Endless re-runs

Strip away all the trademark and largely shopworn histrionics from the Premier and take a look at the recent exchange of correspondence with the Prime Minister.

Some interesting things come to light:

1.  For all the talk about a package of initiatives supposedly designed to get past the Equalization "impasse", the first letter written by the Premier after the famous late November meeting focused on one thing:  the Hibernia shares.

2.  There isn't a specific proposal here, rather the letter is intended to "clarify issues concerning the Government of Canada's investment in Hibernia."

3.  The deadline for the proposal was not the end of 2007 or even January 11, 2008.  Nope, as the Premier wrote, he believed it would be in the best interests of both the federal provincial governments if the matter was resolved before "the end of the new year [sic]", that is, the end of 2008.

4.  In the next letter, dated eight days after the first one, the Premier asks if a decision has been made and then requests a reply by Christmas.

5.  In the next letter written a week after that one, the premier raises comments made by Loyola Hearn.  He then takes issue with Hearn's comment that the federal government had received no written list of options from the provincial government.  The Premier cites his December 3, 2007 letter as evidence this is not the case and accuses Hearn of misleading the public.

Interestingly, the public can now read the December 3 letter, look at its contents and understand that Hearn was correct, at least on that point.

6.  The next letter, dated January 3, complains about comments attributed to Loyola Hearn.

7.  The Prime Minister's reply, dated January 15, focuses on the Hibernia shares since this is what was contained in the December 3 letter. The letter states the federal government's view of the costs associated with those shares, refutes several claims made by the Premier and then asks three simple questions with respect to the shares, based on the provincial government's recent purchase of shares in two offshore projects:

-  What portion of the federal interest is the provincial government interested in acquiring?

-  What would be the fair market price proposed by the provincial government for that share?

-  What is the view of the Hibernia partners to the proposed share purchase.

He concludes by stating that he looks forward to future discussions on the issue.

There is no rejection of anything, specifically, but there is a clear indication the federal government may be prepared to sell the shares.  That's consistent with Stephen harper's letter to Danny Williams during the last federal election.

8.  In his reply, dated January 16, the Premier begins by re-stating his position on a range of comments made in earlier correspondence.

On the specific questions, he states that the provincial government is interested in the 8.5% interest in Hibernia plus the additional Net Profits Interest option associated with the federal involvement in the project.

it is plain the Premier is not interested in purchasing the shares but rather proposes that the value, once determined, be deducted from the "net value gap".  In other words, he wants the cost to charged against the notional $10 billion Equalization debt.

The Premier interprets the last question as questioning 'our capacity to manage the project'.  The Prime Minister's question was legitimate;  the partners may be interested in purchasing the federal shares themselves.

Canadian Press got the headline wrong on one story, although the bulk of the story describes the premier's vitriolic reaction.  The shorter one carried by the Globe online is more accurate since the claim that the PM rejected the Hibernia idea is actually coming from the Premier, not from the factual record.

Interestingly, the Premier took umbrage at being accusing of misstating what the Prime Minister said in November in a private meeting.  Look at the December 3 letter and the later comments by Hearn.  So much for factual accuracy, let alone an understanding of when the new year ends.

There really isn't anything new in all of this. It seems like Canadian political life is simply mirroring American television during a writers strike:  endless re-runs.

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Buckingham story mismatch

Why is it that some of the details in the CBC story on Dr. Sean Buckingham's future as a doctor don't match the description at vocm.com?

On Tuesday, CBC reported:

Buckingham's future medical career will be determined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Newfoundland and Labrador, which said after a jury convicted Buckingham in December that it would launch an automatic review of his medical privileges.

Buckingham voluntarily surrendered his licence in 2005, soon after he was arrested during a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary raid on his home.

The college is not expected to call a panel to consider Buckingham's licence in the immediate future.

Yet, vocm.com gives the story a little differently:

Dr. Sean Buckingham's future in medicine is now in the hands of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Complaints Authorization Committee. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison this week on charges of sexual assault and trafficking in prescription drugs. Buckingham had surrendered his medical licence back in 2005 when he was arrested by the RNC. The college says the matter is now being dealt with as an allegation under the Medical Act.

Under the Medical Act, 2005 a conviction in criminal court becomes a prima facie allegation against the medical practitioner.  Handled in the usual way, it would proceed to the Complaints Authorization Committee which will, as the name implies, review the information and authorize a complaint to proceed to a discipline hearing if that's what the case merits.

That's a feature of the revised legislation that makes the College's job easier. In the old days, the medical board would have to start its own, separate investigation and collect information as if the case was new.  Now the case can be handled somewhat more expeditiously than it would have once upon a time.

But, if the case is before the Complaints Authorization Committee already, as vocm.com gives it, then the CBC story doesn't make sense when it says the College isn't expected to call a panel to consider the status of Buckingham's license.  The CAC meets fairly regularly and it would be considered a "panel' in the ordinary meaning of the term. It hears an allegation after an investigation has been conducted by College staff.

So which is it?

And while we're at it, Buckingham surrendered his license in 2005, but both stories suggest he did so willingly and, in the case of the CBC story using the word "shortly" is accurate but doesn't describe the sense at the time.  In the interests of disclosure, the College was a client of your humble e-scribbler at the time.

It took a few weeks, if memory serves and in the end required some fairly clear public indications from what was then the medical board under the old medical act that if he didn't hand the license over, then the Board was prepared to take it.  The board started an investigation into the new allegations at the time Buckingham was arrested in order to be prepared to have a discipline hearing under the process at the time into the status of his license.

Presumably the information collected in 2005 has been held in abeyance ever since so the process two and a half years later should be fairly straightforward (as suggested by vocm.com).  It shouldn't take a while, as suggested by the CBC story.

So which is it?

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Monroe options Altius uranium prospects in Newfoundland

From the company news release:

Monroe Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE:MMX) ("Monroe") announced today that it has entered into option agreements with Altius Resources Inc. ("Altius") allowing it to earn up to a 60% interest in the Boxey Point and Berry Hill uranium properties, located in Newfoundland, Canada.

Monroe President and CEO Derek Moran commented: "We are pleased to expand our relationship with Altius and to focus Monroe's growing uranium division in Newfoundland and Labrador, with obvious logistical benefits. We shall announce our 2008 program later this quarter and meanwhile we continue to review new projects both in Canada and on the African continent."

The Boxey Point property totals thirty-six claims and is 900 hectares in size. It is located in the Fortune Bay area along the southern coast of Newfoundland, between and a little south of the Coomb's Cove and English Harbour West settlements. The property is about 600 km by road from St Johns. A recent soil sampling program yielded elevated uranium results and two rock samples tested 738 ppm and 1,498 ppm uranium (0.09 to 0.18% U3O8) respectively. There is also remarkable alteration of the sedimentary strata on the property. The expected deposit type could be similar to the conglomerate-hosted uranium prospects that exist at the Beaverdell deposits in southern B.C. or the former Midnite/Blackhawk Mine near Spokane, Washington. For example, from 1955 to 1981 the Midnite mine produced about 11.6 million pounds of U3O8 from 2.63 million tonnes of ore with an average grade of about 0.2% U3O8.

The Berry Hill property totals fifty-seven claims and is 1,425 hectares in size. It is located on the Burin Peninsula about 160 km due west or 235 km by road from St. Johns. The Berry Hill property is a conceptual play based on fluorite occurrences and a number of stream sediment, lake sediment and till samples with elevated concentrations of one or more of uranium, molybdenum and fluorine. The expected deposit type is a granitic-hosted uranium deposit such as the Rossing mine in Namibia, Radium Hill in South Australia or Johan-Beetz uranium prospect in Quebec. Granite-hosted uranium deposits tend to be relatively low grade (e.g., less than 0.1% U3O8), although they can be very large. The Rossing deposit in Namibia, for example, has been in production since 1976, has a uranium grade ranging from about 0.018 to 0.042% U3O8, and in 2006 produced about 7% of world uranium production (http://www.rossing.com/rossingmine.htm).

