The Leprechaun Play

Oil is there on the island’s west coast but why is it that the provincial government has to exploit the potential for oil instead of a local private company either alone or in partnership with others?

In a province where the private sector is so notoriously underdeveloped, the single biggest argument against NALCO’s recent bailout of Leprechaun Resources is that it stunts the local private sector.

It’s not like there isn’t considerable private sector activity on the west coast already, much of it undertaken at great risk by small local companies.  They’ve  soldiered on, risked much and raised plenty of capital from many sources all in search of a commercially viable play.  Some of those local companies have far better plays on the go than Parson’s Pond.

It’s the epitome of what the provincial government should be encouraging in the province and it’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit one would expect would get the unquestioned support from a Premier who told reporters recently that his heart is in the private sector.

The whole thing is even more incongruous when one considers that, in speaking with reporters yesterday, the Premier used Leduc (1947) as a point of comparison.  Leduc was the first major oil discovery and it was made by the private sector. 

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the first oil discoveries have already been made and they were made by the private sector.  The commercial finds on the west coast will come, and it should be the private sector doing the work.

Danny Williams may like to tell reporters he as “private sector guy” but his actions say something else.

This is a guy who has never really competed in the private sector in his life, outside of his law practice

But that’s not the private sector he likes to point to when he talks about being a private sector kinda guy. Nope, Williams likes to talk about running a cable company.  But that is nowhere near like running an oil company.  At Cable Atlantic, Williams had others doing the work in what was effectively a highly regulated monopoly.  That’s essentially the situation he’s been trying to recreate for NALCO.

By muscling into the local onshore oil sector, NALCO has set itself up as the biggest player in the room with all sorts of grossly unfair advantages.  It has the unlimited pockets of the taxpayer and therefore no problem pissing cash down hole after hole even if there is no sign and no possibility of a sign of oil.  There are no shareholders to answer to and, unlike all the private sector companies, NALCO is effectively unregulated.

NALCO’s minister and the minister who makes regulatory decisions about the oil industry are one and the same.   The department’s deputy minister sits on the board of NALCO Oil and Gas’s parent.  NALCO just bought into licenses that expire in six months.  Ordinarily an investor would have to struggle to justify an extension under the circumstances.  NALCO knows they’ll get an exemption, extension or anything else it needs because it has connections no private sector company can match.

Whatever is behind NALCO’s sudden interest in onshore oil plays, it isn’t about repeating the glorious success of Leduc. It’s not about strengthening the province’s oil and gas sector or just the local private sector, the people who really make jobs and exploit opportunities.

Nope.

NALCO’s bailout  isn’t even the giant make-work scheme many of its supporters seem to think it is.  Government doesn’t create sustainable jobs and contrary to the baloney that comes from some mouths, economics shows that government doesn’t get the bulk of its spending back in taxes.

Whatever the motivation for sinking $20 million of public cash in this one venture, someone will have to dig deeper and ask more probing questions of the Premier to find out what’s really on the go.

In the meantime, let’s hope that the real private sector guys – the ones who’ve been looking for oil for years – hit oil before NALCO. 

There’d be another sweet irony in such a development as well.   You see if Danny Williams really was a private sector guy, he’d have never gotten into politics in the first place.  If he really wanted to create jobs, jobs, jobs – as he claimed in 200o3 -  he’d have taken his cable cash and invested in the private sector. 

He’d have taken risks,  been buoyed by a few successes, endured a few failures and then invested in new enterprises here and elsewhere.  He’d be pushing for government policies that support entrepreneurs and encourage the growth of a sustainable, diverse private sector built on daring and imagination.

Instead, the supposed “private sector guy” got into politics and built the existing government bureaucracy into an even larger behemoth backed by policies that discourage innovation and investment and hook private sector companies in the province on government cash.

There hasn’t been a new approach since 2003.  We’ve actually seen the same old approach in Newfoundland and Labrador that has consistently failed to deliver decade, after decade, after decade in a province led by saviour after genius after business success.

And, as we learned in Mount Pearl, Holyrood and elsewhere, there is no pot of gold at the end of that old rainbow of green cukes and red-soled rubbers, at least not for the people  - the taxpayers of the province – whose money goes out the door.

-srbp-

Company behind Fermeuse wind power project seeks bankruptcy protection

Skypower Corp, the company behind a wind power demonstration project at Fermeuse, Newfoundland filed for bankruptcy protection on August 12.

Skypower is owned 50% by Lehman Brothers which filed for bankruptcy last year in what was the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

The Canadian renewable energy company is now seeking to sell all its assets.  It reportedly has sufficient funds  - $15 million – to see it through the asset sale process.

The Fermeuse project involves nine turbines with a combined capacity of 22 megawatts.

There’s no word on what will happen to the Fermeuse project.

Update:  The Fermeuse project was certified operational on June 30, 2009. Power from the project is sold to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro under a 20 year power purchase agreement signed in 2007. 

The project, originally proposed by Vector Wind Energy was later taken over Canadian Hydro Developers on December 14,  2006.  CDH turned the project over to Skypower two weeks later.

-srbp-

Wolfe Island Wind Farm Project

Canadian Hydro Developers Inc operates a 197.8 megawatt wind farm project on Wolfe Island, near Kingston Ontario.

CHD installed the 86 turbines on farmland on the island in early 2009 and the project achieved operational status in early July.  The power is sold directly into the Ontario grid.  Each windmill cost $5.5 million. The overall project cost approximately $500 million.

The project hasn’t been without its share of critics, environmental watchdogs and complaints about noise are already appearing. A group opposed to wind turbines has started in prince Edward County. 

There are also supporters, as well.

The new masthead picture is of a portion of the Wolfe Island wind farm, taken from the ferry running between Kingston and Wolfe Island.

-srbp-

Oh yeah… it’s polling season

The Premier might have been otherwise engaged for the Council of the Federation meeting last week discussing trivial things like the recession and international trade.

But set up an event in the first few days after the government’s pollster starts collecting data and Danny’s there with bells on.

Thursday, alongside his old buddy Ken Marshall to unveil the logo for the 2010 Junos.

How big a deal is this logo unveiling?

Even the presence of Senator Fabian Manning can’t get Danny’s skin crawling enough to keep him from from showing up to goose a poll.

-srbp-

A municipal tax grab

The draft paratransit report for the City of St. John’s proposes a series of new tax grabs to pay for the system.

And deputy mayor Ron Ellsworth – also running for mayor in this fall’s municipal election – wants the whole thing in place before voting takes places:

Deputy Mayor Ron Ellsworth said that, in some way, the report would be revised to incorporate the concerns, but acknowledged that everything needs to be done by mid-September, before the municipal elections.

The report proposes:

-   a new 2.5 cent per litre tax on gasoline sold within the City of St. John’s which would produce an estimated $10 million annually,

-  a new surcharge of motor vehicle registrations for residents of St. John’s that would bring in an estimated $500,000 annually,

-  a new surcharge on both parking fees and parking fines that would bring in an additional $150,000 annually,

-  a new surcharge on taxi licenses that would generate an estimated $180,000 annually.

Having the provincial government pay the full cost of health-related transfers – something Ellsworth was talking up last January  - would bring in about $300,000 annually.  There was no public talk back then about more “creative” ways of sucking cash from taxpayer’s pockets.

Now all this might be a set of good ideas but really, there’s something fishy about the unseemly haste being display by the current council.

After all, this is the same crew that last time around busily assured everyone before the election that the Wells-Coombs Memorial Money Pit was in the black – at last – and then let us all know after the voting was done and counted that the whole thing was drowning in red ink.  The thing continues to flounder.

The paratransit system may need more money but there’s no reason to quickly and quietly grant the crowd running Tammany at Gower the right to suck an additional $10 million out the pockets of taxpayers in the city.

