Taking the voters for grantered!

Last week Humber West Conservative candidate Vaughn Granter didn’t have the time to discuss issues.

He would need – by his own estimate – a couple of days at least to get up on the issues and that would take time away from his goal of knocking on all the doors in the district before polling day.

Fast forward a week and after he’s been taking a sh*t-knocking from people for his stance, Vaughn is changing his tune.

Here’s one of his recent twitter updates:

Having a great day door-to-door with Ministers Clyde Jackman and Darin King. Enjoying good conversations of all the issues. 8 days to go!

Conversation on the issues?  Given Vaughn’s admission last week he wasn’t up on the issues and that he didn’t have the time to bone up, he must have stood quietly on the door step while Darin and Clyde did all the talking.

Either that or Vaughn’s just good at taking voters for grantered, already,

Ah well.  Time will tell. Voting day is seven days away.

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Building permits value drops again in December

The value of building permits in Newfoundland and Labrador dropped again in December, to $76 million from $90 million in November according to figures released on Monday by Statistics Canada.

Permit values during 2010 peaked in October at $191 million.

Consistent with previous months, St. John’s accounted for the lion’s share of the permit values with $42 million worth.

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Feds and province release Lower Churchill transmission line EIS document

The federal and provincial governments released the environmental impact study scoping document on Monday for the proposed transmission line that will carry electricity from the Lower Churchill to St. John’s.

The draft environmental impact study guidelines and scoping document identify the information that Nalcor will be required to address in order to prepare the environmental impact study.

Members of the public now have until March 21 to submit comments on the document. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has up to $200,000 to assist groups and individuals to participate in the project review.

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A rose by any other name would still stink to high heavens

Pity Clayton Forsey.

He’s the Conservative member of the provincial legislature from the district of Exploits. Like many of his colleagues, he visited a town in his district recently and handed out a cheque from the provincial government as a “donation” toward the town’s up-coming tourism festival.

The regional weekly newspaper covered the event and described it this way:

Denise Chippett is the chairperson of the Come Home Year committee. She said the celebrations was enjoyable for all; what also helped were substantial donations from Exploits MHA Clayton Forsey and the town's volunteer fire department.

This week the Telegram picked up that line and started poking into it. The story appeared in the Saturday edition this weekend but sadly it isn’t available on line. The Telegram noted that Chief Justice Derek Green’s report into the House of Assembly spending scandal recommended that members of the legislature not make “donations” from their constituency allowances or with other government money.  If they did so out of their own pockets,  the politician is supposed to make it clear where the money came from.

Forsey is clearly bothered by the Telegram’s questions and, as the Saturday quotes him,  Forsey is quick to distance himself from that scandal.  The money is from a government department, Forsey says.  There’s a small fund in the municipal affairs department to help out with anniversary celebrations, as in this case.

"I've always presented cheques on behalf of departments. Ministers
don't always get out to these districts," Forsey said.

Of course you have to pity Forsey on two counts.  On the the first, he is merely getting nailed publicly for what his fellow government caucus members do on a regular basis.  As Forsey says, he “always” hands out government cheques. it isn’t really fair that he gets singled out in this way.

On the second, you have to pity Forsey for not appreciating that what he and his Tory buds are doing is exactly what the House of Assembly mess was really all about;  they are just using a different means to get there. You see, the main problem with the spending scandal was not that a few fellows defrauded the Crown, although that was bad enough.  The allowances system that existed in the House between 1996 and 2006 allowed individual members to engage in the old political practice of doling out goodies to constituents.

In his report, Green calls it “treating – providing food, drink or entertainment for the purpose of influencing a decision to vote or not to vote.”  That’s not exactly what this is, but the idea is related to the term more people know:  “patronage”.

As George Perlin described it nearly 40 years ago, “the dominant factor in Newfoundland politics has been the use of public resources to make personal allocations or allocations which can be perceived in personal terms….” The objective of this exercise is to connect the politician personally with the distribution of government benefits and garner political support in the process.

Consider that in this example, Forsey holds no government office and therefore has no right to hand out a cheque for government funds in preference to anyone else. Do opposition politicians get the same consideration?  Doubtful.  It’s more likely that a backbencher from the majority party caucus would carry the cheque.

In truth, the money did need to come in a cheque at all.  These days, the money could just as easily have come in a bank transfer from the department to the town.  Nor was there any need for a politician to have anything to do with it.  After all, as Forsey explains, there is a small fund available to any town holding some sort of anniversary celebration.  All the town had to do was fill out a form and wait for the bureaucrats to process it. The same thing should happen no matter where the town is, that is, no matter the political stripe of the person sitting in the legislature for that district.

But there’d be no political value in that, hence Forsey and his colleagues carry right on in the fine old tradition of pork.

The real value – the political value  - of the whole set-up, after all,  can be easily seen in the comment the chairperson of the anniversary committee gave to the paper.  It tied the money to Forsey.  And as Forsey noted he does this sort of thing all the time. Of course he does; so do his colleagues.  The money comes from municipal affairs or from the tourism, culture and recreation department where a bunch of small grant programs keep Tory politicians busy with cheque presentations.

There is absolutely no difference in what Forsey and his colleagues are doing and what virtually all of his predecessors  - leave the convicted criminals out - did with their constituency allowances between 1996 and 2006. All that happened in 2007 was that the pork-barrelling and patronage became the exclusive domain of the majority party in the legislature.

And in the end, that wasn’t really much of a change at all.

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The Force

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Environmentally debatable traffic, Jan 31 to February 4

Two stories this week to lighten the mood.

First:  a poster in the Health Sciences Centre announcing an event for February.  Someone crossed out the first “r” as a spelling mistake.  Likely the same person changed the spelling just down the hall to read nook-yoo-lur medicine.

Second:  Surely to merciful jumpin’s Conservative candidate Vaughn Granter did not dismiss Liberal Mark Watton’s experience in the Prime Minister’s Office or a federal cabinet minister’s office as cavalierly as it sounded.

“Some experience”?

“Could be some advantage”?

Could be a disadvantage?

That’s pretty sad for a guy who isn’t from Corner Brook originally who is trying to play himself as the local boy.

Take a listen to the campaign report linked above, by the way and notice that Granter did little besides run down his opponent and talk himself up personally.  Mark Watton, on the other hand, talked sensibly about issues that are actually of concern to the people in the district.

Huge difference.

Anyway, for those who came for the weekly hit parade, here are the week’s top stories as selected by readers.

1. Tweet of the week (early edition)
2. More of the same…
3. Financials key to Lower Churchill
4. Not the best campaign strategy, maybe
5. A Hugh Shea for our time
6. Strings and all
7. The old hum on the Humber
8. PIFO:  newly minted minister in trouble in own district
9. Ronald Harper
10. Finance minister cops to unsustainable spending

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Why don’t more women breastfeed their babies?

Good question.

You’ll find one woman’s take on it at cbc.ca/nl. 

Beware, though, of one figure that is likely off.  Both Debbie Cooper and Pam Pardy-Ghent claim that 66% of new mothers breastfeed their babies. 

That might be the number who start breastfeeding when the baby is born. Some call it the initiation rate.

The last time your humble e-scribbler checked the local stats the percentage still at it six months after the baby was born was a tiny fraction of that figure.

Try 11 or 12 percent.

And that’s really where the challenge lies.  The overwhelming majority of women who start breastfeeding just don’t manage to keep at it. 

