Nurturing a democratic revolution

Public life in Newfoundland and Labrador remains as fundamentally undemocratic as it ever was.

Paternalism remains the order of the day.  As three sitting members of the House revealed, they they are the face of government in their districts. 

Never mind that neither of them is actually in government.  As members of the legislature, each member has but one job:  to hold the government to account for its actions.  They do so on behalf of their constituents. Doesn’t matter if they sit on the government back benches or the opposition benches.  Their job is to serve the people of the province and the House.

By that measure, none of the current members do their jobs very well. 

The House of Assembly sits  - on average - the least number of days of any legislature in the country.  Members have little time to study any legislation the government proposes.  From the government side, members usually read prepared speeches full of officially sanctioned drivel.

The opposition members of the legislature are no better.  Liberal and New Democrat alike, they tend to rely heavily on official government statements for what they know and say about a bill.  Their comments in an afternoon sitting of the House are often laughable paraphrases of what officials told them in a morning “briefing”.   One need only look at the Hansard record of speeches by Lorraine Michael and Yvonne Jones on the day their rolled over and helped the government in the Abitibi expropriation fiasco to see this situation plainly.

The House has no functioning committees to review legislation. The Committee of the Whole remains nothing more than a hollow exercise in form over substance. The public accounts committee – once the means by which the legislature reviewed all public spending – remains as dead as it was during the darkest days of the recent patronage and corruption scandal. 

As amazing as it is to say, the House of Assembly in the early 21st century has reverted back almost to what it was before the collapse of Responsible Government in 1934.

The House of Assembly is reduced to a form of Punch and Judy show. And to compliment it, recent changes to the provincial access to information laws have systematically reduced public knowledge of government actions when the legislature is not sitting.

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador have turned their backs on politics in increasing numbers.  Voter turn-out in recent general elections and by-elections is at historic low levels.  They know that they have little control so there is no incentive to take part. 

Even the appointed House officers – the Speaker, and the watchdogs of privacy, children’s interests, elections and public accounts – are bumbling and useless. Some offices have been or are filled by political hacks who do not even pretend to be impartial.

A modern, prosperous province deserves a healthy thriving democracy.  Nothing short of a spiritual revolution can reform public life in Newfoundland and Labrador and raise it to the standards that the ordinary men and women of the province deserve.

Here are some ways to do that.

For starters, we need election finance reform:

• Ban corporate and union donations.
• Only individuals should be able to contribute to political parties to a maximum of $5,000 a year.
• Ban “in kind” contributions to parties and candidates.
• Limit election, by-election and leadership campaign fundraising and spending.
• Limit spending by political parties and third parties during elections and during the years between general elections.
• Require full disclosure of donations when they occur, with additional monthly updates on the Chief Electoral Officer’s website.

Piece-meal and largely unnecessary changes to elections in the province from 2004 onward have produced an electoral system that is an embarrassment in a democracy worthy of the name. Electoral reform should include the following measures to break the influence of money and to restore some power to the backbenchers and opposition members:

• Remove the provision that the resignation of a premier triggers a general election.  Overbearing ego created it and it serves no useful purpose.
• Eliminate mail-in ballots and the current system that allows voting before an election writ is actually issued.
• Restore the mandatory 90 day period in which a by-election must be called to fill a vacancy.  The 2004 change to 60 days proved unnecessary and, as in 2007, produced the laughable case of a by-election that was called but never actually held.
• Cut off incumbent expense charges, cell phones and other perks of office 45 days in advance of a fixed election date. This will discourage campaigning at public expense by incumbents.
• Compel members not seeking re-election to vacate their offices and cut off their expense accounts 45 days before a fixed election date or 30 days after they announce their intentions publicly, whichever saves the public more money.
• Introduce amendments to the House of Assembly Act that set mandatory sitting days (for example 50 days in the spring and 40 in the fall) for the House of Assembly with cash penalties for each member if the House does not sit the prescribed number of days.
• Introduce amendments to the House of Assembly Act to establish legislative committees, set the number of hearing days they must sit.
• Make the membership on the committee a function of House seniority regardless of whether a member is on the opposition benches or government back benches.
• Give the committees research and administrative staff to be hired by the Speaker.
• Update:  To go along with this, some other changes to funding would follow:  the office of the leader of the opposition would get funding for administrative positions such as chief of staff, executive assistant and communications director.  Caucuses would no longer get funding for staff and research positions.  Instead, every member would get a standard allotment for a constituency assistant, a travel budget etc. to support individual work as members.
• Update:  The Public Accounts Committee should be the only one with an opposition majority and an opposition chair. 
• Cabinet minister would only be allowed to serve on the House of Assembly management committee.
• Introduce legislation to limit the size of cabinet and the number of government party members who may draw extra payments for government duties.  Exclude those members drawing extra pay from committee work.
• Strengthen the conflict of interest rules for politicians to limit their business and other interests while serving in the House. 
• Add charities to the list of prohibited interests that members may have, especially once they sit in cabinet.
• Extend the prohibited period for doing business with government after leaving office to five years for all politicians and political staff.
• Former cabinet ministers should be barred from any dealings with all government departments, not just the one for which they last served as minister.

To restore the integrity of the House of Assembly officer appointments, nominees should be vetted during public hearings by a House of Assembly committee on appointments.  Nominees should come from a publicly advertised competition, although the list of potential candidates may include recommended nominees from cabinet.

Existing legislation should be amended to allow that officers can only be removed by the Speaker with the concurrence of the committee.  Any suspension or removal from office while the House is not in session must be the subject of a public hearing at the next sitting of the House.

And that’s just the start of it.

In future posts in the series, we’ll look at changes to the province’s access to information laws and reforms to senior appointments.

There are more than 15 good ideas for a stronger Newfoundland and Labrador.

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People unfamiliar with the legislature might not understand how some of these changes could produce a dramatic difference in the House.  Let’s see if this helps:

• Banning corporate and union donations breaks the influence of big money on party policy and shifts power back toward individuals.
• Adding charities to the conflict of interest guidelines closes a gigantic loophole in the current conflict guidelines that has proven to be a major problem in the United States. 
• The new committee structure is intended to restore some power to the legislature and to individual members of the House and help break the centralization of power in the first minister. Among other things, it breaks the patronage hold that Premiers have on perks and bonuses that are often held out as a way of influencing members unduly. 
• Individual members should be able to develop a profile, reputation and a power base that would make them contenders for cabinet based on merit rather than obsequiousness and pliability.
• Funding committees instead of caucuses prevents majority parties coupled with a biased Speaker from doing as the Conservatives did in the current legislature with funding for the official opposition.
• Cutting off expenses before a fixed election levels the playing field between incumbents and challengers at the district level.

From the Earth to the moon

Forty two years later, the American manned space program is about to die.

For the first time in half a century the United States will not have the ability to send humans into space and bring them home again.

How truly sad that is.

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Rumpole and the Cardinal Rule

St. John’s lawyer Averill Baker is pissed that the Crown prosecutor is trying to remove her from a case because she represented the victim in the savage beating her current client is accused of visiting on his head.

He’s facing a second degree murder charge for allegedly shooting his accomplice in a botched armed robbery.  The fellow is also facing an attempted murder charge for the beating of baker’s former client.

Lisa Stead sent Baker a letter. According to Baker, Stead wrote that she will ask a judge to remove Baker if she shows up in court representing the fellow accused of .

Seems the Crown tucked the fellow in in 2005 for possession of stolen goods and possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.  Baker represented him at the time. 

What’s more, Stead advised Baker that she may be called as a witness in the case.

A couple of things stand out from the CBC account of this and Baker’s comments.

