Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 3 – ministerial statement version

Things got pretty bad when the Greenhouse was accused of dumping cukes on the Maritime market. The following is the ext of a statement by Premier Brian Peckford in the House of Assembly as part of an effort to address many of the criticisms and complaints which emerged by the spring of 1988.

Ministerial Statement by the Honorable A. Brian Peckford
Tuesday, May 24, 1988

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is urgently necessary to address this Honorable House on a matter of great importance. It has been suggested for several days now that this Government and Newfoundland Enviroponics Limited has been engaged i some sort of insidious plot to take over Maritime cucumber markets through a systematic dumping effort aimed at bankrupting the Maritime greenhouse industry.

Mr. Speaker, there is not now nor has there ever been any such plan. Such a plan would be totally inconsistent with the policy positions of this Government which have been to strengthen the free flow of goods and services between Provinces [sic] in a fair and open manner.
Newfoundland Enviroponics has absolutely no intention of unfairly competing in any market place. Indeed, the facts are just the opposite.

Newfoundland Enviroponics entered the Maritime marketplace on a fair and reasonable basis. It is probably the most cost-efficient producer in Canada today and we make no apologies for that. As well, it is producing product that is herbicide and pesticide free and is of the highest possible quality. We make no apologies for this either.

Newfoundland Enviroponics can and will compete on that basis. The fact, Mr. Speaker, is that Newfoundland Enviroponics has done nothing wrong. It is not a case of Government subsidy competing with private enterprise.

Newfoundland Enviroponics is financed on a business-like basis and will have to pay its own way. It is no more subsidized by Government then are greenhouse growers or for that matter any other agricultural producer in this country.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we must consider the facts. In an interview published in the May 21 edition of the Globe and Mail, the vice-president of Clover Produce in Halifax indicated that he would be making up the shortfall caused by cancelling orders with Newfoundland Enviroponics by purchasing from Ontario producers at lower prices.

Does this sound like a dumping situation or a situation in which local Maritime growers are being unfairly competed with?

The answer is clearly no.

Mr. Speaker, I feel it is important that the record be set straight on this issue. I would like to quote from Hansard of May 20 and the statement of the Honourable the Minister of Rural, Agricultural and Northern Development:

“Mr. Speaker, it is not the government's intention, or Newfoundland Enviroponic's intention to deliberately put anybody out of business. It is not our deliberate intention to dump so that we can up prices afterwards. It is our deliberate intention to be very, very aggressive in the marketplace and to make sure that we are there in a price competitive situation. We are not going to be competitive in a quality situation because nobody can compete with us on quality. There is nobody who produces a cucumber like we do, that is herbicide and pesticide free, packed fresh and gets to the market as quickly as ours can. On quality we have no concern at all because we are going to be the best by far in the marketplace. When it comes to price, we are going to compete in any marketplace we choose to be in and we are going to do very, very well in those marketplaces.''

Mr. Speaker, not withstanding what I have just said, if there has been any misunderstanding created through a misinterpretation of the Honorable Minister's comments, I feel compelled to apologize. My apologizes go to the local Maritime growers, to the Governments of our sister provinces, to the consuming public, and, perhaps most importantly, to the employees of Newfoundland Enviroponics. They are doing their best to create a successful enterprise. This Government will be making appropriate contacts over the next day or two with neighbouring governments and others to reassure them on these points and to hopefully repair some of the damage which has been done.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of other related misconceptions about this project and the occurrences of the past few days which need to be cleared up.

First of all, Newfoundland Enviroponics has not, as I stated earlier, been dumping produce on the Nova Scotia market. Any suggestion to the contrary is totally without foundation.

Newfoundland Enviroponics has not sold produce outside of this Province at any time at a price lower that it was then offering to its local customers.

Second, there has been discussion about smaller cucumbers being produced by Newfoundland Enviroponics. For the record, Newfoundland Enviroponics is currently producing a variety of grades of cucumbers to cater to the preferences of its customers. These different grades are characterized by different sizes and are packaged and designated as such. The different sizes of product command different prices.

To put it simply, Newfoundland Enviroponics sells the smaller cucumbers for less than the larger ones and of course this is reflected to a degree in the ultimate retail price. It must be reiterated, however, that the retailer controls the final price and therefore, it is difficult to make generalizations about pricing issues.