We need to get to 66% still breastfeeding at six months in.  That’s a figure we can reach in this province within two years with just a modest effort by the provincial government. and community groups.

66 at 6 in 2.

Simple.

Practical.

Attainable.

Breastfeeding  it’s what your bazongas are for.

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Finance minister cops to unsustainable spending

The provincial government hasn’t really been managing the public purse in a sustainable and fiscally responsible way.

Your humble e-scribbler has been saying that since 2006.  There have been plenty of charts and graphs to drive the point home.

In 2009, Paul Oram said that government spending is unsustainable, but unfortunately he said it on the way out the door as he left politics. 

But you don’t have to just accept that just because you read it here.

Now you know that government spending is unsustainable because no less an authority than Tom Marshall – the province’s finance minister – is saying that in every single one of his pre-budget consultations.

Take a look at the slide deck for his presentation.  You’ve seen similar slides here and in some of the conventional media maybe.  You’ll find the information is a wee bit familiar and that’s because the figures your humble e-scribbler uses and the ones Tom is using come from the same place:  the provincial finance department.

But Tom’s slides are better because they are accurate and up-to-date. Now Tom doesn’t give you all the information you’d but what is there is enough to scare the bee-jeebers out of any doubters out there.

Before we get into the details, let’s just say that True Tory Believers should turn away and go play Free Cell or something.  They really should not read on.  Fan Clubbers should really not read beyond this point.  They are putting their heads in jeopardy.  Their whole world only keeps making sense because they have convinced themselves that nothing at BP is real, that it is all wrong and just some sort of partisan plot. 

So if they keep reading to the end, your humble e-scribbler cannot be held liable for the resulting carnage as their skulls collapse.  After all, if your faithful servant says these things only because he is a Liberal and then Tom Marshall says the same things then either Tom is telling whoppers or I am a Tory or…

You can see how easily they could wind up in the Waterford trying to make those two things fit into the same twisted mental space.

Anyway, here goes.

This slide from near the end of Marshall’s presentation shows the net program expenses – everything except debt servicing and capital costs – compared with the consumer price index and the growth in the economy. This is a really good comparison because it shows the changes in the core government spending without things like the “stimulus” capital spending.

This is the sort of spending that would be very hard to cut if revenue dropped drastically.  And you can really see the point if you recall that so much of the economy – 30% or so of the labour force – is paid out of net program expenses. This is your health care spending as well.

Now just because Tom Marshall used it, let’s look at the slide showing the comparison between the growth in gross health care spending – with capital works tossed in – and the consumer price index.  This slide together with the one above illustrates the astronomic growth in spending over the past four years.

 

This slide also shows you a comparison which pretty much destroys any argument that the rate of gro9wth was the only thing Tom and his friends could have done.  You’ve heard all the excuses about catch-up and making up for previous neglect or that costs are just going up because things are booming.

Don’t look at 2009-2010 because that’s the recession year when the costs of goods and services didn’t grow very much at all.  Look at the two years before that.  The provincial government could have boosted spending by double the rate of inflation and they still would have boosted spending by a huge amount.  Instead, they went for triple or more.  in 2007, the year of the last election, they boosted spending by what looks like six or seven times the rate of inflation.

And all that spending was built on what Tom Marshall acknowledges are windfalls from the price of oil.  They are windfalls driven by price and by production of a non-renewable resource.  All wonderful to spend and spend more as long as the cash is rolling in.  But when the prices don’t keep skyrocketing and the money isn;t flowing in, you have a hard time driving spending up at the rate people want.

That’s the definition of unsustainable spending.

Not surprisingly, you can see all the problems in the final slide Marshall used in which he laid out his “challenges”.

That second bullet, the one about high dependence on resource revenues is the bit about price and production.  Great going up but prices do go down.

Skip down a bit and you’ll see the other point:  there’s pressure to continue spending increases and people are used to seeing growth of nine percent on average over the past seven years.  Inflation averaged around two percent each year or thereabouts over the same period.

All the stuff that comes before this points to that bullet about the “Need to control expenditure growth”.  Problem is that expectations are there for continued growth and those expectations are on top of the real need that comes from having an aging population and that is on top of the commitments to boost public spending on megaprojects like “equity” stakes. 

If that weren’t bad enough the combination of election year plus the unsettled Conservative leadership combine to make it very difficult for politicians to make the tough choices and actually control spending.

Remember 2007?

If you’ve forgotten already, scroll back up and look.

A very popular leader with a reputation for toughness and they still couldn’t spend in a responsible, prudent manner.

And if all that weren’t enough to make you cringe, take a look at that last point.  There you have the provincial government’s great plan to reduce public debt:  they will pay it off as it comes due.  That means about $200 to $300 million a year.

Divide that into the $12 billion gross debt and you can figure out how many decades will take  - theoretically - to get to zero at that rate.  Yeah don’t bother.  Let’s just sum it up by saying the current administration does not have a debt reduction plan at all.  Not really.  They don’t.  If things get really bad, they can just roll debt over and that’s what governments have done over the past couple of decades. They could pay off some debt as it came due;  otherwise they just spent as they needed and ran up the debt bill.

We aren’t done yet, though.

That middle bullet about a “requirement” to borrow to pay for the Lower Churchill.

It is only a requirement because the provincial government already made the decision to add another $4.0 to $6.0 billion to the public debt.  They don’t absolutely have to do it and, frankly, the deal as laid out currently is one that doesn’t make any sense.  It would be a huge risk for any government or private sector company that had a healthy balance sheet.  Even with a federal loan guarantee, it is sheer foolishness for the province with the biggest per capita debt load in the country.

Upside:  admitting there’s a problem could mean that Tom Marshall and his colleagues will start sorting out the mess they’ve made.

Downside:  Tom’s admitted to some or all of this in the past in the pre-budget consultations only to bring down a budget each time that did exactly the opposite of what was needed to fix the problems. Only Danny’s gone:  the rest of the people responsible for seven years of unsustainable public spending and unsound management of the public purse are still in charge.

We can hope for the best but experience tells us all to expect the worst.

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Ronald Harper

Compare this Conservative Party spot…

with this classic political spot:

The Conservative spot is darker and much less hopeful than the one that so obviously inspired it.

And for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, they will recognise the Danny Williams’ phrasing in the Harper spot.

Aren’t Canadians determined, too?

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More of the same…

But different.

A good first step is how the Premier described her first meeting with the Prime Minister.

But she was bit vague on the destination piece.

Headed somewhere but not sure where the frig that might be.

Solid leadership!

Kathy Dunderdale had a courtesy meeting with Stephen Harper.

20 minutes.

Very much routine stuff for those familiar with these things and never the chance to get into detailed discussions on anything.

Lots of vague talk from Dunderdale about stuff but very little concrete detail.

She knows the bus is moving and she knows about the doors and seats but where the driver is headed?

We’ll get back to you on that bit.

But it is good to get rolling in this new bus and new driver who is dissimilar in a differential way from the previous occupant of the conducting position.

Dunderdale’s list of things she mentioned in the meeting are the same things her predecessor used to rattle off so it’s a bit unusual to hear her talking about things as if there’d been some radical change of direction in the province.

Oh.

That was the point.

But then Dunderdale said she is “in the same place’ as her predecessor.

So things are the same.

But different.

It is a new relationship but she wanted to hear some acknowledgement from the Prime Minister of those “legitimate aspirations” of her tribe and that he “understands” those things and is the prime minister of the whole country, then things will be different.

So that would mean things are still just like they were with the former premier.