Monroe may earn a 60% interest in the Boxey Point property over four years by spending $1,000,000 on exploration, including a minimum first year commitment of $100,000, and making share payments to Altius of 2,000,000 Monroe shares, including 400,000 shares on signing and 1,600,000 shares divided equally over four years to be paid on each anniversary of the agreement.

Monroe may earn a 60% interest in the Berry Hill property over four years by spending $475,000 on exploration, including a minimum first year commitment of $50,000, and making share payments to Altius of 500,000 Monroe shares, including 100,000 shares on signing and 400,000 shares divided equally over four years to be paid on each anniversary of the agreement.

The earning under each project is independent of whether earning occurs under the other. Upon Monroe fulfilling its earn-in obligations, the parties will form a 60:40 joint venture, with each partner contributing its pro-rata share of future expenditures. If either party dilutes its interest to less than 10% in the joint venture, its interest shall be converted to a royalty of 1.0% of gross uranium sales.

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15 more minutes of fame

Premier Ed Stelmach is likely regretting the day he decided to tackle Dave Cournoyer.

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On top of ole Smokey...

There might be a ski hill today, but IOCC is looking at Smokey Mountain as a possible source of iron ore.

[h/t labradore]

A little perspective

Why is anyone in the province, let alone the country, paying attention to the bit of silliness otherwise known as the Danny Williams "anybody but Conservative" thing?

Well, here's as succinct a view as one might advance:

Since when did we need the Premier's blessing to not vote for Stephen Harper?

Most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, unlike their Premier, were smart enough to know better last time around. And the time before that.

There are more than enough reasons not to vote Conservative. There were last time around too.

But why do you insinuate that by questioning Danny Williams, you are thereby supporting the federal Conservatives? Or that questioning the provincial government somehow detracts from the "great fight" with Ottawa in which we all must uniformly engage?

It's like saying Newfoundlanders can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Just because "our" Premier can only focus on one issue at a a time doesn't mean the same holds true for the rest of the province's citizens.

Frankly, I think all this hullabaloo detracts from the real reasons we should be voting against the current federal government - their record on the environment is atrocious, the same for childcare, seniors benefits, their skewed prioritization of tax measures, their elimination of funding for the status of women, the court challenges program and other equality seeking programs, not to mention their misguided foreign policy.

But all of these issues were plain and obvious three and four years ago. The Premier voted for him anyway.
Maybe instead of imploring that all "good" Newfoundlanders follow Danny's lead, you should be imploring him to follow theirs. After all, in 2004 and in 2006, most of "them" ("us") got it right.

January 14, 2008 10:46 PM

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Just wondering...

As we come up on the first anniversary of the whole meltdown, what exactly is going on with John Hickey's lawsuit against Roger Grimes?

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It's not a contract to sell power

For some bizarre reason, CBC news online is claiming that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro announced an agreement to sell Lower Churchill power today.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro announced an agreement Monday to sell electricity from the Lower Churchill megaproject to consumers in the Maritimes and the northeastern U.S.

Hydro did no such thing, as the very next paragraph of the CBC story makes plain:

The Crown corporation said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nova Scotia Power and Emera Inc. "to explore the possibility of bringing energy" to the Maritimes and New England markets.

That's what the official news release said, too. it's just another memorandum of understanding to explore the possibility.  That's about as far away from a contract to sell power as it is possible to get, except for not having an MOU at all.  No company is obliged to do anything except study.

The only time people should get excited about the project going ahead is if the provincially-owned Crown corporation announces it actually has a contract to sell power to someone other than Newfoundland Power. So far, the only people on the hook to pay for the project are the provincial taxpayers, especially those on the northeast Avalon.

That's pretty much a captive market.

Even the Premier isn't sure the thing will go ahead.  Just a few weeks ago, he officially rated the prospect of the project getting the green light at 50%.

And while we're at it, consumers should beware of the project and the impact it may have on their power rates.

Under changes made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2006, power rates in the province can be linked to Hydro's business actions that may not be related to electricity generation. The Williams administration added a subsection to a previous section of the Act to exempt the crown utility from a restriction on its business activities.

Restrictions on business
24. (1) Subject to this Act, a retailer shall not engage or invest in or carry on any business or activity other than the business of the production, transmission, distribution or retailing of power and the business or activity that is generally related to it.
(2) For greater certainty, subsection (1) shall not apply to a person who controls a retailer, including a corporation referred to in paragraph 23(3)(b).
(3) This section does not apply to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. (added in 2006)

The problem is that under section three of the same Act, the Public Utilities Board is responsible for setting power rates such that: 

(a) the rates to be charged, either generally or under specific contracts, for the supply of power within the province
...
(iii) should provide sufficient revenue to the producer or retailer of the power to enable it to earn a just and reasonable return as construed under the Public Utilities Act so that it is able to achieve and maintain a sound credit rating in the financial markets of the world, ...

If Hydro winds up involved in any other business activity besides electricity generation, as it may do under the Hydro corporation act, then it will affect power rates.

But then again, if the Lower Churchill corporation is set up primarily to export power outside the province, it isn't clear what effect this section of the act might have  - if any - on power rates as they relate to the portion of the power Hydro plans to ship to the island to replace the current oil-fired plant at Holyrood.

The 2006 changes altered substantively the intent of the original act on the hydro corporation, passed in 1977 and amended by the legislature following the 1989 general election:

Special Hydro provisions

17. (1) In considering the rates charged by the hydro corporation for the purpose of a reference under this Act, the public utilities board shall take no account of expenditures or revenues of the hydro corporation or its subsidiaries that are not attributable to the supplying of power to retailers and rural customers.

(2) Where the hydro corporation supplies power to a user who is neither a retailer nor a rural customer, the hydro corporation shall use its best endeavours to obtain for that power the rates or a class of rates that would be compatible with the power policy declared by section 3.

(3) Where the hydro corporation is unable to apply the rates or the class of rates referred to in subsection (2) because of public policy or existing contracts, the Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall enter into those financial arrangements or other arrangements that may be necessary to enable the hydro corporation to comply with the power policy declared by section 3 in respect of those other users of its power.

It also changes the intention of the 1994 version of the Act, which established clear regulatory control by the Public Utilities Board of power allocation and rates within the province, provided a mechanism to redirect power from Churchill Falls under certain circumstances and ensured that consumer rate would be based on electricity generation, primarily for power used within the province.

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May the farce continue...

The farce will be continuing this year, after all.

People in the province have a mere few days to get their submissions ready.

In St. John's, it's less than a week.  The first of the budget "consultations" start next Monday.

Don't count on any summary of the provincial government's financial position to help, either.

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The secret of life, and comedy...

is timing.

The day before Tom Rideout's volte face, these two letters appeared in the Telegram:

'is anyone else outraged?'

I'm a Danny Williams fan who was overjoyed when he came home with the $2 billion in Atlantic Accord money.

I also walked with a lighter step when he signed the Hebron deal.

I voted to help him get the huge majority.

Now things are changing. I hope it's not the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power, etc.
Tom Rideout has to be held accountable. To say that he hasn't been charged, therefore it's OK, is unacceptable. Tom Rideout was given permission for this suspect billing by the same person who gave permission to the MHAs now up before the courts.

Since the auditor general is now effectively mute, whose job is it to lay those charges?

I highly encourage all who are outraged by Tom Rideout's arrogant attitude towards these concerns to write to the editor and express their views.

Ron Wilson

'We deserve better.'

It's a sad day, indeed, when we read in our news media, and hear on the TV and radio, of wrongdoings by our provincial politicians and find ourselves asking, "Well, what else do you expect?"

It's more than sad. It's frightening.

According to news reports (Telegram, Dec. 19) Deputy Premier Tom Rideout spent thousands of taxpayers' dollars on house and office rentals and travel expenses - much of which, it certainly appears, was a blatant overspending of our money.

And you say, Mr. Rideout, you did nothing wrong. You claim you had all your expenses approved. Are we then to conclude that if the House of Assembly told you it was OK to rent two houses, three houses or any number of houses, then you would do it simply because it was approved?