Third, it has been suggested that Newfoundland Enviroponics is marketing its produce at prices significantly less than its costs. This appears to stem from information released some time ago which suggested that at output levels in the order of seven million pounds annually, Newfoundland Enviroponics would require average prices in the order of $1.08 per pound to be viable. The suggestion seems to be that if Newfoundland Enviroponics sell at prices lower than $1.08 per pound it is dumping.

Again this is simply not the case. To begin with, the $1.08 was clearly an average price. We are entering the season of the year when prices in produce markets will be at their lowest. Clearly Newfoundland Enviroponics has to compete in these produce markets and price is certainly a primary criteria. It also has to be remembered that Newfoundland Enviroponics has to break into new markets. It is an accepted business practice to offer some price incentives to establish new products.

Is this dumping? I think not. I would also add that the $1.08 figure was preliminary and premised on annual output of about seven million pounds. Newfoundland Enviroponics is currently producing at rates which are far in excess of our original projections. This allows Newfoundland Enviroponics as an extremely efficient, low-cost producer, to charge lower prices. The $1.08 figure has absolutely no relevance in this type of environment.

Mr. Speaker, I think all Honourable Members need to reflect on this situation. My administration believes that this venture can succeed but it has to be given a chance to succeed. It has to be given a chance to operate without its every business transaction being subjected to microscopic scrutiny by the media and in this Honourable House.

Newfoundland Enviroponics has to compete in the market place; it can and it will. However, we are subjecting this business to untenable pressures which severely hamper its ability to compete. Its suppliers, its customers and its potential customers are constantly being harassed. It makes it difficult to be a supplier or a customer of Newfoundland Enviroponics because of the attention one gets.

This is patently unfair.

Mr. Sprung himself has been called a crook, a liar and a cheat. I have found him to be an honourable, hard-working man, who has perfected a technology significantly ahead of anything else in the horticultural world today. Time will prove this to be correct.

My administration has taken a great deal of criticism over our decision to invest public funds in this project and over the so-called secrecy which surrounds it. During my nine years as Premier of this Province I can recall no other Government decision about which more information has been made available to the public.

Some, however, will not be satisfied until we totally destroy the ability of Newfoundland Enviroponics to compete in the market place.

Mr. Speaker, Government has therefore decided that we will make no further comment on day-to-day operational and marketing decisions of Newfoundland Enviroponics. A Board of Directors is in place and it has our confidence. We will of course continue to report to this Honourable House and to the people of the Province on a regular basis on factual occurrences such as production levels and financial performance, but we are going to give the management of Newfoundland Enviroponics the opportunity to run this business as any other and an opportunity to compete on a fair and even basis in the market place.

My administration takes full responsibility for the decision to invest public funds in this project, just as we have done in numerous other business enterprises in this Province. My administration will also answer criticism directed at this decision.

However, I implore this Honourable House and members of the media to focus their criticisms on the Government and to allow Newfoundland Enviroponics a fair chance to succeed. I would remind Honourable Members that there are 200 people employed in full time jobs at Newfoundland Enviroponics; people who would be unemployed were it not for this project; people who will be unemployed again if it fails.

Surely we owe them the opportunity to make this project a success.

They will take no political satisfaction from its failure.

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Great Moments in Political Philosophy

 

“…the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time.”

Homer J. Simpson

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Freedom from information: a symptom of ponocchiosis

That would be an inability to recognise realise that what one is saying is humourous because it contradicts the claim:

Oram said verbal briefings aren't an attempt to avoid putting anything in writing.

He said he can't remember if he was supplied with written briefing documents when he took over the business department in 2007.

But of course, not having any written briefing notes is exactly intended to avoid having anything in writing.  That way, there is nothing to contradict cabinet minister Paul Oram’s faulty memory.  In this instance, Oram cannot remember what he did less than two years ago in taking on the single most important job of his working life.  His mind is a complete blank slate.

Yet…

He would have us believe  - despite having an evidently sieve-like memory - he can successfully administer $2.6 billion in public money and account for his actions when needed.