But not.

Somehow.

Like in a meeting with federal cabinet minister Peter Mackay, Dunderdale talked about a multi-billion dollar megaproject for which Dunderdale sought a federal loan guarantee.

Which must be somehow different from the times Danny went to Ottawa looking for a hand-out to build a megaproject.

So things are the different.

But the same.

And firstly and fore mostly, she wants some respect.

Never heard that before.

And there wasn’t any talk about the fishery.

Ditto on the sameness file.

So in a last scrum question about the relationship, Kathy made it clear that her predecessor could “articulate” his views clearly and that things were different now, as she embarked on some kind of new path, a yellow brick road to respect for the “legitimate aspirations” of the crowd of people down this way.

Sounds all very familiar, right down to the bit about not being sure exactly where things are going and the inability to articulate specific details.

But God does she spit Quebecish gibberish like “legitimate aspirations.”

It’s all fit to make you aspirate your breakfast.

Projectile aspiration.

Given Dunderdale’s load of bafflegab and pure bullshit, such aspiration would be perfectly legitimate and likely most respectable.

Plus ca change.

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If the Danes can do it…

Maybe Kathy Dunderdale can resurrect Danny Williams big dream of a tunnel connecting Labrador to the island. Remember the Stunnel?

Surely you remember Danny Williams stopping by the side of the highway during the 2001 by-election or the 2003 election – anyone recall which? – and marvelling that he could see the mainland or some such.

Anyway, the whole goofball idea priced out at a few billion dollars and Williams quickly dropped it as unrealistic.

But then people used to say that increasing the provincial public debt by 50% was unrealistic too, until Danny and his successor committed to doing it.

Go big or go home, Kathy!.

So if Danny was planning to rack up the debt by just 50%, go the rest of the way.

And follow the example set by the Danes.

They are planning to build an 18 kilometre tunnel underwater to connect Denmark and Germany.

The estimated cost is  only US$5.9 billion.

Now sure the traffic between Sweden and Norway to Germany and the rest of the continent through Demark makes this much more commercially viable than a link between Blanc Sablon and St. Barbe.  But since when did that ever stop a politician from pissing public money down a hole.

Every great Premier in the province’s history – at least as popularly assessed -  has had at least one gigantic financial mess to his credit. 

This could be Kathy’s.

Just saying.

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Not the best campaign strategy, maybe

In a city where the environment is a big issue, a chance to speak in a public meeting on environmental issues during a by-election might be a good thing.

Well, especially if you are a candidate.

Lots of people protesting tire burning.  Government conveniently dodges a bullet on the issue right before the writ drops. You promise to be a strong “voice” for constituents.  Might be an idea to show up for a few hours in a debate format, say a few words and then get back to whatever else you are doing.

Even if the audience is hostile, it works to show you have the stones to face them.  How are you gonna stare down a hard-nosed cabinet minister like Kevin O’Brien or Charlene Johnson if a few hippies scare you crapless? 

And after all it’s only a couple of hours.

Even if you want to play the company-town-man, you are likely to get more of your own votes with the days of coverage of you tackling the tree-huggers rather than putting out some completely lame-assed excuse delivered via a representative.

These points are evidently lost on Conservative Vaughn Granter.  He begged off a debate sponsored by a local environmental group.  The VOCM version quotes an “associate” who says the man has a “door-to-door” strategy.

Whatever.

If he’s as overwhelmingly popular and as phenomenally well-known in the city as Granter claimed with on Open Line with Randy Simms on Wednesday, then Vaughn could skip a couple of doors and no one would really notice.  That is, he could skip them in a good cause like generating some media coverage to reach more people and reinforce his messages.

In another place, the candidate hisself could be heard on Wednesday babbling some drivel about having to spend a couple or three days boning up on the issues and that would just divert  from his plan to shake every door and knock every hand. Not aware of the issues and the party position such that he has to do an intense three days holed up with a set of briefing notes?

Hardly something you’d want to admit, one might think.

Vaughn isn’t much on current affairs, then?  Wee bit vague on what’s up?

Yeah.

Not the best line and not the best strategy, maybe.

Just saying.

.At least Vaughn has a few days to change his mind or get up to speed.  The debate is set for February 10.

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Tweet of the Week (early edition)

Ken Dryden dropped in to Corner Brook last weekend to endorse his old chief of staff – Mark Watton – who is running in the by-election to fill the vacancy in the House of Assembly by Danny Williams’ abrupt departure.

Watton is a Liberal, in case that wasn’t obvious.

Seems some provincial Conservative supporters are a bit spooked by Dryden’s visit and, by extension, by Watton’s chances. Here’s an example of Twitter comments by one passionate provincial Conservative on Tuesday night:

Unable to recruit local volunteers or what?…what does Ken Dryden know about the issues facing Corner Brookers? …I'd rather someone who had known where Corner Brook was located prior to visiting.

To quote a great conservative thinker, what a terrible thing it is to lose ones mind. Those of you who know the original quote – before Dan Quayle babel-fished it – will get the point.

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Financials key to Lower Churchill

From 2006, an article by Craig Westcott that appeared originally in the now defunct Independent. 

Premier Kathy Dunderdale went to Ottawa today with her hand out looking for some federal financial aid to get the Danny Williams retirement project off the ground.

The key is still in the financials.

Let’s see what, if anything, she gets.

And then let’s see what that will cost us.

Growing interest:  Solving interest rate riddle critical to Lower Churchill project

At a Memorial University lecture hall one evening last week, Gilbert Bennett stood and gave a 45 minute talk on the challenges and opportunities of the Lower Churchill River hydroelectric project.

Then his real work began. For the next 45 minutes, people in the crowded lecture hall peppered the vice president of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro with questions.

They asked him about everything from the chances of getting redress on the infamous Upper Churchill deal to what kinds of benefits the Innu Nation members can expect from the project.

Then came one of the toughest questions to answer, but one that is critical to the viability of the $6-billion to $9-billion project that Hydro is hoping to have on stream by 2015.

“The surprise for me tonight,” said one man, “was that this project, to get off the ground, is going to take as much as 10 years. Interest rates are starting to rise. Isn’t there a risk in taking this project so far out?”

Bennett allowed there is. “I’m with you in that interest rates are going to be essential,” he admitted.

And that was putting it mildly.

<Growing interest>

As Bennett himself pointed out, there are a number of key factors that have to be resolved before the Lower Churchill hydro project can get sanctioned for construction. A land claim and impact benefits agreements must be negotiated with the Innu Nation. The federal and provincial governments have to agree on the form the environmental impact statement will take and who will head the review. And the province must decide who will develop the power plants at Gull Island and Muskrat Falls, who will get the power from them, how they will get it and how the whole thing will be financed.

“As you can see, we have a lot of work to do,” Bennett told the gathering.

But among all the challenges and risks, perhaps none is more important than the matter of interest rates. If the Upper Churchill was a boondoggle because of BRINCO's inability to negotiate a re-opener clause to cover inflation, the killer for any Lower Churchill project could be interest rates. And that’s because just like the man in the lecture room observed, this project is going to take a long time to develop.

“If you had the right contract, it doesn’t matter,” says Cyril Abery. “You’d have to build into the contract that the price you’re agreeing to (sell the power for) is based on certain interest rates and you’d have to have a clause that if interest rates went up, the price gets adjusted. Otherwise you could get screwed. There has to be re-openers in there. If they do that, there‘s no problem. But if they don‘t do that, yes, it is a problem, especially since today interest rates are low and they‘re probably going to go up.”