Mr. Rideout, I ask you a simple question: is it too much for us mere mortals to expect you - as an MHA, a deputy premier, a minister of Fisheries - to use some discretion in spending our hard-earned money?
I believe I'm speaking for thousands of taxpayers when I say to you (and all politicians), for goodness sake, stop justifying your actions by insisting they were approved by Bill Murray or the House regulations or whatever. We are fed up with hearing it.

Those regulations (made by politicians) should never have been made in the first place. And no politician worth his salt would ever have had any part of them. Not only would one expect a person in such a position, who is dedicated to our province, to not partake in such action, but one would expect him or her to expose such flaws in the system as they are discovered and make the necessary changes to ensure such situations are no longer possible.

Let's start calling a spade a spade. They were unconscionable. Let's never hide behind them again.
If you continue to insist, with a straight face, that you have done nothing wrong, then your actions are nothing but an insult to our intelligence. We expect, and demand, better of all politicians.

George Martin

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A little naval history

As a kid, I built the old Aurora plastic model of the USS Skipjack and played with it for hours. The kit is still around, repackaged by Revell Germany, but these days the kit is likely bought by adults instead of children.

Skipjack was the first submarine with both a nuclear powerplant and a tear-drop hull. It's the hull that made a difference in this revolutionary craft. Previous submarines, including the first nuke boat - Nautilus - used hulls shaped like the hulls of surface ships. Skipjack was different. Her hull worked best underwater and her nuclear reactor gave Skipjack the ability to stay submerged under crew or food supply was exhausted.

Here's a newsreel from the time. [Update: a link for those who might not be getting the embedded video.]

While on the slipways, one of her sister ships was cut open, and a length of new hull was added to turn her into the the first American ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington.

No small irony here. In later years, as the Washingtons and follow-on boomers reached the end of their service life the missile compartments were removed and the subs turned into attack boats as they had originally started life.

This picture - of the 1950s and early 1960s vintage submarines awaiting disposal is remarkable for a whole bunch of reasons.

It includes the first of a class of operational nuke boats in history, for example, the USS Skate. She's the first blunt nosed submarine, two to the left as you look at the photo. Skipjack, incidentally, is second from the left of that entire section.

The longer conventional hull is USS Seawolf. She's the second nuclear powered submarine, after Nautilus and the only boat to carry an experimental reactor cooled by liquid metal. At this newsreel, you'll find a short segment on the Seawolf and her reactor problems.

Look closely and you can also see the de-evolution of some of the hulls back to training ships for attack subs.

All the boats in this picture are now buried in the desert, their entire reactor and associated bits stored in metal canisters.

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Jack Brod, diamond merchant and boat builder dead at 98

Jack Brod is dead.

Don't know him?

He died January 6 at the age of 98 years and was touted by the New York Times obit piece as being the last original tenant of the Empire State Building.  Jack's company - Empire Diamond - has a suite on the 76th floor in the building where it's been since 1931.

The curious thing about Brod's life, though is this line:

Mr. Brod’s other business interests included running a boatyard on City Island in the Bronx and a boat factory in Newfoundland.

Now which boat factory might that be?

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Rideout misrepresents former cabinet colleague's remarks

Fish minister and deputy premier Tom Rideout must be having a bad day. 

Not only is he now on the hook repaying several thousands dollars of taxpayers cash he received but was not entitled to, but it turns out his rebuke of former cabinet colleague Loyola Sullivan is based on Rideout's misrepresentation of Sullivan's comments.

Here's Tom's version, as reproduced by CBC:

We were astounded and surprised at the view taken by [fisheries ambassador Loyola Sullivan] when he made the remark that we're 10 years too late for the fight," Rideout said in a statement, describing Sullivan's appearance at a Fur Institute of Canada meeting in St. John's earlier this week.

Here's the next bit of the CBC story, giving Sullivan's actual words.

However, Sullivan's precise comment while speaking with reporters was substantially different than Rideout's rendering of it.

"It's difficult because it's advanced so far," Sullivan said, describing the effectiveness of campaigns by groups protesting the seal hunt.

"I would love to have been in this position 10 years ago, to be able to advance it before it got such a foothold."

It's like the different between an office and a house.

Last month, The Telegram revealed that Rideout had claimed rent of a house in his constituency, even though House of Assembly rules at the time didn't allow members to claim rent or mortgage costs for property in the districts they represented.

Confronted with the claims totalling $23,000 over eight years, Rideout initially defended the expenses saying that he had permission from administrative staff at the legislature for the arrangement. On Friday, Rideout took a very different position:

"I have personally concluded that the way in which these residential expenses were billed to my constituency allowance was not appropriate," he said during a news conference.

"I take full responsibility for that and it is therefore my responsibility to ensure that it is rectified."

Rideout's initial defence started to come apart at the seams when he made incorrect statements on a local radio talk show.  As reported previously, Rideout said that he had only claimed per diems for meals and similar expenses.  Documents obtained by the Telegram showed Rideout claimed both per diems for meals as well as per diems for accommodations even though he was occupying a house and office already being paid for by taxpayers.

Rideout was a member of the House internal management committee at the time he began the expense claim arrangement.  During Rideout's term on the committee, it approved changes to legislation governing the House administration that led, in one instance to the auditor general be barred from auditing the legislature's own accounts. The period was well described by Chief Justice Derek Green in his recent report on the period.

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Related links:

"Beholder, beheld and beholden", a post that notes the curious change in perspective on the Rideout affair from a newbie local blogger once the Premier spoke on the subject:

If Deputy Premier Tom Rideout had permission from the House of Assembly, and thus a special arrangement, to claim for accommodations in Lewisporte, then what has he done wrong? The accommodations exist, permission was granted to claim a legitimate expense, and he has done nothing illegal.

Wonder what the view is now that even Rideout admits there was something wrong in the billing arrangement.

Lookin' up from the basement

RBC Economics' latest forecast for provincial economies has Newfoundland and Labrador looking at growth of just one half of one percent in 2008 and one percent in 2009.

It won't take much to turn that into a recession for one or two years in an economy that just a couple of years ago was starting to fire strongly on all cylinders.

On the upside, RBC expects things will start improving again some time after 2010.

Production is sharply weakening at Hibernia but remains on track at Terra Nova,
White Rose and Voisey’s Bay. Because of these projects, exports of energy and
industrial goods (which include key commodities such as iron ore and nickel)
now account for about three-quarters of the province’s total exports. Recent
approval for a sizeable production increase at White Rose is an added support.
While Newfoundland may well become a “have” province in 2009, it will take
several years before it stands another chance at posting province-leading growth
rates. The go-ahead is now in line for Hebron to start construction in 2010 and
production by 2013. There is the potential for construction of a second major oil
refinery at Placentia Bay, which would also coincide with the rough timelines on
the development of Hibernia South and the Lower Churchill hydro project.

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It's never the principle.

It's always the money.

Beleaguered deputy premier Tom Rideout will be reimbursing the people of Newfoundland and Labrador for money he received which he wasn't entitled to, according to The Telegram.

The St. John's daily revealed last month that the former premier and current deputy premier and fisheries minister:

claimed more than $23,000 for “rental accommodations” in his district of Lewisporte from late 2004 to early 2007, while tacking on an additional $53 per day for accommodations whenever he stayed in the area.

Rideout acknowledged spending the $23,000 out of his constituency allowance to rent a house in Lewisporte.

The landlord who received the cash was a key local Progressive Conservative party organizer.

House rules in effect at the time barred MHAs from charging taxpayers the cost of renting a home or apartment in their district — no matter who they rented it from.

Rideout justified the claims by saying that his Lewisporte rental home contained an office — even though he also operated a rent-free constituency office in a government-owned building less than a kilometre down the road.

MHAs were permitted to claim a per diem of $53 without receipts for accommodations whenever they visited their constituency.

Rideout charged both — a monthly house rental of between $750 and $850, and $53 each day he stayed in Lewisporte.

That means Rideout could be forking out the better part of 30 large, given that the per diem claims for accommodations came to about $6,500 according to the Telly reports.