Paul Oram is not alone.  Joan Burke and likely most of their cabinet colleagues  - update:  the Aural Majority - have adopted the paperless office approach.  The tendency to a paperless ministry is nothing new nor is it confined to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Donald Savoie, among others, has documented the trend and they have also firmly fixed the reason: avoiding accountability.

In itself, that’s a pretty dramatic development for a government that sought office in 2003 on a platform that included accountability and transparency as a cornerstone.   It would also pretty much make a mockery of former deputy minister Doug House’s claim in 2005 that the “Williams government is exceptional in the extent to which its electoral platform, Our Blueprint for the Future (commonly referred to as "the Blue Book") is actually being adhered to in implementing government policies.”

Now, one of the possibilities unexplored by either CBC or The Telegram – both have covered this same issue based on separate open records requests – is that the response from government is actually not completely in accord with the facts.  One of the other tendencies noted over the past couple of years is for government officials to respond to certain access to information requests in a way which is false.

For example, the now infamous case of the purple files, every knows that purple files exist.  The person requesting them saw them.  Both premier and an official of his office have confirmed they exist.  Yet, the official written response was that there were no such records. 

In other instances, officials have invented a category of documents simply to avoid releasing them.

Now at this point, no reasonable person in the province should need convincing that a problem exists and that it needs a solution.  We don’t need to see another story of another cabinet who claims to have a decent memory but who mysteriously can’t recall anything when asked about it.

The only real question is what, if anything, the current administration will do to correct the situation.

They started out with a platform that would have put this province in the forefront of public accountability, openness and government accessibility.  Where they’ve wound up is significantly less accountable, less open and far less accessible to voters than the government they attacked in 2003 with their pledge of 23 positive actions.

The only question right now is:  will they do what they promised six years ago?

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Women in Arms

From New York Times two videos on the experience of women serving in the American military side by side with men.

The attitude toward fraternization has changed dramatically within the American military.  The army now issues oral contraception to female soldiers and condoms are regularly available.  In some instances husbands and wives are working together at the same post and share quarters.

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Route around park shorter

Contrary to claims by project supporters going around the province’s second UNESCO World Heritage site at Gros Morne would produce a shorter transmission line to bring  Lower Churchill power to St. John’s than going through it.

Since the Premier’s estimated cost of the jog around ($100 million) was pulled out of his ass – by his own admission – then perhaps there is good reason to believe it too is a gross exaggeration of the actual cost of running a power line from Labrador to the townies.

So if the line is both shorter and (as it turns out) cheaper around the park, why the instance on risking the park's UNESCO World Heritage site status?

Maybe it’s because the crowd at NALCO just dusted off their old plan – done before the park existed – and never bothered to think it through.

How encouraging that thought is.

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Towns left off branch lines, no plan from gov’t to help

Apparently, there are many towns in Newfoundland that will not be receiving high speed internet service.

This despite a $10 million plus investment dating back to 2005  - not 2008 as the Telly states – which was premised, in part, on bringing the marvels of modern technology to many parts of the province that otherwise wouldn’t receive them.

As for those left out of government’s scheme for Internet railway branch lines, the province’s innovation minister has an innovative solution:  maybe somebody else will invent something to fix their problem and then government can take another look at it.  But apparently government has no plans to deal with them now:

"In two or three years' time, there might be new communications or there might be a new initiative in government to try and help those people.”

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Dipper doodles: NL First meets the (N)DP

Scanning the list of resolution at this weekend’s (N)DP convention – the “New” is optional -  someone from Newfoundland and Labrador might find it all very curious.

There’s a resolution to reorganize the party’s national executive board.

The resolution provides for two seats representing all of Atlantic Canada.

Four provinces:  two seats.  Ontario gets two seats on its own as do Quebec and British Columbia.  But according to the (N)DP,  seven of the 10 provinces in the country have to be bundled together in clumps to equal the other three provinces on their own.

The very attitude so many Canadians have fought against for decades is enshrined as (N)DP national policy in how the party governs itself.  The Liberals and the Conservatives both have representation on their national executives by province. 

Good enough for Grits and Connies.

But not for Dippers.

This must not be sitting well with such long-standing and hard core (N)DP types as Ryan Cleary, he of the Newfoundland and Labrador uber alles wing of the party.

