The new Tammany Hall

No matter how one feels about the Memorial Stadium issue, one must surely be repulsed by the blatant manner in which Marie White and St. John's local appeals board deceived the local committee who attempted to appeal the recent council decision to rezone the stadium site.

Everyone should be absolutely clear: the council decision was gazetted on 19 August 2005, before the appeal was filed with White's committee. At that point, the appellants should have been advised of what White now says was clear - the board had no power to overturn the council decision.

Instead, the board strung along the process, keeping the appellants tied up with busy-work, holding meetings, preparing briefs and otherwise staying out of the municipal election in which the stadium rezoning has been a major issue.

By the time White summarily shut down the appeal hearing, the election was virtually over. Ballots were mailed to residents on Friday, 09 September 2005 and, if past practice is a guide, fully 80% of the total likely to be received has already been returned.

One cannot help but feel that there has been some corrupt practice here. The timing of the ballots and the past voting experience was well-known to all concerned on the board. The board's lack of power was also well-known. If there was no corruption here - no deliberate rigging of the process - the only reason for the three week charade to which the appellants were exposed would be gross incompetence.

Marie White, the members of the board and their official advisors are not incompetent.

Marie White is, however, well known to be a political ally of the mayor, Andy Wells.

For his part Wells chose to make the stadium the centrepiece of his recent political action. It cannot be called a campaign since Wells withdrew from active campaigning on his own behalf some days ago. Instead the mayor's agents have taken out newspaper advertisements encouraging residents to vote against the five councillors who opposed the stadium redevelopment. Wells has played with numbers, making preposterous claims of the cost of reversing the rezoning decision and at times contradicting himself in the matter of a few days on his own estimates of the cost.

On the same day that White ended the appeal fraud, Wells delivered letters to voters in Ward Two attacking incumbent Frank Galgay (who opposed the stadium project) and pushing instead for Bob Crocker, a last minute entry to the race who does not even live in the Ward in which he seeks election. One, again, cannot help but wonder if Wells and Crocker are in collusion.

Wells may not be campaigning for himself, but he is surely campaigning for his allies. The cost of the letters will not be reported on Crocker's expense statement, should he win. One may wonder as well what, if any, other aid Wells' campaign has given to other candidates he favours.

The centrepiece of the now-evident corruption at city hall is the mail-in ballot process itself. This farce has been well-dissected on the Bond Papers before, in the Telegram, and more recently on radio call-in shows with reports of ballots being mailed to the dead and those otherwise long departed the city.

As noted here on other occasions, there is no system to detect vote fraud. Indeed, city officials have professed themselves unable to do even the simplest things to prevent a fraud worthy of Tammany Hall. This is nonsense: officials simply do not wish to prevent fraud. In the process they are clearly in violation of the Municipal Elections Act, including the provisions which allow the city to use an alternative voting system to the one prescribed in the act.

The very timing of the election and the use of mail-in ballots alone favours Wells and the incumbents. Most residents did not begin to pay attention to the election until after Labour Day. Ballots were mailed the following Friday, a mere five days later. As city officials and the incumbent councillors well knew, fully 80% of ballots were returned within three days of being received.

As a result, the election effectively ended on Wednesday, despite the official voting day of 27 September 2005. The strongest of Wells' likely critics having been kept silent until the votes were in, Wells managed to ensure that his only political competition remained a man whose sanity has come into serious question. Even had Wells' other challenger not been forced to withdraw from the campaign due to a family tragedy, there was hardly a chance that the aloof and unpalatable Vince Withers would have posed a serious threat to Wells and his machine.

In the end, residents of St. John's have re-elected the bully boy of municipal politics as their mayor. Another of his political cronies will likely take the deputy's chair by a landslide. Dennis "Doc" O'Keefe will be contented to talk of things he can do nothing about, like gas prices, or spend tax dollars chasing cruise ships, which, as a matter of fact produce the economic benefit of two decently located Tim Hortons coffee shops. Wells can count on O'Keefe's support, come what may.

As for the other councillors, those results will have to wait another two weeks. Irrespective of the outcome - whether all incumbents are returned or a few of Well's political foes are defeated - the Boss of the new Tammany Hall will weigh heavily on residents of the city and their wallets for another four years.

Andy Wells IS campaigning

Contrary to his own claim that he had stopped campaigning, St. John's mayor Andy Wells is spending cash and campaigning actively.

He's just not campaigning to get elected.

He is campaigning to have his own allies elected and defeat his political enemies.

Like Bob Crocker in Ward Two. Crocker who only made the decision to enter the race at the last minute is getting help from Wells. The gag-loving mayor is sending letters to every voter in Ward Two attacking incumbent Frank Galgay.

If Wells is even partially successful, he can change the shape of council and control most seats in the chamber.

The city is moving towards Third World status very quickly. First, there's the dodgy electoral system. Now there's a mayor who is trying to get his own pals elected to council.

Your tax dollars in action

Let's hope the Williams Family Foundation is footing the bill for this little bit of foolishness.

If the premier is feeling the need to find things to occupy his time, if he is a little bit under-worked, maybe he could try getting involved in a few files in his government.

Like say Abitibi.

If he's got wanderlust, he could try visiting Goose bay, Stephenville, Englee, Harbour Breton, Marystown, Ottawa (on behalf of Hr. Breton as he promised)... the list goes on.

What's next, I wonder?

Could it be a visit to the Price is Right set so he can hear Bob yell "Danny Williams! Come on Down!"

Maybe we can convert provincial elections to a game of Survivor so we can see who gets voted off the island.

Truthfully?

This is something Brian Tobin would have done.

St. John's voting follies - the continuing saga

St. John's city clerk Neil Martin continues to follow the fashion and is blaming Ottawa (Elections Canada) for some of the problems turning up with the city's electoral system.

martin shouldn't bear personal responsibility for this. His problem is compounded by having a mayor and council who either have no idea how elections are run, don't care how to run them properly, or don't want them run properly. There's no other excuse for the fiasco that's unfolding.

Stories continue to float to the surface of ballots mailed to people who don't even live in the country anymore. In addition to the stuff on VOCM in the past 24 hours, I have collected stories of another eight ballots sent out erroneously to people who don't love at the addresses on the list or who don't even live in the city anymore.

Some of the people have been out of town for more than eight years.

Is it Elections Canada's fault?

Nope.

EC estimates that the voter list varies by about 17% each year. That comprises 13% due to address changes, two percent from people reaching voting age, one percent who died and another one percent who are new immigrants.

EC updates its voter list using federal, provincial and municipal databases. Obviously, the City of St. John's has some problems with its own databases. Either that or they got stuck with an old voters list.

In the worst case scenario, the current city election is being run with a list that out of whack by about 17%. That supposes there was no effort made to correct the federal list or that whatever city officials did was ineffective - like not being able to search and find that there was a guy named Gus and a guy named Augustus living at the same address in Ward Five.

City Hall claims there are approximately 79, 000 eligible voters in St. John's this year. We don't know if that represents the likely variance in the list (accounting for the dead and new voters) or if it just is a wild guess. There should be about 2,400 new voters, taking into account the number of deaths.

Taken altogether, we can reasonably conclude that the city voting list is out of whack by about 10%, give or take a percentage point or two. That puts about 8,000 ballots in play that will be sent to people at the wrong address, people who no longer live in the city or people who are dead.

In some races in the city, only a fraction of those 8, 000 potentially fraudulent ballots will be enough to tip the election in favour of one candidate over another.

Stand by for the legal challenges.

City clerk on vote problems: missing the point

St. John's city clerk Neil Martin is missing the point when he addresses concerns about the mail-in balloting system being used by the City for this month's municipal election.

Martin told VOCM that the problem stems from the voter list supplied by Elections Canada.

As someone who has worked on campaigns for over 20 years and studied them for as long or longer, I can assure Martin the problems are somewhere else.

1. All voter lists contain inaccuracies.

2. Properly functioning voting systems take measures to catch those errors and correct them, all with an eye to prevent fraudulent voting either by:

- someone voting who is not qualified to vote; or,
- someone submitting more than one vote.

3. The Municipal Elections Act contains specific provisions to deal with both those issues. See particularly s. 40 and s. 41 which allow for a challenge of a voter's qualifications to take place at the time a person votes.

4. The City of St. John's mail-in voting by-law is supposed to conform to the spirit and intent of the provincial government's legislation. In other words, the St. John's system has to contain measures to address concerns about fraudulent voting.

5. The municipal by-law contains no provisions at all which prevent, limit or discourage fraudulent voting.

6. The St. John's system does not even contain measures to allow city officials to detect a potentially fraudulent vote.

7. City officials assume that all votes received are legitimate.

8. The ballot forms merely require a signature. There is no specimen signature on file to compare it to in order to determine if the signature is legitimate.

