The drunk driving sentence that never was

Local media outlets reported on Friday that a man had been sentenced in Grand bank to two years in jail and the loss of his driving license for 99 years.

cbc.ca/nl carried it and the thing has garnered a huge number of comments. Ditto the Telegram although there are only 14 comments there. It made the voice of the cabinet minister as well.

Courtesy of Canadian Press the story went national and turned up in at least one newspaper, the Edmonton Sun.

The thing is online as well a liveleak.com and a local Edmonton bulletin board/forum.

Wonderful story.

Except for one small problem:  it isn’t entirely accurate.

Your humble e-scribbler thought the story sounded suspicious since the sentence of 99 years sounded a bit American.

An inquiry turned up the full details and another inquiry turned up the news release issued by the Burin district office of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that started the thing.

Here’s the release:

Impaired driver receives 2 year prison sentence and prohibited from driving for 99 years

On Thursday, June 11th, 2009 a 47 year old Burin man received a two year prison sentence and is prohibited from driving for 99 years as a result of an incident that was investigated by the Burin Peninsula District RCMP in the community of Burin on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009.

-34-

For further information please contact the undersigned, …

Okay, for starters, the release should have ended with –30-, if anything, not –34- but that’s neither here nor there for our purposes.

News media can’t be faulted for taking what they were given by an official source and using it.

So here’s the fuller and more accurate story.

The RCMP arrested the fellow on Wednesday after receiving a call about an impaired driver.  They managed to nab him fairly quickly  - after a brief chase - and he appeared in court on Thursday.

As it turned out he had five prior convictions for impaired driving and in the most recent one had been sentenced in Nova Scotia provincial court in Cape Breton to a 10 year suspension of his driving privileges.  He was charged in Grand Bank with impaired driving, refusing the breathalyser and driving while prohibited.

In the jigs and the reels of it all, the Crown and defence counsels worked out a plea agreement by which the fellow received two years in jail and a lifetime prohibition from driving. The whole thing – from offence to arrest to conviction  - took less than 24 hours. That, plus the back story are way better than what actually hit the news, at least it’s way better in the opinion of your humble e-scribbler.

So where’d the “99” thing come from?

Certainly not from anyone in the court room, as it turned out.

The form used by the court staff to record this type of sentence gives space for two digits.  A five year suspension would be entered as “05” and a 10 year suspension would be “10” and so on.  Since there is no way numerically to figure out how long a life time suspension actually is, the court system codes a lifetime suspension as “99”, that being the largest two digit number there is and one that wouldn’t be confused with anything else. 99 is the max under the coding system and lifetime is the max under the legal system.

Pretty simple.

But someone reading the court form only and who  - as it turns out – was not familiar with the coding system dutifully bashed out a short news release that included the sentence as being two years in jail plus a 99 year suspended license. 

He also apparently didn’t have time to get the more complete story.  That said, the story as presented is rightfully garnering praise for the police and the court from the people making comments on the CBC and Telegram stories.

-srbp-

Global oil round-up

Some randomly selected articles from around the world on the current state of the oil industry.

1.  Omani oil revenues in the first four months of 2009 are down about 50% from the same time last year, according to Reuters.

2.  Expect a downward oil price correction shortly, according analysts quoted in the Edmonton Journal.   They put the drop to the low 60s or high 50s a barrel.  [Hint;  they’re conservative;  think lower still]  Among the factors cited:  weak demand, new production coming on stream and tons of oil currently in storage onshore and offshore that doesn’t have a market yet.

3.  Of course,the peak oil cultists are still predicting the opposite so they see any lowering as just a temporary calm before the Apocalypse hits.

4.  Scan to the bottom of this article on a recent meeting of  PetroCaribe and you’ll see reference to Cuban oil potential:

In the case of Cuba, Venezuela's financial and energy support is critical to supporting the Castro regime. Energy dependence has long been Cuba's Achilles' heel.

Havana used to depend on the east bloc for cut-rate oil, and plunged into economic chaos and blackouts when it was cut off after 1989. Now it depends on crude from ally Venezuela.

Cuba is negotiating oil exploration and production deals with Russia, China and Angola, with Moscow shaping up as the partner that could make the communist island energy self-sufficient, if its untapped offshore reserves pan out.

If it can achieve energy independence, Cuba may in the blink of an eye turn from a cash-strapped developing nation into a flush oil exporter, possibly projecting its current regime years into the future.

Cuban authorities in October announced that the Caribbean nation's crude reserves were more than double what had been thought, and now were estimated to be about 20 billion barrels.

5. OPEC oil production rose slightly in May, up again from a slight rise in April. Compliance with the OPEC production quota dropped again in May with Venezuela, Iran and Angola exceeding their quotas.  Go back to the article on PetroCaribe and you’ll see Venezuela is in the middle of a little local power play involving oil.  Venezuela runs an oil rent-to-own scheme in which countries in the region can buy Venezuelan crude on credit. 

6.  Still, OPEC lowered its oil demand forecast for 2009, which only makes sense in the current real market.

7.  While there may be some dispute as to whether Cuban oil potential is 20 billion barrels or five billion barrels, there’s no doubt interest is growing in developing the Caribbean nation’s offshore resources.

Either way, Cuba’s oil is attracting the attention of oil companies from around the globe. At the moment, Spain’s Repsol, Brazil’s Petrobras, and Norway’s StatoilHydro are overseeing exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. India, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Venezuela also have signed deals with Cuba.

Maybe Cuban oil potential is behind signs of a thaw in American-Cuban relations.

8.  Closer to home, there’s the NOIA oil and gas conference next week and with it, the annual speculation that Premier Danny Williams might say something earth-shattering despite the fact that making an announcement there would  involve sharing the spotlight with NOIA.

He hasn’t done anything like it before but people still like to stoke the hype.  Last year CBC got suckered into the whole thing in a big way;  this year it’s the Telly’s turn on a smaller scale and focusing on Hibernia South.

Now if the Hebron thing is anything to go by, what comes out the end could be a whole lot less than the hype suggested and some of the details have some really disturbing implications.  Of course, hype is more fun than details.

9.  Speaking of the NOIA conference, the theme this year focuses on the potential for the Arctic.

There’s the global perspective:

SESSION 2: TECHNOLOGIES FOR ARCTIC ENVIRONMENTS 2:30 p.m.

Russia’s Shtokman Project: an Update
Sergey Smityushenko, First Deputy Governor of Murmansk Oblast, Russia

Exploration and Production Options for the Alaskan Offshore
Mike Paulin, President, IMV Projects Atlantic

Pushing the Envelopment: R&D Advances for Arctic Oil and Gas Development
Jim Bruce, Deputy Director Ice Engineering, C-CORE

Canadian Frontiers Operating in Harsh Environments
Peter Haverson, General Manager, Global Drilling, International and Offshore, Petro-Canada

And the local one:

SESSION 4: FARTHER, DEEPER, COLDER 2:30 p.m.