First, she says that she represented the victim in the current case  for “half a day” in 2005 and therefore knows nothing else about the fellow and his life.  While there may be no connection between the brief appearance in court and the conviction, the two things don’t look good together. 

Baker might have been better off walking from the current case given the fairly obvious conflict of interest.  Any cross examination of the victim in the current case would be fraught with problems.  On the face of it, one would be hard pressed to see how that would do her current client any good.

But second and perhaps more important than anything else, there’s the line at the end of the CBC story:

Baker said if the Crown comes up with other charges to attempt to make her be a witness, she will apply to Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court to rule on malicious prosecution.

This suggests that – contrary to her earlier assertion – Baker may know something of her former client’s business or his relationship with the fellow she now represents that she claims.  The charges mentioned here seem to be related to Baker, not her current or former client.

Let’s hope someone at CBC misunderstood.

Otherwise, the implication for Baker’s client is one thing.

The implication for Baker is another, and it is not good.

Not good at all.

In fact, the implications are so serious this might be a case where the lawyer needs to get some legal advice before saying another word.  There’s a reason why lawyers often advise their clients to first of all follow the cardinal rule:  shut the f*ck up.

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Making the Most of Our Energy Resources, Part II – Oil and Gas in the Future

Without new oil and gas discoveries, the Newfoundland and Labrador petroleum industry will dry up within a couple of decades.  There hasn’t been a significant discovery in the offshore since the 1980s, with the exception of one find in the Orphan Basin.

The problem isn’t a lack of oil or gas.  The geological estimates back up the notion there is plenty more to find. The problem is no one is looking for it hard enough to find it. 

To give you a sense of how low exploration levels are now compared to a couple of decades ago, take a look at this slide.  It’s taken from Wade Locke’s recent presentation for the Harris Centre. 

Low exploration levels is one of the most important problems facing the oil and gas industry.  It’s not a new problem.  It’s not the only problem.  There are others, all of which centre on the basic challenge of how we can make the most of our oil and gas resources now and in the future.

Here are some basic ideas that can help us to get there.

For starters, Newfoundland and Labrador has to be an attractive place for investment, exploration and development. Oil and gas is a highly competitive industry, especially in the exploration sector.  There are only so many exploration dollars to go around.  There are only so many rigs to go around and there are plenty of places in the world where companies can find oil and gas, develop it, get it to market and make a lot of money.

Sending delegation after delegation to oil shows in places like Houston doesn’t produce a single new exploration well. What the local oil and gas industry needs is a stable, predictable environment.  That is something they haven’t had for a while.

One of the easiest things for the provincial government to do is set an offshore oil royalty regime and a gas royalty regime.  The provincial government had an oil royalty regime but the 2007 energy “plan”  to replace it with something else.  Not surprisingly for the current administration, there is no sign of a new oil royalty regime four years after they promised it.

Ditto a natural gas royalty regime. The current administration promised one in 2007 but they still haven’t delivered.  In fact, the provincial government has been working on development of a gas royalty regime for the past 14 years and still they haven’t managed to produce anything but a discussion that went nowhere.

With the royalty regime set, there’s no need for the provincial government to hold up any developments while it “negotiates” with a developer.  That’s the sort of thing one might expect in a banana republic.  It isn’t what happens in mature economies.

In the same way, the provincial government should set – or allow the offshore regulatory board to set – basic rules for local benefits.

The current administration held up the Hebron development and in the end settled for a royalty regime only marginally better than the generic regime. But any gains on so-called super royalties were offset by give-aways on the front end of the royalty structure and on local benefits in the form of research and development spending commitments.

Standard royalty and benefits regimes that work across a variety of price ranges and that work fairly for the resource owner  - i.e. taxpayers - and the developer will promote stable economic development.

The provincial and federal government should also implement a policy of merit-based appointments to the offshore regulatory board.  The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Regulatory Board is one of the most important agencies in the province. The most recent fiasco with efforts to stuff a former political staffer into a job she was unqualified for highlight the potential damage that politicians can do to an important official body.  At the very least, the provincial government should advertise for applicants for board appointments based on well publicized criteria. Board appointees should serve for fixed terms and each appointment should come with a publicly available expiry date. The offshore board is no place for political hacks and cronies.

While the offshore oil and gas industry is well developed, the oil and gas industry that lies exclusively within provincial jurisdiction is not.  As a way of encouraging development of a well-managed industry within the borders of the province, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador should develop a regulatory board to administer lands, manage reservoirs, serve as a repository for information on oil and gas and generally serve as the focus of industry regulation from the three mile limit inward. 

The new oil and gas regulator should complement the work of the offshore board.  Naturally, the new board will assume some of the roles assigned to the old provincial petroleum directorate as well as ones that have grown up within the oil and gas division of the natural resources department. The new onshore regulatory board should also administer new, standard royalty and benefit regimes for any future developments.

Other elements of the 15 ideas (and more) also will apply to the oil industry.  For example, breaking up the energy company and either privatizing it or forcing it to function like other companies would break its strangle-hold on the local business environment.  This would inevitably allow for new life and energy in a sector that is rapidly becoming stagnant.

Without new life in the province’s energy industry,  the future looks bleak.  Staying on the current path is not a practical option. 

These are a few ideas to stimulate life and growth and to create a future for the province and its people that works.

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Like Momma always said…Part Deux und Trois

The only funnier thing than a guy up on assault charges claiming he is a wannabe Tory candidate are opposition party politicos who campaign for the incumbents.

In the past couple of weeks, comments coming from both parties have highlighted positive economic news.

Liberal leader Yvonne Jones did it before she headed back to Labrador for a series of meetings. She issued a news release that mentioned how the Labrador economy is booming.

Then  provincial NDP president Dale Kirby tweeted a link to a Globe and Mail story about how well the provincial economy is doing in comparison to the rest of the Atlantic provinces.

Wonderful stuff.

Except that in both cases, Jones and Kirby wound up reinforcing the classic argument for staying the course and keeping the current government in power. Things are going well, say the incumbents. Don’t risk all the good times by changing horse in the middle of the stream of cash and jobs.

Opposition parties need to draw attention to things the incumbent party isn’t talking about. There are plenty of issues. Some of them are ones the incumbents just don’t give a frig about but opposition voters do.  Some are issues the incumbents haven’t figured out are potentially decisive. Others are ones the incumbents will scream blue murder about because they are sore issues.

But talking about how good things are under the current administration?

Not really a message that says vote for me, the leader of the party that didn’t deliver all this good stuff.

It’s good for them to be positive, you say.  Otherwise the opposition parties would be all negative.  No one likes it when you are negative.  More people would listen to the opposition parties if they weren't negative all the time.

Well, for starters if you think that way, then you are – without question  - an ardent supporter of whatever incumbent government we are talking about.  Either that or you make Pollyanna look like a suicide waiting to happen.

Only incumbent politicos and their staunch supporters dislike it when others talk about problems.  Face it:  problems exist all the time.  They may not be big problems but they do exist.  It’s natural for people to talk about them if for no other reason than they would like the incumbents to fix them.

But incumbents hate people talking about problems.  The longer the incumbents are in office the more they dislike problems.  The longer the incumbents are in office, you see, the more likely it is that they caused the problems.

Incumbents also know that problems energise the opposition supporters.  After all, talking about the problems at the time are what helped get the incumbents elected in the first place. 

It seems like ancient history these days, but those who can recall the period between 2001 and 2003 will remember Danny Williams talked relentlessly about problems.  He was angry.  He stayed angry even after the 2003 general election. In fact, Danny stayed angry right up to his last days in office.

Tories  - and Danny lovers - don’t see it that way, of course. They think he spoke the truth.  But that’s what one would expect Tories to say, just as Liberals would have said the same sorts of things the last time Liberals were in power.