9. The on-line voter list system checks for name and birth-date. Simply adding birthdate to the form returned with the ballot would frustrate anyone who submits a fraudulent ballot.

10. The City of St. John's is ignoring vote fraud. Indeed, by deciding against any measures to prevent fraud, the city's position is tantamount to encouraging electoral wrongdoing.

Nothing will change as long as city officials ignore the problem and their responsibilities to run a legitimate election.

Here are some previous Bond Papers on the problem. Try here and here.

Setting Mulroney straight

Brian Mulroney has reared his head again, via Peter Newman's latest book, to blast all his old enemies in the profane way only Brian Mulroney can.

You can find a lengthy piece on Newman's new book here and by picking up Macleans this week.

The one part I wish to deal with is Mulroney's absurd characterisation of Clyde Wells during the Meech Lake debacle.

This is from the Globe's piece on the book:

As for Mr. Wells, [Mulroney] held the [roll of the] dice story [in the Globe and Mail] as proof that he and others had been manipulated, and so began the long, agonizing march toward June 22, 1990, when both Newfoundland and Manitoba backed off on their votes, thereby killing the accord. Mr. Newman writes that Mr. Mulroney flew into a blind rage over Mr. Wells's decision. "You know all politicians take liberties," Mr. Mulroney later told Mr. Newman, "That's the nature of the beast, getting kicked around and trying to get things done in an imperfect system. But nothing has ever compared to the lack of principle of this son of a bitch. Lookit, on the night before the vote I was standing in the rain on the doorstep of his house and asked him what the odds were. He told me that after my speech, they were good -- at least 50-50. This was after he had already made up his mind to cancel the vote."

For the record, I served as special assistant to then-Premier Wells from 1989 until 1996. I lived through the hell of Meech Lake at somewhat of a distance, although in the incident of which Mr. Mulroney speaks, namely the vote on the Accord in the Newfoundland legislature, I experienced it directly.

By "roll of the dice", Mr. Mulroney is referring to an interview he gave to Susan Delacourt, who at the time wrote for the Globe, as well as Jeffrey Simpson and Graham Fraser of the Globe. The interview was conducted in June 11, and appeared on the front page of Toronto's national newspaper the following morning.

"In it, Mulroney made it clear that he had deliberately timed the first ministers' meeting to ensure a crisis atmosphere, to maximize pressure on the hold-out provinces, and to include the holding of a referendum in Newfoundland." [Deborah Coyne, Roll of the dice, (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1992)]

Mulroney admitted that what had previously been characterised as being the result of a need for finding common ground among Accord opponents was in fact the result of a strategy meeting held at the Prime Minister's residence a full month before the meeting. The Prime Minister was attempting to manipulate the situation. Mulroney described the process for fixing the date of the meeting, or as he put it, "the day we're going to roll the dice."

Mulroney's quote was typical of his arrogant boastfulness and it ultimately was federal arrogance, not the actions of any provincial politician, which robbed Mulroney of his glory. The word Mulroney seeks is not profane, it is hubris, or to be more accurate, the painful end visited upon the exceedingly arrogant as a punishment by the gods of politics.

The House of Assembly debated the Meech Lake Accord motion beginning on June 20. Premier David Peterson of Ontario and Premier Frank McKenna of New Brunswick addressed the legislature on June 20, with Mulroney and Saskatchewan Premier Grant Devine speaking on the 21st. As a side note, my staff duties for these occasions including co-ordinating the visits with the Mulroney and Peterson staffs.

Premier and Mrs. Wells entertained Mulroney at dinner at the Wells' residence on the evening of the 21st. Coyne notes that while Wells did not divulge the substance of the discussion, he did say that Mulroney believed the Accord would be rejected in the legislature.

Coyne also notes that caucus met after the House session closed after 11:00 Pm on the 21st to consider the implications of the vote in Newfoundland and in Manitoba. As I recall, public comments by the Liberal caucus members noted concern about the impact of a rejection by the Newfoundland legislature and, to some tallies such as mine, there appeared to be some waffling by cabinet ministers and backbenchers that may have seen the Accord pass.

It is clear, however that neither Premier Wells nor the caucus had reached a decision on adjourning the Accord vote at that point. Rather, as Coyne recounts, there was concern about the appearance of a rejection and a suggestion that the vote be delayed.

The tipping point came with the decision on Friday June 22 by the Mulroney government to extend the vote deadline for Manitoba if the Newfoundland legislature would approve the Meech Lake Accord. I recall standing in the caucus room as Lowell Murray, Mulroney's point man on the Accord, spoke live on CBC Newsworld outlining the proposal. Those caucus members who had previously signaled they might vote for the Accord immediately expressed their outrage. Even those allied with Brian Tobin, and hence likely to vote for the Accord at jean Chretien's whispered behest, changed their positions.

Views hardened almost immediately and almost unanimously in response to the perceived manipulation. I knew from traveling back and forth between the Premier's office and the legislature that morning that the Premier had been attempting to reach Murray repeatedly throughout the morning, and indeed was on the telephone on hold with Murray's office when the senator stepped in front of the television cameras.

My subsequent conversations with several of the office staff, but not with the Premier, confirmed that Coyne's account of this period is accurate.

Mulroney's comments in the Newman book are part of the ongoing campaign to foist blame for the Accord failure onto Wells. Mulroney never understood Wells from the beginning. The Mulroney government made no attempt to deal with him before June 1990, and I suspect the ever-arrogant John Crosbie likely had a large part in the misjudgment of Wells by the federal government.

The record speaks for itself on any point which Mr. Mulroney wishes to address. Unfortunately, the record does not support his contentions. One cannot be sure if his comments are merely delusions or part of concerted campaign of lies and deceit. There is no question that they are at odds with the facts.

As for the comment on Wells being an unprincipled son of a bitch, I can only say that, leaving aside the despicable comment on Mr. Wells' mother, Mulroney's remark demonstrates that he understood nothing - to call Wells unprincipled is tantamount to calling the Archbishop of Canterbury an atheist.

I have rarely met a more principled, conscentious and decent man in my life.

Would that the same could be said by anyone of the former prime minister, or for that matter, his former gaulieter in this province.

Andy Wells - arrogant wookie mayor

Andy Wells has decided to shut down his re-election campaign, comfortable in the knowledge that he has consistently bettered any of his competitors in public opinion polls.

Andy claims he has led his opponents by 40 to 50 percent.

Two things:

1. In any public polls, Andy has been about 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor.

2. In a democracy, a candidate should be required to tell voters what he or she intends to accomplish in the next term of office.

Andy obviously has no desire to be accountable to voters in any fashion.

There's no surprise there.

Wells is notoriously disdainful of any attempt to question what he is doing. The bully-boy heaps tons of abuse and scorn on anyone who disagrees with him. In one interview he branded all other candidates as cowards.

Anyone who has to tear others down constantly like that is to be pitied since he lacks any measure of self-confidence and self-esteem.

The only thing we can be sure of is that Wells will be abusive of council members, as he has for the 30-odd years he's been a councillor. He'll also vote in favour of any development, any time any where. And Well's will make up any reason he can to justify his position.

With Wells' announcement, I don;t feel bad for having written "None of these" across the mayoral portion of my mail-in ballot.

Municipal election expenses

There's a curious story in this week's Spindy on municipal election expenses in St. John's.

Ron Ellsworth claims to have spent only $18, 000 so far and plans to spend no more than $20, 000.

As someone who has worked on a few political campaigns, I'd challenge Ellsworth to open his election campaign books and those of his company.

Ellsworth has likely spent more than $18,000 on signage alone, if one applies the federal or provincial election expenses regulations. His glossy brochures would surely have set him back the better part of $5,000 including some modest charges for design work. He has a bunch of other printed material too. Now that he has started radio spots, we can add another $3,000 or more to the tally of $18k Ellsworth was willing to admit to the Spindy.

And the busback signage that started to crop up recently?

That's just a sign Ellsworth is spending bags of cash and has run out of places to put up his signs.

Another municipal high-flyer is John Dicks in Ward One. Dicks is spending heavily to unseat Art Puddister.

We'll only know how much he spent if he gets elected.

That's thanks to the Third World election system that we have in St. John's.

Count on having it a while longer since our own low-rent Fidel is going back as mayor largely unopposed.

St. John's mail-in madness

The first mail-ins ballots arrived in St. John's households.

The problems are turning up rapidly.

My parents received three ballots in the mail: one for each of them and the third for a cousin of mine who hasn't lived in St. John's for the better part of 10 years.