Chevron's Growth Strategy for Atlantic Canada
Mark MacLeod, Atlantic Canada Manager, Chevron Canada Limited

Greenland - A Steppingstone to Arctic Exploration
Gregors Dam, Chief Geologist, Dong Energy

Playing to our Strengths
Mark Shrimpton, Principal and Practice Director, Socio-Economic Services, Jacques Whitford Stantec

Defining the Outer Limits of Canada's Continental Shelf in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans Under the Law of the Sea
Jacob Verhoef, Director, UNCLOS Program, Natural Resources Canada

That last session is one to watch since the issue of  oil development at and beyond the edge of the continental shelf has implications for any developments in the Orphan Basin offshore Newfoundland.

And for those who are missing their fix of the government’s favourite economist, don’t worry.  NOIA is doing it’s bit to keep on good terms with government. 

Not only is there a reception at The Rooms, but Wade Locke is the lead speaker in the last session.  He’ll be talking up “Offshore Oil & Gas, the Economic Crisis & the Local Economy”.

If he sticks to his more recent lines, this should be fun.  Prediction:  He won’t be hyping non-existent aluminum smelter projects just as the demand for aluminum collapsed.   He might talk about the current economic situation but he might have to be more cautious about undermining the provincial government’s “we live in a bubble, all is well” talking point since the last time Locke’s comments were reported accurately, he got upset.

Right after Wade will be the provincial energy corporation’s Jim Keating who will, in all likelihood, be talking about the Lower Churchill.

Of course, that’s pretty much all there has been about the project:

• Project sanction was supposed to take place in 2009.  Then that got slid back by a mere six months. Now we don’t hear much talk of LC start dates at all.
• The land claims agreement with the Innu Nation – crucial to any development – seems to be deader than a doornail despite the initial hype about it.
• We do hear talk of slinging power lines through a UNESCO World Heritage site, something once described as the “most serious threat” to the park.
• There have also been contradictory statements about the future of the Holyrood generating plant.

And that’s just some of the stuff that hasn’t really been covered in any great detail in local media on the most talked about paper project in history.

Even if the Premier doesn’t lead off with anything Earth-shattering, there’s a prospect Jim and Wade can finish the NOIA conference with something really newsworthy.

 

-srbp-

The lesson from Nova Scotia

In Newfoundland and Labrador these past few days some local adherents of the Orange Creed – that’s New Democrats, not Protestants or Dutch – have been buoyed by the success of their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters.

Others have been talking about the prospect of local New Democrats doing the same thing here that Darrell Dexter and his party did in persuading Nova Scotians to take a chance on voting NDP.

Therein lies the first lesson local New Democrats should learn:  Darrell and the crew didn’t ask Nova Scotians to “take a chance” on anything.  They presented a professional, credible alternative to the other two parties. 

There was no chance involved.

There was a choice.

A few years ago, the Nova Scotian Dippers were like other labourites.  Being a New Democrat was to be part of a social cause or a social group, not a bunch who seriously thought of winning an election.  That’s not unusual. Other labour parties have gone through the same thing.  The Labour Party in Britain once cherished ideological purity over electoral success.  So too did New Democratic parties across Canada.

But, like those other labourites elsewhere,  the Nova Scotian New Democrats decided it was better to be in office than standing impotent on the sidelines with their ideological purity intact.

That’s the second lesson the local New Democrats need to learn:  there is no substitute for power.  You can have all the lovely ideas you want but if you don’t win the election it’s just as well to order another round at the Ship and explain your theory to the bottom of a pint of Guinness.

You get to win by organizing.  Find volunteers.  Get people who know how to organize. Raise money and put it in the bank.  Find candidates.  Reach out and bring new people and new ideas into the fold.

Inevitably, there will be a crowd who will get pissed at the loss of ideological purity, but that’s the price of shedding the sack-cloth and the stench of burning martyr and donning the mantle of government.

Equally inevitably, for every old bolshevik who abandons ship for the Greens, there’ll be two or more new people who either weren’t in politics before or who defect from another team.

The two major parties don’t get elected because people vote the way their parents and grandparents did.  That’s a convenient excuse dreamed up by someone who just can’t face facts. 

The two major parties get elected because they hold onto a cadre of supporters and then add on a whole bunch of people who change their votes from time to time. The other two major parties appeal to voters with the platforms and promises by finding out what voters are looking for and then offering it to them.  Put another way, they get elected by building coalitions of people who have similar views or who can find enough reasons to vote for one team over another. 

That’s basically what politics is about:  bringing people together and that should be what New Democrats do naturally.

But they don’t.  Instead, they try to not just distinguish themselves but drive a wedge between themselves and voters.  New Democrats of the old school make it seem like it is a sign of moral weakness to have voted for the other two parties at some point.  Before one can vote New Democrat one must first  admit the sins of ones voting past.

That’s the essence of that common NDP refrain that the other two parties are all alike.  Predictably, it turns voters off.

Think about that for a second and then look at two New Democrat leaders.

Think about Jack Layton, he of the “they are all alike” school.

And then think about Darrell Dexter.

If you can perceive the differences, and you are a New Democrat, then you are well on your way to learning the Lesson from Nova Scotia. You are well on your way to bringing a genuinely competitive alternative to voters.

-srbp-

What a difference reality makes

When the provincial government announced its $800 million capital works “stimulus” package back in February, they claimed it would create 5,400 “person years” of employment.  Well, they claimed lots of things but let’s just focus on the work claim.

Now for those who don’t know, a “person year” is basically the same as one person working for a year.  Two people working for six months each is one “person year”.

Here are the quotes from the news release:

• It is anticipated the investment plan will create or sustain approximately 5,400 person years of employment this year.
• “…Approximately 5,400 person years throughout the province should go a long way in accomplishing just that…”  [That’s a quote from Hisself]

Note here that neither of them was anywhere near the front end of the release.  The Danny Williams quote is actually almost at the bitter end of not only his release but also the gigantic paragraph’s worth of words purportedly uttered by his prime ministerial lips.

That was February.

Fast forward to June.

Statistics Canada released figures showing that between May 2008 and May 2009, about 12,000 people found themselves sans paycheque in the youngest, coolest, hippest province in Canada. 

With the fishery shut down in many parts of the province upwards of another 10,000 people are in jeopardy of not having much – if any income – this year.

And then less than a week later – and totally by coincidence, of course – the provincial government issues an “update” on its fiscal plan.

Suddenly, the plan contains twice as much cash as announced back in February  and lo, and behold the claim of job creation has mushroomed.

Right there, in the very first sentence, the one where supposedly the most important information goes, there is this:

Provincial infrastructure projects totalling $1.6 billion will be tendered this fiscal year, creating an estimated 15,000 jobs (some seasonal) and providing significant economic stimulus to the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Double the money and triple the job creation.

And there’s no more talk of this wussie thing, the “person year”.   Now there’s a word everyone understands:  “jobs”.