Cleary has set as his goal improving the “long-term status of Newfoundland and Labrador” so it must be tough having to start by trying to sort out the headspace of his fellow (New) Democrats on top of all his other challenges.

Now almost certainly some irked Dipper will point out that there is representation for each province on the national council.

But take a look at the revised structure of that council.  Each province gets one member.  But where party membership is over 5,000 in that province, there’s another member.  And there’s another for province’s with more than 10,000 (N)DP members, and so on.  That sort of structure obviously favours more populous province’s like  - interestingly enough – Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.

The run-up to the next election could turn out to be really fascinating for political watchers, but not because the (N)DP can’t figure out what to call itself. 

Nope.  There could be a little war brewing between the party and one of its wannabe candidates.

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Quagmire update:  At this writing (1015 AM Eastern) The convention wound up moving two separate motions to refer the resolution back to committee to reconsider the representation issue for both the Prairie’s and Atlantic Canada.

How did this get out of committee in this state in the first place?

Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 2

Another view of the Peckford Pickle Palace, this time with some questions which proved to be prophetic.

Don't forget that at the time, supporters of the regime du jour accused journalists and other who questioned the wisdom of such schemes as being pessimistic and too negative to be worthy of any consideration.

It seems everything is being recycled these days including the Fanboy arguments.

 

“Peckford pummelled over greenhouse funding plan”

The Financial Post,  November 2, 1987

by Philip Mathias

 

Newfoundlanders are puzzled by Premier Brian Peckford's decision to commit $11.4 million in government funds to a huge experimental greenhouse.

Greenhouse experts are equally mystified by Peckford's loyalty to what many feel is a far-fetched and overpriced scheme. Even in Newfoundland, one government specialist advised against the scheme.

The province's media and opposition parties are pounding Peckford, and cucumber jokes have multiplied. The $18.4-million Newfoundland Environponics Ltd. project is a 6.4-acre greenhouse being built outside St. John's. Plants will be grown hydroponically on racks - in other words, without soil, in a slow-moving nutrient solution.

The greenhouse, due to start up this month, is meant to make Newfoundland self-sufficient in cucumbers and tomatoes, which are now mostly imported.

The joint owners are the province and Philip Sprung, who also owns a Calgary company that manufactures marquees. Sprung is said to be putting $4 million of cash and loan guarantees into the St. John's project.

Sprung is a self-educated horticulturalist who says he has the key to revolutionary greenhouse technology. The big question is whether he is far ahead of conventional horticulture, or badly out of step with it.

Among Sprung's early ventures was a greenhouse in Calgary. It suffered, he says, from hydrocarbon vapours rising out of the soil, which had been underneath an old oil refinery.

Sprung offered to relocate the greenhouse in Quebec and then on Prince Edward Island. Both provinces declined his request for funds. The project was also given the thumbs down by the National Research Council and the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. '

Sprung's next stop was Newfoundland. The province's agriculture branch wrote a critical report on the project.  Nonetheless, Sprung was welcomed by Peckford and his cabinet.

The provincial government has agreed to provide $3.5 million in equity (land and cash); a $7-million loan guarantee; and a $900,000 provincial sales tax rebate. The unit now being built in St. John's is Sprung's Calgary greenhouse transported holus-bolus to Newfoundland.

Peckford may soon face some tough questions:

• How does the premier justify the $18.4-million cost of the greenhouse? 

The most advanced greenhouses being built elsewhere, experts say, cost half what's being paid by Newfoundland.  The province could probably buy two proven, conventional greenhouses for the price of Sprung's one.

• Can the greenhouse achieve the phenomenal yields projected by Philip Sprung?

He has told the government it will produce seven million pounds of vegetables on 6.4 acres. This yield is 2 1/2 times the best commercial yields in Canada.

Sprung's secret is to pack his greenhouse with three times as many plants as a regular hydroponic model. A hot, humid, jungle-like environment is maintained constantly. Simple arithmetic says three times the plants equals three times the yield.

Horticultural experts say it's not that simple: Yields fall off sharply at high plant densities. Professor Andre Gosselin of Laval University says, ''Sprung's yields are biologically possible, but I doubt if he can get them.''

