The Dismal Science: Debunking the “federal presence” fairy tale

Far from being hard done-by when it comes to federal jobs in the province, Newfoundland and Labrador is pretty much on par, according to a recent study conducted by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and reported by the National Post.

You can find a news release summarising the report here, while the full report is available in pdf format.

Some provinces  - Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Manitoba – have significantly more than the national average number of federal jobs per 100,000 population.  Quebec, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Alberta have less.

Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario are only slightly higher than the national average.

The study effectively refutes claims that this province is receiving something less than its “entitlement’ to federal pork spending.  The comparative figures also demolish two reports released by Memorial University’s Harris Centre in 2005 and 2006.  The provincial government has used those studies repeatedly to bolster its claims for increased federal transfers to the province to offset what turn out to be imaginary grievances.

The Frontier Centre study refers to these federal jobs as a form of “stealth” Equalization.  That is, they contend that the federal jobs serve as a type of federal transfer to the local economy in each of the provinces. More importantly, though, the Frontier Centre contends that the transfer comes in addition to the formal Equalization program and is particularly heavy in the provinces it refers to as “major” have-provinces.

The study also notes that the have-not provinces with the highest ratio of federal government jobs also tend to have higher than average reliance on provincial public sector jobs generally. They compare provinces based on the number of public sector employers as a share of the total population.  Newfoundland and Labrador is third highest on that scale, with Prince Edward Island and Manitoba coming, respectively, first and second.

Looking at the same information but as a share of the provincial labour force, Newfoundland and Labrador is by far the province with the largest dependence on the public sector.  Almost 30% of the provincial labour force is employed by the federal, provincial or municipal government.

The Frontier Centre study puts the findings into a particular context, namely transfer payment reform:

The stealth equalization of unbalanced federal employment described in this paper is part of a much bigger problem —an approach to public policy in Canada that transfers money out of high-productivity regions into low-productivity regions.

Not only is this policy approach harmful to our productivity growth, it is also, quite simply, unsustainable. Historically, the taxpayers in three provinces—British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, have paid most of the bill for high levels of public sector employment in the have-not provinces.

At the same time, the study does point to issues that are especially relevant to Newfoundland and Labrador, even if the report’s authors simply missed the poster child for their argument of unsustainable public spending and the dangers of reliance on what the author’s call “the state driven approach to economic development”.

Most residents of the recipient provinces are unaware of the extent to which their economies are state-driven and reliant on transfers. Beyond the official equalization money, massive amounts of revenue from elsewhere flow into these provinces from a number of different sources. Stealth equalization through federal employment is one important example—but there are others. Higher dependence on federal
government transfers to individuals and discrimination in ordinary  operating programs in favour of the have-nots are two more examples of ways Canadian public policy transfers wealth into the have-nots.

Most residents of Newfoundland and Labrador are unaware of the extent to which the provincial economy is state-driven and reliant on federal transfers in addition to overall public sector spending.

They aren’t alone, of course.  The current provincial administration operates as if going off Equalization was a tragedy of biblical proportions.

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Related: 

• Fragile Economy:  staying the course
• Fragile Economy:  reductio ad argentum
• Fragile Economy:  The public sector
• Fragile Economy: …and two steps back
• Fragile Economy: …now three steps back and loving it

Un-publishing

No, it isn’t like uncommunication.

The Canadian Association of Journalists has a new draft set of guidelines on correcting online information and dealing with requests to remove online material. CAJ handed the job of drafting the guidelines to an “unpublishing panel” of the CAJ ethics committee.

You can find an excellent summary of the issues involved at j-source.ca.

Here are the basic principles CAJ is proposing for how to handle requests to unpublish a particular post.  Again, there is a more detailed discussion at j-source.ca along with an explanation of each point.

1. We [the online publisher] are in the publishing business and generally should not unpublish.
2. Ongoing accuracy is our responsibility.
3. Put a clear policy in place.
4. Unpublish for the right reasons.
5. It’s fair to be human.
6. Source remorse is not a right reason to unpublish.
7. Unpublish by consensus.
8. Explain your unpublishing policy.
9. Help sources understand the implications of digital publishing.
10. Consider the impact of publishing before publication.

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Let’s slap some study on that

This is a government that talks more and more about less and less.

The latest example:

• a feasibility study of a single province-wide emergency telephone number.

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The politics of energy subsidies

From the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies comes a timely rejoinder to the policy in Prince Edward Island of subsidising energy prices out of tax dollars. The arguments in this post refer to the New Democratic Party policy of taxing tax off home heating prices but the concept is the same. The piece is also a timely one for Newfoundland and Labrador where Lorraine Michael recently embraced the policy.  

The argument against the policy of cutting home heating taxes is simple:

It gave people with more than sufficient ability to pay a subsidy they did not need. It encouraged continued consumption at unsustainable levels and it helped the poor not by treating the problem (inefficient homes and too much consumption), but by treating the symptom (high electricity bills).

In Newfoundland and Labrador one suspects that political parties eager – or desperate – for votes in the coming year will lay this sort of policy on thickly to try and buy them up. 

The ruling Conservatives, despite their supposed reform-based Conservative philosophy, are already trying to sell a future deal on the Lower Churchill as a guarantee of stable prices. They don’t talk about the huge subsidies the thing may well involve or that the whole thing will add enormously to the public debt. Incidentally, the likely reason the Premier has stopped referring to loan guarantees as loan guarantees is that he is acutely aware that any Lower Churchill project as he has proposed it will – inevitably – demolish once and for all any claims about the current Conservative administration’s performance in controlling the public debt and deficit.

It’s all bollocks of course.  Energy prices in the province will stay stable anyways without the Lower Churchill.  NALCOR’s own energy demand forecasts don’t support any such megaproject to supply juice to the island portion of the province.  And with a bit of conservation and efficiency, what increased demand there is could go down.

That’s one of the reasons why this AIMS article is interesting:  it specifically points to conservation as an economically sound policy:

the need for some electricity does not undermine the basic math that it is still cheaper and more efficient and, long term, more sustainable to reduce consumption.

At the same time, providing subsidies to allow everyone, but especially low and fixed income Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, to improve the energy efficiency of their homes would treat the problem of high heating bills rather than the symptom.  At the same time, leaving the prices to reflect the cost of production would promote conservation and efficiency.  The whole idea is progressive socially in addition to being economically and ecologically sound.  It beggars the imagination to figure out why political parties would head down a road of subsidies they know is simply  unsustainable.

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A decade that changed the world

Talking Points Memo turned 10 this weekend.

Here’s the story of how it started, via The Atlantic.

Here’s how it looks now and here’s the column format that started it all.