He lived with them while he attended Marine Institute, but he finished that program a long time ago. In the meantime he has lived in Hong Kong and a few other places before settling down in his hometown of North Harbour, Placentia Bay.

My parents are checking to see if my deceased grandparents receive ballots.

The ballot for my cousin will be returned to City Hall, unopened.

In addition, at large candidate Simon Lono ran into some confusion at City Hall when he filed his nomination papers. The voters list contained the names of Simon Lono, candidate, Simon Lono, the candidate's father, who passed away four years ago and - get this - Simon Lono, the candidate's 12 year old son.

A caller to one of the open line shows today reported he received two ballots: one in his own name and one for him using his nickname.

All told that makes four errors in the voters list, two of which resulted in ballots being mailed out to people who don't have a right to vote.

How many more are there in a city of about 80, 000 voters?

Danny Williams: read the fine print

Danny Williams thinks its good news that Abitibi Consolidated is selling off its interest in an Asian paper making operation. He thinks the improved debt position will allow Abitibi to change its position in Newfoundland and Labrador.

If one actually reads the Abitibi release on the decision, a different picture emerges.

- The existing closures stand: Abitibi includes the reduction in its paper output from this divestiture with the permanent closures already announced. "Combined with the 350,000 tonnes of permanent capacity closures announced in Q2 and slated for Q4, the new adjusted newsprint capacity will be approximately 4 million tonnes."

- The company's not for turning: The money is being used to reduce long-term debt. Abitibi runs a significant risk by announcing major debt reduction initiatives now if they are considering adding to their debt. Abitibi isn't run by that hideous breed of politician who will say anything to get a good poll, knowing full well he or she may make a totally different decision when required.

- Abitibi plans to convert some of its assets to high-grade paper production. This would mean that in order to avoid the announced closures, the company would be completing re-tooling Stephenville. That actually increases the capital outlay for some its highest-cost operations at a time when the company needs to actually reduce its cost over the long term.

Always remember: Danny Williams learned his politics from watching Brian Tobin. What he says and what actually is likely to happen may not always be in the same species, let alone the same thing.

Polling for political hacks

Rather than read yet more coverage about a poll, flip over to Campaign Central and read a truly literate insight into what political types know or ought to know about polling.

Beloit College's Class of 2005 Mindset List®

A few year's ago, this list became popular among those of us who are getting older and older.

The list is handed to university instructor's at Washington state's Beloit College. It helps to keep some perspective when dealing with incoming freshmen (first year university students).

You can find the original list here, along with some for past years and for a couple years to come.

BELOIT COLLEGE'S CLASS OF 2005 MINDSET LIST®

1. Most students starting college this fall were born in 1983.
2. Ricky Nelson, Marvin Gaye and Laura Ashley have always been dead.
3. The New Kids on the Block are over the hill.
4. They want to be PHAT but not fat
5. IBM Selectrics are antiques.
6. Thongs no longer come in pairs and slide between the toes.
7. God has never been a "he" in most churches.
8. Hard copy has nothing to do with a TV show; a browser is not someone relaxing in a bookstore; a virus does not make humans sick; and a mouse is not a rodent (and there is no proper plural for it).
9. Moscow has always been opposed to "star wars."
10. Recording TV programs on VCRs became legal the year they were born.
11. The British Royal family has always behaved badly.
12. There has always been Diet Coke.
13. Artificial hearts have always been ticking.
14. The Social Security system has always been on the brink.
15. There have always been warnings about second-hand smoke.
16. They have never experienced a real recession.
17. A hacker is not just a kid who won't stop fooling around.
18. Grenada has always been safe for democracy.
19. They were born the same year as the PC and the Mac.
20. The U.S. Senate has always had a daycare program.
21. One earring on a man indicates that he is probably pretty conservative.
22. CDs have always been labeled for explicit content.
23. Lethal Weapon in one form or another has always been "at the movies."
24. Boeing has not built the 727 since they were born.
25. Sarajevo was a war zone, not an Olympic host.
26. They don't remember Janet Jackson when she was cute and chubby.
27. Drug testing of athletes has always been routine.
28. There has always been a hole in the ozone layer.
29. They have always had access to email.
30. The Colts have always been in Indianapolis.
31. The precise location of the Titanic has always been known.
32. When they were born, Madonna was still a radiant woman holding a beatific child.
33. Jimmy Hoffa has always been officially dead.
34. Tylenol has always been impossible for children or adults to open.
35. Volkswagen beetles have always had engines in the front.
36. They do not know what the Selective Service is, but men routinely register for it on their financial aid forms.
37. Ron Howard and Rob Reiner have always been balding older film directors.
38. Cal Ripken has always been playing baseball.
39. They have probably never used carbon paper and do not know what cc and bcc mean.
40. Lasers have always been marketed as toys.
41. Major newspapers have always been printed in color.
42. Beta is a preview version of software, not a VCR format..
43. They have never known exactly what to call the rock star formerly and presently known as Prince.
44. They are the first generation to prefer tanning indoors.
45. Survivor is a TV show not a rock group.
46. They have heard "just say no" since they were toddlers.
47. Most of them know someone who was born with the help of a test tube.
48. It has paid to "Discover" since they were four.
49. Oprah has always been a national institution.
50. With a life expectancy of 77 years, they can anticipate living until about 2060.

Supreme Court perspective

For all those who persist in the nonsense about the great national slight that no Newfoundlander (or Labradorian) has been appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada since Confederation, Wally McLean brings this sense of perspective.

In the entire history of the United States, 20 American states have never had a state-resident appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Of that number, two are from the original 13 colonies and four have been states since before 1800.

Here's the list, along with date of entry to the Union.

Delaware (the “First State”, Dec. 7, 1787)
Rhode Island (May 29, 1790)
District of Columbia (July 16, 1790)
Vermont (Mar. 4, 1791)
Arkansas (June 15, 1836)
Florida (Mar. 3, 1845)
Wisconsin (May 29, 1848)
Oregon (Feb. 14, 1859)
West Virginia (June 20, 1863)
Nevada (Oct. 31, 1864)
Nebraska (Mar. 1, 1867)
North Dakota (Nov. 2, 1889)
South Dakota (Nov. 2, 1889)
Montana (Nov. 8, 1889)
Washington (Nov. 11, 1889)
Idaho (July 3, 1890)
Oklahoma (Nov. 16, 1907)
New Mexico (Jan. 6, 1912)
Alaska (Jan. 3, 1959)
Hawaii (Aug. 21, 1959)

Bizarre Municipal Math

This VOCM story on Mile One stadium has the treasurer Robert Bishop claiming that stadium management hopes to break-even or make a slight profit this year on the controversy-laden facility.

That figure includes a $1.0 million subsidy from taxpayers of St. John's.

Apparently people at city hall have trouble with math.

In order for the stadium to break-even, they would have to make $1.0 million more than they are planning to make. In other words, when they are done, Robert Bishop will be posting a $1.0 million shortfall.

He shouldn't be counting the city subsidy into his calculations.

That is, he shouldn't be including the subsidy unless his goal is to mislead people.

Doc O'Keefe - Get a grip

Kevin Breen's municipal election signs have been defaced.

Actually, the crafty vandals cut some of the signs in such a way that they had to be replaced at what will likely be a cost of close to $2, 000 for the Breen campaign.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, a joker with a spray can painted the lord "lier" across signs for deputy mayoral candidate Dennis "Doc" O'Keefe.

Aside from the obvious spelling problems with the vandalism, Doc called the vandalism a new low in city politics.

Apparently, Doc thinks it's acceptable for his buddy Andy Wells to call the city's municipal candidates "cowards" and for Wells to be berate O'Keefe and his fellow councillors in public and private meetings.

O'Keefe must also think the spate of advertisements the Well's campaign ran last weekend are peachy keen too.

He must.

O'Keefe has said nothing at all about Andy Well's boorish behaviour lately or in the past.

Doc needs to get a grip, or at least a sense of perspective.

Night of the Long Knives - Connie style

Early media reports on Tuesday evening indicate as many as 15 people have been fired from the senior ranks of the Conservative Party of Canada. CTV reported that the number sent packing was at least five.

This is not good news in the wake of a series of firings and resignations over the spring and summer coupled with declining popular support for the fledgling party and its leader.

Despite Harper's brave challenges for the governing Liberals to call an election, he might want to ask Kim Campbell how it feels to be cocky when the polls don't support you. This won't deflect attention away from problems within the Connie party.

Be careful what you wish for, Stevie.

In the meantime, firing staff is a sign of deeper trouble, namely the inability of the party to get a grip on the real problem. That would be leadership.