15,000 of them, we are told, right there in the very beginning of the news release so no one will miss it;  not buried a raft of  paragraphs down from the top – like say when workers comp has a potential identity theft problem – but right there in front, large as life. 

First line. 

The “lede” they call it in news circles.

With only the little bracketed aside that “some” will be seasonal.

The rest of this news release is also full of numbers.  Lots of them.  Bag fulls in fact.  So many numbers that the release must have been slow going down the wires what with all the added weight, especially right there at the front end.

But that job number is curious because it is three times the original estimate.

That job number is curious because it is right there at the front and called jobs and it is curious because it comes only six days after the people who give accurate numbers tell us that the jobs losses in the province are bad.

How bad?

Here is a chart, shamelessly swiped from labradore that shows the percentage drops or hikes in employment comparing one month to another.  “Periods in which the employment picture was better than the same month one year before are shown as green peaks. Periods in which it is worse are red valleys.”

Notice that the most recent month  - at the far right - was the worst in the past decade and that the situation since last October has generally been on par with the worst of the last decade.

And if that was not evidence enough for you of the magnitude of the employment numbers, labradore produced a chart showing the same data going back as far as Stats Canada could.

The current situation in Newfoundland and Labrador is on par with the three worst job loss periods since the late 1970s. if the fishery tanks as it now appears to be doing, we could be in for one of the worst times on record.

Now the provincial government’s massive numbers economic stimulus release did not come as an accident or as a matter of routine or out of some desire to merely ensure that the ordinary wretches of the happy province knew in detail what was going on.

The current administration is not a bunch known to be enamoured of public interest disclosure.

There was a reason behind it.

There was also a reason why the job creation figures were suddenly given prominence and, one suspects, inflated to such proportions.

It would come as no surprise to find out that there was some kind of minor political screaming going on this past week at the need to get some good news out there to counteract the Premier’s health care meltdown.  The old boy busily defended himself by tossing out numbers about all the money that was being spent.

Coincidence?

We think not.

And then there were those Stats Can figures on employment. 

And maybe, just maybe, in there as well, the government pollster might have coughed up some numbers in answer to questions available only to his client, the provincial government.  Questions that ask for an assessment of  government performance in this sector or another or on this or that issue.

Maybe the signs of confidence aren’t good.

Maybe the confidence in handling the economy question got a majority of negatives as it did at least once before with the current crowd.  Negatives as big as the publicly reported positives.   The kind of polling numbers that make Hisself sit up and take notice. 

Or put a flag bag up, suddenly and surprisingly and inexplicably (unless you had the poll data).

Bad numbers.

The kind of numbers that put monsters under a politician’s bed.

No wonder the Premier and his fish minister looked really worried when the announced some sort of fisheries aid package will come along at some undefined point in the future, if necessary.

The reality of what is going on in the province – compared to the silly hype from government and other quarters – would be enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.

-srbp-

We’re more than a bit sceptical too, Jerome.

Finance minister Jerome Kennedy, quoted in the Friday Telegram:

"I'm have to tell you, I'm a bit skeptical, (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) indicates that 3,000 infrastructure projects across the country are underway," he said.

"Really, at the end of the day, there may be commitments on the part of the federal government, but what's taking place in this province is as a result of our government aggressively pursuing and accelerating this infrastructure strategy."

Hmmm.

By accelerating, that would mean finishing off stuff either started or promised up to four years ago, Jerome?

Like say half the stuff Kennedy listed in his blockbuster update which in no way insulted the premier’s sensibilities about announcing and re-announcing money that had been announced upwards of seven times before in some cases?

Or would that be taking credit for more than the government was really doing, another thing Provincial Conservative Kennedy accused the federal Conservatives of doing?

Like $800 million in new infrastructure spending  - on top of the $800 million already committed for this year – some of which is cost-shared with Ottawa. That would be stuff that isn’t budgeted even though it is supposed to go out before the end of the current fiscal year.

Presumably that acceleration would be what provincial transportation minister Trevor Taylor was talking about yesterday:

"So this year, when the Federal Government offered economic stimulus money, we already had our priority list identified. We had been proactive and our sound strategic planning allowed us to move forward with a series of significant projects very smoothly.

Okay.

So we know Jerome, Trevor and da b’ys really weren’t ahead of the game since half of what they tossed out has been in the works for years.  One project committed in 2007 and promised to be delivered in 2009 just went to tender the other day.

Not really ahead of the game, are we, hmmm?

But with that to one side, surely Trevor and Jerome already inked the deal with the feds for that new money set to flow later this year.

Apparently not.

Federal finance leprechaun Jim Flaherty told CTV’s Jane Taber the other day that:

We have agreements with almost everybody, not yet with Newfoundland and Labrador.

But if Newfoundland and Labrador already had their list together, why didn’t they sign the agreement yet?

Maybe Jerome  - the guy who didn’t know what the Clerk of the legislature did – was just too busy doing something else to read his infrastructure stimulus briefing notes on the new agreement so he could sign the thing. 

Jerome was right about one thing, though:  all the talk of commitments without actually getting anything built would make anyone sceptical. 

-srbp-

The Bi-coastal Difference

Justin Trudeau, popular fundraising draw.

The townie version, courtesy of the guy who used to help bag Brian Tobin’s political cash, this time helping to bag some donors on someone else’s behalf: $100 bucks a pop at a private residence in a very exclusive part of St. John’s.

The west coast version, courtesy of the guy who sometimes carried Tobin’s bags before he got a better job:

The event, which is open to the general public for an admission fee, will be held at the Family Adventure Park on Lundrigan Drive from 2:30 to 5 p.m. June 21.

As Justin himself put it about the Corner Brook event:

“People always want to hear what I have to say, but not nearly as much as I want to hear what they have to say,” said Trudeau. “So, having a more casual format like this family barbecue and a number of other meetings with different people will allow me to make sure people have the chance to get their message out there and across.”

-srbp-

"Holy Carpet-Bombing," Batman Update: Since originally posting on this on Wednesday, your humble e-scribbler has received no fewer than three separate e-mails with the invitation to the St. John's event at SuperDean's house attached.

Amazing.

Either, I am on someone's mailing list and the thing is being mass mailed everywhere - my guess - or there is some worry about attendence. (Not my guess and hopefully not the outcome for Siobhan's sake.)

Let's not even consider that the people e-mailing aren't regular Bond Papers readers.

Hmmm.

Then again, since it is a Liberal fundraiser that might not be surprising.

Some of the most loyal BP readers are local Tories trying to stay in tune with what's happening within their own administration or people with provincial government IP addresses who presumably are getting paid to keep an eye on things.

Liberals seem have better things to to do, apparently.

One of these things…

is not like the others.

1. Hydro-electric generating plants belonging to three private sector companies.
2. Former employees of a defunct paper making operation in central Newfoundland.
3. Fish plant workers.
4. Fish plant operators and fish harvesters.

1.   Hydro-electric generating plants get seized and turned over to the government’s own energy company free of charge, regardless of the NAFTA implications, in one fell swoop and through a bill rammed through the legislature in a day.  The bill also gave government the power to set any compensation, quashed an outstanding lawsuit and decreed that no legal action could result from the expropriation.