Let’s have way more information and discussion before this little idea gets anywhere near implemented.

Incidentally, there’s nothing about this issue on Ellsworth campaign website.

 

-srbp-

Exit strategy

What do Sarah Palin and Ryan Cleary have in common?

Poor exit strategies that prompted rumours and a host of questions based on the way they left their jobs.

Admittedly, Sarah Palin was much funnier that Ryan ever was but the basic point remains the same:  leaving a job requires a coherent exit strategy to quash rumours and avoid problems for both the person leaving and the soon-to-be-ex-employee.

The Globe has an interesting take on how to leave a job successfully.

-srbp-

Making council races partisan affairs

An effort ostensibly aimed at encouraging women to get involved in municipal politics – where there are no political parties – turned into a partisan affair.  A meeting in St. John’s organised by the status of women’s council included only Tory speakers.

And not surprisingly, as cbc.ca/nl put it, “[w]omen who spoke at the sessions Tuesday brushed off criticism that the meetings have favoured Progressive Conservatives.”  They then quoted Tory cabinet minister Diane Whelan.

No invitations to speak were extend to any women with NDP or Liberal affiliations apparently.

Equal Voice – a non-partisan, national group dedicated to increasing the number of women candidates in politics at all levels – wasn’t involved.

There’s a good reason for that:  this event is tied to a campaign launched by Whelan last spring.

If anyone had been serious about a non-partisan campaign, they’d have organized it through an established non-partisan group like Equal Voice.

As it is, the whole thing starts to smell a little funky and a really good cause – getting more women in politics as candidates – gets twisted into something else.  It’s hard to believe that this event could wind up having only three speakers  - Flora MacDonald, Shannie Duff and Diane Whelan - and all of them have Tory ties.

-srbp-

More crap from the Globe

As usual, Christie Blatchford gets it right.

A front page story in the Tuesday Globe excoriates an Ottawa judge for remarks he didn’t make in the decision on the O’Brien influence peddling case. There’s another column that carries on with the same nonsense.

In his decision, Justice Douglas Cunningham assessed testimony from one Crown witness and found that the portion of her testimony on which the Crown was relying was not really central to the conversation she was having at the time. 

Even during the portion of the witness’ evidence led by the Crown, there were sufficient variations in the statement to raise questions about her recollections.  On top of that, the defence was able to demonstrate that, having had many significant events in her life at the time of her statement to police, the judge concluded that the witness’  “recollection of a brief, casual portion of her conversation is so imprecise that, through no fault of her own, I must assign it little weight”.

There is no reference by the judge to the sex of the witness or anything of the sort.  There is nothing but a straight-up factual synopsis of the evidence, which is what you’d expect from a judge.

And out that, the legion of professional Irks has launched into an incredible pile of nonsense.

Shame on Toronto’s national newspaper for giving such crap such prominence.

But, as usual, Christie got it right.

-srbp-

And then, things went horribly wrong…

Ryan Cleary tells CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates his version of why he wants to get into politics.

Rather than settle questions, Cleary just makes his situation worse.

Note that Cleary brings up and then ducks the question of spending more time with his family.  Then he admits the decision for him to leave VOCM’s employ was entirely VOCM’s business decision:  he wanted to stay;  they ended the relationship.

That doesn’t sound like:

Tonight [Cleary] he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Unfortunately, the cbc clip seems to cut out abruptly in the middle of things.  Let’s hope they can fix it and get the rest of it posted.

In the meantime, it’s interesting to hear Cleary handling yet more controversy over his candidacy.

-srbp-

Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response.

Doesn’t anyone think?

Well, apparently Goose Bay mayor Leo Abbass thought enough of the negative connotations of a story in The Labradorian that he had to issue a news release to suck up to Labrador affairs minister John Hickey.

Apparently Leo thinks people are interested in his emotional state:

Mayor Leo Abbass is pleased with the work done so far. “Having thirty kilometers already completed, the widening and upgrading of eighty kilometers ongoing, and an additional fifty to be paved, will not only make the road safer for the travelling public, but also improve conditions for the transportation of goods into our region. We look forward to the completion of a hard-topped surface along the entire length of Phase I and the continued work on Phase II and III of the TLH.”

Of course,  they won’t finished the work until next year – as originally planned - even though a recent government news release may have misled some people into believe there was some sort of “fast-tracking” or “acceleration” to the paving.

Leo didn’t say anything about that, of course.  The sensitive folk of his town can just rest easy because Leo is “pleased.”

-srbp-

How can you tell the government pollster is in the field?

1.  Announcing the announcement of announcements previously announced:  11 August 2009, a news conference to announce the first cheque from a small government program pumped up to sound huge.  The program was announced on June 5, 2009.   That’s just bad planning.  if they’d pushed that forwarded government could have had the announcement in one polling period and then the announcement of the announcement in the next one.

Someone should be shot.

2.  Get three ministers and announce the blindingly obvious:  it took Trevor Taylor, Paul Oram and the guy in charge of the cops to release a “social housing plan” for the province.  Their “vision” is “of a province where Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have access to secure and affordable housing.”

Seems fairly obvious that a plan for providing affordable housing should have as its vision the provision of affordable housing.

That’s just the stuff that doesn’t involve spending bags of money but they are two good clues that polling season is on us once again.

-srbp-

Twittering…

From a cbc.ca/nl discussion thread on oil exploration by the provincial government’s oil and gas corporation, a comment that gives new meaning to twittering:

It was a Liberal Government in Ottawa that sent Liberal John Efford to the Conservative Government of Newfoundland with a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer on the annual royalties from the offshore resources. It was the Conservative Government in Newfoundland under the leadership of Premier Williams who removed the Maple Leaf flag in protest of this insulting offer by the Liberals. It was the Conservative Government who finally reached a royalty agreement that is today bringing billions in to the treasury of this Province.

Was all this negotiate "prior to 2003"? It think not! The Liberals in Ottawa at that time were not interested in negotiating, but in ram-rodding an inferior royalty plan that would have kept Newfoundland a "have-not" Province. Instead we had a Premier and Government who had the intestinal fortitude to challenge their "keep them poor" attitude, and today we are a "have" Province.

Not a single thing in those two paragraphs is true.

-srbp-

It’s official…

As Bond Papers reported yesterday, Ryan Cleary is looking for the New Democratic Party [name under review] nod in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

We can say it’s official because Cleary’s blogger buddy carried the story a day after Bond reported it.  The story is also filled with a raft of jabs and barbs. 

Guess the other parts of the Bond Paper’s post  - about the “spending time with family” thing being a nose-puller of a media line  - must have been right too.

Now it’s only a matter of time before the rumoured other candidate – a “name” – comes forward.  you can tell that part of the story is accurate since Cleary’s blogger buddy denies there’s a contender and wants the Dipper executive to get the nomination over with most ricky tick. 

The only candidate wannabes who look to get nominations over right away are ones worried about challengers who could guarantee their plans to spend more time with the family.

-srbp-

“Accelerated” Labrador roads work actually happening next year – as planned

The provincial government is  “accelerating” its commitment to road work in Labrador  - whatever the heck that means - but that doesn’t mean the work will be done in 2009.

A government news release issued last week started with these glorious words:

The Williams Government is accelerating its commitment to revitalize the Trans Labrador Highway (TLH) by issuing a tender to lay asphalt on an additional 50 kilometre section of Phase I from Happy Valley-Goose Bay towards Churchill Falls. Rather than wait until next year to award the contract, the Provincial Government is getting ready now to award this further work.

That’s additional as in more than the 30 kilometres scheduled to be paved this year and the 80 kilometres to be widened.