Professor Herman Tiessen of the University of Guelph adds that Sprung's projected yields are ''unrealistic.''  Sprung recently severed connections with a British ex-partner Soil-Less Cultivation Systems Ltd., which claims to be the technical and managerial brains behind the system.

Sprung is reported to be looking for a new manager. If one cannot be found who is versed in his unusual technique, yields may be lower than promised.

• -Can the greenhouse be economic at lower yields?

The cost of growing tomatoes at the highest yields obtained at research stations would be about $1.75 per lb., using Sprung's capital and labour inputs. The price of tomatoes in Newfoundland (less retail and wholesale markups) is $1.05-$1.45 per lb. In other words, the cost of Sprung's process seems to be far above probable selling prices.

Sprung claims his yields will be much higher than those achieved at research stations.

• Can Sprung maintain projected levels of employment?

The province has been promised the greenhouse will provide jobs for 150 people - more than three times the industry average for hydroponic greenhouses.  If yields turn out to be anything other than phenomenal, the economics would be improved by reducing employment levels to the industry norm (about 40 people for 6.4 acres).

That might raise questions about the wisdom of the Peckford government advancing $11.4 million for the project. Unemployment in Newfoundland is officially 18%, unofficially about 28%.

• If the greenhouse proves uneconomic, will the province pour even more cash into the project?

Peckford's critics and other commercial greenhouse operators in the Atlantic provinces fear it will.  Critics complain that Peckford has veered away in the Sprung case from regional development guidelines laid down by the 1986 Newfoundland Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment.

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A mid-summer night’s gambol

“Love”, as Shakespeare put it, “looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

Of all the political pixie dust in the province, none has clouded the eyes more than the Lower Churchill.  And while many have played the part,  no Lysanders have been more besotted of this megaproject  than our current one.  

T the course of true love also never runs true and in this case, the course has run nowhere near as true as claimed. While Danny Williams had hoped to be rid of his current job and on to other things by now, he is now saying he will be around until the project is done.   But not a fourth term.

Williams said the project will likely be completed before the 2015 election, and he will be done with politics by that time.

"I can guarantee I won't be around for four terms," the premier said.

The new target date is before 2015, much as the old date, except that now the Premier  is proposing to finish two dams and a power line through the UNESCO World Heritage site and on to St. John’s in less than four years.

The power line, though doth wander everywhere.   According to the latest version it will go over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier, over park, over pale,  thorough flood, thorough fire, and through some other unnamed provinces to get to market.  Where those markets are remains a mystery.

One major problem with this power line tale is that the project – as laid down in the environmental review documents – is exactly the same one described by an earlier Lysander, namely Brian Tobin.   One line to get the power to Quebec and another down through Gros Morne park – the government’s clearly preferred option – and thence to the townies.

That’s it.

There is no line proposed to run from Newfoundland off to Nova Scotia or anywhere else.

But gentle readers, enough of these jests.

Let us walk through the Premier’s latest musings on the Lower Churchill, as contained in a Telegram story this August Saturday, and wash the pixie dust from your eyes.  One megaproject-love-struck player is enough.

1.  Show me the money or Follow the money:  The fact Williams didn’t talk about money should be a clue this whole thing is a crock.  Of course, the Telly reporter also didn’t ask about it, so Williams managed to skate around what likely could have been a very testy and difficult part of the interview.

Basically, there’s no talk at any point in the entire interview about power purchase agreements and those puppies are the key to raising the $10 billion to build both dams and the transmission lines.

It’s that simple:

No money?

No project.

2.  Timelines.  Done by 2015, which was the plan back when the project would have been sanctioned in 2009.  The timeline before that was first power in 2011 based on project sanction in 2007.

Early last year the whole thing was a dodgy proposition according to Williams.  At this point, the environmental reviews won’t be complete until 2010 or 2011, leaving, supposedly, a mere four years years to get all the work done.

Horse feathers.

The project cannot be sanctioned – that is approved for construction – until it clears the environmental process.  As such, the project that was supposed to be sanctioned in 2009 is effectively two to three years behind schedule.  Even if everything goes according to the current timeline – and there’s no guarantee that won’t change too – the whole thing will not be up and running until some time around 2019 at the very earliest.

Anyone who has followed this project consistently will recognise the timelines in this interview are simply a crock.