When it comes to interest rates and the Lower Churchill project, Abery knows what he’s talking about. From 1985 to 1991, he was the president and CEO of Newfoundland Hydro. He helped negotiate a Lower Churchill deal with Hydro Quebec in 1991 that Premier Clyde Wells ultimately rejected.

“He was nuts in my opinion,” says Abery. “It’s a long story, but the long and short of it is I thought he was nuts. I’m not so sure we haven’t got another one now.”

Abery wasn’t at Bennett’s lecture, but he well understands how interest rates could cripple the development.

So does another former Hydro president and CEO, Bill Wells. He headed the provincial Crown Corporation from 1995 until about a year and a half ago. Like Abery, he too tried hard to reach a development deal on the Lower Churchill.

The problem is that while interest rates may be low now, nobody knows what they will be in 15 years time, if the project is even completed by then. Nobody even knows what they will be next year. And once the project is sanctioned, the developer will be borrowing money every year until it gets built.

“You’re borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, spending, spending, spending (until 2015),” explains Wells. “Somebody’s got to lend you that and that interest cost during the period of construction, that just adds on to the principle because you’re not paying anything back. So at the end of the day you’ve got this lump sum of money that you owe and when you close out your financial agreement going forward for 30 years or 40 years financing, what you’re going to pay in interest is determined at that time, it’s not determined now. So interest rates in 2016, who knows? They may be up, they may be down. And one of the things is, who takes the risk on interest? That used to come up in previous negotiations. It‘s a critical factor.”

Wells says the province, or Hydro, could try at the outset of the construction project to get a lender to agree to a range of future interest rates, as some measure of protection, but that would cost a lot of money.

“Interest is a big factor and then it depends on how you’re financing it,” Wells says.

<Quebec again>

One of the ways the province is looking at raising money to build the project is on the strength of a power purchase agreement with a future customer of the power. That’s how BRINCO financed the Upper Churchill deal in the 1960s. Back then, the only customer BRINCO could get to sign a guarantee that it would buy the electricity was Hydro Quebec. With Ontario and some United States utilities facing the prospect of energy shortages, it may be easier to find other buyers this time around. There will be enough electricity from Lower Churchill to power 1.5 million homes.

But the power will still have to go through Quebec.

“You can’t get the power out of Labrador without going through Quebec,” says Abery.

Williams has raised the prospect of building a transmission line through the Maritimes.

Abery is sceptical.

“We always put that out there to make it sound like we had options,” Abery says. “But everybody in the business knows that’s foolishness. It sounds good in the newspaper. Joe Smallwood started that back in the 1960s calling it the Anglo-Saxon route. It was crazy then and it’s crazy now.”

Abery says any talk of a Maritimes route doesn’t fool Hydro Quebec.

“They just smile,” he says. “I mean you’re in the middle of Labrador. The only border we’ve got is with Quebec. So you’ve either got to sell it to Quebec, or go through Quebec. And there’s no reason you wouldn’t sell it to Quebec. Their money is just as good as anybody else’s money as long as you got enough of it.”

Abery says Newfoundland could sell the power to another customer, in Ontario say, and simply pay Hydro Quebec to wheel it across its transmission lines. The fee for doing it wouldn’t be unreasonable, he notes.

“But the farther you sell it, the more transmission lines you’ve got to build and the costlier it is,” he points out. “The simpler thing is to just sell it to Quebec and let them deal with it. But if you’re getting enough money out of Ontario, then sell it to them. If you’re getting enough money out of Manitoba, I suppose you’d sell it to them. But it would be expensive power. The further you go, the more expensive it is. Transmission lines are not cheap. And you lose energy on the transmission line. That’s why you can only go so far with the transmission line, otherwise there’s no energy at the end of it.”

Wells, meanwhile, sees one way around a purchase power contract with Hydro Quebec or any other customer as the main way of financing the project. But it’s one that didn’t get anywhere in the past.

“If the federal government said ‘We’ll back the project,’ well nobody is going to argue the federal government is going to go broke over (it),” says Wells.

Bennett says obtaining federal backing is an area the utility is going to explore very carefully. He notes Premier Williams raised the idea with all three parties during the last federal election. Stephen Harper, then the Conservative Party Leader, now the Prime Minister, said his party supported the idea of a project “in principle.”

Whether that includes a financial commitment remains to be seen.

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The old hum on the Humber

Politicians running for the government party in Newfoundland and Labrador usually have a simple message;  vote for me or the district won’t see pavement again. 

Now they often get more sophisticated in the presentation these days:  Vaughn Granter, for example, is telling voters in Humber West that he will be their strong “voice” but the idea is basically the same.  Having someone in government will help to bring home all the pork you need.

In Granter’s case, his comments give new meaning to Squires-era political slogan about putting the “hum on the Humber”. 

After all, Humber West has been represented in the House of Assembly by more Premiers than any other district in the province.  Period.  If the good burghers of  Corner Brook are missing something it is not from a lack of patronage, pull, pork or anything else.  Face it: it’s doubtful that Vaughn could succeed where the likes of Joey, Frank, Clyde, Brian and Danny failed miserably.

That’s not all. Over most of the past 20 years Corner Brook has had not one but two senior cabinet ministers.  For the past seven alone, they’ve been pork-teamed by none other than a townie who never lived in Corner Brook for more than a couple of nights at the Glynmill in his life and local boy Tom Marshall.

If this much isn’t clear by now make no mistake: Corner Brookers who might be persuaded by Granter’s truly pathetic appeal can rest easy on the future of their city.  Vote for Mark Watton.  If Tom Marshall, the province’s finance minister, cannot keep the provincial tax dollars flowing for the next 10 months, all by himself then it is only because there isn’t any space left to stuff another ounce of pork inside the Lewin Parkway anyway. 

If none of that makes voters in Corner Brook suck some air between their teeth, then let them consider the sad example of one David Brazil.  He’s the newly minted member of the provincial legislature who replaced the late Diane Whelan.  Brazil campaigned on improving the ferry service to Bell Island, a big voting block in the Conception bay East-Bell Island district.

On January 9, Brazil spoke to VOCM and pronounced himself pleased with his colleagues in government  Great job.  Bright future. VOCM’s disappeared the story but you can still find traces of it via google.

David Brazil won a by-election in Conception Bay East-Bell Island in December, and he feels the PC Party is well positioned. He says they have a good caucus ...

And now as his pal the transportation minister is cutting the service back, all Dave can do is smile and try to foist the blame on someone who had nothing to do with the decision. The best he could say is that the cuts were “unwelcome.”

Voters in Conception Bay East-Bell Island are discovering, likely much to their annoyance, that Dave is not their strong voice inside government.  Instead, he is yet another basenji, a dog that won’t bark.

Is there any reason to believe Vaughn Granter will do any better?  Not really.  There are plenty of decent people sitting on the Tory back benches but take all of them together, plus a buck and a half and you might get a decent cup of coffee somewhere.

Such is the fate of a backbencher in the current Tory administration.

Such will be Vaughn Granter’s fate if he’s elected.

Count on it.

Meanwhile, the people of the Straits-White Bay North voted against Danny Williams himself and look at what happened to them. Not only did they get a member of the legislature who kept the government under close and very public scrutiny, they also got a new health care centre that some would have had you believe would disappear unless there was another basenji sitting faithfully at the feet of Premier of the moment.