There was even a quote from Labrador affairs minister John  Hickey saying that “[t]his accelerated work on the Trans Labrador Highway is an excellent example of this government’s effort to realize its long-term vision for Labrador.”

But just like Tom Rideout couldn’t tell time, John Hickey and his colleagues are apparently having some difficulty with the concept “accelerated”.

As Hickey told The Labradorian this week: “We’re not sure if we’ll be able to get  all of that paving done this year, but it’s our hope to have it started.”

Now in this case, “accelerated”  would normally mean faster  than anticipated or than originally plan.  What Hickey told The Labradorian this week is that – despite his claims last week – the paving on the Trans-Labrador Highway between Churchill Falls and Goose Bay will be finished in 2001-2011…as originally planned.

Last week’s news release was evidently part of some sort of poll-goosing spin campaign.  Heaven only knows what Hickey’s most recent comments were all about. Maybe it’s yet another hickey-up.

-srbp-

How old is your cell phone?

Try 1989 for customers of Central Telephone in the United States. 

That’s the date on this video from youtube and it looks to be about right.

There’s another video dated 1986 but the thing lacks any voice over or other identifying marks to suggest it is either an ad or something from about 1986.

The cell phone itself dates back way before that  - try 1973 - with the first commercial product entering service in the mid to late 1970s.  of course, with a handset going for about US$4,000, there weren’t a lot of them on the go.

As with home computers, consider the capabilities of cell phones back then and what they do today.

-srbp-

Wannabe candidates and nose-pulling

Ryan Cleary’s departure from voice of the cabinet minister came as a surprise to most.

There was speculation he’d been fired for campaigning with Jack Layton.  Cleary supporters came forward with other views including one version, reputedly straight from the horse’s mouth, that he left to spend more time with his family.

Here’s the way Cleary’s closest blogger-buddy put it:

However, he [Cleary] did say that the toll on his family was too high.  He was missing way too many sports matches, PTA meetings and was not home to put his kids to bed.  He told me that he could not make a long term commitment to Nightline.  He was having trouble reconciling his love of family with the hours of the job.  I think we can all understand that.

Tonight he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Well, that last one seemed like a real politician’s nose-puller.  How many times have you heard a politician quit a job of leave politics claiming it was to spend more time with the wee ones?  It’s used a lot but it’s seldom the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Turns out the bloggerated version from Cleary’s pal was a nose puller worthy of the love child of Karl Malden and  Jimmy Durante.

Cleary told a gathering of local New Democrats over the weekend that he will be looking for their nomination in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the upcoming federal election.  The Steele crowd wanted a long-term commitment, it seems, and Cleary couldn’t give such a commitment and run for the Dippers too.

Now if any of you know anything about politics, especially federal politics, you’ll know it’s not a venture for a guy who wants to spend more time with his life-partner and offspring.  To the contrary, federal politics can be brutal on home life. 

Missed birthday parties come with the territory.   Putting the kids to bed would be something from a fantasy world.  Getting to hockey games or school plays will also be dodgy and that’s even if the whole clan ups-stakes and moves to walking distance of Hy’s. 

Add in any considerations of more complex family situations and you can see that politics would not be the life for someone who found it problematic to spend a few hours at night sharing pearls of wisdom with the likes of the Moon Man rather than helping the wee ones snuggle down in their Spidey jammies.

Now on the other hand, Cleary may have nothing to worry about.  He might wind up with plenty of time on his hands.

The other New Democrat buzz from last weekend concerned an unnamed – but reputedly high profile  - candidate who is also eyeing the seat Cleary wants.  Unlike the relative walkover he faced last time in getting the nod, Cleary may have to organize to win the nomination in the first place.  He’ll have to start banking some cash, assembling the team and indentifying supporters.

And then he would have to win the election.

In the meantime though, that story about leaving Nightline to spend more time with the kids sounds like the kind of stuff  you get from certain kinds of politicians.

Bullshit isn’t an auspicious start to a political campaign.

-srbp-

Fantasy Island II: Churchill Falls and s.92(A)

Tom Careen of Placentia is apparently vying for the title of Chief Fantasist here on Fantasy island.  He’s become a regular letter writer to the Telegram usually on some topic out of the nationalist collection of fairy tales.

His latest one is an old nationalist chestnut, namely the Churchill Falls deal:

On page 191 of the Young Commission report, there is this paragraph: "In several meetings, we heard that Newfoundland and Labrador should pursue its constitutional rights under Section 92A of the Constitution Act, 1867, to access power and energy from Churchill Falls for industrial purposes in Labrador and on the island."

This is supposedly a magic solution to the 1969 contract that sees Hydro Quebec buy power from Churchill Falls at an extraordinarily low rate until 2016.  At that point, the contract automatically renews until 2041 at an even lower rate.

Now it would appear that these people  - careen included - actually bothered to read section 92(A), an addition to the Constitution Act in 1982.  That will become plain in a moment.

What they are talking about is actually the now famous Churchill Falls legend about a power corridor through Quebec which – if you believe this part of the fairy tale – the request for which the federal government rejected in the 1960s for fear of inflaming Quebec separatists.

This is where the problems start.

Firstly, it doesn’t appear such a request was ever made in the first place, in order for it to be rejected.

Second, there was little incentive for the Newfoundland government to make the request in the first place.  Churchill Falls may have been a deal between a private company – BRINCO – and Hydro Quebec but the project was one of Joe Smallwood’s great provincial projects.  Anyone recall his words at the sod-turning, the bit about “our river”?

Well, one of the reasons why Smallwood most likely never made the request in the first place is that it would have been made under the old section 92 (10).  In effect, had the request on the power corridor been made and accepted, the entire project would fall under federal jurisdiction and the entire Churchill Falls venture would have become a federal Crown corporation.

Not a provincial project any longer, but a federal one with no Joe Smallwood to take any of the credit for bringing it about.  He’d have had to take a back seat and watch as one of his favourite pet projects was ripped from his hands all in order to deal with the tough negotiating position Hydro Quebec was taking.

Despite there being virtually no evidence the power corridor was anything more than a weak-assed bargaining ploy by Smallwood on behalf of BRINCO, the legend persists.

And, it appears that the whole myth has morphed from 92 (10)(a and c) to s. 92(A).  on the face of it you can see how the whole thing changed simply in the retelling:  there’s a ‘92” and an “a” in both;  all you drop is the “10”.  Stranger things have happened.

Of course, you’ll notice that at no point does anyone who mentions 92(A) usually ever discuss what the clause actually says.  There is a summary on page 116 if the final report from the Young Royal Commission but that only highlights the shortcomings in Careen’s idea. All s.92 (1) does is ensure that the provincial governments can make laws governing non-renewable natural resources.   The Young commission makes several recommendations but they are really vague.  The wording is essentially that the provincial government should look after the best interests of the province including taking into consideration s.92(10).

But they don’t recommend anything specific and that is telling.

Simply put, there is nothing specific in s.92(10) that provides any solution to the Churchill Falls contract power rates.  The provincial government can tax power exports but it can tax in such a way as to discrimination against export power.  In other words, any tax applied to Churchill Falls  - virtually all of which is exported - would also apply to power from Holyrood or Baie d’Espoir, all of which is consumed inside the province.

Tom Careen would have known that if he’d bothered to read the Constitution Act or even notice what the Young commission report actually says when it summarises what s.92(10) says.

Then  again, as Chief Fantasist you wouldn’t be interested in anything except…well…fantasy.

-srbp-

Another Homer Simpson moment

So a couple of communities on the coast of Labrador are complaining of lack of action by the provincial government. One is a roads issues which falls under the responsibility of Trevor Taylor, the transportation minister.  The other concerns water and sewer work which is the responsibility of Diane Whelan, the municipal affairs minister.