It's the sad tale of the television spots. Focus on everything but the main issue. The inability to grip the main problem - leadership - is actually confirmation of the leadership deficit the party is currently facing.

Ultimately, the losers are Canadians across the country. Yet again e are denied a clear political choice and a meaningful policy debate on the stuff that matters about the country.

Instead, we get to watch the umpteenth iteration of what the old Tory party did to Bob Stanfield.

It's the Night of the Long Knives - Connie style.

Connie TV spots - another view

To go with this post from last week on the four new Connie TV spots, take this article in Macleans.

Nobody seems to think they are a good idea. We all just have different reasons for our choices.

On another level, note the comment linking staff changes to the pending re-election campaign.

A Telly twosome for Tuesday

Check the online Telegram today which is actually carrying two really worthwhile stories. (They carry lots, but not all are online.)

First is this story [click news and look for the "Highrise" story if that link doesn't work] by Terry Roberts on a new development for the downtown proposed by Danny Williams' brother and Danny Williams' former business partner around the end of June this year. You may recall that Premier Danny Williams is the guy who thinks Andy Wells is the right man to head up the province's offshore regulatory board.

Predictably, the city's boorish mayor is all in favour of the deal. The proposal violates the city's zoning in the area which limits buildings to four stories. The exceptions (Atlantic Place, Scotia Centre, Fortis Building and TD Place) all pre-date the revised downtown zoning policy designed to preserve the historic character of the area. [Hint: it's what draws people here.] Of course, as the mayor is fond of saying: "Rules, we dun need no stinking rules."

This council should not be making any substantive decisions since we are in the middle of a municipal election. That some members of council are carrying forward as if the election didn't matter displays a blatant contempt for voters.

Incidentally, take a close look at the design. The architect seems to thing that kitsch is actually something desirable. Google the word, if you need to. This is a design that people would surely come to wish is in the path of a Category Five hurricane.

Second is a column by Telly editor Russell Wangersky. Russell comes back from two weeks vacation and takes a swipe at columnists like A.J. Baker who pander to their audience rather than present accurate information. Bravo, Russell.

Ward 4 sign wars

Courtesy of Greg Locke comes this picture of one of several Kevin Breen signs that have been altered by an unidentified gagster.

Breen is the incumbent city councillor locked in a tough fight to gain re-election in the current municipal election.

Someone has gone through the trouble of printing up labels that have been stuck on Breen's large signs to change his slogan to "a record of lying". The font and colouring are a close enough match to the original sign that it is hard to tell the change on first glance.

Until now the sign war in ward 4 has consisted of the large number of signs. One of Breen's challengers, Ron Ellsworth has spent large amounts of money on signs, bus advertising and print ads. One of his more obnoxious looking signs is evident in this picture as well. They are obnoxious because the design is crude and the large photograph seems to have no purpose.

Why exactly is Ellsworth extending his hand in this way?

Nawlins - a minor correction, planning failures, and other news

The Washington Post issued a correction in its story over the weekend that stated Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco had not declared a state of emergency in New Orleans.

Apparently she did declare a state of emergency on 26 August 2005.

That said, there is certainly more than enough blame to go around for the apparently slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

The primary responsibility still has to fall on the state and municipal officials. It is their responsibility to ensure certain core services, such as law enforcement can survive. It's not like New Orleans hasn't had a recent hurricane emergency.

This link to a 2004 Associated Press story about the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan sounds eerily familiar, except that this time, Mayor Ray Nagin was pretty quick to blame everyone else for his obvious failings.

The SuperDome issue arose in 1998 and again in 2004, just as it did in 2005. The difference this time is that no priority was given to making sure the state-owned facility could actually support 15, 000 with food and water even for a very short period of time.

While it is true that members of the Louisiana National Guard has been largely deployed to Iraq as of October 2004, the United States Department of Defense has other resources available in and around Louisiana that could have filled the role played by the Louisiana Guard. This would have required a bit of co-ordination between Baton Rouge and Washington, but the current political fracas between the Democrats and Republicans over the New Orleans monkey suggests contingency plans were never developed. Spread the blame for that failure around to however it can touch.

There are 3, 700 Louisiana National Guard soldiers in Iraq, according to the Washington Post. They are due to start their normal rotation home this week.

There are currently 58, 000 Active and Guard soldiers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama providing emergency support to residents affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Local angle: The United States Naval Ship Pollux is one of the U.S. Navy ships providing support in the Gulf. It is carrying fuel for military and civilian emergency agencies. A previous ship carrying that name ran aground on the Burin Peninsula, near St. Lawrence, in the early 1940s.

There is now video available on CNN of water rescue efforts including pictures of bloated corpses floating. Here's a link to the video of a piece of Christiane Amanpour's story. If it doesn't work go to CNN.

Prayer no substitute for preparation: province lacks emergency plan

Almost four years after the September 11 incident and despite examples of natural disasters in this province and neighbouring provinces over the past five years, Newfoundland and Labrador still does not have a functioning emergency response plan.

Provincial officials have worked in the document since 2001 yet are no closer to finishing it, despite almost 48 months of work.

The provincial response to the 9/11 incident was improvised, despite a federal-provincial training exercise in 1999 which included a scenario involving 30 international commercial passenger flights being diverted to Newfoundland and Labrador airports.

Effective co-ordination of the response was hampered by the chaotic nature of Emergency Measures Organization's operations centre. Daily decision meetings reportedly took place in the command centre and involved at times upwards of 64 people, all of whom had input to the meetings which lasted for hours.

In one incident, a request to National Defence for military camp cots was routed by the Department of Health through Health Canada despite military officials being present in the EMO command centre. Subsequent public comments by both the premier and the provincial cabinet minister responsible for emergency response did nothing other than strain relations with the federal government. In a situation reminiscent of the current situation in New Orleans, their public political criticism of federal authorities was actually rooted in their own organizational failures rather than in any shortcomings of federal support.

The provincial public relations response was a disaster in itself. Emergency public relations involves communicating essential, operational information to news media and the general public. The first media briefing took place over six hours after the incident began, took place in an area that ought to have been closed to news media and gave very little useful information on the provincial response. Subsequent provincial government briefings focused on actions in the metropolitan St. John's area.

In one memorable incident, a CBC host tried repeatedly to get concrete information from the provincial municipal affairs minister on how volunteers could help provincial efforts. His attempts to gain practical information were ignored by the minister who was intent on praising officials for their efforts. This release is typical, for example, with its extensive praise of local efforts and very little practical information on emergency response activities.

For those looking for basic information on the province's emergency plan, the provincial government website contains only this section on the province's Emergency Measures Organization.

By contrast, there is this site from the Nova Scotia government. Among other things, the site contains a great deal of useful advice for individuals on emergency preparedness.

Recent experience with the Titan missile incident demonstrated the fundamental breakdown of the province's emergency response system, particularly as it relates to the identification of potential threats, accurate threat assessment and appropriate response.

No provincial government officials hold valid federal security clearances. Such clearances enable them to routinely access sensitive intelligence on potential threats and would allow them to attend international briefings on emergency response. Provincial officials were excluded from a U.S. government briefing on the Titan missile launch earlier this year solely because they lacked a security clearance.

The struggle for control in Louisiana

Anyone following media coverage of rescue and relief operations in New Orleans will notice the ferocity of complaints by municipal and state officials in Louisiana (all Democrats) aimed at the U.S. federal government and President George Bush (a Republican).

This story, in Saturday's Washington Post, documents the struggle to unify command and control over the rescue efforts.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineau Blanco has stilled not declared a state of emergency in and around New Orleans, almost a full week after the hurricane devastated the region. Despite the ease with which some politicians have been playing up accusations of racism in the federal American response to the hurricane it appears that city government in New Orleans did little if anything to establish an effect emergency response. Blanco reportedly took over 24 hours to review a proposal from President Bush that would have streamlined the command and control structure among city, state and federal authorities trying to conduct emergency rescue and relief operations.

By Friday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had reportedly lowered the tone of his rhetoric and was expressing optimism on the emergency response following his meeting with President Bush.

Despite the change of tone, the collapse of local law and order can be traced directly to the mayor's office (which is currently located in the Hyatt Hotel next to the SuperDome). Police reportedly have been forced to scrounge for food and water, weapons and ammunition in an effort to retain some semblance of control. It is incomprehensible that civic officials failed to provide emergency stocks of food and water, let alone weapons and redundant communications that would have allowed police to provide effective service despite the damage suffered by the city.

Two senior police officers have reportedly committed suicide since Katrina devastated the City of New Orleans.