And if you want to know why TPM is important, read the “About” bit from the website:

Talking Points Memo is one of the most innovative political news organizations in the country. Media watchers consider TPM the site to watch as the news business transforms from the old world of print to the online digital future. In March 2009 TPM topped TIME Magazine's list of 25 Best Blogs of 2009. "Talking Points," wrote Time's editors, "has become the prototype of what a successful Web-based news organization is likely to be in the future." And in September of 2009 The Atlantic listed founder Josh Marshall among the nation's 50 most influential commentators.

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Small island syndrome

So get this.

The provincial government in Prince Edward Island is going to borrow a bunch of money and turn it over to a private sector company – a subsidiary of Fortis, no less – so that islanders can think they are getting cheaper electricity.

In reality, they’ll pay the loan back plus interest out of their tax dollars that should be going to things like health care, education and roads.

And Stan Marshall will laugh all the way to the bank.

Meanwhile in other news, the Premier of another small island continues to chase the latest version of his Get-Outta-Dodge legacy plan. 

He promises to stay at the table – where and with whom we don’t know – trying to squeeze every penny out of the deal, as Faux News tells us, supposedly for the province. no word  on subsidies, but count on having to pay them.

That’s what Bob Ghiz told taxpayers in PEI, too.

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Missile: Impossible 3

The Daily Show gives the Los Angeles Missile story the ending it deserves.

Turns out that the California missile was a passenger jet.  The first clips looked like a missile.  The heli pilot says he tracked the thing for 10 minutes, a point that Jon Stewart ridicules for the rather obvious clue it is.  Makes you wonder if the gang at KCBS in Los Angeles is quite that stupid.

The news media – gotta love Fox News – and a few others blame the whole thing on the government for not knowing.

Sounds oddly familiar.

Aircraft misidentified,  hysteria ensues fuelled by local news media speculation. Gotta love local Faux News.  Even the Mother Corp went after the Faux News title on this one.

The truth is a lot less spectacular, of course.

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Traffic – November 7-12

The Top 10 Bond posts for the week, based on pageview activity:

1. Lower Churchill:  US and NL taxpayers may help subsidize costly big hydro project
2. Mysterious missile off Los Angeles
3. Kremlinology 20:  Who will replace Danny?
4. How to win without news media
5. US labour board files complaint over Facebook firing
6. How do you spell winner?
7. Kremlinology 28;  How will he go?
8. My own electoral grandpa:  vote in an election that isn’t happening yet
9. Pass the word
10. Lest we forget:  forgotten edition

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Crude oil r’uh r’oh

From the Globe and Mail come some words of economic caution about the price of crude:

“The energy market has been the Johnny-come-lately to the overall commodity bubble,” said New York-based trader Stephen Schork. “What the market is doing is what it was doing in 2008: Selling the [U.S.] dollar and buying commodities with it. In 2008, it was primarily about energy but traders got their heads handed to them. Now energy is following rather reluctantly.”

He said a further deterioration in the U.S. dollar (USD/EUR-I0.73-0.001-0.19%) would re-ignite crude prices, while a recovery in the greenback would result in a more substantial pullback in commodities, including oil.

Mr. Schork said it is tough to justify $85 to $90 per barrel for crude on the strength of economic fundamentals. A $90 crude price translates into $3 per gallon for gasoline in the United States, and “that is not sustainable,” he said.

Not sustainable.

Those two words just won’t go away.

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How do you spell winner?

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski seems likely to be re-elected in the first victory for a write-in candidate in an American federal election since 1954.

Murkowski lost the Republican nomination to Joe Miller, a challenger with backing from the Tea Party movement and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Murkowski decided to seek re-election but Alaskan election rules, voters would have to write her name on the ballot.

Double problem.

Although Murkowski she had been appointed to the senate by her father – governor Frank Murkowski – and although, she’d already won re-election in 2004, there was still a chance voters might not be able to spell her name correctly. In a two-way fight between a red Republican and a blue Democrat, voters could vote for colour or party and still get their choice regardless of how the candidate’s name looked on the ballot. A write-in candidacy could hinge on the accuracy with which voters rendered her name.

The Republican primary and the narrow Tea Party victory also foreshadowed a tough legal challenge to a third candidate.  Take this third party ad as a typical example of the anti-Murkowski war from the campaign:

Murkowski’s campaign used a simple television spot to push the spelling of her name and get across the reminder that she was the incumbent:

She campaign also used a 17 second video that showed how to vote for a write-in candidate. Her campaign uploaded 61 videos to her youtube account, most of them fairly simple productions with high production values.  In other words, they weren’t expensive to make and told a simple story very effectively.  Most noticeably they were positive.  Even an ad that pointed to problems in her opponents finished on a positive note and let the other guy’s words tie a potential noose around his neck.

The same couldn’t be said for Joe Miller’s stuff. The music in an anti-Murkowski spot remains dark and foreboding even when discussing Miller’s positives. There are – of course – spots on Miller’s youtube account that touch on the media persecution message popular among some conservatives and a core part of the Tea Party’s messaging.

The Alaska Daily News account of one incident includes some video of a confrontation that appears to involve conventional news media and security hired by the Miller campaign. The episode would be familiar to anyone who watched the federal Conservative campaign in the 2005-2006 Canadian general election.

The write-in ballots are the last to be counted in an election that still hasn’t been declared for either of the three candidates.  By some accounts, there are enough write-in ballots and enough of those for Murkowski to give her the election. Republican candidate Miller continues to battle hard by challenging the validity of individual ballots and accusing state officials of favouritism in the counting.

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Remembrance Day 2010

At the going down of the Sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.

Pass the word

In Kingston, a new mess at Canadian Forces Base Kingston carries the name of a man who survived internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  His actions while a prisoner saved the lives of many of his fellow prisoners.  he resisted all attempts to break him.

Two retired army colonels waged a private lobbying campaign to name the mess after Major Ron Routledge, DCM.

Colonel Peter Sutton put it aptly:

"Everybody should be conscious of what's gone before, and do everything you possibly can -- as Ron (Routledge) did with me -- to pass on the word."

Routledge set up a communication network between the Sham Shui Po prisoner of war Camp and British intelligence at Waichow through Chinese ration truck drivers. Without hesitation and fully aware of the dangers involved, Sergeant Routledge [his rank at the time] joined the ration party as the contact for the passage of messages to Chungking agents under the eyes of the Japanese guards.

The channel Routledge set up saved many lives through the supply of much needed medicine and  valuable information. The Japanese discovered the system.  They beat, starved and tortured Routledge mercilessly yet he refused to divulge any information that would jeopardize his comrades. A Japanese court martial sentenced Routledge to 15 years in a Hong Kong prison for espionage, a sentence that ended in 1945. Awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions, the citation for that bravery decoration reads, in part, “The resolute courage of this [non-commissioned officer] NCO in spite of indescribable suffering and his devotion to duty provide an example of the highest tradition in the service.”

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Lest we forget: forgotten edition

So innovation minister Shawn Skinner will be attending Remembrance Day ceremonies at the “St. John’s National War Memorial” on Thursday.