2.  Former employees of the defunct paper plant get a shrug initially but then get $35 million.

When the cash is announced, government claims it was their intention all along to pony up.  Odd, then, that people who questioned government publicly on its intentions were savagely attacked.

Odder too that the provincial government called for the federal government to cough up the dough.  There was even one of those eerie coincidence things with the union involved.

3.  Fish plant workers in the province  - upwards of 10,000 people or more staring at no work and no income - are told they’ll get something if necessary, but it is going to take months to figure out what the whole thing will look like, if it becomes necessary.  Think make work and then employment insurance and you’ll probably be pretty much on the mark.

4.  Fish plant operators and fish harvesters  - looking at financial ruin in some cases  - are basically told to sod off given that any cash to them would be a subsidy and well, “international trade agreements”  - like NAFTA - would be affected.

Williams said the province can't get involved in price negotiations, because it could result in trade retaliation from the United States…

 

-srbp-

How the mighty have fallen

From David Pugliese, the collapse of the once fine public affairs operation at National Defence:

It’s generally recognized that from 1998 to 2005, the public affairs branch at NDHQ was among the best  in the federal government. There were of course glitches, internal battles, tensions between journalists and public affairs officers and the occasional screw-up (a brief “gag” type order in 2001 that was quickly corrected) but overall the PR system was generally seen to be quite effective by those at NDHQ and many of those journalists who used it.

At the heart of that system was the philosophy that both civilian managers and military personnel --whether they be in charge of equipment programs, policy, or human resources, or whatever - were the best spokespeople to explain things to the news media.

Your humble e-scribbler was a lowly cog in that machine from 1994 to 200 as a reserve public affairs officer. Pugliese’s praise is high indeed and those who worked during that period recognised all the elements he notes. it was something public affairs officers could be proud of and the people who implemented the system has a commitment, as Pugliese notes, to “openness and transparency.”

Not so any more.

How did this happen? Some say that “risk adverse” bureaucrats are firmly in control  while others blame senior military officers for standing impotently on the sidelines and allowing this to happen. The Conservative government, with its information-control agenda, also gets its share of the blame, according to NDHQ insiders.

I continue to watch from the outside with interest.

Some of us watch from the outside with a profound sense of loss and disappointment.  Let’s not even talk about the empathy for the poor benighted professionals forced to work inside such a stupid system.

-srbp-

“Old money” from Williams cabinet called “stimulus”

Danny Williams may not like it when federal cabinet ministers recycle announcements, but of  the 52 specific projects listed in the provincial government “economic stimulus” update news release issued on Thursday, almost half - 21 projects - were already announced, some as long ago as 2005. 

Some of the recycled old news slipped out earlier but the announcement on Thursday made the whole thing plain.

The Corner Brook long-term care facility project listed among the stimulus projects has been underway since March 2005. The Corner Brook court house, health facilities in Lewisporte and Labrador west  and renovations to the James Paton hospital in Gander date back to March 2006.

Many of those in the “old news” category were announced in 2007 in the Summer of Love spending commitment frenzy leading up to the last provincial general election. 

One project - the St. Alban’s aquaculture veterinary facility  - was announced in 2007 with a commitment the place would open in 2009.  Instead, the project has just been tendered.

There’s more to it than just the inclusion of old announcements that predate the ‘stimulus’ news conference pulled together as part of the February poll-goosing frenzy; some of the projects seem to include contributions of federal money as if the whole thing was provincial government spending.

The Torbay and CBS by-pass roads, for example, were announced in 2007 and 2008 respectively.  They’re cost-shared 50/50 with the federal government but the provincial news release shows the total cost without indicating it is only ponying up half the total. 

And while the Premier may sneer when his federal cousins announce announcements previously announced, that didn’t stop his own team from discussing projects, some of which have been included in as many as seven separate government news releases.

They are:

College of the North Atlantic campus, Labrador West:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five

Francophone school, HVGB:

• Un
• Deux
• Trois
• Quatre
• Cinq
• Six
• Sept

Port Hope Simpson school:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04bk1.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0426n11.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0429n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0725n10.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/1121n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0904n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/laa/1120n04.htm

L’Anse au Loup:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/laa/0129n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0426n11.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0619n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/0725n10.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/edu/1121n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0429n08.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/edu/0904n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/laa/1120n04.htm

Labrador West hospital:

•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2006/exec/0313n02.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2006/laa/0330n014.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/tw/0212n05.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/exec/0420n04bk2.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/health/0426n14.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/health/0429n04.htm
•  www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/nr/0905n13.htm

Here’s the list of the 21 Old Announcements from the “stimulus” update:

• Corner Brook long-term care facility:  October 26, 2005
• Corner Brook court house:  March 2006
• Colonial Building redevelopment:  started before November 2006.
• Labrador west health centre:  March 13 2006
• Two new ferries:  2007
• College of the North Atlantic, Labrador West:  March 13, 2006
• Francophone school, Happy Valley-Goose Bay: April 2007
• New school for Port Hope Simpson:  April 2007
• New school, L'Anse au Loup:  January 2007
• St. Alban’s aquaculture veterinary facility:  Budget 2007
• New schools in Paradise:  August 2007
• CBS By-pass road:   January 2008, cost shared 50-50 with the federal government
• Torbay by-pass:  May 2007, cost shared 50-50 with the federal government
• Happy Valley Goose Bay long term care facility:  June 2007
• Hoyles Escasoni complex replacement:  October 2008
• Renovations to James Paton hospital, Gander:  March 2006.
• Lewisporte long term care facility:  March 2006
• New K-6 school for Torbay:  Summer 2007.
• New K-12 school in Baie Verte, Summer 2007.
• St Anthony School, Summer 2007
• Port Saunders School, Summer 2007

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Polling bullshit from mayor

If Doc O’Keefe, the mayor of a Great Sittee, actually has a poll that shows him with numbers he is very comfortable with, then he’d release the whole thing.

The fact he won’t release the poll to local media suggests the numbers are a lot less rosy than O’Keefe is claiming.

That would also explain why the deputy mayor  - Ron Ellsworth - is getting his team ready for a run at the Barking-Lounger job made famous by Andy Wells and now occupied by the less-than-impressive O’Keefe.

Show us the numbers, Doc and maybe we’ll believe you.  Otherwise, that clocking noise we hear is probably your knees knocking together.

Or maybe the clock ticking out on your time as head of the Great Sittee.

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Eerie coincidence 2

An economic stimulus package update and an update on an economic stimulus package.

Both will claim to have worked.

In one case, the update was part of a deal to stay in government.

In the other case, a government that has reluctantly provided any updates on anything, that loathes public access to government information and is stalling whistleblower protection legislation suddenly volunteers an update.

And the government pollster is already done his work for the quarter.

What’s up with that?