Repaying the cash once caught seems to be the standard approach taken by politicians in the province these days, as if the numerous questions raised by Rideout's actions in this case weren't cause for having him removed from office.

The same approach has been applied to members of the legislature - Rideout included - who pocketed a bonus payment in 2004 yet never told the public about it at the time. The Premier, for his part, knew about and tacitly approved the payment to members of the House even though he himself didn't accept the cash.

The whole sorry mess - in which everything is supposedly made right if the cash gets paid back, but only after one gets caught -  may work for some people but it's an ethically unsound way to run a province.

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FY 2008 budget set already: annual charade becomes accountability farce

Any organization looking to influence provincial government spending in the budget for Fiscal Year 2008 can cancel their plans.

The budget is set.

An announcement Thursday by two cabinet ministers of capital spending for the fiscal year starting in April is proof the spending program is already done and likely has been done since well before Christmas, if not before the last general election in October 2007.

The announcement included a little jocular disingenuousness on the part of one minister:

Included in the money is $73 million for the 2008-09 provincial roads improvement program. That's a 10 per cent increase over the $66.5 million the program got last year.
"I hope I don't give Finance Minister (Tom) Marshall a heart attack today because I'm going to be looking for another 10 per cent over and above my $66.5 million," [transportation minister Diane] Whalen joked.

Tom knows all about it. So does everyone else in cabinet, most likely.

Otherwise, Diane wouldn't have been able to make the announcement.

And the pre-budget "consultations" usually organized by the finance minister?

No sign of those yet, but when they do come they will have returned to what they were when Brian Tobin's crew started them in 1997: a charade.

dannywilliams.ca

If the crotchety East Coast premier is worried about having his name used in a dot ca domain, he's too late.

A search of the Canadian Internet registry shows that dannywilliams.ca is owned by Shane Barnes of 10 Dollar Domain names in Cornwall Ontario.

If the premier wants to dispute the registration, there is a policy covering it.  Quite frankly, at the end of the day, a dispute likely wouldn't settle in the Premier's favour under that policy.

Domain dannywilliams.ca

Registrant Name
Shane Barnes

Registrar
(10dollar.ca) 10 Dollar Domain Names Inc.

Renewal Date
2008/04/09

Date approved
2007/04/09

Last changed
2007/04/09

Description

Registrar Number
1064689

Registrant Number
1120459

Domain Number
1845382

DNS1

ns.fw2.com

DNS2

ns2.fw2.com

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Provincial labour force numbers

Overall, the Canadian economy lost jobs, according to the latest Statistics Canada information and in Newfoundland and Labrador, the economy showed a December to December flat line.

Full-time employment grew by 2.3% comparing December 2007 to December 2006, while part-time employment in the same period declined 11.7%. 

About 2,000 fewer people were unemployed in the province in the same period, a decline of 11%.

The month to month change - November '06 to December '06 - appears to be a shift from part-time to full-time employment. Full-time employment grew by 4200 jobs while part-time employment declined by 4000 jobs.  Unemployment decreased by 3900 in the same month over month period.

Overall, the labour force remained the same in the last two months of 2006. On a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 1900 fewer people in the province in December 2007 compared to December 2006.

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The blogger, the Premier and a bigger story

No, it's not another meltdown at what the local plants used to call "blogsters" who sometimes irritate their beloved leader.

[Aside: Anyone else notice that since the whole process has been outed, the plants have dropped from the airwaves?]

This time, it's Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach who has his political knickers in a knot over a website - edstelmach.ca - run by a University of Alberta political science student and former Alberta Liberal opposition staffer Dave Cournoyer.

The Alberta Tory had his lawyers threatening to sue for misappropriation of persona unless the site disappeared. They even included a little threat that is lawyer code for "we don't have a case but maybe some fancy letterhead will work instead".

The URL now redirects to a Wikipedia entry on a social credit premier, in case you are wondering. According to Canadian Press, it used to redirect to daveberta.ca.

Pretty tame stuff.

However, as a result of the threats, the story has become a national embarrassment to Stelmach and given the blogger bags of free publicity.  Stelmach won't sue  - he was bluffing from the beginning - and has already sent his chief of staff to try and find an amicable solution to the whole thing. 

Even if the whole thing vanished tomorrow, the story puts the Premier look what the people in Fort Mac know as "stunned":   Had Stelmach spent $14 bucks  - that's what it cost the blogger to register the domain - when he got into politics he wouldn't be shelling out for huge billable hours to his lawyers and dealing with the media over what essentially adds up to nothing. 

It shows incredibly poor judgment for a guy who is also looking at a story about lost oil royalties [see below].

Your humble e-scribbler left a comment at Dave's blog that suggested, only partially tongue in cheek, that it would be appropriate to have every Ed Stelmach in the province sue the Premier for trying to appropriate their persona.  An evil political mind could surely find ways to drag this one out for as long as the Premier wants to keep it going.  After all, Stelmach is paying for the publicity for his own self-immolation.

The only thing that would be more embarrassing than Stelmach's reaction to the daveberta story is a column in Edmonton Sun that laces into Cournoyer on a purely partisan basis. 

Neil Waugh reads like his copy was clacked out by some highly placed thumbs in Stelmach's office. What a novel concept.

The references to "juvenile" and "little Liberal" are embarrassing since Waugh ledes with reference to a much bigger story that he ignores entirely in the main part of the column:

For a few hours this week, it looked like the hopeless Alberta Liberals might be making a comeback.

The Grits energy watchdog, Edmonton Gold Bar MLA Hugh MacDonald, released some disturbing research from the government's annual accounts - the so-called Blue Book.

He revealed that a numbered company controlled by former energy department bureaucrat Kellan Fluckiger had been paid an obscene $1,358,645 to redesign the province's electricity system.

Fluckiger left the government mysteriously in the fall. And the highlight of his handiwork so far was the near brownout the province suffered before Christmas which forced the Tories to delay putting on the legislature Christmas lights for fear of crashing the grid.

Not to mention the sky-high electricity rates consumers have experienced.

And if Neil bothered to read Dave's blog - he likely cribs much from it but wouldn't admit it anyways - he'd find reference to an Alberta government report showing how much the province was losing in royalties.  The original story appeared in the Edmonton Journal, but, c'mon: a good story shouldn't be ignored just because it was covered by another newspaper.

-srbp-

The polls were wrong?

While voters in Newfoundland and Labrador are used to seeing utterly useless political polls reported by local news media as if they were correct, the same in not the case in the United States.

Hillary Clinton's three percentage point margin of victory in the New Hampshire primary is the talk of the pundits, since pre-vote polling showed Barack Obama decisively ahead.  Political polls are not known for being out of whack from the vote by as much as 19 percentage points, or even seven, as was the case with recent polling in this province.

salon.com writer Joe Conason blames the "mainstream" media's anti-Clinton bias for what he contends was a backlash by voters in favour of Clinton.

A more plausible explanation focuses on the polling methodology.

Start with this summary of the results from the Washington Post:

Most polls accurately reflected the large bloc of likely Democratic voters yet to make up their minds, or said they were open to switching their support in the closing days. On the network exit poll, nearly 4 in 10 said they made their final decision within the last three days; 17 percent said they decided how to vote Tuesday. Among those making up their minds on Election Day, 40 percent supported Clinton, 37 percent Obama. Clinton did even better among the half of the electorate who settled on their top choice a month or more ago.

But the late polls missed on how votes divided by gender. Pre-election polls from CNN-WMUR-University of New Hampshire and USA Today-Gallup showed Obama and Clinton about evenly splitting female voters and Obama winning men by a margin of 2 to 1. But Clinton won among women by 13 percentage points, exit polls showed, and she lost among men more narrowly than suggested, drawing 30 percent to Obama's 42 percent.

What the polls may have missed, as the Post notes, is what the undecideds finally decided to do. That's a plausible explanation but one that awaits further detailed analysis by someone with access to the data. No matter what, it's much more plausible than the so-called "Bradley effect' in which white voters are presumed to hide their real voting intentions when an African American candidate is on the ballot.