And when the incumbents hissed at Danny that he was too negative, he just ignored them and carried on about his business.  Danny carried on because he knew what opposition politicians are supposed to do if they ever want to get back into a government office again.

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And Harry won't be running either

Conservative cabinet minister Harry Harding won't be seeking re-election in this fall's general election, according to media reports on MOnday..

Free tuition at NL university for Nova Scotians: NL NDP leader

The Newfoundland and Labrador local of the New Democratic Party wants taxpayers in her province to give Nova Scotians free tuition at Memorial University.

Sounds idiotic, doesn’t it?

But that’s exactly what she wants to do, at least if you follow the thrust of Lorraine Michael’s July 8th news release.

In the release the NDP leader said that “free tuition is essential to ensuring that all of Newfoundland and Labrador’s young people get equal access to education they will need for their own, and by extension, all our prosperity.”

Wonderful stuff.

Then she cites in study released by her party president Dale Kirby, wearing his education professor hat.

Kirby and his colleagues surveyed Memorial University students from Maritime Canada and asked them some questions about why they decided on studying at Memorial University. As the executive summary in the report notes, the number of Maritime students at Memorial went up “ten-fold’ in the past decade or so. And as the report also notes, there have been other reports, most notably by news media, in which Maritime students identified cost as one of the big reasons for them coming to Memorial. They can study at a comprehensive university that has a decent reputation overall(outstanding in some faculties) and they can do it cheaper than they could at Dalhousie or Acadia or University of New Brunswick.

They come here because the tuition is cheap, they said. 

So, reasons Michael, free education for Nova Scotians will benefit Newfoundland and Labrador.

She does not explain how. 

Odds are she can’t.

That’s not important, though. 

In the world of Conservative-style retail politics, all a political party has to do is offer this sort of cash incentive to win votes. It’s like the one about cutting taxes on gasoline or home-heating products.  None of those ideas make any sense except as a way of luring voters:  give us your vote and we’ll give you cash.

The foolishness of the free tuition idea is actually right there in Michael’s release. All you have to do is think about it for a second.

You see all those Maritime students frig off back to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick or Prince Edward island once they get their Memorial University degrees.  They only come here because they can get a decent university paid on the cheap.  They don’t spend four years at Memorial because they plan to settle in Hibb’s Hole once the drinking…err…studying is done.

And if lower tuition is already bringing in the mainland students in droves, then odds are free tuition will attract droves more. The university will have to hire more professors and build more classrooms and laboratories.

And who will pay for this?

Why the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador, of course.

Now think about that a bit more.

In a province where the government is facing a pretty severe financial problem because of foolish spending, the New Democrats want to spend millions more to make university education free.  Then they’ll have to spend hundreds of millions more making the university larger to accommodate all the new students.

And where will thousands of those students come from?

Why Nova Scotia, of course, the most populous province in Atlantic Canada.

Now where else has Nova scotia cropped up lately?

Yes. 

Of course.

Lorraine Michael, Kathy Dunderdale, and Yvonne Jones want to spend billions on this Muskrat Falls project so they can ship cheap electrical power to Nova Scotians.  Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will pay the full cost of the power plus a profit for Nalcor and Nova Scotia-based Emera so that Nova Scotians get a break.

And this is how Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will gain a long-term benefit from their natural resources:  by selling discount electricity to Nova Scotians. 

That sounds an awful lot like this education scheme Lorraine and Dale have cooked up.

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Traffic that never flip flops

The weekly top 10 Bond Papers posts for the week of July 11 to 15, 2011, selected by you, the readers.

1. Forecasting the fall
2. All three NL parties back Muskrat project
3. A world of their own
4. Ahem
5. Political parties and debt:  the Kennedy perspective
6. You might know it as bribery, Ma’am
7. Cross yet another one off your list and Not much to see [tie]
8. Cross Sheila off your list
9. The Ballot Question:  October 2011
10. Did I say “yes” to Muskrat?  I meant “no”:  Jones

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Telly takes wind out of Muskrat

The Telegram editorial on Thursday linked the Muskrat Falls project with the recent announcement by Kruger Inc of a wind energy project in Quebec:

Power, apparently, is cheaper in Quebec. Hydro-Québec says its 2,000 megawatts of wind power are being purchased for an average cost of 8.7 cents a kilowatt hour. That's a huge difference - especially because we're also supposed to be selling power into North American markets.

But you have to wonder - if Hydro-Québec is bringing 2,000 megawatts of wind power on stream at 8.7 cents a kilowatt hour before Nalcor brings 824 megawatts of power on stream at 14.3 to 16.5 cents a kilowatt hour, who will be subsidizing the off-island sale of power of Muskrat Falls to make it competitive with power that costs a third less?

And just why is Muskrat Falls clearly the provincial government's only choice - and Nalcor the only possible supplier - to meet our energy needs again?

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Did I say yes to Muskrat? I meant “no”: Jones

Political decisions in Newfoundland and Labrador are apparently like the local weather at least as far as the current crop of party leaders in the province is concerned.

Wait a minute and everything changes.

Kathy Dunderdale set the standard for indecisiveness with her on-again, off-again subsidies for Danny Williams’ latest gaggle of professional jockstraps.

Now it’s Yvonne Jones’ turn.

In an interview with NTV’s Issues and Answers last week, Jones said that as Premier she’d hand over responsibility for deciding the fate of the Muskrat Falls to the Auditor General. 

And if he ruled the thing was good, then that was good enough for Jones.  She’d go along with it.  Jones sounded positively giddy at the thought of all the jobs and electricity to fuel develop in Labrador.  She claimed there’s 700 megawatts need for mining developments.  That’s pure crap, of course.

Well wait a minute, or in this case a couple of days, and Jones wants to scrap the deal now. That’s what she says in the latest news release from the Opposition Leader’s Office

The reason Jones changed her mind is an interview with Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin on CBC Radio.  Shumlin noted, among other things, the problems with the current projected prices for Muskrat Falls power. 

“If the power is too expensive for residents of the United States, how is it affordable for us, when Premier Dunderdale wants to charge us more for it than consumers outside the province,” Jones said. “Kathy Dunderdale is content to saddle this province with generations of debt for a project that doesn’t make financial sense.”

Quick!  Get the smelling salts.  Regular readers of this corner are swooning at this revelation. After all, it’s not like your humble e-scribbler hasn’t been pounding the drum about how uncompetitive the Muskrat Falls power is on the markets not just today but well into the future.

In fact, there’s even a comment from Kathy Dunderdale  - from last fall - about the lack of American markets for the super expensive Muskrat power.

And if none of that rings a bell, don’t forget the Rhode Island memorandum of understanding.  Kathy Dunderdale told the legislature one story.  Turns out that, to paraphrase a famous politician, nothing Kathy said could be further from the truth:

As far as we can determine, there is no legislative hold up here in Rhode Island, it is more of a question of cost.  While the power generation is inexpensive, the cost of transmission adds to the final price. The possibility of purchasing power is still alive; it may be a topic of discussion at the conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers that is happening today. Interest in purchasing renewable energy remains. 

Yes folks, there you have it from 2009:  New England states are interested in buying energy from renewable sources but the damnable costs of transmission are a problem.

That post did not make the local media sit up and take notice.  It took two years and another governor for them to figure it out.

Anyway, scuttling the deal is Jones’ latest position. Once she gets a few phone calls from people who want jobs on the project or from business owners anxious to suck harder on the public debt tit, she’ll swing around again.

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Aquaculture centre opened three years behind schedule, more than 100% over budget

Premier Kathy Dunderdale opened an aquaculture centre in the south coast community of St. Alban’s on Thursday three years after it was supposed to be finished and at more than twice the original forecast price.