3.  And the departure date’s a crock too.  Danny Williams may run in the next election.  Then again he may not.  If Williams stuck to the original timeline, the project would be sanctioned this year and hence he could leave knowing it is on the way. 

The Lower Churchill isn’t the determinant of Danny Williams political career.  Something else is.  Figure that out and you can figure out whether he will go soon or run again in 2011.  You see, Williams has changed his commitment on departure so many times, it’s hard to take seriously his current version:  that he will leave, definitely, in 2015.

4.  NALCO – run from the Premier’s office.

Williams said he meets regularly with officials at Nalcor Energy - the provincial Crown corporation which is overseeing the project - to get updates on the outstanding issues which need to be addressed before the project is sanctioned.

Anyone who thinks Williams isn’t the de facto head of NALCO can take that quote as a slap upside the head.  There are a raft of implications that go with that but they should be fairly obvious for anyone with a clue.

5.  The sanctioning issues:

Some of those outstanding issues for the Lower Churchill include ratification of the New Dawn agreement with the Labrador Innu, an environmental assessment - expected to be complete next year - choosing a transmission route for the power, finding customers for the power and obtaining financing for the project, which could cost $10 billion.

But Williams is confident that all these matters can be resolved and said steady progress is being made towards the project.

"None of these are insurmountable, they all just take time," Williams said.

Well, let’s see.  There’s  money, something Williams didn’t talk about that much at all and that one isn’t insurmountable unless someone plans to stick taxpayers with the full bill.

As well, there’s:

6.   New Dawn or, as it is known around these parts, the Fart Man Accord.   The land claims deal with the Innu was supposed to be over and done with last January.  Right now the vote on the agreement is postponed until…well…never.  There is no date for a ratification vote.

There’s also no sign the federal government has accepted it and they have to be party to any land claims deal with the Innu

7. The environmental process.  Should be pretty much a mechanical exercise except for the Gros Morne bit.  That one is going to be sticky but only because the feds hold the trump card.  If the thing had included a line to the mainland outside the province, it would be subject to a federal environmental review.  As it is the provincial government will sanction its own power line project – what else would they do? -  but they’ll have to come up with something clever to deal with a backlash over Gros Morne.

Could that “something” be the jobs created by poking a few holes in the ground at Parson’s Pond which is just outside the park?

8.  The feds.  Danny Williams has a bunch of federal things that need fixing if his pet project goes anywhere.  At this point, all that is dead in the water, largely due to his own actions over the past couple of years.

He’s linked the project to federal funding but even as recently as this summer Williams ducked a chance to pitch the project directly to federal cabinet ministers.  Was it because Harper showed up?

The feds won’t just pony up cash for this.  Odds are good it would come – if it came at all – in the form of an equity stake.  That’s means the federal government would own shares in the Lower Churchill just as they do in Hibernia.  Is that something Danny Williams is prepared to accept since he is already so peeved that the Hibernia shares exist?

The feds are also not likely to be persuaded by a cheesy blackmail attempt: 

Williams said the Gros Morne route would probably be the cheaper and shorter route, but he said it could be taken off the table if Ottawa would commit to help fund the project.

9.  Not the preferred route…  Through Gros Morne and the park’s UNESCO World Heritage site designation, that is.  Not the “preferred route”.  Nope.  It’s the only route.

NALCO is pushing the line through Gros Morne it’s the only route they have looked at since all they’ve done is just updated plans that have been around since before the park existed.

Notice, of course, that in polling season Danny Williams is suddenly talking all sweet and purty.  The last time the park route came up he insisted he’d drive the line through the park based on numbers he pulled out of his ass on the spot and a totally shameless bit of nonsense about grandma and her heart surgery.

The time before that Williams was all for the route saying those who doubted the route would be persuaded once they saw the “trade-offs”.

10.  The only thing in the interview you can take to the bank. (Don’t buy the “green project” bullshit)

"This is going to happen, it's just a question of when."

The Lower Churchill has been a project in the works since the 1950s or 1960s.  It’s been going to happen for 50 years.  it’s always been a question of when. 

The only thing we can say for certain now besides saying the project will happen at some point is that the “some point’ will not be by 2015.

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Missing in Action: the 2006 economic policy review

In 2006, Danny Williams decided he needed to take a second look at the economic development plans he was following.

