s Jack Harris in the House of Commons:

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No stinkin’ knowledge required #nlpoli

Say one thing for Kathy Dunderdale, she tells it just like it is.

In response to questions about the qualifications of four people the provincial government recently appointed to the board of directors at Nalcor, the Premier said they didn’t need to know anything about electricity, oil and gas or any of those other things that the provincial energy corporation is doing. 

Their job didn’t involve knowing anything.