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Meanwhile in a phone booth in St. John's...‏

there’s a fundraiser for Siobhan Coady, member of parliament for St. John’s South- Mount Pearl.

Well, actually the thing isn’t being held in a phone booth but it is being held at SuperDean’s house.

Hundred bucks a plate.

Guest: Justin Trudeau.

Invite only.

Wonder who’s on the guest list?

We can cross Roger Grimes and any of his friends off, most likely.

Maybe there’ll be some new faces, the ones that make some of us consider doing another round of Two Degrees of Separation.

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Fart-in-Church Update: And then in ye olde inbox appears an e-mail from an official party source with the invite to the SuperDean/Justin event. Perhaps your humble e-scribbler is supposed to be on the invite list.

While Siobhan is certainly worthy of support and Trudeau is a sure-fire draw, the venue leaves so much to be desired that it pretty much cancels out the positives.

Maybe someone in the media or one of the attendees should ask the host if he shares his old buddy's jaundiced view of Confederation and the Liberal Party.

After all, this is part of the philosophy of Dannyism and Dannyism is something that SuperDean apparently thinks we need to keep going for a couple of decades more:

The way that our people and our region have been treated by one arrogant federal Liberal government after another is disgusting. The legacy that the late Prime Minister Trudeau and Jean Chrétien will leave in Atlantic Canada is one of dependence on Mother Ottawa, which has been orchestrated for political motives for the sole purpose of maintaining power.

Yep. There is a Great Liberal Conspiracy afoot to oppress the people of Atlantic Canada solely for the benefit of Les Rouges.

Not only that but the Great Liberal Conspiracy was perpetrated by none other than Justin's father, he being "the late Prime Minister Trudeau".

Such sentiment would surely go over like a fart in church among Liberals or even a fair-minded non-partisan with some passable knowledge of the facts of the matter.

Shuffle-up-a-gus

How often are there cabinet changes and shifts in the senior bureaucracy?

While there is no text-book solution to that question, aside from elections, resignations and political meltdowns, there usually aren’t a lot of shakeups in a team government.

The reasons are pretty simple.  Cabinet ministers and senior officials (deputy ministers and assistant deputies)  are expected to get to know their departments and the people in them, to form good working relationships and then get on with the business of running their respective shows.  cabinet will send down some instructions.  Departments are expected to come up with new ideas.

In order to do that, people have to spend time working together.  They need time to learn the issues and figure out what happens when you pull the lever over there in the corner.

All of that applies equally to both the political side of departmental management (the cabinet minister) and the public servants (deputy ministers and assistant deputies). 

In the eight years between 1996 and October 2003, successive Liberal premiers changed their cabinets (major and minor changes) 11 times. 

In the five and a half years since the fall 2003 election, the current administration has made changes to cabinet 12 times. The bulk of that shifting came in the first term, with at least two changes in assignments involving some ministers roughly every six months.

Over on the public service side, the relative numbers are even more dramatic.

Liberals:  24 appointments over eight years.

Progressive Conservatives:  37 in five and a half years or so.

Now some of these announcements were onesies and twosies, that is one appointment at a time.  In other cases, like the one made today, the changes have involved seven or eight people in different departments. 

Two of the appointments made Tuesday were for people filling jobs in an acting capacity while the person normally in the job is one some form of leave.  In some instances, there have been times when the top two positions in one department have both been acting simultaneously.  That hasn’t happened a lot but it has happened.

While changes at the cabinet level have been relatively infrequent since 2007, the same can;’t be said on the executive side.  Eight changes in 2005, but 11 in 2007, five in 2008 and four already in 2009. 

Beyond the frequency, your humble e-scribbler hasn’t finished a detailed assessment yet to see who has been moving and if there are any departments that have been the focus of the changes.

Still…

the numbers are striking.

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Nova Scotia goes orange

They did it the old-fashioned way, working district by district and over a number of years to build up the party and its infrastructure.

“I've believed right from the beginning that we had to move the party into a mainstream position where we were in touch with the everyday lives of ordinary people,” he [NDP leader Darrell Dexter] said before the start of this campaign.

“I think people have begun to realize that the values that the New Democratic Party stand for are the values of the people of the province and it's just a matter of how we go about presenting them.”

There’s a lesson in there for some people.

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Eerie similarities

Stephen Harper:

A defiant Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended his embattled natural resources minister on Tuesday, dismissing the opposition's call for him to fire Lisa Raitt over controversial comments caught on tape as "cheap politics”.

Someone who is not Stephen Harper:

“This is a significant issue with tremendous impact on many families and women in this province. To try to play politics with it, I guess, speaks to the credibility of the members who are raising it in that fashion. It speaks to the depths they will reach to try to play cheap politics in this province," said
Wiseman.

Someone else who isn’t Stephen Harper:

I am not supporting this motion because it reeks of cheap politics. It is partisan politics of its worst.

Well, it isn’t really a similarity except that politicians who are in a tough spot, who may be trying to defend the indefensible, usually have nothing better to do than accuse someone of playing “cheap” politics with an issue.

If they don’t say that they accuse their political opponents of “political games” or “political opportunism” even though in the course of the scrum cum rant, the politician admitted they’d been sitting on information for the better part of the last year. [Hint: Check the scrum video for the bit about when government knew about the computer search for the word “breast”. Further hint: it wasn’t April 2009]

Condescension is the least effective form of political argument.

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What are the odds…

That a mid-20 something has the experience and maturity to serve as the media aide to a cabinet minister in any jurisdiction in Canada?

Pretty slim, as it turns out.

What are the odds that cabinet ministers anywhere in the country will start hiring based on something other than the current  - obviously insufficient - requirements?

Pretty slim.

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Nova Scotia Election checklist

The seats to watch, via labradore, with rationale.

Commentary that beats the shite out of most of the stuff coming from the people who get paid to make commentary like this.

Yes, Don, that includes you.

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The Raitt Tapes story

Via the Chronicle Herald, now that the injunction application has failed:

“They’re terrified of the issues,” said Ms. Raitt.

“You know what? Good. Because when we win on this [Chalk River and medical isotopes] , we get all the credit. I’m ready to roll the dice on this. This is an easy one. You know what solves this problem? Money. And if it’s just about money, we’ll figure it out. It’s not a moral issue.”

“No,” says Ms. MacDonnell. “The moral and ethical stuff around it are just clear.”

“It’s really clear,” says Ms. Raitt. “Oh. Leona. I’m so disappointed.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” says Ms. MacDonnell. “They’re just so .... I wonder if it’s her staff trying to shield her from it or whether she is just terrified.”

“I think her staff is trying to shield her,” says Ms. Raitt. “Oh, God. She’s such a capable woman, but it’s hard for her to come out of a co-operative government into this rough-and-tumble. She had a question in the House yesterday, or two days ago, that planked. I really hope she never gets anything hot.”

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NL crude production forecast: 2009-2025

From the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, projected total annual oil production offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.  The CAPP report provides estimates of daily production which have been extended for this chart by multiplying by 365.