To answer the media questions, the provincial government deploys John “The Shoveller” Hickey, the minister of Labrador Affairs.  His response sets him up for a big fall:

"I can't act on issues if people to raise them with me," Mr. Hickey said. "I got to say, these communities need leadership. Getting on an open line show is just not cutting it."

Now right off the bat, we have no idea which level of leadership Hickey is criticising:  Is it the mayor and town councils in the affected communities?  Is it the local member of the House of Assembly or is it his cabinet colleagues who are showing inadequate leadership by not bringing this issue to his attention?

But the real problem with Hickey’s comments is that he has set himself up for a huge political smack between the eyes.  All someone has to do is produce letters to his office concerning these issues and the old boy will look like a complete idiot.

Not a good spot.

And how likely, you may ask, is it that someone would be able to produce such correspondence?

Well consider that the issue of a road to connect Norman Bay to the rest of Labrador came up at the 2005 annual meeting of the Combined Councils of Labrador.  If a townie could find this on the Internet with a simple google search, surely John Hickey or someone from his staff could have noted this issue. And it’s not like Hickey wouldn’t have already been aware of these issues:  he attended a session with Labrador politicians. 

On top of that there’s the story in the Northern Pen - and reprinted  in the Western Star - from last February about a letter from one resident of Norman Bay to Barack Obama looking for help with roads.  This didn’t turn up in Hickey’s media clippings?

How about the letter the fellow says he wrote to …wait a minute…John Hickey:

Roberts said he's exhausted all possible avenues locally, having sent letters to Labrador MP Todd Russell and other federal politicians, as well as to Labrador Affairs Minister John Hickey.

Did John get the letter?

And if that wasn’t good enough, it’s not like the issue of roads in the area didn’t come up in the House of Assembly in 2007.  Again, a simple google search turned up a wonderful couple of answers from Hickey, none of which blamed others for the situation.  Rather Hickey just deployed the traditional bureaucratic response that he’d take the issues under advisement.

Then there’s the Northern Strategic Plan, which includes references to communities along the southeast coast of Labrador raising concerns about an inability to cost-share water and sewer work.  Hickey must have heard someone mention this stuff given that his picture and a message are included at the front end of the plan document.

So there it is:  Hickey says he’s never heard of the issues because no one has sent him letters.  There’s ample evidence he is aware of the issues in southern Labrador and that at least one person has actually written to him.

This is a classic Homer Simpson moment.  You can see the letters turning up all over the place and Hickey being embarrassed at his own stunnedness in making a comment that is only too easy to prove false.

All the rest of us can do is laugh and utter a “D’oh” in unison.

-srbp-

Fallow field?

nottawa raises an interesting point about NALCO’s bailout of the Parson’s Pond oil licenses.

-srbp-

Shocker of the century: soldiers, sex, speed and booze version

Some prudes at the Department of National Defence need to get a grip.

Apparently, they are  concerned because a recent study showed that the mostly male, young soldiers returning from Afghanistan are spending their bonus pay getting laid and going on the beer during a five day “decompression” stint on Cyprus after their operational tour is over.

According to the Toronto Star:

The problem reached such a state when the last contingent of Canadians stopped off in Cyprus this spring that military officials have recommended slapping a two-drink limit on soldiers for the first night of their decompression to "facilitate learning" in a Day 2 course on transitioning from life at war to life at home.

Soldiers are apparently also spending their cash renting dune buggies or fast jet skis they they then use to race about at high speed.

It’s hard to know which is more ludicrous:  the fact that someone at National Defence headquarters paid good money to study this or that the Toronto Star is reporting it as if it was shocking and somehow worthy of corrective action.

DND is apparently considering adding some lectures to the post-deployment curriculum to address the “problem”.

Now the Star is not known for the high standards of its reporting, especially when it comes to matters military.

But still.

A bunch of young men want to release some tension after six months of hard  work - need we remind the dorks at the Star life threatening at that – and so they blow some cash getting drunk and enjoying the company of other willing young people. those that break the law get arrested and dealt with in the courts.

Where exactly is the problem in all this?

Well, where other than among or with the crowd who write this crap for the Star’s readers?

-srbp-

Another safari reporter bags small game

When you drop in, do a couple of quickie interviews and then head off again, you tend to miss the details.  The Globe is the latest vehicle for the safari reporter’s guide to something called Newfoundland.

There are some nuggets of gold in the story but they are inundated with the same old crap that’s been written a dozen times.  Gee, no one has ever called the province “The Rock” before or noted that economic diversification is a major goal.

There’s even the obligatory interview with  Danny who does his part to spread a few complete falsehoods (like the bit about “ a St. John's-heavy boom” being because half the population lives in or around the capital) and resurrect some foolishness  from the early days of his administration (the Stunnel is apparently one of his dreams).   BTW, note the curious – and continuing -  tendency to refer to the psychological state of the entire province and the psychological state of a single person as if they were interchangeable or the same thing.

Count on the locals who normally judge their own self-worth by what appears in the Globe to be feeling a bit buoyant initially. 

-srbp-

PUB pork snacks: the editorial view

The Saturday Telegram editorial makes good points about the recent pork appointment at the board of commissioners of public utilities, but it misses one key fact:

The provincial government actually started a hiring process for the public utilities board that should have resulted in merit-based appointments.

They decided to cancel the competition and revert to the old method of appointment.

The current administration actually started down the right road and then turned around and went back.

-srbp-

Takogo kak…

So what is it about northern strongmen, physical activity and their supposed political power?

Ya got yer Putin, the pecs and a swim in a Siberian lake…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or Hickey and…

the…

umm…

err…

shovel.

 

 

 

 

 

-srbp-

NALCO buys pot from Leprechaun, has one year to find black gold

The provincial government’s energy corporation will spend at least $20 million over the next year to drill exploration wells on three licenses near Parsons Pond.  The wells must be drilled within the next 12 months or so or the licenses will revert to the Crown.

NALCOR Energy acquired a 67% interest in the venture for slightly more than CDN$500,000; that represents about 85% of the interest previously held by Calgary-based Leprechaun Resources. The remainder is split among a group of small private sector companies:  Leprechaun Resources, Deer Lake Oil and Gas, InvestCan and Vulcan Minerals.  The only changes in the interests held by each company appears to be with the Leprechaun portion.

Leprechaun tried to raise capital for the venture last year through a public share offering.  Evidently that offering didn’t attract as much attention as expected. It appears that the provincial government’s energy corporation stepped in to salvage the project. 

Vulcan and InvestCan are also partnered on a separate venture in the Bay St. George region.  The drilling program on the Robinsons No. 1 is planned to finish this year at at depth of 3600 metres.  Earlier this year, Vulcan drilled two wells in the shallow Flat Bay deposit, both of which showed oil.

In mid July 2009, the provincial environment department notified Leprechaun that its application for an access road at Parsons Pond would require an Environmental Preview Report.

-srbp-

Devil in the details Update: From Moira Baird’s excellent Telegram story:

1. Expiry date on the existing licenses:  February 1, 2010. That’s two tight a time frame to get three holes spudded and assessed.

2.  Drilling as early as September:  Using what rig?  If NALCO doesn’t have one already lined up and on site, they will have to bring one in from as far away as Alberta or the Gulf Of Mexico.  Good luck with that.  The best prospect would be to use the rig Vulcasn currently is using on Robinsons No. 1.  Availability late fall or early winter.

3.  Friends in high places:  NALCO’s Jim Keating on the possibility of getting an extension on the licenses:  “I believe, if required, we'll be able to seek an extension for the licences to make sure that ... we optimize the best results for the people of the province and our partners.”

Can you say “unfair advantage”, boys and girls?