Former fisheries minister Tom Rideout announced the offices and laboratories in 2007.  He estimated the cost at $4.2 million.  It was supposed to be opened in 2008.

In a news release marking the opening, the provincial government reported the facility cost $8.8 million.

Danny Williams included the project as part of the provincial government’s “stimulus” package in 2009.  That was just one of the delayed and over budget Williams included as if they were brand new projects in response to the recession.

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Ahem

From the e-mail inbox this week came a gentle reminder from Kevin Kelly, editor at the Herald:

Just wanted to point out that in last week's Newfoundland Herald, (the one with Kiss on the cover), I did a story entitled "Headed for Disaster" discussing the province's spending habits, including how much money the government was spending on itself, as well as comparing govt. spending from 2004 to now. I also brought up the Muskrat Falls costs and comments from both sides of the issue.

Kevin didn’t like the reference in another post that only the Telegram was getting the message that provincial government deficits and Muskrat Falls debt weren’t a good mix.

Fair ‘nuff, Kevin. 

Just to make it clear though, your humble e-scribbler divides the local media scene into two piles.  The daily electronic and print gang go in one pile.  These are the gang who make up the press gallery in the House of Assembly and who have reporters covering the provincial political scene. They tend to break or report on hard political and economic news day-in and day-out.

The weeklies, monthlies and bi-weekly print outlets go in another pile, for a bunch of reasons.  This doesn’t mean they are less important, less influential or anything less in any way.  They just have a different focus.  It could be the local community, as in the Transcon weeklies.  It could be the local arts and entertainment scene.

Rather than skimp, here’s an extract from what the Herald ran in a piece titled “Headed for disaster?”

But here’s the thing. The provincial government is showing no signs of cutting its spending, even on itself.

The Tories have come under fire in recent budgets that included enormous revenues from the oil industry, but were matched by increases in spending and less worry on debt reduction.

Even with the looming financial crisis that could happen, the provincial government increased spending this year by 5 per cent, a trend that has continued over the past number of years.

“We have responded since being elected to office with expenditure levels that support a high level of programs and services, and we stimulated the economy during the recession,” stated Finance Minister Tom Marshall during his recent budget.

“Always, however, we were committed to spending within our means. During my consultations with the people of the province prior to this Budget, I was clear that, while strong expenditure growth was necessary during the catch-up and stimulus periods, more moderate expenditures are required in the future. Our net program expenses will grow by less than 5% in 2011-12, with much of this growth relating to wage increases previously negotiated.”

…

But there is still no arguing that it [Muskrat Falls] will cost a lot of money to get the project underway, and does the benefit outweigh the cost?

It’s one of many questions ahead for government as it deals with what could be a looming financial deficit.

Economist Wade Locke says the government has to make some tough decisions in the years ahead to deal with the upcoming debt crisis.

“There are three options you can do: you can borrow, you can raise taxes or you can cut expenditure,” he said. “All three have negative consequences for you, so what you need to think about is which of these options are the most effective way of dealing with your issues.”

It might need to start thinking way ahead, and perhaps cutting where it hurts most, itself.”

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Pesticide ban regulation not even written yet

While everyone may think the provincial has banned the cosmetic use of pesticides, a quick check with the province’s environment department confirmed this afternoon that not only haven’t they gazetted the regulation needed for the ban, they haven’t even written it yet.

That’s not what the news release would have you believe.

The headline reads:

“Ban implemented on cosmetic pesticides for lawn care”

Note the past tense of the verb, suggesting this is something was already done.

The provincial government actually announced on Thursday that it will  - that is, at some undefined point in the future  - write a regulation, send it for approval and have it gazetted to bring it into force.

But until then:  nada.

Without a regulation putting the ban in effect, there’s no other legal way the provincial government can ban the cosmetic use of pesticides.

No reg.

No ban.

This isn’t the first time the provincial government had problems with pesticide regulations.

In February 2004, then-environment minister Tom Osborne announced a consultation into new pesticide regulations to replace pesticide regulations introduced in 2003 by the Liberals.

In September 2005, he announced the new regs would be implemented shortly thereafter.

They were introduced in April 2007, just in time for the provincial election.

Plenty of people have been fooled.

None of them did a simple bit of homework.

News media took the announcement of government’s intention to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides and ran it as if the ban was done. Both of the province’s opposition parties issued news releases praising the provincial government for listening to people and doing what’s right. 

 

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Labour crunch coming

Only the naive or the demented would portray the looming labour crunch in the province as a “tremendous opportunity”.

A report released on Wednesday by the provincial human resources department forecasts that by 2020  - less than a decade from now - there will be 70,000 vacant jobs in the province.  They will be in all sectors of the economy.  They will be in all areas of the province.

The primary cause of the vacancies will be retirements. Only 10% of the vacancies will come from employment growth, that is from new job creation.

This is not an opportunity of any sort.  Newfoundland and Labrador will face a labour shortage at the same time as the rest of North America will go through the same problem. Many of the jobs will remain vacant because there won’t be anyone to fill the positions. Some other provinces, notably Quebec, will face a far worse situation.

This is a situation that the provincial government, labour unions and businesses have seen coming for more than a decade. So far, they have done nothing about it except talk about it.  Now the problem is here.

It represents a very real financial problem for the provincial government.  As baby boomers retire, some costs like health care will increase dramatically.  At the same time,  revenue sources will drop off as there are fewer people working to produce taxes and other sources of government revenue. Increasing the number people drawing a government paycheque may look good  for votes in the short-term, but when you look at the big picture, you can see just exactly how grossly irresponsible the current administration has been for the past seven years.

Regular readers of these scribbles will be very familiar with the implications of the looming labour crunch. Unsound financial management by the current administration promises to make the problem much worse than it would have been if people in responsible government positions had acted instead of talking before now.  The Muskrat Falls megadebt project looks even stupid in this context than it does standing on its own.

Only the naive or the demented would look on this as anything positive.

Government, labour unions and business leaders have seen this coming and they’ve done nothing about it except talk.

On Wednesday, they carried on as if nothing happened.

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The Ballot Question: October 2011

Here’s the question for voters to decide in this fall’s general election as the party leaders themselves have defined it.

If you want:

• guaranteed high electricity prices in Newfoundland and Labrador (roughly double current rates),
• at least double the current provincial debt, and,
• subsidised electricity exports to Nova Scotia and anywhere else in northeastern North America…

then vote:

Progressive Conservative

 

or

Liberal

 

or

New Democratic

 

No matter what you chose,  you get Muskrat Falls.

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Public sector job growth outpaces private in NL

From labradore:

In the five years since the recent-historic low, in early 2006, of about 55,600 public-sector employees, the public-sector labour force has increased by about 11,500 or over 20%. As a share of total employment, the public sector has grown from 26% to 30%.

The twelve-month average ending in June 2011 was 67,100 — an increase of 4100, or 6.5%, from the same period twelve months earlier. This represented an increase of over half a percentage point in the public sector's overall share of the employed labour force.

Then there are the pretty charts showing the public sector employment, federal, provincial and municipal, in thousands of people:

and the private sector:

 

So when you have digested the full impact of that little bit of information, consider what the Muskrat Falls project is really all about: the megadebt will be worth it because it will “bring significant employment and income to the residents and businesses of Newfoundland and Labrador.”

 

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Related:

• The Fragile Economy;  … and two steps back
• The Fragile Economy:  hard numbers

Not much to see

The Telegram’s Russell Wangersky looked ahead to the fall election and didn’t like what he saw.

Wangersky’s assessment is brutal but it is accurate.

The Liberals:  “When someone who isn't looking for the leader's job is bigger news than the person who's already holding it, you've got big problems.”

The NDP:  “Unremittingly hopeful but doomed to disappointment….Don't bet the family fortune on renting floats to the victory parade.”