The New York Times suggests that the impact of having two historic candidates - one black, the other a woman - on the Democratic ticket, coupled with the relatively short time gap between the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire may have had an impact on poll results.  NYT also suggests that methodology - in this case the use of tracking polls and their high margin of error - had an impact if not on the result than on the reporting of the polls.

And that's where another well-known phenomenon emerged, according to NYT:

Still, reporters who cover a particular campaign face a special challenge that was documented as far back as Timothy Crouse’s chronicle of the 1972 presidential race, The Boys on the Bus: Their ability to take in all that is happening may be limited.

At 8 a.m. Wednesday, Joel Achenbach, a reporter for The Washington Post who had been covering Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, posted a mea culpa on the newspaper’s Web site.

“Count me among those who thought Obama was a runaway train, that he’d blow Clinton out of the water,” Mr. Achenbach wrote. “You had to see the crowds! Feel the energy!”

Inaccurate polls and media commentary influenced by time spent on an airplane with the candidate?

What a novel idea.

-srbp-

Additional links:

USA Today:  "Pollsters struggle to explain Clinton win"

Telegraph (UK): "Inquiry after pollsters miss Hillary Clinton win"

CBC Newfoundland and Labrador campaign blog 2007:  "Embedded on the big blue bus"

Recession ahead?

The Newfoundland and Labrador economy may slip into recession over the next 12 months, if some current projections hold true.

Forecasts to date had the Newfoundland and Labrador economy flat-lining over the next two years or experiencing extremely modest growth of less than 2%.  The provincial government's own economic analysis division forecast last April that economic growth in the province during 2008 would be 0.8%.

The division also forecast gross domestic product in the province would increase by 3.4% in 2008 and decline by over 11% in 2009, with a further 4.4% decline in 2010. In "chained" 2002 dollars, GDP is forecast to decline 1.8% in 2008 and 1.9% in 2009.

All of that - in a forecast dated last November - included an assumption that the American economy would "grow by 2.2% in 2007." As well, "growth is expected to average 3.0% per year over the remainder of the forecast period," which ends in 2010.

That might not be an accurate picture, as it turns out.

Goldman Sachs is assessing the American economy is already likely falling into recession.  According to the Globe and mail, Merrill Lynch is now forecasting that the "Canadian economy is poised for a sharp slowdown as U.S. demand weakens...". The recession is forecast to last from two to three quarters (six to nine months) and will be mild by historical standards. Growth is forecast by Goldman Sachs at 0.8% over the year.

In Canada forecasters are already adjusting their projections for Canada in 2008, with growth in one worst case scenario hitting on 1.4% nationally compared with earlier forecasts of 2.4% or more.

A recession in the United States - even if relatively mild by some standards could have a significant impact on Newfoundland and Labrador.  The United States is the province's largest foreign trading partner, receiving 52% of the province's exports in 2005. 

Given that experts are revising downward their forecasts for overall Canadian and American economic performance over the  next 12 months, it is reasonable to conclude that the provincial economy will perform more poorly than earlier predicted.

-srbp-

Three kick-ass Geoff Meeker posts to start the year

1.  Meeker's "best of", part one.

2.  Meeker's "best of", part two.  Some might be surprised at Meeker's praise for the Independent both in layout and for content, specifically columnist Ivan Morgan and photo editor Paul Daly.

Meeker is nothing if not fair.  In this case, he's also spot on about the photos and the layout.

3.  A blast from the past, in which Meeker's Dad, media icon Ken Meeker offers up an audio tape of Joe Smallwood and an unnamed CBC reporter as Smallwood craps on reporter randy Simms for some comments Simms made on a local radio talk show in Gander.

-srbp-

Authenticity

Public relations practitioners will be - or ought to be - familiar with this concept.

Authenticity.  Authentic.

As in real.

As in not fake, plastic or otherwise packaged.

As in someone or something individual voters can relate to, empathise with and thereby create some form of attachment to or relationship with, even if at a distance.

Interesting.

Authenticity is one word that cropped up in stories about the Iowa caucuses  both before and after the vote.

The winners - Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee - were perceived by voters as being authentic.

As the L.A. Times put it, the race for the presidency was not about policy and substance at this point but about proving that the candidate was a "regular guy":

In fact, Huckabee said, not only had he hunted varmints himself -- in addition to deer, ducks, antelopes and, now, pheasants -- but he also was an experienced varmint-eater, having downed his share of fried squirrel, biscuits and Coke as a college student.

"I figured out you could put grease in a popcorn popper and heat that thing up, and you could cook anything," he said in an interview. "So we fried squirrel."

But that's about the Republicans.

Allowing for the potential bias in some commentary, the situation in the Democrat camp is perceived slightly differently.  Chicago Trib columnist Steve Chapman put it this way:

A virtue in a capitalist—being willing to do whatever is needed to satisfy the target audience—becomes a vice in the political realm, where it looks like an acute lack of principle or character. Voters in Iowa seem to prefer a candidate who appears true with them, and true to himself.

Or herself, which raises a problem for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Like Romney, she executes programmed responses with the efficiency and warmth of a Dell Inspiron desktop. But while Romney gives the sense of having no inner core, Clinton gives the sense of having an inner core that she is stoutly determined never to let us see.

She has portrayed herself as misunderstood—"the most famous person you don't know." If Americans don't know her after 16 years in the spotlight, it's not our fault. But maybe we know her all too well.
Much has been made of Obama's complexion, with good reason. For an African-American to win the opening round of a presidential campaign is truly historic, even if it doesn't lead to ultimate victory. But his appeal has more to do with skin comfort than skin color. Obama is at ease in his epidermis in a way that Clinton and Romney are not.

He offers a reassuring grace and calm likewise absent in John Edwards, who pretended that finishing second in a state where he has concentrated his efforts is proof that Americans yearn for a pitchfork populist. From Edwards' speech Thursday night, you would never guess he did worse this time than when he ran in 2004, with a more genial approach.

 

Authenticity  - or lately even currency  - has become an issue for Clinton.  In mid-December, during a campaign stop in Donnellson, Iowa, Clinton was asked about her religious views.  Surprise!  Turns out her old Sunday school teacher was in the audience. There's an Associated Press video at this yahoo link.

It's likely no accident that in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, Clinton displayed emotion at a campaign event. Authenticity is perceived as an issue;  Clinton came in third among Democratic candidates in the Iowa caucuses.  If she doesn't do well in New Hampshire, her campaign is done.

Take notice of the fact this display of emotion actually made the news in the context of Hillary because thus far she hadn't shown it. The NBC newscast segments linked together in this vid also includes a comment about Clinton stating that she likes to watch "Dancing with the stars".

There's also a commentary that notes the Clinton campaign had eschewed emotion until now and that the campaign appears to have made a conscious effort to give voters an opportunity to connect with Hillary emotionally.

The Granite State primary will be interesting, at least on the Democratic side.  We might see if "authenticity" can be suddenly and successfully injected as part of a campaign strategy in a way that seems decidedly counterfeit.

-srbp-

When you're in a hole...

the best way to get out is to stop digging.

Usually.

However, the province's Eastern Health authority seems intent on pushing through to see if they can reach China instead.

The issue - in this instance -  is an effort by the authority's lawyers to block access to two report on its lab facilities that are at the centre of both a lawsuit and public inquiry. The story broke before Christmas and, apparently, was poorly handled. 

The authority's position is given virtually no prominence and the reason they offered is a bit of a nose-puller.

The hole that was pretty wide and pretty deep got bigger.

Now that the holidays are over, someone at Eastern Health decided it's time to get back to the pick and shovel work by having the acting chief executive of the authority call a local open line show and repeat the same basic information, yet again.  As vocm.com reports,

Acting CEO Louise Jones told VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms the reports have already been provided to the Commission of Inquiry, but they have concerns that the results of a peer review would be made public. [Emphasis added]

Tactically this might seem like some sort of good idea.  heck, the lawyers might even feel this is necessary for some reason.