4. Which other companies:  “[NALCO boss Ed] Martin said Nalcor has been assessing the west coast for the past two years and had also been approached by some of the exploration companies.”

Okay.  Which ones and for what properties?

We know about Leprechaun, which has former cabinet minister Paul Shelley in key positions.  How about Deer Lake Oil and Gas with former Peckford aide Cabot Martin at the helm?

Those would be the most likely choices and they might also explain why Leprechaun effectively got what looks more like a government bailout than a farm-in. 

After all, if Leprechaun had the cash to do the drilling program, it wouldn’t have sold out to NALCO or anyone else.  And if all Leprechaun had needed was an easy extension of the license to get the job done, they also wouldn’t have sold out such a large stake to NALCO.

Nope, license extensions are only easy if you’ve got connections and NALCO is connected all the way to the top.

5.  Pull the other one:  $14 million out of a total of $20 million?  The drilling program was estimated to cost $26 million, not 14.  Where’d the rest of the cost go?

Counterpointing

Of course pumping out a raft of good news, even if it is recycled for the most part, does help to offset the latest employment figures.

There are over 6,000 not working in July 2009 in Newfoundland and Labrador who were working full-time in the same month last year.  There are actually 7200 fewer full-time workers year over year but a slight gain in part-time employment shaved a bit off the net employment picture.

You won’t see much reporting of the jobs stats in Newfoundland and Labrador, but you will see plenty of space given to the “joy, joy” stuff.

-srbp-

You know its polling season

1.  An announcement about fibre-optic something or other.

2.  An announcement about energy something or other.

3.  Money for road paving, announced again and again.

There must be some really intense concern on the 8th that the public mood needs a lot of extra help to be happy for the pollsters this summer.

-srbp-

The longest, slowest good-bye in political history

For those who don’t know, the Council of the Federation isn’t another Star Trek convention.  It’s the new name for the meetings where all Canadian premiers get together and talk about stuff.

Only a few years ago it was one of the most important thing on the go, at least for one premier.

Now, suddenly, things like protecting the environment, fixing employment insurance and rebuilding the economy are not so important. Some unspecified office business is.

Maybe this is another step in the long, slow, good-bye announced in 2006.

-srbp-

Pork appointment at PUB

Another one of the Tory faithful has gone to his reward as a full-time commissioner of public utilities.

Jim Oxford will start work on September 9th.

Regular readers will note that just before the last provincial election the governing Conservatives announced a public competition for both the chair and commissioners jobs.  They collected a few resumes but then scrapped the whole idea shortly afterward.

The Public Service Commission, the crowd that supposedly ran the competition, refused to provide any substantive information to your humble e-scribbler when he inquired about the whole mess last year. They would confirm a competition had started but beyond that, there was nothing but stony silence.

The absence of a genuinely impartial process for selecting commissioners might be the reason why the minister making Oxford’s appointment had to go to the lengths of pointing out that the public utilities board is an independent body.

Either that or Tom Marshall was sensitive to the fact that Oxford was not only a career public servant in Mount Pearl but the guy who managed the Tory party finances since the year A.D. Naught. 

Oxford joins Andy Wells, the chairman appointed last year.

-srbp-

Real Leaders Shovel It, apparently

There’s been a silly exchange of letters to the editor the past couple of weeks between a fellow named Matthew Pike and the John Hickey.  Hickey took time out from shovelling pavement to shovelling something else in response to a letter from Pike.

The whole thing is silly because Pike started out by kicking Hickey over the foolish government position on the Goose Bay airbase.  It’s pretty silly for Pike to try and hold Hickey to account for a position which  is based on holding John Hickey’s federal political buddies to a promise anyone with half a clue knew was total bullshit when it was uttered.  Hickey campaigned for the federal Connies a couple of times  while the federal Connies were running hard on the bullshit promise of a battalion of soldiers for Goose Bay. Now he is slagging them off for not delivering.  Pike was poking Hickey for supposedly not doing more to push for bullshit.

Anyway, the exchange got sillier considering that the best come-back Hickey could toss at Pike is that Pike is a staffer at the provincial Liberal Party office.  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn’t.  It’s really irrelevant given the inherent foolishness of Hickey’s position on Goose Bay.  That’s also really not much of a point coming from a cabinet minister in a party which relies so heavily on plants in the media. 

Enter Shannon Tobin. 

Tobin decided to dip his oar into the exchange this week in a letter the editor thankfully decided to leave off the newspapers website.  He didn’t point out the obvious.  Instead he decided to back Hickey.  After starting out with a couple of paragraphs based entirely on Pike’s employment status, Tobin drops this wet kiss:

Now I am proud to state that I support the Progressive Conservative party of Newfoundland and Labrador mainly because I know that the PC party has and continues to show a lot more respect towards Labrador than the Liberals ever did.

After accusing someone else of partisanship, Tobin tosses his own partisan affiliation on the table in such glowing – and entirely irrelevant - terms.  The rest of the letter continues the unqualified partisan praise for Hickey  - nothing on the Goose Bay base issue itself, by the by  - before finishing with the assurance from Tobin that  “the view from Lake Melville with John Hickey as our MHA is a bright and magnificent one.”

Takogo kak Hickey:  There’s something about a man in hard hat and safety vest, apparently.  In a letter to The Labradorian, Shannon Tobin credits Hickey with bringing benefits to central Labrador: “… including the fact that we finally will have some  much needed pavement placed on the TLH…it is quite clear that John Hickey is a real leader and there isn’t any need for a change.”

Tobin’s letter is such an over-the-top love letter to John Hickey’s political backside one can easily conclude one of two things:  either Tobin is applying for a job in Hickey’s office via The Labradorian.  Or he’s been applying already but has had no luck in the hunt for Hickey-related work thus far. 

Now of course, there’s no reason to doubt Tobin’s sincerity. He likely believes every partisan word of what he wrote  but, in the ordinary course, one does not usually see even the most blind of congenitally blind partisans weighing in to an essentially trivial bun fight between two other partisans unless there is something else going on.

About the only thing Tobin wrote which likely reflected the views of the majority came in his second sentence:  “I am a little displeased that some would take advantage of this option [writing a letter to the editor] for seemingly political motives.” 

They likely find letters like Tobin’s more than a little displeasing.

-srbp-

Only NL GM dealer affected by cuts closes doors

Clarenville’s Decker Motors is the only General Motors dealership in Newfoundland and Labrador affected by the company’s cuts to dealerships.

The company closed its doors last week after 47 years in business.

-srbp-

What we pay him the big bucks for…

Labrador affairs minister John Hickey vows to pave roads in Labrador s’posin’ he’s got to do it himself, one shovel full at a time.

Many people wonder what Hickey does in his portfolio.

Now they know.

Nit-picky Update:  Okay.  So he writes letters to the editor of the local weekly too.

And issues inadvertently funny “news” releases.

Oh yeah…and he once sued former Premier Roger Grimes for defamation for something Danny Williams actually said.

Whatever happened to that law suit anyway?

 

-srbp-

How Irish we aren’t: airline version

So how come, with news of a new airline serving St. John’s, none of the locals have suggested trying to bring Ryanair to Newfoundland?

Stranded passengers.

Shagged-up check-in that causes some serious security issues.

An airline boss who muses about cutting the number of lavatories per aircraft to one AND charging to use it, or about imposing a fat tax on passengers and then basically tells disgruntled passengers to feck off.

For a crowd that spend most of their time bitching about travel to and from the island, Ryanair and Michael O’Leary would seem the perfect match.

 

-srbp-

Dear Krista…

It’s pronounced “aitch”.

Not “hay-tch”.

Once is fine, but hearing it every time the term “H1N1” turns up in a newscast the mispronunciation grates on the nerves.

Just thought we’d sort that out before someone slips minestrone into a script.