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The sun whose rays…

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The January Traffic 2011

Okay so if January comes in like a political nut-bar, it makes you wonder if it will go out in a straightjacket.

Like is this the most sane the year will be or is this like a tiny taste of the mania to come?

Maybe the traffic pattern for January will give us a clue.  The numbers are still running at more than 20,000 readers a month with close to 40,000 page loads.  There’s no shortage of interest in political commentary and that’s a decent thing for someone who writes a political blog.

See if you can find a pattern in what dominated the news based solely on the top 10 posts as selected by the readers:

1. Tory angst may be well founded
2. Connie leadership rigged?
3. Watton to carry Liberal banner in Humber West
4. Brad and circuses
5. Rick Hillier?  Tim Powers? No thanks, say NL Tories
6. Is anyone surprised?
7. Logically challenged Conservatives
8. Cabana candidacy causes Connie caucus consternation and Dunderball Run! [tie]
9. Fear and Loathing in the Caucus Room and Democratic Deficit [tie]
10. Coo-coo for Connie Puffs

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A Hugh Shea for our time

In the most recent twist of an already bizarre tale, Brad Cabana has managed to turn what had been a fiasco inside a tragedy into a farce.

There is no other word for it, but farce:  a member of the federal Conservative party and wannabe leadership candidate for the provincial Conservatives expresses his fervent desire to perpetuate Dannyism in the province…and having been rejected by his own party now proposes to take that bag of ideological and other wares to the Liberal party.

Not to be left out of the play, some local Tory supporters – the most ardent of Danny-ite diehards among them - are claiming that this is proof that Cabana was just the tool of some dark Liberal or Harperite conspiracy in the first place.  The smallest problem with that thought is that they are deadly serious about the idea.

Some might put this down to being nothing more than another symptom of a political system still working through a great shock. Danny Williams’ hasty departure would certainly count as that shock.  And perhaps Cabana is nothing more than the usual local political gadfly or eccentric character with a rare opportunity to get more attention than he might otherwise.

There might be something to that.

Then again, if that is the case, we may well have yet more proof that the province’s political culture is in a precarious state.

Forty years ago, as Joe Smallwood’s political empire crumbled around him, even the most ossified corner boy could rhyme off four or five potential premiers from the Liberal or Progressive Conservatives.  Most of the prospects had served in Smallwood’s cabinet at one time or another.  And there were the colourful characters thrust into the limelight at different times over the course of 1971 and 1972 as they changed parties and plotted and planned. 

These days, the most addled patient in a methadone program couldn’t name a single politician, most likely, let alone a brace.

And as for the others, let’s just say that as the province seems to be missing the broad range of political talent it once produced, so too is it short the rest of the spectrum.

Brad Cabana is no Hugh Shea.

Not by a long shot.

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Strings and all

Frank Moores was the second premier to hold office in Newfoundland and Labrador after Confederation.  He led the Progressive Conservative Party to victory in the 1972 provincial general election, defeating Joe Smallwood and ending Smallwood’s 23 year reign.

That was no mean feat and Moores didn’t do it single-handedly. He led a large group of people who organised themselves in a political party that was distinctly  different from Smallwood’s Liberals.  Until the late 1960s, the Liberal party had no district associations, for example.  Smallwood maintained a hand-picked fixer in every district who handled all the party business.  Smallwood himself picked candidates and until the 1969 convention, there’d been no leadership debate of any kind.

Moores won the Tory leadership at a convention held in May 1970.  A group of influential Conservatives, including Danny Williams’ mother and father spearheaded a drive to get Moores back from Ottawa where he sat as a member of parliament.

Now, in itself, that’s fascinating in light of the political outlooks of provincial Conservatives like Chick Cholock.  Ross Wiseman’s executive assistant wrote an e-mail to Brad Cabana, the Tory leadership hopeful back in late December.  Cholock wrote – you may recall – that “in an ideal world there will not be a leadership challenge.”  As Cholock saw it, a leadership battle “always hurt the party for years.  Any Party at all…”.

In the 1970 leadership convention, the Tories had a handful of candidates.  The list included Herb Kitchen, John Carter, Walter Carter and Hugh Shea.  Moores won handily and there was a minor controversy but for the most part, the party managed to sort out the difficulties and carry on.  Almost a decade later, the party held another leadership convention and managed to avoid any lasting controversy. The Tories stayed in power for another decade.

That hardly sounds like a series of unmitigated disasters, does it?

In the 40 years since Moores’ convention victory, the provincial Conservatives have certainly changed.  They’ve become – in essence – a fairly typical local political party for Newfoundland and Labrador.  Now, as before Confederation, the parties aren’t programmatic. They don’t have ideologies or set agendas.

And, at least as far as the province’s Conservatives have shown over the past few weeks, they certainly aren’t driven by grass-roots members.  They are most certainly not, as Danny Williams described them last year, a Reform-based Conservative party.  The Reformers believed very firmly that political parties ought to be directed by their members.  Policy used to get set at regular conventions.  District organizations picked candidates.  The party constitution laid down clear and unmistakeable rules and people paid attention to the rules.

No one could mistake the difference between that approach to politics compared to the provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Sure the party has a constitution and bunch of people have titles.  But even the rules about something as crucial as membership aren’t clearly spelled out in the party’s fundamental document. And when it comes to deciding what those rules mean, only the insiders get to decide who the insiders can be.

In that sense, you could say that the local Tories aren’t democratic.  Now before anyone goes off the handle, understand that is not the description offered up by your humble e-scribbler.  A Tory supporter posted a comment on Twitter last week that said exactly that:  “a political party is not a democratic institution.”  Open Line host Randy Simms said exactly the same thing last week as well.

While you can disagree about what democracy means exactly, it is rather striking that two politically aware and presumably politically astute people in the province could state that political parties are not democratic organizations.  They weren’t troubled by the idea, apparently.  They didn’t find it odd.  In fact, it would seem that they found it perfectly natural for a political party to be run by an inner cabal accountable only to themselves.

And, as it seems comments online, provincial Conservative supporters seem to think every political party operates this way.  They don’t, but that is another matter.

What’s really striking is the way Frank Moores viewed political parties 40 years ago. You can find this quote in Janice Wells’ recent biography of the former premier:

Political parties are what people make them.  We’ve got to get people involved who don’t even recognise the need that they be involved in their own welfare, their own future, who perhaps after twenty-one [sic] years don’t even realize they have that right, and we have to get our best people involved, our best academics, artists, businessmen, educators.  I want these people to become totally involved in the work that faces us, and to know that they won’t be manipulated like puppets but will have major roles to play in reviving the province.

Political parties are indeed what people make of them.  In some bizarre twist, the people who make up the provincial Conservative Party in the early years of the 21st century have managed to turn Frank Moores’ party into something he most likely wouldn’t recognize.

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PIFO: Newly mined minister in trouble in district

Derrick Dalley?

Appointed to cabinet to boost his chances of re-election and then delivers pork to his own district?

Liberace gay.

The Tory back-room boys reject Cabana.

And now this.

So many shocks in a row.

Call it a penetrating insight into the frackin’ obvious but still fun to point out, just as your humble e-scribbler did the day they swore him into cabinet.

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Binary politics

Okay so finance minister Jim Flaherty says there’s a 50-50 chance of a federal election this spring over the budget.

And about 25 years ago, Gwynne Dyer predicted there was a 50-50 chance we’d get out of the 1980s without a nuclear war.