There are at least two problems with this particular news release:

First, the National War Memorial is in St. John’s but it is not the St. John’s memorial, as this release suggests.  It’s the one erected in the Dominion of Newfoundland in the 1920s as its national war memorial, hence the name.

Second, Skinner isn’t just participating, he is representing the provincial government – officially – in the one ceremony that represents the entire province. Nice if the Premier could have made it, but evidently he had something else on.

Incidentally, it was good to see the Premier on Tuesday tossing around a few softballs with former journalist Peter Walsh over at Dannyvision.  All that free television across the province is especially important in polling month.

Those two huge gaffes  - what Skinner will be doing and where the event takes place - are enough to make a mockery of the sentiment expressed in the release that people ought to attend a Remembrance ceremony.

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Suzuki Foundation takes aim at Gulf drilling #oilspill

Kathy Dunderdale might not be too worried about the environmental impacts of an offshore oil spill. 

Charlene Johnson might have trouble from day to day figuring out if the offshore is in her jurisdiction or not.

But make no mistake:  David Suzuki has the Gulf of St. Lawrence firmly in his sights. The David Suzuki Foundation is encouraging its supporters to contact the federal government to get a halt to drilling and other exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A big part of the campaign is simulations of the impact of a spill at Old Harry:

Each simulation illustrates what could happen if an spill of approximately 10,000 barrels of oil per day took place over a 10-day period in various seasons. The model demonstrates the direction of the flow of oil emanating from an instant or continuous spill. Forecasts indicate the location and concentration of surface and underground oil over time.

There’s a spring, summer, fall and winter version.

The spring spill hits Newfoundland very hard.

Summer is worse for western Newfoundland.

Fall nails the south coast as far away as the Burin Peninsula.  St. Pierre would take it heavily in this scenario.

Winter hits five provinces but affects only a small portion of south western Newfoundland.

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Related:

• NL offshore drilling bans rests with prov gov
• Drill, baby! Drill!
• Miles before they hit the shore (labradore)

Mysterious missile off Los Angeles

The video  - shot by a KCBS news helicopter - shows what seems to me a missile fired from the ocean offshore Los Angeles and heading out to sea.

But so far no one knows what it was. 

The United States Air Force insists it didn’t launch anything from nearby Vandenberg air base and the United States Navy is also denying any launches.

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US labour board files complaint over Facebook firing

In the United States, the National Labor Relations Board is accusing a company of illegally firing an employee over a comment she made on Facebook.

From the New York Times:

The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.

Lafe Solomon, the board’s acting general counsel, said, “This is a fairly straightforward case under the National Labor Relations Act — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”

According to NYT, this looks like a straightforward case of free speech, as protected by law.

However,

employees might cross the line into unprotected territory if they disparage supervisors over something unrelated to work — for instance, a supervisor’s sexual performance — or if their statements are disloyal.

Courts often view workers’ statements as disloyal when they are defamatory and are not supported by facts. Mr. Babson cited a case upholding the firing of airline workers who held signs saying their airline was unsafe. But, he said, if employees held signs accurately saying their airline or restaurant had been cited for dozens of safety violations, that would most likely be protected.

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Lower Churchill: US and NL taxpayers might help subsidize costly big hydro project

Premier Danny Williams is promising a Lower Churchill deal before the end of the year and one way he could finance the project is by offloading the cost onto American and Canadian taxpayers.

Some American politicians are trying to redefine state environmental subsidies that currently don’t include hydro megaprojects like the Lower Churchill.  In Massachusetts, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker not only advocated for big hydro as part of the state’s energy future, he also favoured giving big hydro projects the “renewable” status that would make them eligible for state subsidies. 

According to the Boston Globe, the subsidies in Massachusetts alone could be worth as much as six cents a kilowatt hour.

Incumbent Democratic governor Deval Patrick  - who won re-election last week - opposed the idea:

“It does not make sense to give renewable energy incentives to a foreign-owned enterprise for something that needs no subsidy,’’ Patrick said in a statement to the [Boston] Globe. “It would amount to a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars for Canadian ratepayers at the expense of Massachusetts customers.’’

That doesn’t mean the idea is dead in Massachusetts, though.  Energy giant Hydro-Quebec is lobbying hard for the “renewable” status for its own projects. Earlier this year, the company won a battle in Vermont to make hydro eligible for subsidies. That’s all part of HQ’s push to take its share of the New England energy market from 8.5% to upwards of 12%.

Lowering the cost of Lower Churchill power by six cents a kilowatt hour could make Muskrat Falls financially viable, especially if NALCOR left the American marketing to a private sector partner and let that company keep the subsidies.  NALCOR already sells power at the Quebec-New York border to Emera.  Under a deal announced in 2009, the Newfoundland and Labrador company apparently gets about the same rate per kilowatt hour it got from a similar deal with Quebec that expired in 2009.  Any other financial details, like profits from seasonal price fluctuations, seem to flow to the private sector.  It’s hard to know for sure since details of the 2009 detail are confidential. 

And while Danny Williams claimed last week he’d lay any development deal for the very expensive Muskrat Falls version of the project in front of the public, he hasn’t lived up to similar promises yet on other projects.  Many of the key details of the 2007 Hebron deal remain shrouded in secrecy.  Amendments to the province’s open records laws in 2008 shield the publicly owned NALCOR from disclosure of its financial dealings even though it receives public funds to run the company and its subsidiaries.

Foreign tax credits aren’t the only way NALCOR could subsidise the cost of building Muskrat Falls.

Under the most recent version of the Lower Churchill described recently by Premier Danny Williams, 40% of the power from Muskrat Falls would come to eastern Newfoundland. NALCOR’s environmental submissions on the project make it clear, however, that the island portion of the province doesn’t need the power now or in the foreseeable future. The company also plans to keep its diesel generators at Holyrood running even after it builds any new lines to the island from Labrador.

Shipping power to a part of the province that doesn’t need it would give the public utilities board the legal basis to offset any losses from sales to Nova Scotia or into Quebec by offloading them on local ratepayers.  That’s because provincial laws require that the public utilities board to set rates that protect NALCOR’s financial position from its entire operations.  But that rate-setting power only applies to domestic rates. PUB doesn’t regulate export prices.  By using Lower Churchill power in the province – even when it isn’t needed - NALCOR could use local ratepayers to subsidise power exports. 

Taxpayers could get hit another way on the deal as well.  Any NALCOR debt for the project – likely to be at least $6.0 billion – will wind up on the balance sheet of the provincial government, one of the most indebted provincial governments in Canada on a per capita basis. 

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How to win without news media

Texas governor Rick Perry won re-election without relying on conventional news media.

Perry shunned editorial board meetings, for example.  Those are sit-down sessions with the entire editorial staff.  It’s a traditional way to garner an endorsement and that is traditionally seen as a key part of any major political campaign.