-srbp-

Canadian Press and CBC desperately need online fact checker

Someone needs to start doing some fact checking on stories posted on CBC’s web site.

A Canadian Press story on a Russian Proton K rocket contains this claim:

The Proton-K re-entry was reminiscent of a 2005 incident, when a U.S. military rocket splashed down in the vicinity of the Hibernia oil platform, on Newfoundland's Grand Banks, shortly after its launch from Florida.

The planned launch of the Titan IV B-30 rocket prompted Premier Danny Williams to order an evacuation of several offshore-oil platforms.

But the order was soon rescinded when American air force officials assured Ottawa the risks were small and the rocket would be destroyed if it veered off course.

None of it happened.

1.  Danny Williams didn’t order an evacuation of rigs – he doesn’t have the legal authority.

2.  Danny didn’t rescind the order not only because he didn’t give it  in the first place but because the evacuation  - or more accurately, a removal of non-essential personnel - went ahead. 

3.  The assurances from American authorities were the same all the way through the sorry-assed episode. The government reaction went through a few permutations mostly as people stopped making asses of themselves in public but nothing the Americans said produced any changes in the provincial government reaction.

4.  The Titan didn’t “splash down”.  The booster section broke up as it returned to Earth, as predicted. 

5.  The thing also wasn’t near the Hibernia rig unless more than 100 kilometres away is “near”.

Seriously, people.  This stuff happened within the past five years.  The facts are readily accessible on line.  It’s astonishing that CP would cock it up that badly and CBC would let the cock-up stand.

CP and CBC need a fact checker.

-srbp-

The junk science of ink blots

If some psychologists are worried that knowledge of the Rorschach test posted to the Internet has invalidated the ink blots as a diagnostic tool, then perhaps they might consider the entire test to be useless as a diagnostic tool in the first place.

After all, based on that little bit of psycho-logic, the test was invalidated from the moment the first book on Rorschach appeared in the first library.

Moreover, the test was rendered invalid in its application to the millions of people who have gone through psychology courses that discussed the whole concept of figuring out personality through what people say in response to blotches on bits of paper.

And of course, that also would mean the test would be automatically invalidated for use on anyone who has previously been “tested” using Rorschach or a similar method.

Rather than jumping all over some Canadian doctor who posted information on Wikipedia, all those psychologists who are getting their knickers in proverbial knots might just consider that their own argument suggests that their much-praised “test” is perhaps a bit more like phrenology than they’d care to admit.

In other words, Rorschach might just be utterly useless - at best  - or junk science at worst.   It would be far more like divination than diagnosis and definitely heading for the realm of intellectual fraud.

And all of that is derived from the argument advanced by the people supposedly defending Rorschach's method.

-srbp-

Historically challenged

Having the provincial government eliminate interest charges on provincial student loans is considered an ”unprecedented” initiative by…umm…the provincial government.

Students can borrow government-guaranteed money to finance their education.  That would run to the tens of thousands these days, but not having to pay any interest on that loan is considered something worth heralding from the roof-tops as a feat unequalled anywhere in the civilized universe.

But it wasn’t that long ago that going to university in Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t require any borrowing at all.

The former students writing this sort of knob-polish evidently aren’t history grads.

Either that or they are the people who teach google use over in InTRD.

-srbp-

Waiting for the news release…

when Newfoundland and Labrador’s population drops by one half of one percent would be like waiting for government to lower gas prices by half a cent.

Not gonna happen.

But government will raise prices by a little more than a quarter of a cent. Such is the sensitivity of the government gas pricing fixing scheme when the prices aren’t in the consumer interest.

And cabinet ministers will issue news releases when the population estimates go up by a comparably small amount.  Last summer, then-finance minister Tom Marshall issued a news release heralding a growth in population of a mere 171 people.

Thus far, not a peep on an estimated population drop of  264.

That could be because the growth in population – triggered as it was by the recession – could now turn once more in population decline as the western world comes out of a recession.

And while the current administration likes to claim credit for things they didn’t do – oil revenues and  increased population for two examples – they seldom like to take responsibility for stuff they do.

Funny that, iddn’t it?

-srbp-

Lemme get this straight…

The guy who liked to recycle expense claims (in one case three times) and who serves in an administration renowned for recycling announcements (in some cases as many as eight times) is criticising another politician for supposedly recycling announcements.

Oh yeah and to make it even funnier, this same guy campaigned not once but twice for the guys he now criticises and he’d-a-been out there a third and fourth time if his boss hadn’t told him he couldn’t.

Can you say “credibility gap”,  boys and girls?

Maybe he’d have been waving around a signed contract for the feds to help pave the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Speaking of HMV, where exactly is that lawsuit against Roger Grimes, John Hickey?  If memory serves, Hickey was suing Grimes for something Danny Williams actually said.

Now there’s a brilliant law suit for you.

By the by,  who is stunneder in that case:  the guy who gave the advice to sue or the guy who took it and wound up paying the bill out of his own pocket?

Tough call.

Oh yes, and this latest release recycling news release is itself recycled.

-srbp-

Random thoughts - squirrels

“Squirrels are the Devil’s oven mitts.”

That quote turns up in The Book of General Ignorance a marvelous collection of trivia, facts and myth busting that goes nicely with The Origins of the Specious.

It’s attributed to Miss Piggy  but there’s no sign of it anywhere on the Internet, even on Muppet fora.

Doesn’t matter who said;  it’s hysterically funny especially for those of us who find the critters a lot less cute and cuddly than they seem.

Not all squirrels are Miss Suzy, you see.

Changing the frame, at last

Premier Danny Williams may well have lived up to an election promise and brought the auditor general in to look at the books, but until then, not one single "honourable member" involved at the centre of the slimefest thought of taking a principled stand on the issue.

We’ve talked about frames before and that quote from the Saturday Telegram editorial shows just exactly how effective some frames can be in skewing the discussion of a topic.

That idea – that Danny Williams made an election promise and sent the auditor general to the House of Assembly – is one that the governing party and its supporters have pushed since the moment the Premier revealed the existence of the auditor general’s investigation.

It has survived despite countless column inches of news coverage and minutes of electronic reporting.  It has survived despite an extensive investigation by the province’s Chief Justice that shows the full detail of things.

But try and find one single sentence in the entire report by Chief Justice Derek Green that confirms anything even close to the claim that “Danny Williams…  brought the auditor general in to look at the books…”.

You won’t find such a sentence, though, because it never happened.

The second half of that editorial quote is also wrong.

Not one but three members of the House of Assembly “thought of taking a principled stand on the issue” of ethics and accountability in the House of Assembly.

In fact, the three – Danny Williams, Harvey Hodder and Ed Byrne – felt so strongly about the need for stricter financial controls that they held a news conference in order to unveil nearly two dozen commitments designed to address public distrust of politicians.

In the event, the three only got around to implementing about half their commitments, though,  and the ones related to the House of Assembly allowances only came about because there was no way to avoid them. 

The Telly editorial isn’t just satisfied to repeat the official frame;  the writer takes the time to add a myth or two of his or her own.   Take, for example, the view of the role played by the provincial government’s cheque-writer, otherwise known as the comptroller general:

The comptroller-general's office, which issued the cheques, unable to question any of them, no matter how peculiar.

That simply isn’t true, of course. One of the enduring mysteries of this entire affair is how the chief cheque-writer could issue cheques far in excess of maximum amounts that were well known to officials and yet at no point did he or his staff apparently raise any concerns. As Chief Justice Green notes in his third chapter:

During this era, the Comptroller General had full access to all financial documentation in respect of the disbursement of public funds from the accounts of the legislature. Internal audit and compliance staff of the Comptroller General could review transactions of the House of Assembly and test for compliance with policies. In short, while the House and the IEC were understood to have the authority to make management and policy decisions, independent of Treasury Board or Cabinet, various elements of this overall financial control framework of government were deemed to apply to the House of Assembly.