The Conservatives:  “Right now, they are an all-encompassing government that stresses the need for belt-tightening (while spending more), reducing debt (while increasing it) and telling people that we have to live within our means (all the while living beyond their own).”

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A world of their own

Kathy Dunderdale showed up in the province again to talk about the wonderful reception her Muskrat Falls megadebt project got from the New England governors.

Two things stood out right off the bat from Dunderdale’s scrum. 

First, there was her reference to Yvonne Jones as if the Liberal leader hadn’t already drunk the freshie.  Jones supports the project for the same reason Dunderdale does:  “significant employment and income to the residents and businesses of Newfoundland and Labrador”.

That those short-term jobs will come at such a terrible price -  doubling electricity rates and doubling the public debt  - won’t bother the placeholders one bit;  none of the province’s political parties are concerned about such triflings when then can buy votes with public money.

Second was Dunderdale’s response to a question about comments by Connecticut Governor Dannel Molloy about the need for timely discussion between Canadian province’s and New England states about importing Canadian electricity.  He also noted the need for improved transmission infrastructure to move the power along.

Dunderdale reminded the reporters at her scrum that Molloy was a newbie, only in office since January.  Then she carried on with the usual song and dance about how hydro is the answer to everyone’s prayers.

The fundamental problems with Muskrat Falls still remain.  Nottawa reminded everyone of the basic problem in a post that ran on Tuesday.  Connecticut’s current retail price for electricity is 40% below Muskrat Falls’ projected cost price. 

What he forgot to add was the transmission cost. That’s also something Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin  was talking about when he told reporters during the recent New England Governor’s and Eastern Canadian Premiers’ conference that:

… the most pressing question that needs to be resolved is how to get Canadian power to northern U.S. markets without boosting transmission capacity.

"There is no universal plan to get it there," Shumlin said.

Muskrat power will cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14 to 16 cents per kilowatt hour to produce.  Then it has to roll through a couple of Canadian province’s and three or four American states.  In every one of those jurisdictions there will be at least one transmission charge whacked on top. 

That’s what Shumlin was talking about.  Even if by some hysterical development 16 cents a kilowatt hour became cheap electricity in New England, adding another 50% on top of that to move it around just prices the juice out of the market altogether.

Well, that and the fact that people in his state and elsewhere in New England just don’t want new hydro lines slung across their states.  New Hampshire opposition to a new line is just one example.

As you listen to Dunderdale, Jones, Michael and other politicians ramble on about Muskrat Falls you just get the sense they are in some sort of bizarre alternate universe.  They are out of touch with reality and news media keep repeating their comments as if they were rational.

The Telegram, alone among local media outlets, is finally getting the message. Its editorial on Saturday and again on Tuesday laid out the naked truth about Muskrat Falls and the provincial government’s enormous debt. The others, like VOCM, just continue to enable the delusions.

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Cross yet another one off your list

Intergovernmental affairs minister Dave Denine won't be seeking re-election this fall, according to media reports.  So much for the claim last December that all Tory incumbents were seeking re-election in the fall.

Update:  Voice of the Cabinet Minister and the Ceeb all have stories on Denine's departure.  Here's a post where your humble e-scribbler mentioned that Denine wasn't running again.

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All three NL parties back Muskrat project

Voters in Newfoundland and Labrador who are worried about the current Tory administration’s plans to double the public debt and public electricity rates need worry no longer.

The project will go ahead as currently planned regardless of which party forms the government after the October general electricity.

Liberal Party leader Yvonne Jones, the last apparent hold-out among the three party leaders in the province,  told NTV’s public affairs show Issues and Answers this weekend that she would accept independent reviews of the project that confirm it is the lowest cost alternative.

Jones said that rather than kill the deal, she’d send it to the province’s auditor general and the public utilities board for review.  The ruling provincial Conservatives have already sent the project to the public utilities board.  That conveniently wipes one of Jones’ options off the table.

That leaves Jones with the Auditor General. There’s basically nothing the AG could do with the project.  The AG’s office lacks the in-house skills and expertise to make any assessment of the project.

NTV’s Michael Connors put the question to Jones bluntly, asking if she would approve the project if the independent reviews confirmed the project was the lowest cost alternative.  Jones answered that “obviously” she would but that doubling rates told her it wasn’t the best way to go.  Of course, if the reviews don’t back her up, Jones already committed to approving the project.

Why Jones has been criticising the megadebt project remains a mystery. 

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The placeholder election

No matter what the outcome, all three political parties in the province will have new leaders before the 2015 contest.

In December, the Tories decided to postpone their leadership fight until after the October general election.  Kathy Dunderdale took over the job in the first place on the understanding it would be a temporary thing.  The shift in December had more to do with internal party politics than Dunderdale’s sudden discovery she had some goals to accomplish.  [Hint:  she didn’t].

Dunderdale is pushing 60 as it is.  If she’s elected in the fall, she will be the oldest person ever elected Premier since Confederation, beating out Danny Williams by eight years. This is not a two term Premier, no matter how you look at it.

The only real question is whether the Tories will have the leadership quickly or wait until year three-ish.  Anything before October 2014 triggers an election under Danny Williams’ changes to the Elections Act.  How long she stays is really up the ambitious men and women within her caucus who have parked their campaign until after the fall vote.

Over in the Liberal camp, Yvonne Jones’ only hope of hanging onto her current job is if she wins the next election. Even then, her tenure would depend heavily on her having a clean bill of health.  Otherwise, the length of time she stays on as leader is in inverse proportion to the magnitude of her defeat. The only factor that could push her out more quickly would be a recurrence of Jones’ cancer.

There there is the 68-year old New Democratic Party leader, Lorraine Michael. While her party keeps torquing the idea of some massive break-through in the general election, Michael likely won’t be around long afterward to enjoy it, even if it does happen. 

Politics is gruelling.  Look at the toll the stress has taken on Kathy Dunderdale already, despite the fairly obvious makeover she’s undergone in a very short space of time.  And Dunderdale is nine years younger than Michael. 

This is Lorraine’s last trip to the polls. Just as well to start the pool now on who will replace her.

No matter how you slice it,  this election will be about marking time;  it’s a placeholder election with the real contest coming at some point within the next four years

It will be interesting to see how this issue – one that affects all three parties equally – factors into the campaign and to the final vote.

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Political parties and debt: the Kennedy perspective

Political parties usually carry around debt.  Some carry more than others. Some parties don’t carry any.

Is it an issue? 

Maybe.

Just for the fun of it, consider this portion of a speech Jack Kennedy delivered to a Democratic Party fundraiser in 1962.  It came on the first anniversary of his inaugural and a speech many regard as one of the finest inaugural speeches in American history.

Those familiar with Kennedy’s speech will recognise that he is delivering a parody of his own words to the Democrats and their supporters.  Those unfamiliar with the original can find it here, at bartleby.com.  There’s also a youtube video of the original television broadcast in colour.

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Forecasting the fall

Pick up a sharpened pencil.

Now take a clean, white sheet of paper from the computer printer.

Close your eyes and make a small round mark on the paper with the pencil.

Look at the black dot.

You can’t real tell much about it, can you?  Unless you knew the story, a person looking at the dot couldn’t even tell you how exactly it got there beyond the fairly obvious point that someone likely made it. If a pencil had been able to roll off a nearby shelf onto the page, for example, you couldn’t even say decisively that a person had made the mark deliberately or accidentally.

So it’s a dot on a piece of paper.  Someone  - apparently - used a pencil because there’s a fairly obvious difference between a pen mark and a pencil mark.

But beyond that, everything about the dot, including its position on the page really only comes from adding some other details. 

For example, you can describe the dot’s position in relation to the edges of the paper.