The reason is pretty simple politics:

Mike Baselice, Perry's highly skilled pollster, acknowledged Wednesday at a public forum sponsored by The Texas Tribune that the campaign asked primary voters in Texas whether a newspaper endorsement would make them more or less likely to vote for Perry. Only 6 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to support Perry, while an eye-popping 37 percent said it would make them less likely (56 percent said it made no difference).

In other words, for all the energy conventional thinking would have you put into sucking up to editors, the average Texas voter didn’t really give a rat’s derriere one way or the other. And with almost 40% taking an endorsement as a bad thing, that pretty much clinched the deal. 

Predictably the news media slagged Perry.  That only increased his standing in the eyes of voters, especially the 37% who said they would look unfavourably on a candidate who had a news media endorsement of any kind.

Perry also didn’t do the usual things associated with a conventional campaign, like lawn signs or direct mail.  Instead, his campaign used social media, paid television and “field operations” – face-to-face work by campaign volunteers.

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My own electoral grandpa: vote in an election that isn’t happening yet

Danny Williams is worried that local politics is being more like the American system.

Much like the more benighted souls in some parts of Eastern Europe, most of Africa and gigantic chunks of the Middle East, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians could only dream of such a thing.

You see, even though they live in one of the most civilised places in the world – Canada – they are subjected to electoral laws introduced since 2003 that make it possible for people to vote in elections that don’t actually exist. Talk about making a mockery of our democratic legacy.

News of the latest version of this farce came from ads in the local papers.  in itself that is another reminder of the backward steps for democracy taken in this province since 2003.  Where once the chief electoral officer was a non-partisan public servant, the last two have been partisans.  One was a former Liberal cabinet minister. 

The current one had to resign from his seat on a party organizing committee in order to take the job. The party, of course, is the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party, and the guy who currently serves as chief electoral officer used to be the president of that highly partisan crowd.


This is yet another one of those things you could not make up.  You could not make it up because it is the most ridiculous idea imaginable in a democracy.

Yet it exists as the law in this province.  It’s one of a package of “reforms” introduced by the governing Conservatives after 2003 that turned out to be more of a farce than not.  Meanwhile, the meaningful reforms Danny Williams promised in 2003 - new campaign finance laws, for one - simply vanished as if they never existed.  What was it he used to say about unkept promises?

And if you enjoyed this little tidbit of electoral idiocy, consider the version in 2007 when Williams called a by-election that never actually happened.  This was the original version of “I am my own electoral grandpa”.

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Kremlinology 28: How will he go?

Gordon Campbell resigned suddenly last week as Premier of British Columbia. Campbell’s been under considerable political pressure resulting fro introduction of the harmonized sales tax in the province.

The Globe this weekend is taking a look at the impact not only of Campbell’s departure but the abrupt way he left the political stage.  The quote Bob Plecas, a former Campbell advisor:

Any serious contender to replace Mr. Campbell, whose unpopular harmonized sales tax has crippled the party, would have to be free to differentiate himself or herself from the current policies, he added.

“But what he’s asking them to do is stay on the Titanic and keep rowing,” Mr. Plecas said.

It’s not exactly the same situation at the other end of the country.  Campbell left suddenly and pretty much unexpectedly.  Danny Williams, by contrast, has already made it abundantly clear he’s in the later stages of his political career in this province.

In fact, Williams first talked about quitting politics in late 2006.  Not surprisingly, one of the things he was moaning about at the time was the weight of the office he volunteered for. The backstory on his winter and spring full of discontent, at the time,  probably had much more to do with the collapse of Hebron talks and revelations about gross overspending and criminal activity in the House of Assembly, some of which continued until 2006, rather than any real annoyance with the life in the political goldfish bowl.

Fast forward four years.

Williams’ most recent version of the 12 minute rant at every Goldstein he could think of seemed to be much more about his frustration with the Lower Churchill, the budget and other matters than about liberals and the media.  After all, he finished up by urging people not to pay attention to the “bullshit”.  That would be, of course, the same “bullshit” he just spent 12 minutes obsessing about.

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

Not really.

Then again, it seldom does.

Maybe he was offering excuses for failure. 

“Imagine how much I could do…” or whatever the exact words were.  Your humble e-scribbler has made the same point many times before.  Maybe a lot more would get done if only the current administration didn’t spend so much time  - and public money - manipulating public opinion or obsessing about the three people in a coffee shop in Deer Lake who muttered misdemeanour words about the Old Man.

Maybe Williams was just venting his considerable frustration  - yet again - again with the job he volunteered for and that no one is forcing him to keep.  It’s just that those outbursts seem to be coming a bit more frequently lately.  His last Great Whine Session was in August, the last polling period.

As these bitch sessions seem to come closer and closer together, it seems appropriate to wonder how and when exactly Williams will finally give us all the wave from the Cessna door as he heads off to Florida more or less permanently.

Will he go before October 2011 or has his caucus roped him into one last kick at the cat?  What happens if the polls shift and it looks like he won’t reclaim the seats he has right now let alone score all of them?  Danny Williams hardly seems like the kind of guy who would stick around and settle for being in exactly the same spot again.  He needs to go for something bigger.  But what happens if he couldn’t hope to sweep all 48 seats in the House?

Will he struggle along and wait until 2013 or 2014 before pulling pin? Will he give plenty of lead time and hang around while his successors duke it out or will he pull a Campbell and walk out one fine January afternoon?

No matter what happens, we know that Danny Williams is in the final stages of his political career.  Go back to April and you can see a list of some of the contenders and pretenders to the throne who are already campaigning for his job. Maybe it’s time to think now about how he will finally slide out of his current job and when.

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Crude up, but what does it mean?

Crude oil finished the week on a high, with Brent coming closer to US$90 a barrel than at any time since October 2008.

That’s good.

Right?

Well, maybe.

Certainly, in the short run it brings in some extra cash.  The provincial government low-balled production estimates in the spring budget but the actual production level only offset prices below the forecast average of US$83. in the end, the forecast oil revenue will likely not be far off the actual budget projection of $2.1 billion. 

Don’t be surprised if it is more like $2.5 billion.  if that’s the case, then the current budget is the first one in a long while where the provincial government gave figures that were close to the actuals.

Unfortunately, the budget forecast a cash deficit of around $900 million.

Two things will help bring that number down.  First, production at Voisey’s Bay – even allowing for a strike – might start pushing government’s mining royalty back up to where it was before the recession.

Second, and perhaps most likely, the provincial government could be way off in its  capital works spending.  This is – you will recall – a government that has a real problem getting the job done.  If someone could come up with a little blue pill for it, these guys would buy it by the container load.  We are talking projects announced in one year, forecast to end in a couple and they only get around to tendering the thing at the end of the two years.  Delays and massive cost over-runs are routine.