The downward production trend is unmistakeable.  The increase in 2017 represents the increase from Hebron and Hibernia South.  The two year delay in signing the development deal postponed the extra production which would have replaced dwindling production from other fields.

To give a sense of the implication of this chart, total royalty revenue in 2016 would be US$400 million.  If we assume a 20% premium for an 80 cent Canadian dollar, that works out to Cdn$480.  Compare that to the estimated $1.265 billion in Budget 2009.

Any added revenue that may come from the Hebron royalty regime would not arrive until sometime after 2020.  Even then, added revenue from the so-called super royalty only comes in any month when the average price for West Texas Intermediate crude is above US$50 per barrel.

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Bluenose Dippers in front: Angus Reid

A poll by Angus Reid for CTV shows the Nova Scotia New Democrats with 47% support heading into Tuesday’s general election, ahead of the Liberals at 26%, the progressive Conservatives at 23% and the Greens at 3%.

The online poll, conducted June 1 and 2, reports a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The new poll, which is considerably more comprehensive in its detail than recent efforts by Halifax-based Corporate research Associates shows Nova Scotians looking for change. 

The poll also tracks apparent vote switching, with the New Democrats holding on to their 2006 votes and adding chunks from both other major parties.  The Angus Reid/CTV poll also carried enough detail to look at the geographic distribution of votes, something that would be important for trying to predict seat counts:

In contrast, the NDP appears to have gained broad-based support both regionally and politically. The party holds the upper hand in most regions except rural Cape Breton (where the Tories lead) and the Annapolis Valley (where the Liberals are ahead). While holding on to 83 per cent of their vote from the last election—the highest vote retention of any contending party—the NDP is drawing about a third of voters (31%) who backed the Liberals in 2006 and a quarter (26%) of respondents who supported the Tories. NDP voters are also more likely to vote than supporters of the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, suggesting that even a low turnout will not slow Dexter’s momentum.

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Speech disappeared

For some unknown reason a speech delivered by Premier Danny Williams at an April 2008 Public Policy Forum testimonial has been removed from the organization’s website.  Williams was co-chair for the event. 

While the news release and the event notice remain, the speech has been disappeared. Speeches from the 2009 event are posted.

For those who’ve been following, that’s the speech in which Williams uttered the immortal phrase “counter-spinning negativity” to describe the stuff that keeps him up at night.

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Gas facility joints list of energy projects in NL on hold

CBC news is reporting on Friday that Newfoundland LNG has shelved plans for a natural gas transhipment facility at Grassy Point, Newfoundland pending improvements in world natural gas and capital markets.

There’s no other reporting of the decision nor does the company have anything on its website about the project since it received environmental approval last August.

Construction had been expected to start this summer, according to CBC.

The company was confident the project would start construction in early 2007 however there were reasons to doubt project’s future 2008, as Bondpapers noted in April, August and October.

This is the cancellation of the third major project for northern Placentia Bay.  A proposal to build a second refinery collapsed in 2008 and earlier this year, owners of the Come by Chance oil refinery announced that expansion plans for that facility were on hold indefinitely.

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Job losses in NL no paradise

The number of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians out of work in May 2009 compared to the same month last year is equivalent to almost the entire population of the Town of Paradise.

Some 12,000 fewer Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were collecting paycheques in May 2009 compared to May 2008, according to figures released Friday by Statistics Canada. Detailed tables show the losses and gains by economic sector.

Seasonally unadjusted figures show the changes by region, with central and the west coast of Newfoundland having the largest drops.  All regions recorded a decline in employment according to Statistics Canada.

In March, the provincial finance department projected only a modest decline in employment  - a mere 1.o percent - in 2009 compared to 2008.  The provincial finance department uses Statistics Canada figures in making its estimates.

Paradise is billed as the fastest growing municipality in the province.  According to the 2006 census, the town had a population of 12, 589.

Newfoundland and Labrador also posted the largest year over year percentage change in employment, with a drop of 5.3%.

Table:  Percent change in employment, May 2009 compared to May 2008,  seasonally adjusted, May (Source: Statistics Canada)

Newfoundland and Labrador	-5.3
Ontario	-3.3
Prince Edward Island	-3.0
British Columbia	-2.6
Alberta	-0.7
Quebec	-0.4
New Brunswick	+0.6
Manitoba	+0.6
Nova Scotia	+0.8
Saskatchewan	+2.6

 

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Update note (2129):  added links to detailed tables.

Bell 206 crash – photo interpretation

At approximately 2030 hrs local time, a Bell 206 belonging to Quinlan Brothers fish company crashed about 15 minutes east of Conne River on the south coast of Newfoundland.

The helicopter was apparently returning from a cabin in the Bay du Nord wilderness area when it crashed.  Three people remain in hospital in St. John’s.  They are reported to be in serious but stable condition.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police released a photograph late Friday of the scene.   

The Quinlan helicopter is in the foreground.  In the background is a Bell 206 belonging to Canadian Helicopters International.

In the picture at left (click on the photo to get the cbc.ca/nl story), it’s hard to see some of the detail.  The fuselage is intact, but the tail boom immediately aft of the fuselage is broken off  and one blade of the main rotor is apparently gone.  The helicopter reportedly struck a tree but it isn’t clear at this time from media reports if that caused the crash or was an incident that occurred while the aircraft came down due to another emergency.

The Telegram enlarged the main portion of the photograph.  Some of the detail is easier to see in that one.  We’ve added some coloured marks to help distinguish things a bit.

The red arrow points to the main rotor blade which is hanging by what appears to be a portion of the fibreglass material from which it is made. 

The yellow arrow points to the tail boom which sits pointed away from the fuselage, starboard side up.  You can make it out in between the top of the fuselage and the intact portion of the rotor blade. 

There’s no sign of the tail rotor at all but given the angle of this picture the thing could be intact but hidden by either the main fuselage or the tail boom.

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What drives current oil prices?

Some people will tell you that resurging growth in the Chinese economy is pushing oil prices up and will sustain high oil prices into the future.

That’s an interesting notion given the demand statistics.  take a look at daily consumption figures from nationmaster.com.  The figures here jive with a commentary by CBC Radio’s business consultant during an interview with On the Go’s ted Blade’s Thursday afternoon.

Now admittedly they are from 2007 but they show that American daily oil consumption is about thee times that of China.  Those figures have changed relatively over the past couple of years since both the American and the Chinese economies have taken a hit and the hits are connected.

There’s still an oil glut on the world markets, by the way, despite cuts in production at OPEC.

So why are oil prices high?

It seems that prices are relatively high for the same reason that helped drive oil to historic highs last year.  A weak American dollar coupled with questions about the American economic recovery are pushing speculators into the oil markets again. 

At some point, though, the markets will correct, just as they did last year. High oil prices will delay the American recovery and likely exacerbate the demand versus supply imbalance. In a world of tight money, the world can only sustain that situation for so long. 

At that point, just as in the mid-1980s, expect a second downward drop in oil prices after the initial steep slide.