Far from being unable to pose questions, the comptroller general had both the knowledge and the legal ability to ask questions about the chronic overspending.  He didn’t.  Nor did the auditor general raise any questions either even though he and his staff  had access to the same information available to the comptroller general. 

Both offices – the CG and the AG – produced annual reports on government spending and dutifully reported the overages.  Neither said so much as “boo”.  For 2004 and 2005, for example, both the AG and the CG issued the Public Accounts that showed the House accounts for members’ allowances out of whack by roughly a  million each year.  They never once noted that the budget presented the previous spring had claimed that the accounts were exactly on budget

The Telegram editorial illustrates the extent to which the frame applied to the House of Assembly scandal persists despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.  In other words, three years after the people of the province learned of the scandal and after a series of reports and court cases, there is still a marked preference in public comment for fiction over faction, for myth over reality. 

Until commentators reject the frame applied to the scandal three years ago, it will remain a political life unexamined.

-srbp-

Hydro Quebec intervenes on Lower Churchill

Hydro Quebec has taken a shot at the Lower Churchill project as part of the environmental review, saying the environmental documents do not contain the amount and the quality of information normally required within the framework of the environmental evaluation of major hydroelectric projects, according to le soleil.

The HQ submission said that unless deficiencies are corrected, the project shouldn’t be approved.  Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has until September to respond to the HQ submission, as part of the environmental review process for the project.

One of the issues highlighted by HQ was water resource management between the Churchill falls power plant and the Lower Churchill. 

That may be a valid objection and could be the reason why the provincial government made changes to the Electrical Power Control Act two years ago but still hasn’t implemented them.  Under the changes, two energy producers on the same river would have to come to an agreement to ensure both projects worked to the maximum.  In the absence of an agreement the province’s public utilities board could impose one.

But, the revisions are in limbo.  Incidentally, the only part of the province the section applies to would be the Churchill River.  It would have applied to any developments on the island but any potential issues there were eliminated when the provincial government wiped out most private sector electricity generation on the island with its December expropriation.

-srbp-

Paying not to produce electricity

A drop in electricity demand in North America will see Hydro Quebec paying some of its suppliers not to produce electricity in the next year, according to le devoir.

Selon les documents déposés devant la Régie par la société d'État, ses surplus d'approvisionnements s'établissent à 11,3 TWh pour l'année prochaine. Le chiffre inclut les volumes d'énergie différés par le passé. De ce volume important, Hydro-Québec souhaite désormais soustraire les 4,3 TWh de la centrale de Bécancour. «Notre contrat avec TCE nous permet de payer pour la non-livraison d'électricité», a commenté Guy l'Italien, porte-parole d'Hydro-Québec. «Cette option nous coûte, dans le contexte actuel, moins cher que si nous décidions de prendre possession de l'électricité pour la revendre sur le marché.» La Société n'a pas été en mesure hier d'indiquer si des clauses similaires étaient présentes dans ses contrats d'approvisionnement avec d'autres de ses fournisseurs.

HQ is looking to shutter a natural gas generator operated by TransCanada Energy and pay the company $250 million under the terms of the contract between the two companies.

In the near term, HQ may also wind up with a significant surplus of generating capacity as it looks to bring the La Romaine and other projects on stream.  HQ will go ahead with the megaprojects since it has the capital and will look to recover its costs over a very long time span.

A drop in energy demand and competition from other electricity generators will likely also lessen the chances the provincial government’s cherished Lower Churchill project will find favourable capital arrangements.  The $6.0 to $9.0 billion project remains chronically about two to three years behind schedule in its most recent iteration. 

The project also doesn’t have a single customer to date outside consumers on the island portion of province.  They would be – in effect – forced to subsidise the massive project by virtue of having an infeed line strung to the Avalon peninsula even though demand on the island could be met through other less costly means.   Other than that, there are no signed power purchase agreements.

Interestingly, as demand has lessened, interest in the project has increased, particularly within the Maritime provinces.  Federal cabinet minister Peter Mackay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently toured the proposed dam sites by helicopter.

Of course, weakening demand and a proponent jammed up for cash and pushed along by its own hyper-torqued rhetoric might create a much better circumstance for energy buyers looking to strike a favourable long term deal.  That’s very similar to the situation that led Brinco to sign a disastrous deal with Hydro Quebec in 1969, with the backing of the provincial government.

-srbp-

h/t to Claude Boucher.

An unhealthy trend

In a province with a notoriously underdeveloped private sector,  the news of a manufacturing venture in Argentia should be bringing a lot more voices of concern than it likely will.

That’s because the metal fabrication facility will be a joint venture of JV Driver, D.F. Barnes Group and the provincial government. 

Out of a total estimated cost of $10 million, the provincial government is tossing in $4.0 million. And of that amount fully half is going to purchase specialized equipment for welding pressure vessels as well as training employees.

In other words, the provincial government is taking on the capital costs and the human resource costs for two private sector companies of the start-up venture. 

Now it’s not like these sorts of government-backed ventures have a spectacular history of success in Newfoundland and Labrador, and that history spans a half century and more.  Typically, the ventures that need such massive transfusions of public money are marginal at best or  - even worse - unthinkable without it. 

Places that have a market demand and industrial sectors where there is demand usually can attract sufficient private sector investment to make a go of things without government involvement to the tune of 40% of project cost and with government absorbing the cost of training and capital equipment purchases. 

If you look at the news release, there’s no sign this new venture has any contracts already aside from whatever demand might come from local offshore projects.  That might point to another issue, namely that this pressure vessel fabrication plant is competing with well-established players globally that are considerably closer to customer locations than Newfoundland and Labrador.   The existing companies would also have the competitive advantage of experience and a proven track-record for delivery.

Taken altogether, those points suggest it might be difficult to break into the pressure vessel market successfully without using government subsidy as a way of lowering costs.

This is not the first example of government subsidized industry in this province and, if the current administration’s policies are any clue, it won’t be the last.  What this project indicates is that government has decisively abandoned the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan. 

That plan, you may recall was built on the twin ideas of lower to non-existent government subsidy on the one hand and on the other a focus on industries where Newfoundland and Labrador offered an obvious competitive advantage.  The idea was to create businesses that were sustainable in the long-haul in a global economy without government financial support.

What is now appearing more obviously is that the provincial government’s industrial development policy is a throw-back to the rubber boot and eyeglass factories  of the Smallwood era and the 1980s vintage cucumber grow-ops. 

Plus ca change, it would seem, or perhaps res ipsa loquitur:

"In particular, My Government will create sources of capital to enable businesses to establish, grow, diversify, and prosper."

There are also white tips poking through the sand, portents of the bleached bones of Latvian dinosaurs from the days when another government brought back little more from its wanderings than the crushing weight of debt. It is not for government to create sources of private sector capital out of public money, Premier Williams. One shudders at what the winds of time will expose of that seemingly Smallwoodian tyrannosaur.

After years of looking at the Irish and Icelandic models, the province’s industrial policy has apparently reverted to its original Latvian root.

-srbp-

When small could mean big

As renewNewEngland.com reports, the Maine state legislature recently passed an initiative designed to encourage small, locally-owned green energy generation concepts. The bill was signed into law on June 26.

The new law establishes a six-year pilot program to encourage the development of community-based renewable energy in Maine, defined as a majority locally-owned facility that generates electricity from an eligible renewable resource.  The pilot program has an overall program cap of 50 MW, 10 MW of which is reserved at the outset for projects that have a generating capacity under 100 kW or are located in the service territory of a consumer-owned utility.  To be eligible for the program, renewable energy projects must (1) have a generating capacity of 10 MW or less, (2) secure a resolution of support from their local community (projects with a capacity of less than 100 kW are exempt from this requirement), (3) be connected to the grid, and (4) have an in-service date of September 1, 2009 or later.