But in the big picture - the strategic picture - what it appears to be is what it will be taken as:  an effort to withhold information.  The key word in public inquiry is "public".  Even allowing the commissioners to see a report or two is pointless if they are not permitted to quote the report or, as the original CBC story indicated, even speak with anyone involved in the report about the report and its conclusions.  this is definitely not a smooth move in an inquiry that was created largely out of concerns about a lack of disclosure or inadequate disclosure of information to patients and the public.

And all of that  - obviously - further damages  both the legal case and the public relations case for the authority. The whole thing only gets worse when the comments are made on local talk radio where, among other things, the story gets parsed down to something essentially meaningless as in this case.  All the story says is that the authority has unspecified concerns so it wants to restrict who can see reports.

Better to have killed off the legal tactics early on in the management decision-making cycle. Failing that, the authority should have taken on a pre-emptive strategy by discussing the reasons for the legal action thoroughly and in detail with the media in the first place.

As it is, the commissioners have been handed a live-action example of how Eastern health's decision-making process works. They can dissect and should dissect it in detail.  They would see what public relations and media relations advice senior management has been getting and how they have been working through a major problem.  They can look at the internal relationships of the management team and, if they really want to look close take a gander at the staff structures and human resource issues. 

All of these play a role in how things get handled. The comms section could have a raft of highly qualified people giving expert advice.  It's useless if they get ignored by management.  They could have a bunch of good people with solid experience but who lack certain crisis management expertise.  The staff might be simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem they face coupled with .  Again, the road to hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Then again, they might have a bunch of people lacking the skills to manage the high profile cases like this one.  Nice website and brochures but not up to the heavy slogging. 

That's the range of possibilities and there are likely other combos.

But no matter what the reasons, the public inquiry into the breast cancer screening crisis has in front of it a text-book example of how not to handle a high profile, controversial case. 

It's provided by the very authority the inquiry is examining.

And for the authority?  Well, surely someone has figured out by now that the best way out of a hole is to stop digging and climb out, possibly using the shovel you came with.

China's a long way down and in between here and there, things get mighty hot. 

Melt careers and people kinda hot.

Get the picture?

[cross-posted from The Persuasion Business]

-srbp-

The Caine Mutiny, the really off-Broadway version

News junkies in Newfoundland and Labrador have been treated these past couple of weeks to a truly odd series of exchanges between Premier Danny Williams and the federal regional minister, fish minister Loyola Hearn.

The two have traded barbs these past few years, despite the fact that in 1989 then-lawyer Danny Williams backed Loyola for the provincial Tory leadership. However this weeks exchange included references to some form of political espionage, at least according to some reports.

And that's only part of what makes the whole affair so strange.

In a year-end interview with CBC, Hearn said:

There are times I'm sure I know as much as what's going on in cabinet and caucus or on the eighth floor as the premier does.

The eighth floor, incidentally, is local political slang for the Premier's Office.  It occupies the entire suite on the eighth floor of the Confederation Building's east block.

Note the words exactly.  Hearn says that he knows - at times - as much about what is going on inside caucus or cabinet as Williams does.  Not "more than";  not "less than":  "as much as". This will become important later on.

More importantly, note the context in which the comments came. You'll find it in the ram audio file linked off the page quoted above at cbc.ca/nl.  You see, context gives a clue to meaning.  Get the context wrong and the meaning of the words can come out wrong.

Hearn is talking about - is obviously talking about - the federal Conservative prospects in the next election.  Hearn says that he has personal friends within the provincial Tory caucus and that we shouldn't be surprised if some of them opt to run for the federal Conservatives. Then he tosses in the line about knowing as much as Danny about what goes on inside caucus and cabinet.

So there's the start of the whole controversy.  For some reason, the CBC online story juxtaposes the context such that the "knows as much as line" comes before the bit about having candidates from friends in the local Tory caucus.

Take a look at the CBC television story and you get much the same idea as the radio story, though.  Hearn is clearly talking about the overall relationship between the two parties.  He couldn't be any more plain in stating that he has friends inside the local Tory caucus and while - at times - they've been forced to part company as a result of the Danny-Steve spat, overall Hearn has good and old political friends along the local Tories.

No where in any of this is there any hint that Hearn was talking about having spies inside Danny's den.

CBC didn't report it that way at all, and to be perfectly frank if there was the least bit of that kind of implication, CBC would be all over it.  They'd poke at it, dig it and then tell the story they found.

But Hearn never hinted at spies and that isn't what CBC reported.

It is, however, what Danny Williams decided to take issue with almost a week later. You'll find Williams' comments from the CBC Morning Show on January 2. he claims to have received phone calls from people who feel that a "shadow" has been cast over the local Tories.  Williams claims there has been some claim of infringement of cabinet and caucus confidentiality.

Williams goes so far as to say that "Mr. Hearn has made a pretty broad statement when he says he knows virtually everything that is going on inside caucus and cabinet and on the eighth floor."  Now there's a huge difference between saying one knows as much as someone else from time to time. and saying that one knows "virtually everything", presumably all the time.

There's also no suggestion anywhere in Hearn's comments that any confidences have been breached.  Hearn can know what is being discussed generally;  plenty of people do.  It wouldn't be strange at all for a federal cabinet minister to be aware of projects that are going to the provincial cabinet, especially where the project is a joint federal/provincial one.  It also wouldn't be unusual for politicians to chat informally about issues confronting both administrations.  All of that can take place - and does take place legitimately - without any suggestion that anyone is breaching confidences or is behaving improperly.

Now it should be fairly obvious at this point that this whole story took off when Danny Williams reacted with what are some of his vintage, hyperbolic misrepresentations.  Does anyone remember, for example, the pre-election 2003 claim that someone was trying to hack the Tory computers when in fact it was merely a case of someone innocently sending an incorrect printer command? The police got called and found nothing at all.

The thing gets even sillier though.

Kevin O'Brien, recently demoted to be minister of licenses and permits, pulled an oram of absolutely historic proportions on Thursday in a call to one of the VOCM talk shows.

First, there is the blatant misrepresentation, dutifully following his boss' lead:

O'Brien: So, in other words, what he’s saying there is that, you know, at any given time, any given Cabinet, any given caucus in the federation of Canada,and including the federal side, can be broken.

...

He says, [presumably reading from a transcript] Loyola Hearn says he is always fully briefed on what is happening inside the Danny Williams government. "I always do. That’s why we can always be one step ahead of him, Hearn said in a year-end review with CBC News. I have friends throughout Cabinet and caucus."

Second comes the complete invention, the hysterical claim after some further misrepresentation: 

But he is saying clearly here to me that he's going to try to prevent and try to undermine any type of, of a process that Newfoundland and Labrador may enter into to better ourselves and be, and take a rightful place in the federation of, of Canada.

Huh?  Aside from questioning the transcript from which O'Brien was reading, one also has to wonder if the minister's ability to comprehend plain English has been removed.

But it gets worse as O'Brien becomes more fully engaged in his anti-Hearn diatribe.  According to the former business minister, there are apparently few who can grasp what is going on in this province (and cabinet):

Well, I'm going to tell you something now. What's happening in Newfoundland and Labrador in regards to the energy plan and everything else that's been negotiated to the benefit of all the, the residents of the province, I don't think Hearn, and a good many of us, actually has the grey matter to understand it all.

Okay.

It's all good for a laugh, but hopefully, we've been able to demonstrate a couple of things.

First, Hearn didn't say what Williams accused him of saying. Hearn's actually stuck to his wording consistently, including in this Canadian Press story filed on Thursday.

Second, the media  - at least CBC - got the story right the first time and continue to report Hearn accurately. The rest of the pack, CP and the Globe included, actually started riffing off Williams' misrepresentations.  It's a nice job of spinning by the Premier, but frankly the reporters involved should be ashamed of themselves for such a a rudimentary failure of fact checking.

They fell for a stale ploy. After all, it's not the first time Williams has made a claim which is completely, totally, factually incorrect, is it?