Closer to home, that likely means any hopes of oil powering the provincial budget out of deficit might be a bit premature at best.  At worst, a dramatic drop in oil prices – like say to about half where it is now – or a delayed American recovery will only increase the deficit problem in the years ahead. 

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Rio dumps Chinese, partners with BHP

Rio Tinto announced Friday that it is no longer pursuing its deal with Chinese industrial concern Chinalco. 

Instead, the company will launch a joint venture with BHP Billiton on iron ore assets the companies share in Australia.

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Anger, personified

The raw scrum video, via cbc.ca/nl of the response by Premier Danny Williams to an ongoing story at Eastern Health.  There’s also the full cbc.ca/nl online story on the ongoing controversy.  If that doesn’t work, try another link here:   http://tiny.cc/TEJTJ.

CBC news obtained documents through the province’s access to information laws that shed more detail on the release of information in early April related to the ongoing breast cancer testing issue.

Officials  - especially communications vice-president Jennifer Guy - at Eastern health,  New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael, all on the receiving end of the Premier’s anger including an accusation of  political opportunism on the part of the NDP leader. 

This is radically different from anything ever fired at people like Stephen Harper.  There’s none of the characteristic hyperbole, for instance.  You can feel the anger coming clearly through the audio portion. Eastern health chief executive Louise Jones held a newser later in the day;  that isn’t available online yet.

Williams recently criticised the province’s access laws for bogging down government officials with “frivolous” requests and used that an excuse for failing to deliver whistleblower protection legislation in the first session after the 2007 general election as Williams promised.

In a scrum with reporters last Friday, Williams also claimed there was not much experience globally with whistleblower protection laws

He also accused an unnamed witness at the Cameron inquiry into the breast cancer scandal of being motivated at least in part by a personal vendetta. Williams said someone “came on pretty strongly” and decided “to have a crack at government after they did not get their own way’ on employment for a relative with government.

Political opportunism by opposition leaders is not an unusual phenomenon in Newfoundland in Labrador, by the way:

“We told them it was only print-sharing and that there was no threat but, regardless of that, they did take the action they did,” he said.

“What happened wasn’t a breach. Their staff, we believe, knew it wasn’t a breach.”

The action referred to there by a police officer was a public accusation a Liberal political staffer had attempted to hack into the opposition Progressive Conservative computer system.

The story broke in early February 2002:

"The premier's office knew right away that this had happened and, in my opinion, they've acknowledged that a political staffer has interfered with our (computer) system," Conservative Leader Danny Williams said Friday.

"That's very serious stuff."

The language from then opposition leader Williams was strong and, as it seems people in his office knew at the time their version of the story was nothing that would warrant the over-the-top language their boss used:

"Here we have a political staffer trying to break into our computers," Mr. Williams added. "It's very disconcerting to us. There's strategic information in our offices."  [“Liberal tried to hack our computers, Tories say: Newfoundland probe”, National Post Richard Foot, Saturday, February 9, 2002]

or from a Telegram story headlined “Tories sweep offices for bugs”:

"An attempt at access is just as serious as access - no different than attempted robbery is as serious as robbery itself," said Williams, who is a lawyer.

"From our perspective, we're treating it as a very, very serious matter."

 

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NS election: undecideds dominate

Forget what you’ve seen reported.

Take a look at the Corporate Research Associates quarterly poll results since early 2008, adjust them to take out the “percentage of decideds” skew and it’s pretty clear that no political party in Nova Scotia is lighting anyone on fire.

There’s what you get and it really isn’t pretty.

With the exception of the poll taken in the first two weeks of May 2009, “undecided” more Nova Scotians are undecided than are opting for any one of the three major political parties.
 
The New Democrats may wind up on top in next week’s vote, but that’s just the way the electoral system works.  It sure won’t be because there is any massive excitement among Nova Scotians for an orange option.  Blue and Red are in worse shape.

Leadership certainly isn’t a factor.  Sure, CRA asks which leader Nova Scotians prefer and sure the NDP guy comes out on top.

But when asked to rank the issues, leadership comes out as the big issue for a mere five percent of respondents in the poll done in the second half of May.

According to that poll, the top issues are health care funding (37%) and dealing with economic concerns (33%).  The next most frequently mentioned issue  - education funding – comes in at a mere 11%.

That’s interesting because the NDP are pushing Darrel Dexter above all in what has become a fairly typical “Big Giant Head” type of campaign.  But  - stealing an approach from the federal Conservatives - the Nova Scotia New Democrats are making seven key commitments.  The top two are the economy and health care.  Stephen Harper only needed five commitments, incidentally.

Ditto the Liberals, at least as far as making the party leader the centrepiece.  That’s a weird choice given that the guy doesn’t poll all that well in comparison to others and – if CRA is correct – the leader ain’t the vote driver. The Nova Scotia Grits also have seven ideas at the heart of their plan, the second and third of which are health care and the economy.

The Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives are in trouble.  Google the party and the information that comes back claims the party is led by some guy named Hamm. If the party website can’t get any more up-to-date, then there are issues here that help explain the Tory’s consistently crappy polling and why they are likely to be headed for the opposition benches for a while.

The Progressive Conservatives play down their leader a bit – hint:  it ain’t Hamm -  which is understandable if the polling is right. The party platform has five core areas and the top one is the economy. The second one is also the economy, expressed as “rural development”.  The third and forth are about crime and “defending” Nova Scotia while the fifth is another traditional Nova Scotia economic engine:  the political pork feast of roads and infrastructure.

If you look at all three parties, neither of them is really hammering away at health issues or the economy, at least as far as their news releases are concerned. 

For an outsider watching the election from afar, media coverage wouldn’t suggest the election is a hot topic.  Take a gander at the Chronicle Herald website and find any highlight of election coverage. Try and find it.  CBC has the standard [Insert the name of the jurisdiction here] Votes [Insert Year Here] but the web space is nothing to write home about. those are just two.  The actual on-air coverage from the electronics, plus Connie TV’s Steve Murphy or Global might be different.

Something suggests, though, that the election isn’t turning anybody’s crank in a big way.

That, rather than the idea the New Democrats will be the government, might turn out to be the story next week:  “Nova Scotia had an election and they swapped one minority government for another;  see you again in a year or so.”

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NS election: Undecideds double in two weeks

The number of undecided voters in the Nova Scotia general election doubled in the second half of May compared to first half, according to two polls from Halifax-based Corporate Research Associates.

In a poll taken in early May only 17% of respondents were undecided or weren’t planning to vote.  In the second poll, 33% of respondents were undecided. 

The second poll covered a larger sample (834) than the first poll (627). The first poll was conducted from May 7 to May 16.  The second poll as conducted between May 18 and May 30.  CRA reports the margin of error for both polls as 3.9% for the first poll and 3.4% for the second, 19 times out of 20.

Support for the front running New Democrats dropped from 30.7% to 29.5%.  Liberal support dropped from 25.7% to 18.8% and Progressive Conservative support dropped from 23.2% to 17.4%.