"Over the past two years we have undertaken strategic initiatives that are significant planks in our economic development agenda," Premier Danny Williams said. "Now, halfway through our mandate, it is time to take stock of what has been initiated to date, and move to the next phase to ensure our development strategies are being carried out in an integrated, co-ordinated fashion, in line with our original goals."

He appointed Doug House to “lead the process”.

The process was supposed to lead to some called an “integrated provincial development plan”.

So where the heck is it?

Missing in action, apparently.

In April 2008, House quietly slipped back to his real job as a sociology professor at Memorial University. There’s absolutely no reference in his resume to what he did after the 2006 news release other than to mention he was a deputy minister.

There’s a mention in his biographical sketch of the work he did but no title for the final report or indeed any sign that there was a final plan produced after two years of work.  In fact the only thing House mentions in his bio is being a “key contributor” to the 2003 Tory party platform, although he doesn’t call it that.  Likely that was the chapter that paraphrased the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan.

Now maybe there’s a good reason for all that.  Maybe the plan doesn’t exist.  Maybe it doesn’t exist because of a fundamental difference of opinion between Doug House and some others  - or maybe just one big other - in the current administration. 

You see, going back to the 1986 report of the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment, House has been one of those who has rejected the megaproject model for local economic development.  You know megaprojects:  things like Hebron, Hibernia South and the Lower Churchill.

You can find a good description of the report – titled Building on our strengths – in House’s memoir of his time at the Economic Recovery Commission in the 1990s.  House defined what he viewed as the attitude of the Old Guard within the bureaucracy.  They combined the industrialization policy of the Smallwood era with the resource-management focus of the Peckford years.  The result was a focus on big projects Hibernia, Voisey’s Bay and the Lower Churchill which were – and are – often described as the “last chance” for the province.  This same Old Guard view rejected or was suspicious of the potential for  small scale industrial development, agrifoods, and aquaculture.

The Old Guard  - the attitudes that House fought against from 1989 to 1996 - also believes in an expanded federal presence in the province comprising things like a federal penitentiary and defence bases.

Now it shouldn’t take too much energy for someone to realise that the economic development policies of the current administration heavily favour large scale industrial development projects.  Other stuff  like forestry and agriculture and the list House mentioned don’t get nearly as much attention.  There is a bit of cash thrown at them in the budget but when it comes to capturing the attention of the real decision maker(s) in the current administration, if it isn’t really big it just doesn’t exist.

With all that as background, it’s really no wonder House left government.  What’s really amazing is that he stayed as long as he did. 

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Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes

Ah, how quickly they forget, these pleasant but heavily indebted, taxpaying people of Newfoundland and the sorry experience of governments that gamble (or is it gambol?) with public money on all manner of ventures.

How quickly they forget just how they got to be the most indebted people in the entire country.

More than anything else, they got into hock up to their eyeballs from cheering government after government as it poured thei tax dollars into this hole and that, each of which was supposed to gush barrels of cash so that God's Other Chosen (But Seemingly Forgotten) People could at last have their Eden here on Earth.

How quickly do they forget?

Apparently 20 years ago is too long for some of the poor darlings.
From the Memory Hole, the first newspaper cutting about that gloriously foolish venture known as the Sprung Greenhouse.

Bear in mind though that at the time there were a great many supporters of the regime du jour who cried that any amount (in this case upwards of $22 million) was fitting.

"Spend a buck to make a buck" they cried. 

"Brian can gamble with my money any day" they shouted. 

"How can anyone be so negative all the time and oppose this idea?"

"Sure they'll create a few jobs and get it all back in taxes."

"We will be the world leader in cucumber production."

At the end, all the pod-houses did was induce an epidemic of insomnia among the good residents of Mount Pearl and add another $22 million to the public debt.

"Skepticism rains over hydroponic greenhouse"
The Toronto Star
Friday, May 22 1987

by Alan Story

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - In a province with a mere 380 farms and the poorest soil, a raging agricultural debate has been at the centre of politics - and over-the-back-fence conversations - here for the past two weeks.

The subject: hydroponic cucumbers.