Before anyone jumps to man the barricades in defence of state and city officials, remember that emergency response in a federal system starts at the municipal level, then goes up to the state level and finally to the federal. All must work together, but since Tuesday, both the New Orleans mayor and state officials have been busily tossing the monkey of the disastrous emergency response onto Washington's back. At the heart of the problem appears to be a gross lack of preparedness at the city and state level, coupled with something bordering on incompetence at the State House in Baton Rouge.

In this story from the Army Times, the writer refers to national guard units beginning combat operations in New Orleans. That American military have to refer to their actions as combat operations suggests the extent to which municipal and state officials have lost control of New Orleans.

In a related incident, police escorting civilian engineering contractors to repair damaged levees shot and killed five or six gunmen in New Orleans. The gunmen were part of an armed group who opened fire on the convoy.

Typhoons hit Gander

Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons made a stopover in Gander this past week and were captured on these digital images by local lawyer and aviation buff Mark Stares.

In the top photo, a Eurofighter from 17 Squadron RAF, the operational evaluation unit makes its final approach into Gander.

In the bottom photo, pilots and ground crew walk away from a parked aircraft.

Military aircrafts of all types routinely make visits to major airports in Newfoundland and Labrador.

So much for rumours

Rumours are usually nonsense and so it turned out this week that a couple of chatter-bits posted to the Bond Papers were...well...WRONG. They were labeled as rumour and chatter so hopefully no one was unduly misled and the reputation of the Bond papers hasn't suffered.

1. Efford is staying. Based on everything your humble e-scribbler was getting, John Efford was going to pack in his job as federal natural resources minister due to ill health. Instead, Efford decided to hang around with a different schedule that will help him better manage his diabetes.

2. Crap Talk may survive. Rumours that Bill Rowe's afternoon talk show was doomed seem to be wrong as well. Open Line host Randy Simms is seeking re-election to the Mount Pearl city council, so Randy is rightly taking a break so he doesn't have an unfair advantage over his fellow candidates.

Crap Talk host Bill Rowe and Nite line host Linda Swain will be taking turns covering the afternoon show while Bill takes on full-time hosting duties in the morning.

Oh great, we get to hear Bill continue to find every way he can to create an open sore out of Newfoundlanders attitudes to themselves and the rest of the country. Personally, I think VOCM should take emery boards, sandpaper, salt and anything else Rowe has handy. More often than not his information is bogus, although he continues to convince people that this province and its people are little more than a "pimple on the arse" of Canada. That's Bill's phrase by the way, not mine.

Well, as some of my friends are fond of saying, "I am no pimple. I am no arse."

I'd paraphrase Churchill to defend my fellow Newfoundlanders from the jaundiced, miserable and usually hollow presentation made by Danny William's former personal representative to the Lord Minto Hotel:

"Some pimple. Some arse."

What drops from the back end of a male bovine?

I don't know about the rest of my public relations colleagues, but people I know call a story like this BULLSHIT.

Who gives a rats backside if you are getting calls for interviews, Danny? This is the kind of superficial, puff story that makes Williams look like a prima donna, a light weight. Sure it strokes the hell out of his ego. But beyond that it doesn't mean a thing.

Any experienced PR practitioner would recognize this for what it is - irrelevant crap - and kill it off before it went anywhere.

Then again, if you thought the New England governors conference was a success or that having senior comms people waste a day a week monitoring call-ins shows, I guess you'll believe anything.

In the meantime, if this story is the result of the Premier's comms staff feeling self-important because of the media attention, they better get some sense of humility and a sense of perspective real soon.

No matter how you slice it, this story smells of people appointed for their connections instead of their qualifications.

The best man for the job

"Both the premier and I continue to believe that Andy Wells is the ideal candidate [to be chief executive officer of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board] and we will be requesting that he be given primary consideration as this process moves forward."

- Ed Byrne, Minister of Natural Resources, August 25, 2005

Is there something about Ed and Danny we should know?

Cover from The Current, Newfoundland and Labrador's alternative paper.

Photo: Greg Locke, Straylight
Ballgag: Our Pleasure

Hatching, matching and dispatching Mary Walsh

This Macleans piece on Mary Walsh's little sitcom includes a quote from your humble e-scribe.

The best part of the print version are photos by the Spindy's Paul Daly.

Pick up a copy to see what the guy shoots.

John Crosbie - Liberal sleeper

John Crosbie, your long sojourn away from the Liberal Party will soon be over.

Keep up the excellent work. You have managed to work for decades pretending to be a Tory.

Next to Stephen Harper, Crosbie is the strongest factor working in favour of a Liberal majority government next time.


Crosbie on Harper not pretty
The Daily News (Nanaimo)
Thu 01 Sep 2005, Page: A6
Section: Opinion
Byline: Don Martin
Source: CanWest News Service

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - As Stephen Harper's warm-and-fuzzy barbeque tour winds down with the defining image being that photo-op disaster of him squeezed into a comical cowboy outfit, the last thing the Conservative leader needs is a deadly burst of friendly fire.

But sniper shots are coming from the top floor of St. John's tallest office building where Conservative father figure John Crosbie looks out at the The Rock's political landscape ... and cringes at what he sees happening.

A "pessimistic'' Crosbie is predicting hard times in the next election for his party, warning that Harper is scaring voters by linking his leadership to the campaign against same-sex marriages while heeding lousy advice from his inner circle.

OK, you're probably saying, so what? John Crosbie's a 74-year-old political curiosity, best known as the former Conservative finance minister whose 1979 budget torpedoed Joe Clark's minority government a few lifetimes ago to the average voter.

But Crosbie still commands attention and respect in the reunited Conservative party, where only 15 months ago he was a huge Harper booster who flirted briefly with the bizarre notion of running against Liberal cabinet minister John Efford before his long-suffering spouse vetoed such silliness.

I am in the middle of a national research project which has put me in contact with business leaders, academics and grassroots Canadians in five provinces.

So let the tape roll on the wit and wisdom of a candid Crosbie, who tells it like it is even though it will give a morale boost to his besieged enemies in the Liberal party.

On the Conservative party's campaign against same-sex marriage: Crosbie believes in the traditional definition of marriage, but argues the time has come to give up the fight to preserve it or risk having it inflict irreversible political damage on the party. "Same-sex marriages have been accepted by the establishment in Toronto and in the courts and in the metropolitan areas, so there's no point in continuing to oppose them. It's very dangerous for the Conservatives to continue opposing same-sex marriage because it reinforces this feeling in people's mind that we're dangerous and that if we get in, you don't know what kind of stupid thing we might do next that would harm people."

On the party's electoral prospects next spring: "The signs are all that we're in danger of not having much of a chance in the next election. It's because the public doesn't think we're a safe alternative. Surely if they thought we were a safe alternative, the polls would have us 20 points ahead, not 20 points behind."

On Stephen Harper: "I supported him as leader and continue to support him, but at the moment he's a politically endangered species which makes us all politically endangered."

On Harper's personal charm: "Among our friends, the women think he's scary. Christ Almighty, Paul Martin is 10 times as scary. But they believe Harper's cold. And he IS cold. He doesn't have human warmth. He's not able to even work a room. He doesn't want to meet people. The thing that saved the Pope (John Paul II), who had some pretty reactionary policies, was that he genuinely wanted to meet people. Unfortunately, Harper needs that, but he hasn't got that at the moment."

On the Conservative party backroom: "I've never come across the likes of those little dictators. Most of them have no experience and try to tell us what we must do. They force us to have nomination meetings before we have suitable candidates lined up to be nominated. This is not the way you do it. He's ill-served by the organizers and paid people who are behind him."

On the future of Canada: "I'm very disappointed and anti-Paul Martin. I believe the system is out of balance and uncompetitive. If we can't get a more competitive system, where the governing parties change from time to time, Canada is in real difficulty."

Well, there you have it. The gospel according to John Crosbie. Unfortunately for Stephen Harper, these harsh observations and this painful analysis comes from Newfoundland. And that makes them Rock-solid.

Efford staying - colour me surprised

This release from John Efford was issued on September 1, 2005 at approximately 6:30 pm, Newfoundland Daylight Savings Time.

Colour me surprised.

Colour me disappointed.

Fire the petroleum farce staff

Some consumers in the province awoke this morning to the shock of an increase in gas prices of around 20 cents per litre.

Those of us paying attention got our gas early and saved a bundle.

Search in vain on the government website prior to the increase to see a news release indicating that the hike in gas prices was coming.

The petroleum products office has long passed the point of being a tolerable charade.

It is beyond a mere fraud.

It is now an intolerable farce.

Close the office.

Lay off the staff or reassign them to more productive work.