Interpretation of the poll in conventional media relies on dealing only with decided voters. Thus, CBC concludes that “support for the NDP has risen sharply to 44 per cent from 37 per cent” while ignoring the change in undecideds.

There is no indication that Corporate Research Associates probes undecideds in the two polls, completed as part of CRA’s quarterly omnibus polling in Atlantic  Canada.

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Adios, Lisa

Not only did federal natural resources minister Lisa Raitt or one or her staff leave a three inch thick binder of confidential briefing notes at a CTV office, they didn’t try and get it back.

If that isn’t cause for dismissal, then there isn’t much left that is.

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Lessons not learned, Part II: health department may have breached privacy law

Unless they’ve got written consent for the disclosure, the province’s health department violated several sections of the province’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

A report by independent consultants on the location of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device includes the home address and telephone number of one of the consultants as well as complete curricula vitae of the three consultants.

The original news release directed interested people to contact the department’s communications director for a copy of the report. The release issued Tuesday contained a link to the complete report, with the attached CVs.

The report was received on February 28 and released on June 2, in violation of a supposed government policy requiring reports to be released within 30 days of being received. 

Under section 30 of the Act, government must refuse to disclose personal information unless there is written consent. A similar provision is contained in section 39.

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Sectional Update:  The ever eagle-eyed among you noticed that since this document wasn’t released under the access to information bit of the legislation, section 30 doesn’t apply.

Correct.

Section 39 does and that confusion is purely mine in the way the post was quickly written.

The act covers requests for information PLUS privacy protection.  The privacy part containing s. 39 covers what government may do with personal information.  One of the things is not release it without permission.

It all comes out to the same thing.

s.39 of the ATIPPA applies in this case.  Without permission, they weren’t suppose to publish personal information.

Lessons not learned

“They should be shot over there.”

So said Premier Danny Williams when the public reacted angrily to a news release from Eastern Health late on a Friday afternoon that buried the kernel of hard news in the middle of the release.

Turns out senior government officials knew about the whole thing in advance, had a hand in drafting the release and that cabinet ordered the disclosure immediately, despite the objections of officials at Eastern Health.

The documents, released under the province’s open records laws, are available on the cbc.ca/nl website. Interestingly, they appear to have been processed electronically.  This is contrary to standard government practice in some departments which seem to favour using only hard copies as a way of maximising the cost to the applicant.

When asked in the legislature on April 5 (the first sitting day after the Friday news release) when he and officials of his department first learned, health minister Ross Wiseman initially ducked the question, talking instead about research done previously to identify all patients involved in breast cancer testing.

On the second and third questions, Wiseman finally relented, but claimed he had only learned of the matter on April 2, presumably at cabinet:

Yes, I was aware that they were going to be doing that release. The conversation that my office had with Eastern Health was midday on Thursday (April 2, the day cabinet met) , and the understanding and direction was pretty clear: that this information needed to get out immediately. The fact that they were late on Friday afternoon releasing it, I had no control over, Mr. Speaker. That was their call, their decision to release it. I received the notice of the release just moments before it was out. I was out of the Province on government business, meeting with my colleagues in Halifax and with other health regions.

Mr. Speaker, that was their call, but I would agree with the member opposite that getting a release out late Friday afternoon and not having anyone available from the organization to comment on it is not something that I would agree with either.

Wiseman is only referring here to the cabinet directive to release the information, not when his officials first learned of the issue.  The documents obtained by CBC place that time earlier that week. An e-mail from health deputy minister Don Keats shows the minister looking for a briefing on the subject on March 31.

Wiseman’s answers in the House on April 5 also leave the impression that government had no involvement in the matter:

I want to tell the member opposite and the members of the House, Eastern Health write their own press releases. They release their own communiqués. I was aware of the information that they had.  I was aware on Thursday that they were going to be releasing it. My understand was they were going to be releasing it quickly. I then went out of the Province on business, only to find that I got a copy of the release at the same time it was being released to the public.

That also wasn’t strictly accurate since, according to the released documents, cabinet had directed the release immediately without waiting until patients had been contacted directly.

By the following day of questions in the House of Assembly, April 6, Wiseman was acknowledging he had learned of the issue on April 1.

Speaking with reporters on April 5, the Premier condemned Eastern Health for releasing the information in the way they did including not disclosing the information to patients first. That’s the same scrum in which he uttered the infamous comment that “they” should be shot over there.

Justice Margaret Cameron, in a report released last month, found that Eastern Health had erred by not telling the whole truth of what it knew, Williams said. The premier slammed the authority for sending out information late on a Friday and then not making anyone available to talk about it immediately. He said patients deserve full and transparent disclosure.

"This is about people's lives … They have a right to be told," Williams said. "They have a right to be told in a proper manner. There has to be proper disclosure; there has to be someone there to answer questions. It's not something you do at the tail end of a Friday afternoon."

The documents on the cbc.ca/nl website do not appear to represent all the documents related to incident.  Missing are documents or any notes referring to having the issue placed on the cabinet agenda and what, if any communications there would have been between the department and Executive Council, the government’s central co-ordinating agency.

Some of the documents were written days after the event and around the same time Eastern Health’s vice president of communications engaged in a rather bizarre bit of public spinning about the location of information in the news release.  She wasn’t the only one spinning the story.

Coincidentally the week before the Premier said that people should be shot over the incident, courts in Ontario upheld the ruling that such language constituted uttering a threat.

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Williams invents excuse for stalling whistleblower law

In a scrum with reporters last week, Premier Danny Williams said he has instructed government officials to gather evidence on experience with whistleblower legislation because there  is “not much precedent” around the world for whistleblower legislation.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The United States Congress enacted the false claims act of 1863 to protect the public from unscrupulous manufacturers who substituted sawdust for gunpowder in Union Army contracts during the Civil War. The legislation,  updated in 1986, allowed citizens to file claims against manufacturers and awarded the citizens – effectively whistleblowers – a portion of any subsequent award.

There are 18 other American federal statutes that contain whistleblower protection.

A 2002 statute, enacted in the wake of Enron, extended protection to private sector employees who blow the whistle on wrongdoing.

The US federal government has had a whistleblower statute to protect federal employees since 1989. The earliest such law for federal employees was enacted in 1912.

Most American states have protection for employees who disclose unethical or illegal acts by employers.

The United Kingdom has had whistleblower protection since 1998.

Various Australian states and the Australian Capital territory have whistleblower legislation.  The earliest dates from 1988.

The Government of Canada has had a whistleblower protection law since 2005 and in 2006, Manitoba passed a public interest disclosure statute.

Williams promised whistleblower legislation during the last general election, in 2007, saying:

The very first session of the House that we have, that's something we'll have a look at. As a matter of fact, there'd be no reason why we wouldn't get it on.

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Who said that?

What about the principles of accountability of government and the reliability of the budgeting process? Why doesn't government just tell the people the truth? You, the people, have a right to know.

Who said that?

When?

Where?

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