You can assign a grid system to the paper and say the dot is in one of four quarters or describe its location in relation to one of the corners. But is the corner on the top of the page, the bottom, the left or right?  You can’t tell that because it depends on how you lay the sheet of paper on the table and how you lay it in relation to you.

Context.

You have to put the dot and the paper in a context in order to give it meaning.

In politics, the context is sometimes called a frame, as in a picture frame.  Photographs only let you see what was in front of the lens.  They don’t give you the wider context.  You have to supply the context – or frame – as a way to help people see the picture as you think it should be seen. People can take the frame out of their own knowledge or experience or someone can supply the frame.

Now if the frame is factual – here is a black dot on a page – then there isn’t much you can say about it.
But when the frame is gets further and further from fact – like saying that the dot could represent a trend  - you have pretty much entered the world of bullshit.

With that frame in mind, take a gander at a recent CBC story about a potential new Democratic Party surge in the October general election.

One point – the NDP win in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl during the recent federal election  - becomes the possible harbinger of a much larger break through for the NDP.

But the federal election showed that there is great potential for pulling in new support.
For instance, NDP candidates in the metro St. John's area pulled 9,467 votes in the 2007 election.  By contrast, 50,069 people in the same pool of voters backed the NDP in May's federal election.  St. John's East incumbent Jack Harris won his race by a landslide.

You can’t fault the NDP for running with the line they think a breakthrough is possible.  That’s the sort of thing political parties are supposed to say especially running up to an election.  People see where it’s coming from and they can judge the source for themselves.  CBC reports other comments from a New Democratic candidate and from the party’s local president.  Fair ‘nuff.

That bit about the vote result turns up in both the online version and the Here and Now television story.  It’s apparently of CBC information that lends some support to the NDP line.

But it is a completely misleading frame.

Really far from not fair ‘nuff.

For starters, it compares two completely different election results.  One was federal.  One was provincial. That’s a big difference in local politics.  Then there are the many differences in issues and personalities, that is, in the stuff that drives vote choices. 

Then consider that the snippet only gives the NDP result.  It doesn’t tell you what happened with other parties.

The CBC data dot doesn’t tell you about any provincial elections held in the area since 2007.  If they did, CBC would have had to report that Jack Harris scored a huge victory in the 2008 federal election but that he and his team couldn’t translate that into anything at all in a couple of recent provincial by-elections. 

The provincial Tories turned out for their team in a provincial contest, despite voting for Jack Harris federally.

Add more information and the frame in this story doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, as your humble e-scribbler noted a couple of months ago.

As it is, the fall election is likely to bring a few new twists people haven’t anticipated. Does this story herald other changes outside politics directly? Maybe this story is a one-off.  Maybe it’s a new form of free-time political broadcasting.  Maybe it’s another version of Faux News North in which torque replaces information.

One thing's for sure:  if this is the type of reporting that carries on into the fall, forecasting this fall election could be a lot more entertaining that anyone might have thought a few short weeks ago.

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You might know it as bribery, Ma’am

The eagle eyed nottawa picked up on something in a column by Michael Johansen at the Telegram.

It’s a reference to a cash payment due to the Innu of Labrador as part of the land claims deal they approved in a recent referendum. Johansen refers to it this way:  “the Innu would be paid $2 million within days as compensation for damage caused to them by the original Churchill Falls development.”

Nottawa points out that:

Payments - particularly those to be made within days - to groups or individuals contingent on their voting a certain way are generally frowned upon. In most cases, they're outright illegal.

Would no one be troubled, or at least curious enough to enquire if in the next election, I went knocking on doors with a campaign slogan like "Ten Grand In The Hand"?

Now if you look at the terms of the draft agreement released in 2008, the compensation payment is $2.0 million annually until 2041.  The payments start “upon ratification and execution of the” impacts and benefits agreement.

There’s no reference in the early draft to the money being compensation or anything of the sort.

“Compensation” came up in the news release the provincial government issued when it released the draft agreement.  It’s in the quote from no less a person than Premier Danny Williams.  He said the agreement included “redress on the upper Churchill hydroelectric development.”

A couple of paragraphs later, the magic word appears:

The agreement also provides compensation to the Labrador Innu for impacts associated with the Churchill Falls development. This settles the outstanding grievance of Innu Nation with respect to damages suffered to Innu lands and properties as a result of the flooding caused by the upper Churchill River development in the 1960s.

Now you wouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to connect up the payment set out in the agreement and the references to compensation in the official government statements in 2008.  From the comment you get what the intention of the payment is, even if the agreement itself doesn’t state what the money is for.

But whether the idea of connecting acceptance of an agreement on a wide range of issues with a payment to redress a grievance causes very serious legal problems is another matter entirely.

That matter is serious, as nottawa is suggesting.

It is so serious, in fact, that someone needs to clarify this, sooner rather than later.

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Wally Young’s in trouble

You can tell the Tories are worried about their support in St. Barbe because they’ve scheduled not one, not two, but three announcements in the district starring health minister Jerome Kennedy on a day the provincial government is usually on holiday.

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Dexter admits NS didn’t do Muskrat Falls homework

In an interview with The Coast, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter admits his government didn’t exercise due diligence before signing onto the Muskrat Falls project:

The Coast: Has the Nova Scotia government commissioned any cost comparison between Hydro Quebec and Lower Churchill?

The Premier: The costs with respect to the project, of course, have to be submitted as part of the financing for Nova Scotia Power. That analysis takes place in the same way as any other costs going into their rate requests.

The Coast: But have you compared Hydro Quebec power with Lower Churchill...

The Premier: I haven’t asked the department whether or not they’ve done that work.

Dexter also showed his ignorance of geography.  He told The Coast that he expected the Muskrat Falls power would be cheaper than power from Quebec because it is farther from Nova Scotia than the Labrador power.

Of course, the reason the Nova Scotian government didn’t have to compare costs is because Emera will get the power from Labrador for free.

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Strangling energy innovation

The Telegram editorialists are finally putting it all together, at least when it comes to the provincial government’s energy company, the Muskrat Falls project and taxpayers:

It looks a lot like the province would prefer all its eggs in one basket. Or, more to the point, the province not only wants to run an energy warehouse, but actually wants to own it all as well. In its own way, that handcuffs consumers in this province. Because one company will decide the most effective way to produce and supply our power. We’ll just pay for it.

Monopoly control is exactly the premise of the Conservative’s energy plan released just before the last provincial election.  Very few people read it and there’s never been much debate about it. But make no mistake:  the heart of the plan is about strangling any alternative to whatever Nalcor wants to do.

It’s about absolute control.

And it’s about talking about wind energy while deliberately preventing any wind energy development outside of some very small token projects.

The reason is simple:  wind, small hydro and conservation would basically make the Muskrat Falls megadebt project utterly irrelevant.

The Telegram editorial notes that the Nova Scotia energy regulator just set a rate for private wind generating projects selling power into the provincial grid.  The rate is 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour.  As the Telegram reminds everyone, that’s below the 14.3 cents Muskrat Falls is forecast to cost;  and that’s if  - by some extraordinary miracle - the thing doesn’t go over budget.

Who pays the extra cost?

Why the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, of course. 

Full freight, plus profit.  Emera gets a share of the transmission cash inside the province as well.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotians will get a giant chunk of Muskrat Falls power for free;  if you want to take the $1.2 billion Emera will spend on a transmission line as payment for the power (it really isn’t), then the price they would pay comes out to be something like 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  If Emera wants more power than the stuff they get for free, they will pay about 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour for the extras.

Pretty sweet.

Well, except if you live in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Traffic for people lined up at the Basilica

This was an amazing week in Newfoundland and Labrador politics. 