Things would be a lot clearer if the provincial finance minister issued a mid-year financial update in September as he should.  That’s halfway through the fiscal year.  As it is, he will say something in December.  If last year is any indication, he’ll toss a load of sheer bullshit into the public mix in the hopes of keeping people lined up at the counter spending cash for Christmas.

The we just have to keep an eye on crude prices.  Oil is still the biggest revenue source the provincial government has. Things are fine as long as oil stays where it is now.  But when the markets can show an eight dollar a barrel increase in as many days, they can equally show a drop if the factors come together in the right way.

If the provincial government plans to unleash a year of election spending at the same time as the markets start to sort themselves out, this could prove to be a very interesting year indeed, right up to the next provincial election.

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Some loveable turncoats

‘In Newfoundland politics,”  wrote Bill Rowe, “you haven’t lost your political virginity unless you’ve knifed your own party in the back and crossed the floor of the House of Assembly at least once.”

At the time he wrote that – 1984 – Rowe was a lawyer, columnist, radio show host and the author of the splendidly titled Clapp’s Rock and The Temptation of Victor Gallanti. he was also the former leader of the provincial Liberals, a job he lost in the wake of a political scandal involving leaked police reports.

In 1985, Rowe tried to run for Brian Peckford’s Conservatives.  He lost the nomination fight.

In 1993, he carried the Liberal banner in the provincial general election and got a solid drubbing by the local Conservative candidate.

Fast forward a decade.  Conservative Danny Williams tried to lure Rowe back into politics as a Conservative.  Rowe held out for an appointment to a job as Williams’ personal ambassador to Hy’s.  He took up the job in 2004 and held it for a few months before packing it in to return to St. John’s.

Rowe is now touring the country, incidentally, flogging what is purported to be an insider’s account of things he was outside the room for during that brief sojourn on the Rideau.  According to reports, the mainlanders are lapping it up. The softcover book has hit the Globe and Mail’s hardcover best-seller list.

You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

One of his regular talk show callers these past few years has been a decent fellow named George Murphy.  He has garnered some local notoriety for his ability to forecast retail gasoline prices with some accuracy.  Murphy is a staunch supporter of the government’s gas price-fixing scheme, among other things.

Murphy’s gained some extra notoriety lately by being the latest local politician to carry on the fine tradition of crossing the floor to the other side.  Murphy very loudly and very publicly renounced the Liberal party and headed for the New Democrats. Murphy was cross that the Liberals did not hire him for a job, picking instead Craig Westcott, a journalist of some considerable experience who did a bit of work for the provincial Conservatives and whose only foray as a candidate was for the Harper Conservatives in opposition to Danny Williams’ Family Feud in 2008.

So far only one local journalist -  Telegram editor Brian Jones - has accurately captured the essence of former Liberal Murphy’s current position, that of New Democratic candidate in a by-election likely to be called next week for a seat formerly held by the Conservatives:

…Murphy didn’t like it that a Tory became a Grit, so he bolted. Murphy, a former Liberal, is now an NDPer.

He is seeking support from NDP members to win the party’s candidacy in the upcoming byelection in the district of Conception Bay East-Bell Island.

But by Murphy’s own logic, NDP rank-and-filers should be aghast. A former Liberal is tainting their pure gene pool, as it were.

Perhaps Murphy knows something the rest of us don’t — that changing parties is unacceptable for some people, i.e., Westcott, but entirely acceptable for others, i.e., himself.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve read that Telegram story three times and I’m still left thinking, let me get this straight…

You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

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The Traffic Report, November 1 - 5

No, folks, this is not a summary of Cecil Haire’s morning traffic reports on CBC Radio.

But something is going on all the same. Traffic in the past couple of weeks is up.  It’s currently running at 18% higher than the same time last month.

Here are the Top 10 stories, as determined by what people are reading:

1. Thin-skinned or what? (Arguably the first time a one sentence post linked to an article on Sarah Palin hit the top of the chart in this corner of cyberspace.)
2. Stop bullying
3. Lower Churchill:  Tshaukesh leads quiet resistance to the Old Man’s dream
4. Being negative
5. Smart politics versus not smart politics
6. Anger Management:  Conservative version
7. Keith Coombs:  financial genius and Lower Churchill:  more potato, potato [tie]
8. Rumours of his demise…
9. Court docket now online and Williams announces political exit plan [tie]
10. It gets better

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Shatner – F**k you

And the original

 

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Blaming liberals and the news media

You can find the Premier’s remarks at the annual Conservative Party fundraiser online at cbc.ca/nl.

He’s been down this road many times before but never this intensely.  And he finishes by telling us how much money the government spent.

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Drop-out drop detail

The 2008 report on schools from the provincial education department is a wealth of useful information on one of the most important government service areas.

Chapter 10 is about school leavers.  In light of the Statistics Canada report on drop-outs, it’s worth taking a closer look at the way the drop-out rate dropped in this province.

As we know from the Statistics Canada report, 19.9% of young people dropped out of school in Newfoundland and Labrador, on average, in the three years 1991-1993.  By 1996, that figure had declined to 16.7%.

By 2006, that number was down to 8.9%. The rate was lower in 2003, continued downward for the next two years and then jumped up in 2006. The current rate  - 7.4%  - is actually about what the rate was in 2005. The table is taken from the provincial government report.

Media reports indicate that a higher percentage of males than females dropped out in this province in 2009 (103% versus 6.6%). That’s a change from a decade and more ago when the male rate was dramatically higher.  According to CBC, “while rates have declined for both sexes, the rate of decrease was faster for men, narrowing the gap between the two.”

The provincial education department has another statistic, though.  It compares rural versus urban rates of school-leaving.  Here’s the provincial government table comparing the rates for all provinces and for the country as a whole.

This sort of statistic doesn’t bode well for economic development in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. And it doesn’t get any better when one considers the trend in the Eastern district, for example, that shows those graduating high school in rural areas are more likely than urban students to leave with a general pass.  n other words, they aren’t necessarily more likely to enter post-secondary education or training.

If a provincial government could only focus on one area in order to produce economic and social benefits to individuals and to the community as a whole, improving educational performance would be it.

Now it is interesting to pick up on comments on the other post on this report.  Both noted the possible influence of the cod moratorium in 1992 on the decline.  On the face of it, the answer seems to be that the moratorium did influence the rate.  Young people in rural areas, especially males, tended to leave school since they could make a living in the fishery or other similar work with a limited education.  Without the cod fishery they might have stayed in school.

Maybe.

The idea is worth exploring but the answer is likely to be more complex. Don’t forget that about 70,000 left Newfoundland and Labrador in the aftermath of the moratorium.  While the drop-out rate declined dramatically in the period between 1993 and 2005, the persistence of a high drop-out rate in rural Newfoundland  suggests there might be other factors at work.