For those who aren’t into the really out-there, mind-bending conceptualising and thinkerising, let’s make it simple:  there’s a 50-50 chance of anything.  It either will happen or it won’t.

What bullshit artists count on when they pour out this pseudo-analytical crap is that there are only 10 types of people in the world who understand binary:  those who do and those who don’t.

Get it?

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Traffic for small buildings, the last week of January 2011

1. Coo-coo for Connie Puffs
2. Irresponsible Government League:  free-wheeling in Dunderdale’s department
3. Connie Leadership 2011:  a small but apparently overlooked point
4. One sign of the political Apocalypse
5. The same old excuses
6. Unsound public finances:  Tom Marshall’s travesty
7. Watton to carry Liberal banner in Humber West
8. A country apart?  More like a world apart
9. No wind, please.  We’re Nalcor.
10. Stelmach bails

Trivia bonus question for people who get the humourous reference in the title:  Two Conservatives with last names referring to small buildings. Name ‘em.

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Breaking news and breaking wind

Loyola Sullivan thinking about running as a federal Conservative. [Update: CBC online story]

News in 2011?*

Try 2008.

Tom Rideout eyeing a Conservative nod.

News in 2011?*

Try 2008.

Unless they’ve made the official announcement – Jerry Byrne did -  it is still just  as much a case of scuttlebutt as it was in 2008.

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Addendum:  John Hickey looking at a federal run?  Posted here in December:

Of the crew listed above, John Hickey has had his five best years to fatten up the pension and there’d be no real reason for him stick around anyway.  Future premiers might be less inclined to keep him in cabinet.  Doesn’t matter, though, since Hickey’s apparently got his sights on going federal in the next federal election.

Don’t forget Tommy Osborne, too, in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, another perennial favourite.

* Date fixed

How to be a Tory

The bunker team that ruled on Brad Cabana’s appeal of his rejected leadership bid made a fascinating – and most likely inadvertent – description of what standards they used to determine who might be considered a member of the provincial Conservative Party.

You can hear this in a debrief CBC Provincial Affairs reporter David Cochrane did with the St. John’s Morning Show’s Jeff Gilhooley on Friday morning.

Cochrane reported that the Conservative appeals team found that only three of the names on Cabana’s nomination forms were considered to be party members.  They came to the conclusion after scouring membership lists from district associations, youth groups and other affiliated organizations as described in the party constitution.

Sounds good and official so far, right?

And then Cochrane started listing the three.

The first one he described was a person who may have – note the conditional language – put up a few signs during an election campaign.

Hold the phone.

That’s it?

May possibly have been vaguely recalled to have helped out on a sign crew. 

Okay.

So how many signs do you theoretically have to stick in the ground? 

Is it one? 

A dozen?

Do the signs have to be in the ground or could you have been seen holding one lovingly at some point?

Do you actually have to have done it or is it a function of someone else’s efforts?  After all, maybe this was back in the 1990s when every Tory householder included a sign.  Junior sticks it in the window to piss Dad the Dipper off and presto the whole family is down in some registry of known Tories kept in someone’s basement?

Maybe the whole membership process isn’t even that specific.

Maybe you only have to look like someone who might have erected a sign: Yes, by. That fellow looks like a guy who helped me out years ago.  He’s a member then.

After all, as Cochrane related the tale, the Tories weren’t even sure this guy or gal actually wielded the hammer or got the splinters from holding the two by two. They thought he may have.

And while they weren’t even 100% certain of that they were prepared to say that the person was a member in order to meet the clear and stringent requirements set down in the Tory party constitution.

We know this is such a document since coronation chairman Shawn Skinner – with no real or perceived conflict of interest whatsoever, surely – duly blessed the outcome.

Now that sign guy doesn’t sound like someone whose name wound up on an actual membership list. After all, the party  doesn’t really have membership lists as such since the party doesn’t have members, as such. There are no cards or dues or any formal way of identifying as a member of the party.

In fact, the party considers every person in the district over the age of 18 years to be a member for the purposes of voting in nomination contests.  And under the party constitution only members can vote.

So basically before Cochrane even got that far in this tale, the story totally demolished the bit before it. If the Tories had actual membership lists to scour, they wouldn’t have had to be beggar someone’s failing memory of a sign crew that could have gone off with a van and the dozen bear and a few dozen signs at any time back to 1972, at least.

And if they really had some sort of membership lists with rules that are clear, widely known and fairly applied, they wouldn’t be crediting Cabana with finding a possible Tory sign jockey.

In case you'd forgotten, the same people who are living this tale of membership stupidity are the same people who control about seven billion a year in public money.

it would all be hysterically funny if that were not true.

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Connie Leadership 2011: a simple but apparently overlooked point

So now the Conservatives’ appeal team have tossed a decision out of the bunker that says Brad Cabana had only three names they recognised as members of the party.

Appeal denied!

Never saw that coming.

Liberace was gay and now this.

Anyway, while this Cabana-gate fiasco has been dragging on and on, the Conservatives held a nomination to select a by-election candidate.

The requirement to vote in the nomination – as widely reported – was that the person had to be over the age of 18 years and resident in the district.  Bring along a couple of pieces of identification and they let you vote.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that such an approach means the party actually recognises any person resident in the district and over the age of 18 years to be, by default, a member of the Conservative party.  If they required someone to sign a statement that they supported the aims of the party, then that’s only a minor additional wrinkle.

And what does the party constitution say about voting in a district nomination fight?  That’s really important because the Conservatives down the bunker are using the party constitution to claim Brad’s list of names doesn’t qualify.

Article 12, Section 6 of the Progressive Conservative Party constitution reads:

Eligible voters entitled to vote for a person to be elected as the Party Candidate are those persons who are members of the District Association, ordinarily resident in the Electoral District at the date of the Nominating Meeting and who are not less than eighteen (18) years of age either at the date of the nominating meeting or at the date of the election, if the date of the election has been set…

read that first bit again.

“Eligible voters”, that is, those people “entitled to vote for a person to be elected as the Party Candidate” in a by-election or general election are… “persons who are members of the District Association”.

Sounds simple.

The people who can vote are members of the District Association.

Okay.

So how can you tell who are member of the association?

Well, look at the official party announcement.

It merely refers to “voters”, as in:

“Voting will be held on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in two locations; they are:

• Corner Brook - Elks Club
• Gallants - Town Hall

Voters are reminded to have two pieces of I.D., one of which must include a street address and picture.”

And in that case as in every nomination since 2003, the Conservatives have allowed anyone with an address in the district and matching identification to vote.

Only members of the district association can vote and members means anyone living in the district over the age of 18 and possessing some valid identification.

So how exactly can a party that – by repeated practice – accepts anyone living in a district over the age of 18 years claim that a list of 73 people over 18 years of age and living in the province actually contains 70 names that are not members of the Conservative party?

Sounds like the party has the same legal geniuses on this cases as the ones employed in the AbitibiBowater expropriation, the 1969 contract litigation and the Ruelokke thing.

A clause that says the tribunal decision is binding on both parties actually says a judge can’t rule on the decision.

That one got laughed out of the courthouse and all the way down Duckworth Street.

Uh huh.

Next think the Legal Genius(es) will try and insist that a judge has no jurisdiction over a corporation registered in the province and operating under the Companies Act.

There are judges on Duckworth Street already drawing lots to see which of their numbers get to sort out that little legal turd and the turd-wrangler who gets to lay in in front of his or her bench.