Summer arrived with a vengeance, traffic at the humble e-scribbles is back up and the theme this week seems to be cock-ups.

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner starred in a couple of posts this week, although one of the incidents wasn’t his fault.

In at the number two spot is noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary in what is likely to be the first of many appearances in the parliamentary year-end gag reel. He’s getting attention for his poor choice of words.  It should be because the comments were a load of malarkey. 

For those who want some humour with the Saturday morning Internet browsing, the title of this post is a play on Cleary’s inappropriate language (see the Number 10 post) See if you can figure it out.

Number three is a wannabe provincial Conservative candidate who is accused of chucking an electric drill at the cops in an incident that also involved an RV.

And on it goes.

1. Skinner makes false statement in letter to Telegram editor
2. Makes it official, then
3. Definitely cabinet material
4. Loan guarantee for Muskrat Falls “electioneering” says NDP MP from Quebec
5. And this just in from K-L-A-N news
6. Skinner throws AG under a bus
7. You say potato.  I say road apple.
8. And there goes another one
9. Okay, so it wasn’t a bus after all
10. Trade talks with Europeans = “doing back-room deal with group of serial rapists”

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. 

Sucker bet: windy moose version

The guy who did such a bang-up job of looking after the Hurricane Igor disaster is now the guy leading the fight against moose-vehicle collisions.

Anyone care to wager on the prospects for success on that one?

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Makes it official, then

Noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary is apparently getting some criticism.

Here’s the way Voice of the Cabinet Minister reported Cleary’s comments on one of the radio station’s call-in shows:

New Democrat MP Ryan Cleary is defending his use of the term "serial rapist" in describing foreign fishing fleets in a recent blog post. Cleary's blog Fishermen's Road often condemns the mistakes made in the offshore fishery. Earlier this week, Cleary accused European nations of "having fished out/raped" the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

The post has raised a few eyebrows, particularly among women's groups, who feel the language diminishes the impact of sexual assault. Today, Cleary defended his use of the term "serial rapist" by referring to an article he wrote in 2006 that used the same term. That article, he said, was nominated for an Atlantic Journalism Award.

Now that’s sort of right but it does need a little clarification.

Cleary’s post actually made a bunch of incorrect statements about a trade deal but used the fishery as the centrepiece of his rant.  As for the rapist comment, what  Cleary actually said was:

Canada is doing a back-room deal with a group of serial rapists.

In a subsequent post, Cleary defended his use of the term saying he did the same thing in 2006 in a column at the old Spindependent that wound up getting nominated for an award. That wasn’t a justification for the factual errors just the use of the word rapist in the relation to European nations and the fishery on the Grand Banks.

Cleary defence consist of two basic points:

• Making the same idiotic remark before makes it okay to do it again.
• And repeating the same idiotic comment really super okay if the piece in which the idiotic remark appeared the first time wound up in some sort of award competition.

Sounds a bit like the exchange in the movie the King’s Speech, reproduced below via IMDb:

Lionel Logue: [as George "Berty" is lighting up a cigarette] Please don't do that.
King George VI: I'm sorry?
Lionel Logue: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you.
King George VI: My physicians say it relaxes the throat.
Lionel Logue: They're idiots.
King George VI: They've all been knighted.
Lionel Logue: Makes it official then.

There you have it.

Of course, the comments in the post are still idiotic, but that’s another story.

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Okay, so it wasn’t a bus after all

But that doesn’t mean natural resources minister Shawn Skinner escaped completely unscathed from his episode on Backtalk on Wednesday.

Here’s the latest version of a story about comments Skinner made on VO’s afternoon call-in show.  The head on the story was “Retraction”:

The following story appeared on the web in a manner which left the impression that a minister was speaking about the C-NLOPB, when, in fact, he only referenced Nalcor in his call to VOCM Backtalk.

The government is refuting claims by a talk show caller that the auditor general cannot gain access to the books at Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. On VOCM Backtalk with Pete Soucy, a caller said the provincially-owned utility would not allow an audit. However, Natural Resources Minister Shawn Skinner told the show that claim was untrue.

While the auditor general has complained that he was unable to get the information he wanted from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, he has never expressed any concerns about Nalcor or its predecessor, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

There.

That’s clearer.

Not.

Here’s the actual “following story” that this supposedly replaces, although you’ll notice that in the version above, there actually isn’t the bit of the “following story” that it replaces.

The government is refuting claims by a talk show caller that the auditor general cannot gain access to the books from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. The A.G. complained recently that he was unable to obtain the information he was looking for.

However, the minister of natural resources, Shawn Skinner, replied on VOCM Backtalk with Pete Soucy that that claim is untrue. He said there is a provision for the auditor general to review commercially sensitive information.

What we actually have here is an entirely new version of Skinner’s comments.

In the new version, the caller was talking about Nalcor, not the offshore board. So Skinner didn’t throw the AG under any sort of bus. VO made the mistake. That was one of the possibilities in the earlier post and, frankly, it makes more sense given the very friendly relationship between the AG and the current administration.

All the same,  if you look at what Skinner was actually talking about, he did wind up raising a rather uncomfortable issue of another sort.  Skinner just reminds us all of  changes that Skinner and his colleagues made to the Energy Corporation Act in 2008 that effectively hid Nalcor from any meaningful public scrutiny and independent oversight.

That’s so much better.

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Skinner throws AG under bus

[Updated in another post]

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner threw outgoing Auditor General John Noseworthy under the bus on Wednesday as he contradicted the AG’s claim he can’t get access to some of the offshore regulatory board’s records.

Voice of the Cabinet Minister ran a story based on Skinner’s comments with the afternoon call-in show’s new host Pete Soucy.  Here’s the whole thing in case the disappear it:

The government is refuting claims by a talk show caller that the auditor general cannot gain access to the books from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. The A.G. complained recently that he was unable to obtain the information he was looking for.

However, the minister of natural resources, Shawn Skinner, replied on VOCM Backtalk with Pete Soucy that that claim is untrue. He said there is a provision for the auditor general to review commercially sensitive information.

That’s pretty odd considering Noseworthy has been very friendly to the current administration on so many occasions.  Even the timing of his initial attack on the offshore board in 2008 could be seen as a way to help the incumbent Conservatives out in their efforts to put negotiating pressure on the oil companies or to poke at the guy who embarrassed Danny Williams so badly in Williams’ bizarro struggle to make Andy Wells the board boss.

So what gives?

Well, it could be the rumour Noseworthy will be running for the Liberals in the fall.  There doesn’t appear to be any substance to it at the moment but the rumour is strong.  Maybe Skinner wanted to start a pre-emptive strike on Noseworthy’s credibility.

And – as with the bullshit about Dean MacDonald being a long-time Liberal – rumours have a way of being accepted unquestioningly as fact by some in this town, if enough people repeat the same fairy tale often enough. well, that or if the right people say so.

That doesn’t mean Noseworthy won’t run in the fall. It just means there are no signs at the moment – even behind the scenes – that Noseworthy will be a candidate.  Now odds are that the opposition parties are both falling over themselves to get Noseworthy as a candidate just because someone said the guy would be a good catch.  See those rumours at work again? 

But there’s a difference between that and the idea Skinner is about to announce or that he is already locked in.  If Skinner was trying to undermine Noseworthy, he was acting on the basis of shite intel.

That isn’t the only plausible explanation for Skinner’s comment.  Now this is Voice of the Cabinet Minister after all, so there is a possibility they just misunderstood what Skinner said.

And, it could also be that Skinner is just wrong, again.

After all, it isn’t like he has never said things that are patently, obviously and demonstrably false before.

Who knows?  Lots of strange things are turning up in the news these days as the political world slowly twists itself in a whole new bunch of shapes.