Still, these numbers bear further consideration.

Especially considering the literacy and numeracy rates in the province.

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Williams’ shift sends Lower Churchill back to enviro drawing board for second time this year

As labradore has it, the panel conducting the environmental reviewing the Lower Churchill project is asking NALCOR  - the provincial government’s energy company - to submit a raft of new documentation now that the Premier has decided to completely revise the project.

Not surprising.

Not surprising at all.

Nor would it be surprising to find that both the panel and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency are privately spitting nickels in frustration at the twists and turns they’ve gone through to deal with this project.

Last January, the panel explained to NALCOR that the company’s submissions up to that point didn’t justify the project, as presented.  You got it.  NALCOR could not justify the project.  They also couldn’t demonstrate things like the claimed greenhouse gas emission reductions.  That’s because they don’t have any customers to show how the hydro juice will actually displace fossil fuels used in electricity generation anywhere on the planet.

NALCOR spent eight months  - until August 2010 - revising and revamping stuff, sending it along to the panel and then out to the interested parties for detailed review.

The Innu picked up on the fact that NALCOR and the provincial government were now substantially revising the project – the smaller dam and a whole new transmission routing – and said exactly that in their response filed with the environmental review panel. 

Based on the Premier’s comments at the end of October, the panel had to get the whole thing sorted in order to comply with the panel’s terms of reference.  Specifically, they are asking NALCOR to document:

a.  Changes to the project description, construction (including schedule) and operation;
b.  Transmission interconnection lines;
c.  Changes to accommodation facilities;
d.  New cost estimates;
e.  New socio-economic data and timing, particularly employment, work scheduling approach, labour requirements, goods and services;
f.  Changes to reservoir clearing and impoundment and validity of model results (mercury, flow, ice modeling, etc.);
g.  Harmful alteration, disruption and destruction of fish habitat and implications for the proposed Fish Habitat Compensation Plan;
h.  Potential aquatic and terrestrial impacts;
i.  Traditional land use and Aboriginal issues;
j.  Any other relevant information.

This is going to take another year or two, at least and the whole review is going to get way more interesting. 

The project the panel has right now consists entirely of two dams and a connection back to Churchill Falls so the power can head out through Quebec.  The line to Soldier’s Pond, near St. John’s is entirely within the province so that isn’t part of the federal review. But that’s it.  All that NALCOR is pushing is the same project Brian Tobin pushed in 1998.

Until now, the line to Nova Scotia simply didn’t exist except as a political throw-away line.  Events of the past two months have changed all that.  If NALCOR really intends to ship power to Nova Scotia – as discussed just within the past week -  they will now have to lay that on the table, in detail.  There will also be new interested parties looking for a say in what happens in the line from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia and then maybe in whatever connections will happen in New Brunswick. An already complex project just got a whole lot more complex.

Don’t forget that this project was supposed to be under construction right at this moment.  NALCOR was supposed to sanction it in 2009. 

This latest bad news comes on top of other setbacks and a reminder of the biggest inconvenient truth about the legendary project. Substantial chunks of the Innu community aren’t happy with the project. And if that weren’t enough, an analyst at the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council thinks the province needs to get its fiscal house in order before thinking of adding at least $6.0 billion to the public debt load.

But perhaps the biggest setback of all for Danny Williams’ plan was one entirely of his own making.  After rejecting a proposal to develop the deal with Hydro-Quebec and Ontario Hydro, Williams then spent five years  - entirely in secret - trying to get HQ to take an equity stake in the project. He even offered to set aside his political commitment that he would only sign a Lower Churchill deal if HQ provided redress for the 1969 contract.  HQ just wasn’t interested:  they’d already moved on to other big projects.

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It gets better

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Sign of the future?

The opposition leader makes a splash with a simple call for earlier breast cancer screening for women.

The cabinet minister issues a long-winded news release reciting all the stuff his department is doing about breast cancer.

And it predictably finishes with a recitation of how much money the current administration has spent.

Which one was more effective?

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The importance of staying competitive

The Government of Ontario is creating 75 scholarships aimed at attracting top graduate students to Ontario universities.

Meanwhile, in another province, the university not only faces declining enrolment but also a freeze on funding for graduate students thanks  - apparently - to some management cock-ups rather clumsily spun as a good thing.

On the upside, the provincial government’s research and development corporation announced on Wednesday it would provide funding over three years to support work by eight doctoral, 12 masters and two bachelors students at Memorial University.

“World-class research is at the heart of Memorial University and I’m delighted that 22 of our students have received RDC’s Ocean Industries Student Research Awards,” said Dr. Christopher Loomis, Vice-President (Research), Memorial University. “Graduate students are an essential part of Memorial’s research success. The competitive funding provided by this scholarship program will enable them to conduct research that is important to Memorial University and critical to the future prosperity of the province.”

 

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Smart politics versus not-smart politics

In his battle against Reform-based Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper over Equalization, Reform-based Conservative Party leader Danny Williams didn’t have any political friends left.

Not surprisingly, Williams failed.

Ditto, the family Feud, known to some as the ABC campaign.

Senior political reporter and columnist Chantal Hebert made the point rather bluntly in her column in the Wednesday Toronto Star:

At the federal-provincial table, Williams is ultimately a loner.

You can see that very point as far back as October 2004. Remember the famous storm-out?  Well, let’s just say it had less to do with negotiations and more to do with a potential dressing down from other Premiers who had finally cottoned on to the federal transfer deal Williams was trying to finagle.

By contrast, though, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall just got Stephan Harper’s Conservatives to turn down a hostile take-over bid by BHP of Potash Corporation.

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Drop-out rate continues 20 year decline

The drop-out rate for Newfoundland young people reached 7.4% between 2007 and 2010, according to Statistics Canada, down from an average of 19.9% in the period between 1991 and 1993.

The rate fell most dramatically in the period between 1993 and 2005 when the rate fell from 19.9% to between 8% and 10%.

That’s also the period when Newfoundland and Labrador eliminated denominationally-based education. Prior to educational reform under the Liberal administrations of Clyde Wells and later Brian Tobin, control of education as divided among seven Christian denominations.

The provincial government eliminated denominational education in 1997 following two referenda.  In the second vote, an overwhelming majority of those holding educational rights voted to abolish the system.

Education has a smaller share of the current provincial budget than it was in 1995.

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“Get fiscal house in order” first: analyst

An analyst with the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council told a conference in St. John’s that the provincial government  “has to get its fiscal house in order” before it makes an investment in any version of the Lower Churchill energy megaproject.

Fred Bergman said the province’s net debt to gross domestic product ratio remains among the highest in Canada at 41%.

Bergman is quoted by the Telegram [page four story, Wednesday November 3, not on line] as saying:

“Get your fiscal house in order, get your debt-to-GDP ratio down, get your budget balanced and then you can afford to tackle something like that.”