The people of the province should not be forced to endure another day of its existence.

Parsons compensation increased

This release yesterday from the provincial government announces an increase in compensation to Gregory Parsons. Mr. Parsons was wrongly convicted of murdering his mother.

Mr. Parsons was represented at one time by Danny Williams, the current premier. There is an interesting comment in the release that given Mr. Parsons' personal situation in 2002, he may have instructed his counsel [not Mr. Williams] to accept a compensation offer that was less than that to which he might be entitled.

Mr. Williams did not represent Mr. Parsons at the time.

While it is laudable that Mr. Parsons is receiving additional compensation, this release raises two issues:

1. The comment on Mr. Parsons' actions in 2002 suggests an improper comment on the counsel he received, if it is indirect or implicit comment.

2. Since Mr. Justice Antonio Lamer has not released his final report into Mr. Parsons' wrongful conviction and hence has not established the scope of government's responsibility in the matter, this money seems to be an effort to forestall additional demands for compensation to which Mr. Parsons' might be properly entitled.

The New Approach to hand-outs and whining

Doubts about Loyola Sullivan's ability to grasp the picture beyond moving around digits on a page grows with this release on the federal government presence in Newfoundland and Labrador. The release turned into this story on VOCM.

It's hard to know how Sullivan came up with the numbers he prints in the release. Then again, Sullivan has never been straight with people about his own budget numbers. He seems to be able to be in perpetual fiscal crisis despite having gobs of cash coming in from all quarters.

There are two points here:

First, Sullivan's numbers and percentages are wrong.

Second, and more importantly, Sullivan's interpretation, that this represents a massive loss to the local economy just doesn't hold up to logical scrutiny or his own previous statements.

Let's just forget, for the time being, that Sullivan is the guy who, shortly after he took up the finance job, was complaining about the disproportionately large number of public servants in the province.

At the end of Fiscal Year 2004, there were 7, 189 federal public servants in the province, compared to roughly the same number at the end of each fiscal year since 1998. Those figures were obtained by the Bond Papers from the Government of Canada.

Sullivan uses 1990 as the base year for his calculation, likely because that happens to be one of the periods in which federal employment peaked in every province. He claims that federal employment decreased by 39% in Newfoundland and Labrador compared to a national average of 18%. That's a 21% disparity.

Well, at the end of Fiscal Year 1990, there were 415, 414 federal employees across the country. At the end of the last fiscal year, there were 371, 257. That represents 44, 157 fewer positions or about 10.6%.

The total number of Canadians employed by the federal public service is 1.15% of the total population.

In this province, the numbers went from 10, 140 to 7, 189 - a drop of 2, 951 jobs or 29% in the same period.

Still, federal employees in Newfoundland and Labrador represent 1.36% of the population, a proportion higher than Ontario (1.22%) and Quebec (0.98%).

Sullivan also doesn't talk about the increases in federal presence in places like Goose Bay, nor does he talk about the likelihood that the St. John's taxation data centre will be increasing its staffing levels soon and handling work from across the country.

But here's an interesting thing. In Nova Scotia, the 23% drop in federal employees in that province represents a loss of 7, 240 positions. That's more than double the drop in this province in absolute numbers, even though the percentage change is smaller.

Beyond that though, Sullivan claims that those federal job losses totaled up to almost double the reported figure - he says the 2, 774 jobs lost added up to equal 5, 300 jobs. Unfortunately, Loyola doesn't explain why that might be so. Truth is, I doubt he can. Whoever cooked up these digits for Loyola appears to have used typical multipliers for spin-off jobs for the private sector and applied them to public sector jobs.

However, public sector jobs - like say the 16 people at the weather office in Gander - don't produce the same spinoffs in the service and supply sector as a comparable number of jobs in the oil industry, manufacturing or the fishery. That's because the work they do by itself doesn't generate added economic benefit.

Suck a few hundred jobs out of paper manufacturing in central Newfoundland and on the west coast of the island and you are going to get almost double the jobs losses in banking, insurance, office supplies and other support services.

Screw with the fishery needlessly and you'll shag the economy out of hundreds of millions of dollars of real economic activity that brings much-needed foreign exchange into an economy that depends heavily on trade. You'll also muck around with tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

Take a few people out of Gander or the small Public Service Commission office in St. John's and they won't have quite the same effect.

Overall, Sullivan's main argument - that the feds are steadily decreasing their presence in Newfoundland and Labrador - just doesn't add up. Federal job numbers in the province have hovered around the same level for the better part of a decade. The small changes seen recently like Gander, fall within the seasonal fluctuations there have been anyway from month to month.

Beyond that, Sullivan is simply talking through his hat when he argues this province has a right to a "fair share" of federal employees. The same cock-eyed approach led the Mulroney government to create something called the naval Presence in Quebec program. It was a cash fiasco, ripped apart by the auditor general.

No province has a "right" to a proportion of federal jobs. Federal public servants aren't booty. They aren't spoils. They aren't a form of Equalization. Canadians deserve to have their federal services delivered cheaply and effectively. We don't need to fatten the payroll so that we can have people running a navy section in Manitoba.

On a local level, Sullivan should recall the disastrous Tobin policy of relocating public servants to communities across the province. It was poorly conceived, poorly executed and an admission that Tobin had failed completely in his efforts to come up with a single new idea for developing the local economy. Saskatchewan fell into the same trap with equally harsh consequences for Saskatchewan taxpayers.

Sullivan's release shows a few things:

1. Loyola can't do basic math.

2. Loyola can't see the big picture.

3. Loyola and the government of which he is a part are wedded forever to hand-outs from Ottawa - The January Deal (a massive Equalization transfer) and now federal jobs.

Underneath it all, it would appear the provincial government is now in the position Brian Tobin was in after two years in office: totally lacking in a single new idea.

Whining about Ottawa is hardly a New Approach.

Crap Talk dead?

It may only be a rumour but there is talk around St. John's that Bill Rowe's Back Talk afternoon call-in show on VOCM will be dead in the fall.

The show may be killed off because of low audience numbers.

No surprise to those who listen to the show the Bond papers likes to call Crap Talk because...well...the host and most of the callers keep spouting the same old crap day in and day out.

Whither Bill? According to one scenario, Bill will go back to the morning Open Line slot. Randy Simms, who has been a refreshingly new voice in the call-in world will be bumped back to his managerial duties with Steele in favour of the man who has given new meaning to the term cranky in the afternoon.

There is also talk that talks have taken place between Bill and the gang over at Rogers to have Bill host their Sunday night call-in show. The people who pay Rowe's salary in the weekdays wouldn't gain anything by having their boy on television, but Rogers would gain yet another interviewer who wouldn't dare give the current government a hard time over anything.

So far there are no plans to change the name of Out of The Fog to Krysta Loves Danny, largely because that would be too blatant an admission of OOTF's low standards of journalistic impartiality.

Connie TV ads miss the mark

When you take a look at the August flight of Conservative Party television spots, you can see the handiwork of someone who thinks that the Connie problem is just about image.

You can tell what happened. Someone did some polling. They likely found that Stephen Harper appears to Canadians to be a bit to stiff and unapproachable. They likely found an attitude that Harper runs a one-man band with no input from his caucus.

Yep. Must be an image problem, they concluded, betraying their advertising background.

Their simple answer: a bunch of short TV spots showing the Connies working on policy in August, when everyone else is on vacation. Get a catchy slogan: "Stand up for Canada". Include a couple of member of parliament from visible minorities - but only a couple and feature them in just one spot. Have Steve ask people questions. Shoot the whole thing in a store-front somewhere with floor to ceiling plate glass windows. Get Steve out of his jacket. Or if the jacket is on take off the tie. Lots of smiles. Make jokes about Liberals. Be funky and hip.

Poof, says the advertising team, problem solved. We'll just invent a new image.

Warning bells would be going off in the heads of any reasonably savvy political communicator.

Political communications isn't about image. It's about reputation and credibility.

And that's where the Connie's blew it. Right away, the TV spots look contrived - painfully, obviously contrived. No politicians hold meetings in these glass-front offices. They look and sound fake.

And they are. Utterly fake.

The acting sucks. It should; they are politicians for crying out loud, not actors. Worse, the pols in the vids look uncomfortable - they sound and look like they are reading a prepared script.

The set is bogus. No one would believe that policy gets made on the MuchMusic set. None of these guys would be seen on MuchMusic, especially Steve, who still appears stiff and professorial, like he's lecturing people.

The whole thing takes on the air of those breath-freshener spots that mocked the 1970s cop shows, complete with the fake freeze frame at the end.

But those spots were built around the parody as a way of catching your attention and making you laugh. They want you to remember the brand the next time you buy Clorets. The humour is the hook to get your attention and hold it.