Third, Hearn likely knew when he made the comments in the first place that the control-freakish guy on the Eighth would react badly to any suggestion that there might be some alternate source of power in the province than Himself. he said it, in part to provoke a reaction and in getting it demonstrated that he can actually stay one step ahead of the Premier.

Hearn could back off when Danny went ballistic without any real political loss.  After all, what Hearn said was true.  He has friends in Danny's caucus and, more importantly, every federal nickel spent in Newfoundland and Labrador flows across the regional minister's desk.  That truth may cause the Premier to squeal, but it is still the truth even if Hearn appears to some to back off the remarks.

Fourth,  as for O'Brien, well, we can conclude that he was just a casualty in the completely made-up story of spies in the Tory caucus. You see, there are a couple of spots in the O'Brien comments to VOCM where he notes that he used to be good friends with Loyola, that they come from the same part of the shore and so forth.  Williams notes that Loyola used to have friends in caucus, obviously an oblique reference to Fabian Manning and Loyola Sullivan both of whom have the distinctive twang of the boys from the Southern Shore.

Aside from insulting and embarrassing himself simultaneously, the only thing poor Kevin gained was a perpetual could of suspicion.  After all, a paranoid would ask, why would he have needed to profess his loyalty if there was no reason for him to feel guilty in the first place?

That leads us to the fifth point, namely that for all Williams' own paranoia and his apparently manic obsession with control, the nervous nellies who called him to assure The Boss of their loyalty actually are actually not Hearn's agents. 

That is, if the agents ever existed in the first place, of course.

You see, the hallmark of a true double agent is that he or she appears more consistently and genuinely loyal to The Boss, all the while never drawing any attention to himself or herself. 

They blend in.

And the Captain of the local ship of state will never suspect that there is a duplicate key to the wardroom so they can eat the strawberries, either.

-srbp-

Yep. Lower the Lower expectations

From CBC news:

Indeed, Williams said the chances of the Lower Churchill project proceeding are about 50 per cent.

For a guy who, by his own description, is a perpetual optimist, that's as downbeat a forecast as you can get.

-srbp-

No political parties a good way: NL Liberal leader

It's hard to figure out how the leader of a political party could be quoted as saying that the province would be better off without political parties.

But Liberal leader Yvonne Jones did just that in the Wednesday edition of the Telegram.  Sadly, it isn't online but we'll see if the hundred rhesus monkeys kept chained to the IBM Selectric IIs in the Bond basement can churn up a clipping shortly.

I always say that we're such a small province, when you've got three political parties, there's always a lot of energy and time and expertise spent in, I guess, staking out everybody's turf in the political arena...

I used to say to myself, "maybe we're expending it in the wrong direction? [sic]"...Maybe if a lot of that was just put into strengthening policy for people, we might end up with a lot better result at the end of the day.

Let's start by pointing out to Ms. Jones that our political system is already supposed to be about "strengthening policy for people."  That's what politicians are supposed to be doing.

If there is insufficient attention paid to policy in the political realm currently - and there isn't - the fault lies not with the system but with the politicians currently in the system.

After all, as we have noted here numerous times over the past three years, one cannot slide a sheet of paper between the political parties in this province on any major policy issue. 

Sheet of paper?  That's too thick.

Physics does not conceive of a sheet so thin as to describe the complete absence of policy difference between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives on major issues or, more startlingly between Danny and Lorraine on even more things.

After the general election, Ms. Jones stated publicly that she and her rump caucus could not do their jobs without cash from the legislature for "researchers."  This presumed that the researchers actually had any impact on the party policy, or even on the individual member's ideas.  Obviously, they did not. 

Take for example the energy bill, rammed through the House last spring with virtually no debate in the legislature.  Ms. Jones spoke in glowing terms of the bill and never once mentioned the policy issues involved in, except to indicate her support for the government position.  She took her notes, incidentally, not from whatever dozen staff the caucus employed, but almost entirely from the briefing provided by government officials at the request of opposition house leader Kelvin Parsons.

Did she question at all the notion of state-owned oil companies in Canada?  Did she question the government on its business plan, that is, did she ask if there was one she could examine to see if it made any sense?  Did she say boo about the borrowing attached to the bill of $600 million?  Did she ask why the bill was coming to the House only a year after the hydro corporation legislation was changed to allow it to be an energy company? Did she do her job?

You can easily guess the answer to every question.

And that is merely one example.

You see, our political system, divided into parties and generally adversarial in style is designed to place ideas in conflict.  It is designed to create or to foster a conflict or a contrast in positions.  In the process, flaws may be exposed in either point of view and, if possible, fixed. New ideas may come to the fore.  Bad ideas may be discarded.  Out of the clash of ideas, truth - or something approximating it - may emerge.

Our system is based on the premise that there is a fundamental value in examining policies openly and publicly before implementing them.  What we have seen over the past four years, and what Ms. Jones obviously supports, has been a fundamental erosion of that value.  When we noted here the decrease in sitting days of the legislature and the pathetic excuse for debate in the House over the past four years it was to point out that - fundamentally - politicians in this province have become increasingly elitist and decreasingly democratic in their actions. 

When they meet in secret and agreed to ram a bill through the House - as Ms. Jones did last spring with the Green bill on behalf of her caucus - she and her colleagues robbed every single resident of the province of his or her fundamental democratic right to know what is being decided on his or her behalf.  That was just one bill.  There were literally dozens of others, all of which will have lasting impacts on the province and its people.  Yet not one single voice was raised in opposition.  Not one contrary idea was given voice.

At least, in the legislature there was silence, but that is because for the past decade, the province has been without a properly functioning political system built on parties. We already have the system Ms. Jones wishes for and it has been a dismal failure.

What Ms. Jones is now endorsing, though, is an even greater effort to dismantle democracy in the province than what she and her colleagues in the legislature - irrespective of party - have been working at since at least 2003. At least in the current state, the party system may be revived for the greater good.  What Ms. Jones now proposes is to kill it off entirely.

Political parties are not merely teams built around ideas.  They also serve as a means of funding campaigns for individual candidates in districts who might otherwise be unable to raise the money needed to fight an election. They provide a body of knowledge and groups of workers who understand how the political process - the electoral process - actually works. In that way, political parties can serve as a way of encouraging increased participation in the political process. Eliminate parties and this province will take yet another step backward to the days when it was nothing more than the playground of the local merchants and their vassals.

There's no small irony that Ms. Jones makes this suggestion in the 60th anniversary of the single greatest exercise in democracy ever undertaken in this place. After two referenda based on universal adult suffrage, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador restored to themselves responsible government.  They clearly rejected rule by appointed elites in the first referendum and in the second chose the form of responsible government they wished for themselves and future generations.

But make no mistake:  in 1948 the people of Newfoundland and Labrador opted for a form of government for which they individually held ultimate responsibility.  Arguably, by opting for Confederation, they chose a form of government that would ensure the old elites could not control the country as thoroughly and as dismally as they had before 1934.

Ms. Jones proposes an idea that may well suit her colleagues.  After all, the government party is led by a fellow who has some problems with free speech. But the idea ms. Jones floats is as fundamentally bad as the idea of removing free speech from the legislature or replacing our democracy itself  - as suggested by one newspaper publisher recently - with rule by some form of triumvirate.

In the long ago days of 1948, as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians headed to the polls, might any of them have thought that 60 years on, the economy of the place would be as rich as it is and yet the politics would be so demonstrably bankrupt?

If only electricity could come from the generations of our ancestors turning in their graves...

-srbp-

Williams starts to Lower expectations

Admittedly its vocm.com and therefore subject to error, but it looks like the Premier is trying to lower expectations on the Lower Churchill project.

Lots of hurdles to overcome on that one, apparently.  In the meanwhile, the Premier is pointing to other projects as signs of economic prosperity.

Projects that don't depend on the provincial government to deliver,  interestingly enough.

-srbp-

Consistently inconsistent finance minister

The man who only eight months pooh-poohed the idea of balanced budget legislation has now decided that  balanced budget legislation is a good thing.