The Williams administration ran a half billion cash deficit in 2009 and budgeted for a $900 million cash shortfall in 2010.  Budget projections released in spring 2010 do not include any forecast for balanced budgets.

Finance minister Tom Marshall has previously consistently rejected balanced budget legislation.

In its various configurations, the Lower Churchill project could cost anywhere from $6.0 billion to $14 billion.

The following charts show the provincial government’s liabilities and net debt.  The vertical axis is in millions of Canadian dollars.

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Related:  “The Fragile Economy: staying the course”

NL offshore drilling ban decision rests with prov gov #oilspill #cdnpoli

The federal government couldn’t impose a ban on offshore drilling in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore area unless the provincial government agreed, according to briefing notes for the federal natural resources minister obtained by PostMedia.

Under the 1985 Atlantic Accord, such a decision would require the agreement of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. A federal-provincial agreement with Nova Scotia contains similar provisions.  In the absence of such an agreement, the Government of Canada has reportedly entered into informal talks with other coastal provinces where offshore drilling could take place.

Newfoundland and Labrador is also different from other provinces in that its provincial jurisdiction does not end at the low water mark.  Under the 1949 Terms of Union, the provincial government governs the same territory as it did prior to Confederation. Court decisions have upheld the view that this extends to three miles offshore, the territorial sea limit recognised internationally in 1949. As a result, the provincial government in newfoundland and Labrador has exclusive jurisdiction on offshore drilling within three miles of the shoreline.

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Related:  Drill, baby!  Drill! – Dunderdale rebuffs concerns about border, offshore oil spills

Keith Coombs: financial genius

Ah, friends, it seems like only yesterday that Keith Coombs wanted to be deputy mayor of St. John’s.

And what, pray tell, was one of his most outrageous claims?

In his campaign ads, Coombs says the city is expected to have an annual surplus of $11 million for each of the next four years, for a total surplus of $44 million, and that he wants the money to go back to the taxpayers.

Voters must have had a premonition that Keith was full of crap.

Turns out that $11 million surplus next year will be a five million dollar shortfall. 

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Being too negative

cbc.ca/nl takes a look at negativity and local politics in a report by provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane and a commentary by Randy Simms.

They are both worth checking out if for no other reason than they raise issues that are worth considering and worth debating.

A couple of quibbles:

First, negativity of this type isn’t something new.  In the current local version, this penchant for attacks goes back about a decade.

Second, Randy Simms is in the right neighbourhood when he mentions the recent mid-terms in the United States.  Politics in this province for the past decade or so demonstrate the very effective use of American political techniques  - including an ideological element - on a local level.  The lines used are similar to ones employed elsewhere in Canada, provincially and federally, and in the United States. While they use paid advertising in other places, here the slagging is done using other vehicles. 

When you are done with the video stuff, pop over to the Telegram and check the Wednesday editorial.  It points out the hefty price the Williams administration paid for a recent decision about a Facebook comment:

Why? Well, ask yourself what the circulation numbers are for one person’s Facebook page. Maybe hundreds; sometimes, thousands. In Pardy Ghent’s case, 1,109. 

Then, ask yourself this question: what’s the combined circulation of the Canadian Press, Yahoo News, MSN.ca, Troy Media, and the Reuters news service, just to name a few?
All of those sites carried the story of Pardy Ghent’s firing, under the not-so-pleasant headline “Facebook flap over Danny Williams’ penis.” 

It made newspapers and websites across Canada and the United States.

It even made the website of the India Times, half a world away. 

Yep — Skinner took a small fire, and unsuccessfully tried to put it out by pouring on the largest amount of gasoline he could find. 

Ignoring the status line would have made the whole thing a 15-second wonder that reflected far more poorly on Pardy Ghent than on anyone else. 

Instead of a handful of people shaking their heads, there are now thousands. Well done.

Two additional points:

First, the Telegram’s account of costs don’t really go far enough.  The CBC news stories and all the comments on this issue that are circulating under these and related media stories point out the extent to which negativity is now an issue that can cut the ruling Conservatives at least as sharply as it cuts anyone else.

Going negative this early definitely has its costs.

Second, Shawn Skinner didn’t do this on his own. Well, odds are he didn’t.  Like Kevin O’Brien, he was likely following orders.

Take out of all that what you will.

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*edits for caps, spelling and sentence structure

Stop bullying

Rick Mercer (via CBC NL)

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The October Traffic - Horrorshow

14,113 visitors up from 12,500 the month before.

20,039 page views.

Despite the drop in air temperature, October was a hot month at Bond Papers.

You might be surprised at what all those people were reading.  Here are the Top 10 posts for the month,based on the number of visitors:

1. Court docket now online
2. Williams announces political exit plan
3. Campaign Sign, Two
4. Municipal affairs minister passes away after lengthy illness
5. Campaign signs:  Outrage
6. Best Political Blog in Canada! Right Here!
7. The weight of office
8. When the rubber meets the paper mill
9. Jane Taber – Twit
10. Air Canada, the Maple Leafs and Sucking

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Anger Management: Conservative version

Former premier Roger Grimes makes some solid observations in the Tuesday Telegram about the idea of building Muskrat Falls on its own, as the latest iteration of the Lower Churchill goes.

“It makes ... absolutely no sense to finance the smaller part of the project that, of and by itself, can’t make any money,” he said.

What’s way more interesting in the current context, though, can be found in the comments section. 

Just note the number of comments, likely all Conservative partisans, attacking Grimes personally for having the temerity to offer an opinion. Notice how many of them appeared before 8:00 AM.  That is some serious anger-management issues going on there, people.

As you read the comments – if you can stomach them – remember that this is polling month.  As usual, people in the province are being treated both to an orchestrated series of happy-news announcements.  But what makes this month stand out is the connection to the assaults by the Fan Club. 

The Fanboys.

The Greek Chorus.

The Pitcher Plants.

The last time this crew deployed in such an organised and indignant manner was when some people dared to notice that the Premier had heart surgery. Their anger is aimed, not surprisingly at Liberals and if reporters step into the line of fire the media will be added to the list.

Anger  - and we are talking some major-league bile here - aimed at liberals and the news media.

Sounds just a wee bit familiar.

Dontcha think?

It gives a whole new meaning to the term anger management.  The real question, though, is will the strategy that worked before continue to work just as well the next time.

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Lower Churchill: more potato, potato

Sometimes really interesting things crop up in two stories about the Lower Churchill. 

Take for example, the likelihood of a deal with Emera to run a power line to Nova Scotia.  There’s a Canadian Press story dated November 1 that says this:

The head of Nalcor Energy won't say whether the Newfoundland and Labrador Crown agency is close to inking a deal with Emera Inc. (TSX:EMA) on the proposed Lower Churchill hydroelectric project.