Unfortunately, these Connie spots were supposed to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately for the advertisers in this case, picking the people who will run the country isn't the same as picking toilet paper or breath mints.

The spots are being taken seriously, by Conservatives, but that is entirely predictable. They also get a passing grade from commentators like Paul Wells.

The Connie political challenge is to get past the converted and start speaking to other Canadians. They must win over the Canadians who aren't perpetually in a snit, the ones who don't eat up acres of bandwidth sputtering against the evils of the CBC and the rest of the MSM - the mainstream media.

It's a tough job: the most recent polls show that Paul Martin doesn't even have to show up and he clobbers Stephen Harper as Canadians choice for prime minister. The Blogging Connies response, when they are not pounding at the CBC on their blogs, is to create a flashing button on their sites asking where Paul Martin is.

BFHD, as we used to say in high school. Big fat hairy deal.

And like the flashing button, these TV spots are well wide of the mark for fixing the Connie political problem.

The challenge the Connies face is not about looking different. It is about being different. That's the Zen-like difference between political communications done by an advertiser and political comms run by someone with experience at public relations.

Some Connies have suggested that the party should stop trying to look anything than what the part actually is. Now there's an idea. Start by communicating the substance and not the image. If you want to get people to look at the Connie health care policy, for example, why not have a spot featuring Peter Mackay, DDS? He polls well which reflects his natural ability to communicate sincerely, the cousin of crediblity.

Sure it would make Harper's bum even tighter to give one of his rivals a high profile but just think of it. The approach in one feel swoop would wipe out once and for all the rumours that Steve ruthlessly guards his profile. It focuses on the issue not the surface flash. Rather than the artificial team in the current load of TV spots, Canadians would see an actual team. I'd bet cash that their polling numbers would change for the good.

The problem for the Connies is actually really simple and it's one that no amount of advertising will fix. Reputation and credibility are about what you are, not how you look. Billy Crystal's Fernando was dead wrong.

Canadians can see through any image-driven contrivances like these four little TV spots. In the end, the spots, poorly conceived, poorly executed actually add to the Connie malaise. They've already pegged Steve Harper and unless he actually changes or the party changes the leader for a new one, it is damned near impossible to erase the guy's reputation.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Use the link and go watch the spots for yourselves.

I like the child care policy one. The one with the kids in it working at their colouring books.

or was it writing the Connie election advertising strategy?

Steve might consider hiring them. They sure as hell couldn't do any worse a job than the people he paid for two minutes of Canadians' lives they'll never get back again.

Loyola and "sound fiscal management" - oxymoron [Revised]

Loyola Sullivan turned himself in knots these past few days trying to explain why the province won't be offering any systematic help to low and fixed income earners struggling with high heating costs this winter.

According to Sullivan, we have a huge debt which grows each day.

Ok Loyola.

But you're the finance minister.

What is your plan to stop the bleeding from our budget, Loyola? That's what people elected you to do. That's what you were talking about when you mention all the financial evil the other guys did when they were in power.

Fixing the financial mess was what you promised to do once you got elected.

Truth is Loyola doesn't have a debt reduction plan. He didn't have a real deficit reduction plan either: that was taken care of by the growing economy.

There is no plan, despite promises made by the Premier two years in a row.

As Loyola Sullivan said earlier this year, the Williams government intends to let the debt grow by about $500 million each year for the foreseeable future. If that approach to sensible financial management lasts for 10 years, as Sullivan mused, the debt of the province will be the better part of $ 20 billion. That's the same size as the economy currently. That would put us in the same mess the Wells government inherited in 1989: a debt load equal to the size of the economy.

Talk about living beyond your means.

In interviews yesterday, Sullivan referred to this as being somehow a matter of sound fiscal management.

I call it grossly irresponsible, especially in light of the Great Offshore Deal [editor's note: That was sarcasm] Danny brought home last year. When we are flush with cash, we should be fixing the long-term debt problem so that when the oil runs out, we can still pay the bills.

Piling up more debt is not the way to do that. It isn't what the Williams administration promised before they got elected.

I can see the campaign slogan now:

Vote for Danny and Loyola for Responsible Irresponsibility.

What people will see is Danny and Loyola: Oxymorons.

Premier makes local oil patch sweaty - but not in a good way

The local oil patch grows increasingly nervous with the bellicose rhetoric from Premier Danny Williams about Hebron development and any future developments.

While the Premier seems intent on playing to the Open Line gallery, there is concern he will talk his way right out of a deal that would see development of the last identified commercial field offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

Of course, since the Premier himself has committed to getting a deal on Hebron development, it makes everyone wonder why he proposed Andy Wells to head the offshore board so that Andy could get the good deals.

Meanwhile, the Premier ignores the red tape and obstacles that prevent the remaining oil that has been discovered offshore besides Hebron from being developed. Knowledgeable people in the local oil industry have repeatedly point to an overall government regime as being the problem. Offshore Angola or in the Gulf of Mexico, the time from discovery to development is measured in months. Here it can be upwards of a decade and more with all the associated costs.

We pay the costs of that delay, incidentally because the oil in the ground has no value. It only is worth cash when we start producing it.

In other places fields of 100 million barrels and smaller are viable. No one in government here - least of all the Premier - is talking about getting that field size to market. They seem content to do, as the Premier did yesterday with the governors and premiers: talk about our resource as growing. Truth is that estimates are growing - but there hasn't been a commercial discovery sine 1984.

Talk is cheap, Premier.

B-17 and P-38 to visit province [UPDATE]

You don't have to be an airplane buff to be excited - I mean really excited - that a fully restored B-17G "Liberty Belle", and a restored P-38 will be visiting the province this week and weekend.

Here's the link to the aircraft website along with a schedule.

The P-38, named "Glacier Girl" was one of a flight of P-38s lost on Greenland and subsequently recovered from beneath tons of ice. Read the story here.

Update - VOCM is reporting that the B-17/P-38 tour has been delayed by Hurricane Katrina.

A banana municipality or just plain bananas? Mail-in voting system ignores monkey business

A post last week on Bond Papers brought attention to the prospect of vote fraud in the upcoming municipal election in St. John's owing to the vote-by-mail system being used.

Unfortunately, city officials have apparently neglected to provide any measures to discourage, prevent, detect or otherwise eliminate vote fraud.

A story in the Sunday Telegram by Terry Roberts quotes Neil Martin, the City Clerk, as saying that city officials assume everyone will be honest and that there is no way to prevent vote fraud. Since the story isn't available online, I'll try and get a copy of it and post the story here.

Martin is quoted as saying: "We have to trust that people will do what's correct. If we assume there will be corruption, then there's not much we can do."

According to Martin, "We [city officials] are as prudent as we can be. We're ensuring the voter's list is entirely up to date. The ballot is mailed to the person on the list, that person signs and sends us back the voter declaration form, along with the ballot."

At no point did Martin indicate how city officials will ensure that the vote returned was actually cast by the person to whom it was mailed. Nor is there any indication of how the city is ensuring its voter list does not include people who are no longer qualified to vote or who have died.

The Bond Papers' contention that vote fraud was a possibility in St. John's can now be changed to vote fraud is a probability.

It's not as though vote fraud is a rare thing.

The last provincial general election included allegations of voting irregularities in the mail-in ballot system used.

As this British Broadcasting Corporation story reports, electoral fraud in the 2004 Birmingham municipal contest was of such a nature that a judicial inquiry declared the whole election invalid. The link to a BBC video news report on the BBC site describes the electoral fraud in greater detail. The entire scheme involved as few as 1, 500 votes in a municipality with a larger population than the whole of Newfoundland and Labrador. That was enough to skew the entire result, however.

Part of the concern expressed by the Birmingham investigation was that the vote envelopes were so easy to identify that one could not make them more inviting by writing "Steal Me" in bold letters across the front of the package. Ballot envelopes were reportedly taken from postal workers and from household letter boxes, brought to a couple of locations and then completed and returned.

The same situation can easily exist in St. John's, and as the city clerk admits, there were reports in 2001 of ballots laying about in hallways of apartment buildings throughout the city. No one knows where those ballots went or if they were cast. The city cannot tell if they were cast or not, even though the vote-by-mail system is touted as having produced a 10% increase in voter participation compared to the previous general election. That increase in participation coupled with the supposed cash savings to the city are the two reasons given by city officials for going to a completely mail-in vote system.

Any election may be subject to attempts at fraudulent voting. In this instance fraud is taken to mean:

- voting by someone not entitled to vote;
- submission of multiple votes by the same individual (in a one person/one vote system); or,
- removal of ballots in order to discourage voting.