With the active encouragement and financial assistance of the Peckford government, an Alberta firm is dismantling its 3.2-hectare, high-tech greenhouse in Calgary and shipping it east to St. John's to begin growing hydroponically produced cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

The $18.5 million joint venture between the Sprung Group of Companies and the Newfoundland government is being touted as a solution to several of Newfoundland's problems.

Among them:

• The lack of cheap, high-quality produce available locally. Neither the price nor taste of a tomato or a cantaloupe you buy at a St. John's supermarket matches what you can find at Toronto's Kensington Market.
• The lack of jobs. According to company president Phil Sprung of Calgary and the government, which will put up to $11.5 million into the project, 330 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs will be created.

Even if all Newfoundlanders became vegetarians, the Sprung greenhouse would produce far more tomatoes and cukes than the local market could ever consume. Sprung's surplus would shipped to the mainland.

"For once, Newfoundland will be first in new technology and not just in unemployment rates," Peckford said on May 8 when he announced the deal. It's not only skeptical mainlanders who are questioning the wisdom of setting up a giant food factory based on technology that failed to perform properly in Calgary and on market studies the premier won't release.

Peckford's mad hunt for employment has brought him "full circle to the insanity that premier (Joey) Smallwood pursed when he tried to set up a chocolate factory, a rubber factory and orange juice factories in the middle '50s," declared Newfoundland New Democratic Party Leader Peter Fenwick.

Worried about the Sprung greenhouse's potential surplus entering markets in the Maritimes and even Ontario, James Keizer, president of the Greenhouse Growers' Association of Nova Scotia told Peckford that "if this greenhouse is built and operated as Sprung claims, it will fail within two years and take some Maritime growers who have built their business - one stick at a time over many years - with them." Letter-to-the-editor writers and editorial cartoonists have had a field day too.

Last week's Sunday Express, a new and brightly written St. John's weekly newspaper, featured a cartoon of a moronic-looking Peckford, clenching a stem of grass between his teeth and overseeing a Rube Goldberg-like operation known as "Peckford's Pickle Farm."

The main serious questions being raised are whether a major hydroponic greenhouse is technically feasible in Newfoundland - hardly Canada's banana belt - and whether it makes economic sense. Hydroponics - growth with water, instead of soil, as a medium - is recognized as a viable method of producing vegetables which is just starting to come into its own across the North America..

Sprung's somewhat secret hydroponic process involves planting seedlings in trays of water containing various nutrients, but no pesticides, and rapidly raising them to maturity under natural or artificial light in greehouses. Sprung makes big claims about the level of productivity. At his former Calgary greenhouses, he says 28,000 tomatoes and 22,000 cucumbers were produced daily. The cukes matured in less than a week.

But can his process work in often foggy and cloudy Newfoundland? Agricultural scientists have pointed that in St. John's, the number of degree days (a measure of natural heat available) is 1,600 while southern Alberta has 3,100 days. The extra heating required and the extensive use of artificial lights proposed for the St. John's greenhouse may significantly boost the costs of production, they warn.

Others following the great greenhouse debate aren't sure what to make of Sprung's claim that gas leaks from the soil at his Calgary site were the only reason why he had a major crop failure last year and why his tomato plants turned grey.

 The economics of the project are also in doubt. Some here are surprised that Peckford, who has tended to avoid getting sucked in by the industrial dream-peddlers who regularily come calling in Atlantic Canada, has become the project's biggest promoter.

Will all of the tomatoes and cucumber grown - more than twice Newfoundland's entire current level of consumption - actually be sold?

Why is the project so large after a recent provincial royal commission specifically warned against the dangers of getting tied into mega-projects?

What will be gained if other Maritime greenhouse producers are put out of business by the government-financed Sprung operation?

Before the Sprung story is over, Peckford may realize that tomatoes can be thrown as well as grown.

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Invent a weasel word…

The New York Times’ Ben Schott challenges readers to have some fun and invent new words or phrases that have an obscured or no meaning to replace words and phrases that already work perfectly well.

Here is one to get you started:

Democratic Party (of Canada)

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The reality of government polls

Governments look on polls and the associated poll goosing as a means of shaping public opinion, not measuring it.

Pee in the shower

See?

Told it was a good idea.

From Brazil,  a cute 45 second spot that shows peeing in the shower saves water in the long run.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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-