Then there’s a CBC story dated November 1 that says something else:

Hydroelectric power from a proposed project in Labrador could reach the Maritimes within five to six years, Ed Martin, president of Newfoundland's Nalcor Energy, said Monday.

That five years obviously wouldn’t start today because as of 2010, the project is still bogged down in an environmental assessment.  Still, Ed didn’t give a probably projection on that.  It could – entirely fantastically  - be pumping juice in five years;  odds are though that the project would not be pushing electricity a decade from now. 

Premier Danny Williams recently told a gathering of the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party that a deal to develop one dam was possibly very close.  Ed Martin, the head of the province’s energy corporation told reporters in Halifax this week that  - from the CBC story – "[t]ime will not drive us. It has to be right."

Hmmm.

Potato.  Potato.

Tomato. Tomato.

Maybe the whole thing’s off. 

Maybe the whole thing’s on.

Maybe the whole thing is half on, and half off, go-it-alone and with partners simultaneously.

Surely you’ve noticed that since 2005 this project has gone from doing it alone to doing it with partners to doing only a bit of it with partners and still nothing has happened after five years of endless public posturing.

Oh yes, and five years of secret talks, in addition to the public talking about it.

And the price, meanwhile is still $6.5 billion for the smaller dam and a bunch of expensive transmission lines.  That was the original price for two dams and a line to Quebec. The whole thing could actually cost as much as $14 billion.

But that’s not the end of the flippin’ and da floppin’.

Danny Williams told his Conservative followers that the line to Nova Scotia would be a sweet way to reject Quebec after all their slights, real and imagined, over the years.  According to CBC, Martin said that shipping all that power means NALCOR needs a line to Nova Scotia in addition to a line that runs through Quebec.

"If we are going to move the kind of volumes we're talking about over the 50 years, we've come to the conclusion we need both routes."

And in leading up to that comment, Martin restated one of the ideas your humble e-scribbler floated, just so he could refute it:

"With respect to that question of is it something that we're using it from a leverage perspective, the answer is no,"

Still, though, if Ed Martin actually had a deal or was really close to one, he’d be announcing it rather than talking about all sorts of scenarios and possibilities.

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Federal briefing note cautions against #oilspill speculation

A briefing note prepared for federal natural resources minister Christian Paradis describes the potential impact an oilspill offshore Newfoundland and Labrador from one of the existing fields.

The note describes projections about impacts of an oilspill as risky since they are speculative. Nonetheless, the briefing note – obtained by Canadian Press under federal access to information laws – does give some idea of what might happen in a “non-trivial” spill:

The note says a “non-trivial” spill could leave oil in the water for weeks or months and much of it likely wouldn't be recovered. But little-to-no oil would likely wash up on Newfoundland's shores, and most of it would drift eastward and disperse in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sea birds might not be so lucky. The document says “it is likely that oil from a large blowout offshore eastern N.L. would cause substantial and significant seabird mortality, due to these species' extreme vulnerability to surface oiling.”

Fish might survive, but the fishery would likely be affected:

“This could have an economic effect upon the fishery enterprises involved. ... There is also the possibility that market perceptions could be affected for fishery products caught over a wider area than that actually affected by oil.”

Okay.  So this is speculation and, as the briefing note suggests, the minister should avoid speculation.  That’s actually good advice and someone should have fed the minister some better talking points.

Someone should have fed better lines to Premier Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale, too.  Both not only speculated on potential scenarios, they downplayed the potential impact of a spill.

And of course, neither the federal nor provincial Conservative politicians mentioned the possible impact of a “non-trivial” spill in some places offshore but not quite so far out to sea.

Like say in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

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Thin-skinned or what?

It’s the “or what” you need to think about.

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Rumours of his demise…

Ted Sorensen, Kennedy advisor, White House speechwriter, lawyer, author and Democratic activist is dead at the age of 82.

Rumours of his demise, as noted in a post at Regret the Error, circulated previously.  This time they proved true.

The New York Times obituary described Sorensen’s role for President John Kennedy this way:

He held the title of special counsel, but Washington reporters of the era labeled him the president’s “intellectual alter ago” and “a lobe of Kennedy’s mind.” Mr. Sorensen called these exaggerations, but they were rooted in some truth.

Kennedy had plenty of yes-men. He needed a no-man from time to time. The president trusted Mr. Sorensen to play that role in crises foreign and domestic, and he played it well, in the judgment of Robert F. Kennedy, his brother’s attorney general. “If it was difficult,” Robert Kennedy said, “Ted Sorensen was brought in.”

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Lower Churchill: Tshakuesh leads quiet resistance to the Old Man’s Dream

Elizabeth Penashue is opposed to development of the Lower Churchill. 

She is concerned about what it will do to the environment and what the changes to the river will mean to the environment and to the Innu people who have lived in the area for centuries.

As she put it last year in a letter to The Labradorian:

A lot of people understand why we walk. We don't want the dam like they did before to Churchill Falls many years ago. We lost so many things back then, we lost hunting areas, and so did the white people, not only the Innu lost, other people lost too. They lost the same. The biggest thing we lost, were the burial grounds. This was the most important thing that we lost. If they make another dam what else will we loose? The river will die, and all the stuff around the river, trees, and the animals and fish. And the peoples hunting areas will be ruined.

We walk, women and children together to send a strong message that we will not give up. We are strong and we want to be respected and listened to. It is for the future of our children that we are doing this for!

While some people east of the over pass might have been pre-occupied with other things last week, listeners to Labrador Morning caught an interview with Elizabeth Penashue with host Cindy Wall (CBC audio file: October 28).

Penashue is a respected elder in the Innu community. Each fall for the past 13 years, she has walked the 80 kilometres from Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Gull Island to raise awareness about the impact Lower Churchill development will have on her people.

In the interview, Penashue talks about some of the people who have walked with her, including busloads of school children brought out each day.  She also talks about the food she enjoys and about the tent prepared for her by family members and other sin the community when she arrived at Gull Island.

More than many southerners may realise, Penashue represents a powerful political voice within the Innu community that cannot be ignored. Claims made a couple of years ago about an agreement on land claims and development, for example, proved to be so much hot air.  Penashue’s principled opposition carries great weight in itself and serves as the focal point for others who share her concerns.

Elizabeth Penashue is one of the reasons why any claims that a Lower Churchill deal is imminent or that the project may start soon are just so much hot air. The so-called New Dawn agreement vanished not long after the provincial government made a great noise about it. 

What blew the deal away, was not a mountain of hot air bigger than the blast that brought it.   It was the soft voice of a woman who walks 80 kilometres every fall and who will keep walking 80 kilometres until she can do it no more.

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Elizabeth Penashue’s Blog:  elizabethpenashue.blogspot.com

Before I’m gone I want to see some change, I want to help my people and teach the children. I don’t want to see my children lose everything—I know we can’t go back to how things were, but I don’t want them to lose their Innu identity, culture and life.