This has all the hallmarks of a growing trend south of the border to focus on private sector development of small energy developments.  It’s based on the belief – apparently -  that small is not only less harmful to the environment but that local initiative and local capital can successfully combine to meet a portion of the nation’s energy needs.  The approach is supposed to create jobs and, since it is handled by the private sector and costs are relatively small, stimulate the growth of local businesses.

Compare that to the official philosophy in Newfoundland and Labrador that is touting an energy megaproject that thus far has no customers outside the northeast Avalon peninsula.  Incidentally, even your humble e-scribbler’s sister missed the point that the infeed the provincial government is trying to ram through Gros Morne is designed to bring power to townies, not Yanks. 

There is no plan in public at this point to extend any power lines south of the island of Newfoundland.  There likely won’t be if customers can’t be found for the juice.  Anyone who has read any part of the environmental review documents for the infeed to Soldiers Pond will understand that the thing is justified entirely on a supposed power shortfall on the island within the next decade. 

They plan to meet that supposed need with Lower Churchill power at a cost of $6.0 to $9.0 billion.  As the 2007  energy plan puts it:

This demand is forecast to grow at a fairly steady, moderate pace over the next several years. This would result in a need for new sources of supply on the Island prior to 2015, and later in Labrador.  As a result, we plan to develop the Lower Churchill project, which will include  a transmission link between Labrador and the Island.

Anyone reading the environmental impact documents will also realise that the provincial government’s energy company has effectively ignored the potential for small hydro developments or other small electricity projects to meet local need.  Even when an energy corporation official talks about wind power, it is obvious the corporation is fixated on the export market.  And when they think exports, big is all they seem to see.

There’s been a moratorium on small hydro projects in the province since the late 1990s.  While the provincial government committed two years ago to make a decision on the moratorium this year, odds are the decision won’t be made on time.  Even if it is made, the energy plan links the Lower Churchill and alternative sources for the island in an “either/or” proposition.  If the government proceeds with the Lower Churchill, alternatives are dead issues.  If the Lower Churchill dies, then small generators are the way to go.

As for private sector capital investment,  you only have to consider that one of the effects of the expropriation bill last December to see the official attitude to the private sector.  While everyone fixated on Abitibi, the expropriation also included seizing control of just exactly the kinds of small hydro that Maine and others are encouraging and hand them over to the provincial government’s energy corporation.  Star Lake  - totally unrelated to the Abitibi mill - was one of the casualties of the expropriation, as was the Exploits River partnership, a joint venture between Abitibi and locally-based Fortis. 

If that doesn’t convince you, consider that in the event small hydro projects go ahead, the energy plans mandates that only the provincial government energy corporation will be involved:

If the Provincial Government lifts the moratorium, it will institute a policy that the Energy Corporation will control and coordinate the development of small hydro projects that meet economic thresholds and are viable for an isolated island system.

And it’s not like the energy corporation has been very efficient at exploring alternatives to its current obsession with megaprojects.  The earliest proposals for wind energy farms on the island turned up over a decade ago. However, it took another six years for a small project to start on an isolated island and another  seven years for a report to examine the issues involved in wind generation and another two years after that before the first larger demonstration project started.

If Newfoundland and Labrador followed the approach of other jurisdictions, the people of the province could reaping the big economic and environmental benefits of innovative, small energy generation.

Unfortunately, the provincial government’s energy plan is fixated on government monopoly and megaprojects. The only things big in that are costs and - of course - project delays.

The Lower Churchill was supposed to start in 2009.  By the latest estimates, the earliest it could start construction is after 2011.

-srbp-

The Wookey Hole Witch

Wookey Hole Caves, near the village of Wookey, Somerset held a competition recently for the post of witch at the local tourist attraction.

Contestants had 60 seconds to make their pitch in front of a panel.  Carole Bohanan, a real estate agent, bested 400 or so others and walked off with the job. As the resident witch, Carole will work under the name Carla Calamity. 

The job comes with an annual stipend of 50,000 pounds sterling.

Legend has it that an old woman did once live there, with her dogs and her goats, her spells making life miserable for the locals.

Eventually, a monk from Glastonbury was sent for and Father Bernard, together with his bible and a candle, went in to see if he could sort the situation out

He failed. The witch ran off into the depths of the cavern, cursing and screaming.

So the monk scooped up some water from the cave, blessed it and threw it at the witch. She and her dog were turned to stone and can still be seen in the cave today.

Now given a choice, something suggests that people on the west coast of Newfoundland might prefer shelling out a few hundred thousand annually for a local Carla.  If nothing else, she’d be a much better draw than say some massive steel erections in a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Don’t think so?

Just take a gander at the winner.

-srbp-

Fisheries activist passes away

Father Des McGrath, the Roman Catholic priest who was instrumental in the drive to organize the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union has passed away at age 74.

McGrath was found dead in his garage by police.

Born in Corner Brook in 1935, McGrath was ordained in 1961.  in 1969, McGrath and Richard Cashin helped fisherman organize the Northern Fisherman’s Union.  It amalgamated with the Canadian Food and Allied Workers Union in 1970 to form the predecessor of the FFAW.  Cashin served a president. 

McGrath held no union office but remained an advocate for fisheries union for the remainder of his life.

-srbp-

Why…

1.  Does Ron Ellsworth, wannabe mayor, keep referring to himself in the plural as in “we” received information or when “we” got into politics when he is referring to himself, singularly and personally?

The “we”, something he copied from his model’s speaking pattern along with referring to things as this “piece” or that “piece”, sounds pompous, arrogant or – worse – deranged.  [word replaced;  see note below]

And while we are at it, why…

2.  would Ron Ellsworth, wannabe mayor, bring up optional blind trusts for city councillors when there are other ethics issues he’s clearly ignoring.

Like campaign finance reform.

Far better for people to know which monied interests in town are backing candidates than giving councillors the option of putting their interests at arms length.

But in the spirit of disclosure and accountability, maybe Ron could disclose publicly his own local business interests for starters and a complete accounting of his campaign donations and expenses for the past two elections.

We are not talking about the ones required by the laughable city election rules.  We are talking about full and complete disclosure using – for example – the federal campaign spending and reporting rules.

Ellsworth has made a rod to beat his own back, but his rival for the mayor’s chair – Doc O’Keefe  - isn’t likely politically swift enough to use it. 

Others might not be.

-srbp-

Change update:  There are two parts of that post that require correction, elaboration and clarification.

The first is the use of the word “mentor” in reference to Ellsworth.  That wasn’t the right word since it could suggest a conscious collaboration by both parties. The word “model” is better since it merely suggests what seems to be obvious, namely that Ellsworth is modelling himself on a certain well-known politician.

The second is to replace the words “but Doc is too stunned to use it, most likely”.  Stunned is a common enough local word and while that phrase would come across to someone who got the point using dialect, the potential for misunderstanding is too great to leave it alone.

The phrase could be taken the wrong way so best to change it to one that more accurately reflects the meaning intended:

As it now reads, the sentence should convey the point that while Ellsworth has essentially handed his rival with a political rod to beat him about the head with, Ellsworth’s rival hasn’t displayed the sort of political savvy and moxie – the political swiftness – to capitalize on his opponent’s blunder.

Now for those who think your humble e-scribbler got calls, be assured that there were none.  Also be assured that Doc’s crowd won’t like the revised version any better than the one before.  Nor will Ellsworth and his crowd.

This just makes plain what was meant.