In April, 2007, provincial finance minister Tom Marshall said:

"I don't know if I agree with balanced budget legislation," Marshall said.

"I certainly would agree with fiscal responsibility legislation … but I'm not prepared to be locked in automatically to a balanced budget every year," he said. [Emphasis added]

In December 2007, Marshall told his hometown newspaper:

“I would like to see us come forward with some fiscal responsibility legislation that would make it a commitment of every government to ensure that, as a principle, we budget for a balanced budget, recognizing it won’t be possible to always have a balanced budget,” said Marshall. “And, if we can’t balance the budget, there would be an obligation on the government to explain and disclose to the people of the province why it didn’t happen and to disclose a strategy to ensure we get back to a balanced budget over a certain period of time.” [Emphasis added]

Of course, this is the same fellow who in the spring budget felt that $55 million was a fine amount by which to reduce the provincial debt but who, by the fall, had decided it was a paltry sum.

One wonders what's next on the finance minister's agenda of policy flip flops.

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The ghost of Ned Morris

There's something about the provincial government's grandiose plan to extend broadband Internet access to every nook and cranny of the island - Labrador will get it if there's federal funding to cover the cost - that sounds unsettlingly familiar.

The whole thing is being spear-headed publicly by industry minister Trevor Taylor.

The project is not based on private sector investment.

The public will foot the bill.

Nor is it based on a sound strategic plan; there is no plan.

Since the idea was first floated that taxpayers should underwrite the private sector, government officials have struggled to figure out how to make the whole thing work. They've also struggled to hide what has been going on, but that is another sad part of the tale.

Their latest iteration of the idea is to have the provincial government continue to underwrite an expanded project. The costs are, essentially, unknown. What was originally a five million dollar investment quickly mushroomed to a total of $20 million and now will cost a figure the provincial government has yet to release.

Might it be the total to date but on an annual basis? Might it be higher? There's good reason to believe that the costs, like the supposed benefits are too phantasmagorical to even begin to contemplate them.

All of this sounds oddly like the railway of a century ago. Specifically, the so-called government broadband initiative looks like Ned Morris' branch lines.

In 1909 the People's Party of Sir Edward Morris was elected, having promised a program of branch line construction. The new branches, although popular in the older areas of settlement which they were to serve, did not open new areas or encourage new industries of note. The first new branch was an 88-mile line to Bonavista, which opened November 1911. The longest, at 104 miles, the Trepassey branch was constructed 1911-13, providing a rail connection to St. John's from the Southern Shore. Along the south side of Trinity Bay, the Heart's Content branch (42 miles, but incorporating parts of the original Harbour Grace line) was completed in 1915. Finally, the Carbonear branch was extended by a 48-mile line to Grates Cove-Bay de Verde in 1915. This extension was closed in 1930, however, the branch continued to operate to Carbonear until 1983.

With the onset of the Great War, the branch line program was halted before the last two lines were complete. The Fortune Bay line, intended to be a 57-mile link to the coastal steamer at Terrenceville, was abandoned in 1915, although 43 miles had been railed. The Bonne Bay branch, projected to run 35 miles north from Deer Lake, was abandoned with the line partly graded.

The new branches proved expensive to operate, carrying only passengers and occasional freight. After the government took over the railway in 1923 an effort was made to serve the less-travelled lines using trolley-like "day coaches" on the Bay de Verde, Trepassey and Heart's Content lines. The Bay de Verde and Trepassey lines were closed in winter, and in 1931 were closed altogether. As Heart's Content was a winter port for the A.N.D. Company that line continued sporadically until 1938. The Bonavista branch remained in operation through the summer of 1983.

Politically-motivated project, lacking a sound economic basis for which the public ultimately pays.

Yes, it sounds suspiciously familiar, but unlike the railway, the public costs of the fibreoptic deal have yet to be calculated, let alone seen by the people who are footing the bill.

Update: This CBC story does two things. First it makes plain that any fibreoptic project for labrador will likely have to be funded by the federal government, at least according to common provincial government thinking. After all, the project will cost an estimated $80 million.

Second, the figures for the current fibreoptic project were wrong at the time the story was printed and are even more wrong now. $52 million, as the story quotes was light by about $30 million based on the estimate given by the project proponents when the idea burst into public view in a calculated bit of spin-meistering.

Yes, that's $82 million, of which $20 million was provincial and another $5 million came from Uncle Ottawa. [You can find the links back to that bit of math in the original post.]

The fribreoptic project for Labrador will basically become like the Trans-Labrador highway: something the provincial government promises repeatedly - and in writing more than a few times - yet fails to deliver.

The only thing more predictable than flip flops on the finance minister is the treatment of Labradorians by the provincial government.

After all, if the Premier is still all fired up about a broken promise made by the current Prime Minister to this province, how should Labradorians feel about what his administration has been doing since 2003?

Perhaps they are already wishing for Carol Kane to pay a visit to a few cabinet ministers next Christmas Eve. [Hint: read the sign.]

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There's no better satire than self-satire

"We’re really the centre of the universe..."

Premier Danny Williams, in a year-end interview with The Telegram

Good evening, Newfoundlanders. Here is tonight's interesting fact, sent to us by a Miss Fielding, whose fascinating letter I will read in full: "Dear Mr. Barrelman: It has come to my attention that there are in the world a number of books – I am endeavouring to find out how many and will let you know when my research if complete – in which no mention whatsoever is made of Newfoundland."

... Miss Fielding further writes, "I am myself in possession of several such books, including 'A Guide Book to Chilean Songbirds,' the absence in which of the word Newfoundland is so inexplicable that I have written its publisher demanding an explanation."

From Wayne Johnson's Colony of unrequited dreams, described by a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as being, in part, a satire on regionalism.

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Prosperity and principle

For some time, observers of the local political scene have noted that the current administration is governed by one law:  the rules apply to everyone else but they don't apply to us.

The Telegram editorialist drives it home in the Saturday edition with a commentary titled "Ethics vs. the law".

So does that mean [Premier Danny] Williams was being disingenuous when he emphasized “the need for openness, honesty and integrity” for members [before 2003]? Perhaps it does — but that’s not illegal either.

Here's an online definition of 'disingenuous': "not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness...".

Well, here's the thing:  he wasn't failing to be candid or giving a false appearance of frankness.  he meant exactly what he said.  The thing is, in the world he inhabits, it's a given that any actions he takes are virtuous, moral and...well,...perfect.  or perfectly justifiable.

It's the incarnation of the old joke about rule number one:  the boss is always right. Rule number two?  "If the boss is wrong, refer to rule number one."

The thing is in this case The Boss doesn't get the joke.

By his definition, the very instant he took the Premier's chair the need for "openness, honesty and integrity in government" had been met.  The other guys - onto whom all his smears and innuendo (remember the computer hacking fairy tale?) and vicious, personal attacks  ('You are pathetic...") had been heaped prior to 2003 - were gone.

Job done, supposedly.

Except that the job isn't done.

The job isn't being done.

The job - the job of building a fundamentally fair, open and democratic society in Newfoundland and Labrador - won't be done until the rules apply fairly and equitably to all.

That job - the most important job in our society - won't be done until our society functions on the basis of principles like fairness, openness, democracy, honesty and integrity.

That job can't be done when our politics functions on the basis of invented victimization, flatulent rhetoric, or self-serving rationalizations of the type described so adroitly by the Telegram editorialist.

The latter may be the principal methods of a particular group, of a particular administration, but that does not make these methods principles.

A truly prosperous society can only be built on principle.

The Telegram editorial reminds us of how truly far we are from even starting the job of prosperity.

-srbp-

The joy of editing

Take a close listen to this audio clip included with a short news story at vocm.com about the Premier looking for a missing $10 billion.

Forget, for a second, the whole cash trumps principle thing and listen to the clip itself.

The heavily edited clip.

There are at least five or six really noticeable jumps in the clip that suggest someone at vocm.com did a lot of editing to fit the Premier's remarks into a small space.  The only thing is, you have to wonder if - in the process - the meaning of the comments were changed.

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