Electoral systems across North America take active measures to prevent voter fraud and preventing fraud is a key part of preserving the legitimacy of the entire electoral process. In a system where the right to govern derives from attaining a majority or plurality of individual votes, voters must have confidence that the system is as free as possible from fraud.

In the State of Oregon, which successfully conducted an entire state-wide election using vote-by-mail, the state government has implemented simple mechanisms using available technology to ensure that each mail-in ballot is cast legally.

By contrast, the City of St. John's has produced an electoral system in which a city official now admits City Hall is completely unconcerned with the prospect of fraud.

Consider the numbers and the realities.

There are approximately 79, 000 eligible voters in the City of St. John's, according to Martin. Given death and the mobility of people in a growing city, it is reasonable to assume approximately 10% of the list will be changed for this election from the previous one.

For a concrete example, consider that both my elderly grandparents passed away since the last general election. The city's list may miss them out. If they receive ballots, count on them being intercepted by my parents who will ensure the ballots are destroyed or returned to City officials unopened.

Others may not be so scrupulous.

Of course, even if the City of St. John's actually has a completely accurate voter list that eliminates all dead people, they still cannot ensure that ballots will not be stolen and cast by someone other than the legitimate voter.

The City Clerk may point to the signature on the returned ballot as some proof of legitimacy. Unfortunately, he has no way of comparing signatures to ensure that the one sent back is from the correct person. That's the system Oregon uses and the one Martin dismisses as being too costly.

In Oregon, the state government funds a process of voter registration and many community organizations and political parties assist in voter registration at no cost to taxpayers. After all, it's in their interest to ensure the system works properly and such a system promotes voter involvement - supposedly one of the goals of the St. John's system. There is no reason to believe such a system couldn't work in St. John's to help ensure the voting system is free of corruption.

The City's system would work to eliminate fraud only if there was 100% participation. In that system, any duplicate ballots and signatures could be easily detected.

Here's the rub: the actual participation rate is now only 60%. City officials can still attain what the Telegram reports as their goal of 75% participation rate in this election, but the increase could be the result of people sending in ballots solely from the residents of the city who are too disinterested to bother to replace a stolen ballot.

To understand the importance of eliminating fraud, consider this: with about 79, 000 eligible voters, 10% to 15% would mean that between 7, 900 and 11, 850 ballots could be fraudulently returned, achieving the desired increase in participation albeit illegally.

Flip over to the City of St. John's website and take a look at the returns for the last election.

- Only 6, 000 more votes would have put Vince Withers in the mayor's chair.
- About the same number of votes put Gerry Colbert in the deputy mayor's chair. His rival was Sandy Gibbons.
- In Ward 1, Art Puddister won by only 1400 votes or so.
- In Ward 4, Kevin Breen took his seat with only a couple of thousand more votes than his nearest rival.
- At large, Tom Hann and Geoff Peters were only a couple of thousand votes behind either Sandy Hickman (who won the by-election) and Dorothy Wyatt.

Of course, the vote-by-mail system actually isn't about fair and legitimate elections. Its official purpose is to get a result as cheaply as possible.

According to the Telegram, the city has budgeted a little under $400, 000 for the election with the bulk of the costs being eaten up by postage.

Although polling day (the date for final receipt of ballots) is September 27th, city officials expect that upwards of 95% of the total ballots cast will be returned within 10 days of their being mailed out on September 9th.

For those who are good at math, that means the election will effectively be over a week before polling day, at the latest.

The city's election system will produce results at a lower cost than traditional forms of voting, but the question remains what the cost will be to democracy.

A public embarrassment

This week, governors from the New England states and premiers from Ontario, Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces are in St. John's for their annual conference.

This is a major international event, with the provinces and states discussing major issues of international trade affecting the northeastern part of the continent.

For this province, it is a chance to showcase what we have to offer and to further strengthen our trading relationships with New England. The premier is about to announce a multi-million dollar contract with a local advertising company to "rebrand" Newfoundland and Labrador. Essentially, he wants to convince our potential trade partners that this is a sophisticated, modern place with which to do business.

That's what makes the government's New England business page, linked from this VOCM web story, such an inexcusable insult to the people and businesses of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Let's walk through the thing and see what we find:

1. Next to a nice smiling picture of Kathy Dunderdale, there is a button that invites us to click it to see the introduction "play".

2. Click it an all you get is a static picture if you use any browser other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Computer programmers will tell you that Explorer is the most common browser out there. Ok. But if I am one of the smart people who uses a browser that hackers can't screw with, why am I getting a second-rate site?

3. There is an instruction on the picture that appears on Firefox that tells you to click the buttons on the left for further information. The buttons are on the right.

4. Click on the button that asks if you are interested in doing business in Newfoundland and Labrador, and you are wisked to a page featuring the smiling face of our own Premier Danny Williams. That's good so far.

5. Click on the button "Your business here", which already looks like a placeholder in a rough draft of the site.

6. Under "Strategic Location and Transportation", you'll find some useful basic information about the province.

7. The first picture in this section appears to be an United States Navy aircraft handling crew from one of its aircraft carriers.

8. The next picture is a fisheries patrol aircraft. That service is supplied by a local company but you won't find a single mention of Provincial Airlines and its subsidiaries anywhere else in the site. Beyond that you won't find any visual proof of our well developed air transportation sector. Nope. Just by looking, I'd think the only way to get here was by small bush plane - a culvert with wings.

9. Under market advantage, the information is ok. Why is there a picture of a defunct Newfoundland stamp and pre-Confederation Newfoundland coins?

10. On the research and development page, try and find mention of the companies like Rutter Technologies, Northstar Network or Northern Radar, all of whom have developed highly competitive, high technology products from their base in Newfoundland and Labrador. They get reduced to a single mention as being "Many local firms..." long after there are extensive paragraphs on publicly owned research facilities.

11. Oh yeah, check out the pictures and see if those don't look like the kind of basic manufacturing you'd find anywhere on the planet.

12. Under "Industrial Infrastructure", there's that carrier deck crew waiting again. The information is generic and the facilities that do exist in the province, like Marystown and Bull Arm don't get a mention or a link. There's just a generic discussion of the fact we have industrial parks...just like you can find anywhere.

13. Under "Communications" , there is a bunch of generic information - nothing to grab your attention - , along with some links to those same public sector outfits mentioned on another page. There is reference to the technology industries association, but nothing on specific achievements. Those are the kinds of things people looking to do business here want to know: what have local companies done - Rutter, Stratos, Northern Radar, GRI Simulations...not a mention.

14. Under "Communications Contacts", you'll find a bunch of associations yet again. Under government contacts, the federal government's Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is listed under "Provincial Government" contacts.

15. On the main menu again, "Business News" takes you to Kathy Dunderdale's department and its own list of news releases. There's no way to find more detailed information on real business news from the province. If you use Firefox to get to this page you get a message that it is "coming soon".

16. Under trade shows and mission, the page on Explorer went suddenly blank while I was checking it out. Under Mozilla it gave me a list of 11 events occurring between May and June 2005. All the specifics were in 2004! As of 4:00 PM Sunday this was suddenly reading "Available Soon!" - but 2005 is half over, people! Mozilla still gives me the 2004 listing for events but the news page goes to the government site..

17. Back to the home page again, and click on the business directories. The petroleum one is from 2002 - grossly out of date. On none of the directories will you find a hotlink to a website or an active hotlinked e-mail address. So much for showing we can use modern technology.

Overall, this site is a public embarrassment. It might be tidied up by Monday and some of the glaring problems fixed, but some of the more substantive ones won't be corrected - it would require major revamping of the website.

Before we spend dollar one on any advertising campaign, the Premier needs to get a grip on his government.

Marketers can claim we are anything they want. The public relations guys will look at actual performance - your reputation and credibility.

If I were to judge by the nlbusiness.ca website, I'd get the idea Newfoundland and Labrador is not a place to do business.

That is far from true - but a half-assed government website that promotes public sector interests at the expense of the private sector won't attract any interest to the province except head-shaking.

Canadian campaign blog

For political junkies, few things could get them as excited as a new blog from an anonymous but obviously experienced campaigner.

Campaign Central is only a few days old but already the posts have touched on some of the interesting apsects of political campaigns: demographics and communication methods.

Add this one to your "must-read" column.

On a related subject, I have been fiddling with some posts about local campaigns and the way they have traditionally approached things like advertising, media relations and the use of research.

Looking around at the St. John's municipal campaign, there is a great feature piece for local media comparing and critiquing the signs and the approaches. That one will wind up being a post mortem, though since I am actively involved in the campaign right now.