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Connie Leadership 2011: Tweet of the Week

…how is it not democratic. [?] A political party is not a democratic institution. Decisions are made by members.

Seen in the twitter-verse from an ardent Conservative supporter in Newfoundland and Labrador in a discussion on the never-ending saga of the Conservative efforts to keep Brad Cabana from upsetting their carefully laid back-room plans.

 

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The Double-Dippity-Do

While teachers may be the largest group of people the Auditor General found to be double dipping, the problem isn’t confined to them.

Auditor General John Noseworthy found 60 pensioners drawing salaries from government departments and the House of Assembly in 2009. And while he didn’t check to see if any of the politicians were double-dipping, Noseworthy did find that the pols liked to hire double-dippers:

For 2009, departments indicated that 10 of the 60 (2008 - 7 of the 47)  rehired pensioners were political appointments such as secretaries to a  member of the House of Assembly or research assistants and, as such, Cabinet approval would not be expected.

Cabinet approval might not have been needed but the provincial government’s finance rules should at least be instructive in the legislature especially in the wake of Chief Justice Derek Green’s report on the 1996-2006 slush fund scandal.

This chart from the AG report shows the distribution of double-dippers making more than $25,000 per year, by department:


There’s no indication of what a “private MHA” is in that entry for the education department.

The child and youth advocate appears to be the retired judge appointed to replace Darlene Neville. No surprise there as the province’s justice minister blessed the double-dipper in the House of Assembly in early 2010. Your humble e-scribbler also raised the point around the same time along with the note that the judge’s salary was actually way higher than that of the person he replaced.

Talk about big stamps.

Then there’s the numbers by salary and pension amount:


The problems here are way beyond the idea that people are drawing a pension and collecting a new salary at the same time.  That’s a gigantic one, in itself, but this is an old issue and one that government policy has clearly addressed since 1993, at least.  People aren’t supposed to be collecting a pension and drawing a salary from what is, in essence, the same pot of cash.

The policy is clear on this, but as Noseworthy points out, the policy is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.  At the same time, departments aren’t properly documenting the hiring and the re-hiring.

What there seems to be in this case, as with the ATV issue, is a chronic management problem. responsibility for the problems has to start at the top and that’s the only place that can set both the tone and the general management approach to fix it.

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The same old excuses

Seems like the last time double-dipping was a public controversy, proponents of the scheme used exactly the same excuse:  people won’t take the jobs for the money that’s offered.

Wasn’t true then and, given the Auditor General’s report, it still isn’t true.

Maybe the teacher’s association needs to rethink its ancient talking points.

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Tentative deal in Voisey’s strike

As reported by CBC.

As reported by the Telegram.

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Coo-coo for Connie Puffs

yes, those busy little political beavers in the Confederation Building are still obsessing over certain questions on VOCM’s question of the day.

They learned their Danny-lessons well.

The latest question to get goosifed was one about the Conservative leadership race and the back-room deal Brad Cabana is fighting to bust wide open.

10,616 clicks, 80% of which went in the “no” column for a question asking if Brad should be allowed to run for the Tory leadership.

Now in all likelihood the past practice holds, which means that tax dollars in some government office got spent paying some staffer or bunch of staffers to bust up a computer mouse casting these “votes”.

But aside from displaying a pretty shagged set of priorities, this little display does illustrate the lengths to which the back-room boys over at Connie headquarters are prepared to fight off any attempts at bringing modern democratic ideas inside the Bunker that Danny Built. Hisself’s legacy is apparently too precious to throw away on such frivolities at fair voting, open membership and debate free from intimidation and afternoon visits from executive  assistants.

It’s a pretty sad commentary on how far the once mighty and respected party has fallen lately. The only thing sadder would be the plants clogging up comments sections defending the party’s anti-democratic bent.

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Coincidence?

Auditor General criticises a department.

Minister got shuffled in a surprise move in January.

Bear in mind that the provincial government knew the contents of the Auditor General’s report long before the public did.

Department of Child Youth and Family Services: 

As a result of issues with the delivery and monitoring of the [long-term protection] LTP component of the [protective intervention program] PIP we determined that there was an increased risk that harm may occur to children.

Kathy Dunderdale suddenly shuffled Joan Burke, who had headed the new department from its creation two years ago, back to head the education department.

Meanwhile in another part of the report …

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Irresponsible Government League: free-wheeling in Dunderdale’s department

From the Auditor General’s most recent report on the provincial government’s handling of public funds, released on Wednesday:

As at 19 March 2010, the EMS identified that 56 (12.0%) of the 465 recreational vehicles were missing.  We also found that 49 of the 56 missing recreational vehicles were assigned to the Department of Natural Resources.  

We note that the 2006 Report referred to 80 missing recreational vehicles and indicated that "To have this number of machines unaccounted [for] is unacceptable and increased monitoring of both ATVs and snow machines is strongly recommended.” The Report noted that 67 of the 80 missing recreational vehicles were assigned to the Department of Natural  Resources and the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Yes folks, Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s former department lost 49 snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles and that accounted for 87.5% of the government’s inventory of missing ATVs.

How do you lose a snowmobile or a quad?

Well, sez the purist, the vehicles aren’t really lost. It’s just that the department officials don’t know where they are.

For those of us paying the bills, that lousy record keeping and the poor management practices that go with it still pay for all that waste in government.

Meanwhile, 49 somebodies may well have sweet rides courtesy of your tax dollars.

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Same and different: Alberta and NL Conservatives’ leadership issues

Alberta premier Ed Stelmach is leaving politics in the face of a revolt within his caucus, according to the Globe and Mail.

Kyle Fawcett, a first-term MLA from Calgary and one of the more fiscally conservative in his party, acknowledged there were cracks in Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet.

“I do think that there was a bit of an issue in caucus,” he said. “There were some challenges around, obviously, this upcoming budget, and some promises that had been made. And I think the Premier saw that as an obstacle that maybe he didn’t want to tackle at this point in his life of public service.”

The unexpected news on Tuesday makes for some interesting comparisons with events in Newfoundland and Labrador over the past couple of months.

Danny Williams left politics unexpectedly in early December.  

Unlike Stelmach, Williams wasn’t facing any obvious internal political problems although he did drop hints of difficulties within his caucus.

Like Williams, Stelmach left politics with the accusation that the opposition parties would employ American-style political attacks in the upcoming provincial general election. Unlike Williams, Stelmach wasn’t a hypocrite in making such a comment.  Williams used Republican-style politics for his entire political career.

While the Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador cooked up a backroom deal to avoid a leadership contest, their Alberta brothers and sisters can look to a quick contest among several cabinet ministers that could be over by the end of March.

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Don’t shoot! They’re short

Of the 16 by-elections since 2003, the provincial Conservatives have set a mere 22 days for campaigns in all but three.  The minimum required under provincial election laws is 21 days.

In two of those, the campaigns lasted 23 days and in one the campaign was 24 days.

The current campaign in Humber West fits the pattern to a tee.

The Conservatives have also been super-speedy in calling by-elections.  In three – Exploits, Port au Port and Humber Valley – the writ for the by-election came the same day the incumbent vacated the seat.

But at 52 days after being vacant, Humber West is the third longest time the Tories have taken to call a by-election They took 61 days to call Cape St. Francis, 60 days to call Baie Verte,

The maximum time to call a by-election under election laws is 60 days.

The others range between three days for the Straits-White Bay North to 48 days for Placentia- St. Mary’s.

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One sign of the political Apocalypse

Seen around the Internet:

I am not confident, based on the government's past record that they have a plan to diversify the rural economy and that concerns me. It will take leadership, innovation, commitment and ability. I am not sure that those traits have been applied to the job in a while.

That comment, from one of Danny Williams most strident supporters, is an damning criticism of Williams’ and his Conservative Party in power.

Are the locusts and hailstorms far behind?

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The Basenjis of St. John’s

If there are dogs that won’t hunt, the Conservatives members of the House of Assembly representing seats in the metro St. John’s are the kind that won’t bark.

Back-bencher, cabinet minister or parliamentary secretary, they are all sitting idly by as the current administration demolishes the school system in the metropolitan area. 

Thousands of students will suffer as a result of a poorly conceived and clumsily executed backroom deal between Eastern School District and the province’s education department to close schools and move students into lashed up space.

The school district will unveil a bunch of resolutions to implement the department’s plan tomorrow night.  If you go by the versions that have already circulated to test what will get a majority, the school board trustees plan to ignore the thoughtful comments made by parents across St. John’s that oppose the back-room scheme and propose instead the plan already agreed upon by parents themselves in 2008. 

There are huge problems in the scheme.  For example, under the deal, the city core and downtown area will be left without a school of any kind.  Students will have to be bussed across town.  In another area, hundreds of students will be forced to change schools four times in five years until the provincial government finishes a new high school in the west end.

If they finish it.

If the school doesn’t get finished, the students will languish as refugees in sub-standard facilities.

The very idea of those things would be ludicrous even as a response to a disaster.  Parents across St. John’s are gob-smacked that bureaucrats and politicians would deliberately plan to implement such a hare-brained scheme and dare to defend it.

But the fix has been in since well before Christmas. Trustees, the majority of whom are from outside St. John’s, are already in favour of the scheme.

Portable classrooms are reportedly on the way to house students from one junior high school who will be forced into grossly inadequate facilities for an unknown period of time.

Not a single member of the province’s legislature from the metro area will speak out to support their constituents.

That’s not a prediction.

That’s a guarantee.

Just watch.

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Chevron announces find offshore Africa

From Chevron’s news release:

“SAN RAMON, Calif., Jan 25, 2011 -- Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today confirmed discoveries within the Moho-Bilondo license in the Republic of the Congo.

The Bilondo Marine 2 and 3 wells are located approximately 40 miles (70 kilometers) offshore of the Republic of the Congo, in 2,600 feet (800 meters) of water in the central part of the Moho-Bilondo license.

George Kirkland, vice chairman, Chevron Corporation, said, "These discoveries further demonstrate the potential of West Africa where Chevron has made significant investments to develop new energy resources."

Bilondo Marine 2 and 3 were drilled to a total depth of around 6,000 feet (1,800 m). The Bilondo Marine 2 (BILDM-2) well found 253 feet (77 m) of gross reservoir, while the Bilondo Marine 3 (BILDM-3) well, which had a different reservoir as objective, found 144 feet (44 m) of gross reservoir. Both wells were successfully tested and flowed oil.

"We look forward to continuing the work needed to further evaluate these discoveries and potential development options," said Ali Moshiri, president of Chevron Africa and Latin America Exploration and Production Company.

The discoveries follow two previous successful exploration wells, Moho Nord Marine-1 and 2, drilled in the permit area in 2007 and the positive appraisal wells Moho Nord Marine-3 in 2008 and Moho Nord Marine-4 in 2009.

The permit area's deep-water Moho-Bilondo project began production in April 2008 and is currently producing 90,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Chevron's subsidiary holds a 31.5 percent interest in the permit area with partners Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (15 percent) and Total E&P Congo (operator and 53.5 percent).

…”

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Stelmach bails

Alberta premier Ed Stelmach is leaving politics.

The Alberta Conservative party will hold a leadership convention to replace him before the end of March, 2011.

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Unsound public finances: pork-barrelling on steroids

If it wasn’t for oil prices, the provincial Conservatives wouldn’t have anything to crow about when it comes to public finances.

And since they have no control over the price of oil, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that building their budget plans on oil prices is something bordering on insane.

You can see that insanity by looking at a chart from the Auditor General’s recent report showing the provincial government’s budget surpluses and deficits.

Three things:

1. Remember the fiscal year numbering thing – The AG misreports the year. To find the actual fiscal year, knock one off.  In other words what the AG calls 2010 is actually 2009.
2. These are accrual or accounting surpluses.  If you look at the actual cash performance, there are some chunky deficits in these years.  Like 2009 for example when the provincial government had to take about half a billion from its cash reserves to cover that whopper of a deficit. Ye olde e-scribe wrote about this before  - in 2008 - along with a couple of lovely pictures to illustrate the point.
3. Those gigantic surpluses in the chart weren’t planned.  In fact, if they planned anything,  the current provincial government crowd planned on going in the hole.  They came out in the black because oil went to insane prices. Look at the budgets for those years and you will see that Tom Marshall and his colleagues planned gigantic spending deficits.

Take 2007, for example.  According to the budget for that year, Tom Marshall planned to come up short by $1.2 billion.  The year before he actually came up short on cash by $707 million.

While you’re at it, these charts also explode the latest bullshit bomb finance minister Tom Marshall’s been spreading now that the Auditor general’s report is on the street.  According to Tom there was a plan, tons of fiscal responsibility and then temporary deficits to make sure the nasty old recession stayed away from our shores.

If you reflect on the actual budget history of the Williams administration, you will see that only real difference between 2009 and all the years before isn’t that 2009 was a year of “stimulus”.  It actually follows the established pattern of planned overspending. 

What changed was the world price of oil. In 2009, the provincial government’s budget forecast and the actual average turned out to be pretty much the same number. 2010 might not be far off that experience, at least as far as cash flow goes.

And that “stimulus” spending?  Well about half of it was actually stuff the provincial government just couldn’t deliver two or three years before when they first promised it. The packaged it up and called it “stimulus” but it as really something a lot less impressive than it sounded. It was, however, a typical Fernando announcement:  it looked a lot better than it actually was.

The provincial government has spent the last seven years spending public money. 

Lots of it. 

At umpteen times the rate of inflation. 

And they started unsustainable spending long before the world went into a recession.

If they had a plan, it certainly wasn’t to spend responsibly, reduce the public debt and generally look after things for future generations.  In fact, if you look at how much they spent and what they spent it on, it looks like old-fashioned pork-barrelling on steroids.

All that puts the current provincial administration is an especially hard spot.  Politically, they won’t be able to start fixing the problems they’ve created. There’s the election and then, if they win in October, they’ll have to settle the leadership thing.  They can really only carry on with the spendthrift ways they’ve followed for the past seven years.

At the same time, politically, the public is now clued in to the problem, wise to the government torque and looking for the sort of serious leadership decisions that the Conservatives can’t really deliver.

Not exactly the greatest situation to be in with an election coming in a few months time, is it?

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A country apart? More like a world apart

In British Columbia, two of the province’s major political parties are holding leadership contests.  There’ll be lots of debate and discussion.

Meanwhile on the other coast, one of the province’s political parties is desperately trying to make sure its secret backroom deal holds together so they can avoid any debate at all.

And the guy the back room boys are trying to keep out of their private clubhouse is vowing to fight what he calls the “feudal“ politics of the province’s ruling Conservatives.

The drama is national news.

Embarrassing national news.

Danny Williams’ successor is busily making sure Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t seen as the youngest, coolest province.

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