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And there goes another one

Jim Baker, incumbent Conservative in Labrador west announced today he won’t be seeking re-election in the fall.

Baker claims he made the decision in 2007.  Odds are you’d have a very, very hard time finding anyone who voted for Baker or the Pavement Putin who can recall that they announced their intentions before polling day in 2007.

More importantly, though, Baker is another sign that the December deal is crumbling.  Back then, all the incumbents would have sworn on a stack of His Speeches that they’d run again. 

Now?

They are walking to the exit, one by one. 

Baker’s an interesting one though because he only has a few years in office.  He won first in a by-election in 2007 and then got re-elected in the October 2007 general election.  In other words, Baker doesn’t appear to be eligible for a pension.

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And this just in from K-L-A-N News…

The headline:

“Financing Announcement for Foreigners to NL This Afternoon”

The little script story had less objectionable language in it that was much closer to what the official media advisory said.

Even immigrants would have had a much friendlier ring to it than “foreigners”.

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Republic of Moose

In an announcement that had absolutely no ties whatsoever to the current election campaign, the provincial government today tossed $5.0 million into a variety of efforts that are supposed to reduce the number moose-vehicle accidents in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The provincial government will spend $1.0 million on the traditional make-work job of clearing alders and other scrub from the sides of provincial roads.  this time though it will be clearing alders and scrub specifically to reduce moose accidents.

Out of the hundreds of kilometres of paved highway in the province, the government will build protective fencing on 15 of those kilometres as part of an experiment to see if it might keep moose from wandering onto roads where they get hit by cars and trucks. As one perceptive tweet comment had it, though, no one has explained how the government will measure the success of their efforts to reduce something that happens at random. 

Kinda makes the experiment silly, but as we noted, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact moose accidents are a political issue the government has ignored until now when it is – purely coincidentally – an election year.

There are other reliable indicators, though.

You can tell the provincial government is serious about this project because they spending the same amount of money cutting down on moose accidents that they spend subsidizing production of the CBC series Republic of Doyle.

You can tell the announcement had nothing to do with an election because both opposition party leaders couldn’t wait to praise the ruling Tories for making this splendid announcement.

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Loan guarantee for Muskrat Falls “electioneering” says NDP MP from Quebec

Noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Raymond Cote made it clear on Tuesday he disagrees with his party on a loan guarantee for the Muskrat Falls project.
According to Canada.com:

"It's a gaffe to have dealt with that sporadically," the MP for Beauport-Limoilou near Quebec City said. "It was an electioneering announcement that only added fuel to the fire."

Cote believes the solution will be to push the federal government to provide the same sorts of benefits to other provinces.

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Skinner makes false statement in letter to Telegram editor

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner is writing more letters to the editor of the Telegram these days that the former Open Line hydro queen sends tweets.

The government must have polling showing that the Muskrat Falls project isn’t going over well among the great unwashed.

In his latest epistle to the unclean, Skinner writes:

Hydro must comply with legislation and regulations that require it to ensure sufficient electricity is available at all times. If supply is required to meet demand, then the Electrical Power Control Act states that this new generation must come from the least-cost source.

That would be great.

It would be peachy, if it only it were true.

But it isn’t true.

Now there’s no way of knowing if Skinner didn’t realise the letter had at least one false statement in it or the person who drafted the letter didn’t keep current with current events so this is not a lie.

But there is absolutely no doubt that what Shawn wrote to the Telegram’s editor is not true.

It is false.

It is incorrect.

Newfoundland and Labrador Regulation 92/00 exempts the Lower Churchill project from the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994:

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is exempt from the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 and the Public Utilities Act for all aspects of its activities pertaining to the Labrador Hydro Project as defined in section 2 [of the regulation].

Section 2 describes the entire project, including Muskrat Falls and the power line to Soldier’s Pond.

The whole issue got huge discussion during a recent sitting of the legislature.  It’s been in Shawn’s briefing notes for months. Your humble e-scribbler discussed it at length in the following posts:

• Dunderdale to hide important Muskrat details from public scrutiny
• Dunderdale flips and flops;  Muskrat exemption errata
• Dunderdale in action:  one Homer moment after another
• Dunderdale using rigged deck against public on Muskrat Falls

Muskrat Falls power does not have to be the cheapest power.  In fact, the entire project financing only works because consumers will be forced by law to pay for the whole thing plus a profit while export customers will get it for gigantic discounts.

So if Shawn is so obviously, blatantly, totally wrong about such a fundamental issue as this, how many other things is he wrong about?

Or to be more accurate…

If this sort of blatantly false statement can wind up in public with the minister’s name on it, how much other stuff from Nalcor and the provincial government on Muskrat is also false?

 

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Definitely cabinet material

A man arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers with an electric drill says he plans to seek the Provincial Conservative nomination in Port de Grave district during this fall’s provincial election.

Here’s a chunk of the story from Voice Of the Cabinet Minister before it is disappeared:

The man accused of assaulting a police officer with a drill over the weekend will be juggling a number of events over the coming weeks. Garry Drover, 49, intends to seek the PC nomination in the district of Port de Grave for the October election.

Drover appeared in provincial court this morning and was released on several conditions, including keeping the peace and abstaining from the consumption of alcohol or drugs. Initially, he was ordered not to enter any establishment that sells alcohol, but he requested that that condition be revoked, as he has a number of campaign rallies already scheduled to take place in bars and pubs.

Drover says at the time of the weekend incident that got him arrested, he was preparing a camper for his campaign. He says he and a friend were testing the sound system when they were pulled over by the police. Drover told reporters after he was released that he does not believe the charges he's facing will affect his campaign, since he is innocent until proven guilty. He insists he did not intend to break the law.

Campaign rallies scheduled in bars and pubs?

There’s never a dull moment in local politics.

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You say potato, I say road apple

Kathy Dunderdale thinks it’s all much ado about nothing.

Dunderdale commented in response to a Telegram editorial that noted a set of reports prepared for Nalcor on the Muskrat Falls mega-debt project were not as Dunderdale as previously described them.

All pish-posh and trivial.

“Semantics”, she called it, as if the meaning of words  - what semantics is really about - was a trivial thing.

In the House of Assembly this past spring, Dunderdale met questions about the cost of the project with claims that the project had been blessed by what she called “independent audits”.  Take this exchange with Yvonne Jones on March 29 as typical:

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

…

I ask the Premier today: Will you tell us how it is possible to build a steel transmission line across the Province today for less money than it would have cost thirteen years ago?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

…

More than that, Mr. Speaker, we have had two independent audits of the methodology used by Nalcor to ensure that the process is as good and the information as good as can be had at this point in time.

The Telegram got hold of a copy of one of these “independent audits” and found that the thing wasn’t independent.  One of the people involved worked or had worked for Nalcor on the Muskrat project.

What’s more, the thing wasn’t an audit.  The Telegram quoted directly from the report where the authors say “this is not an audit”.

That isn’t all.

The thing also wasn’t a review of the financial aspects of the project that addressed the validity of the projects cost projections.

And it also wasn’t a review of the premises on which Kathy and Nalcor’s Ed Martin are justifying the project.  These guys doing the review didn’t look at the long term trending in energy prices, the possible implications of high oil prices on electricity costs, replacing Holyrood or alternatives to building this project at this time in this way.

What they were doing is checking to make sure the crowd at Nalcor hadn’t forgotten anything as they headed down the road to a destination they’ve already committed to hitting.

This a perfectly legitimate function and good on the Nalcor crowd for consulting experts in doing things in which the Nalcor team has pretty much zero experience.

But – and this is a big but – there is a huge difference between what Kathy Dunderdale said the reviews were, what she apparently implied they were and what they actual were. The difference in meaning is like finding out, as the hapless burghers of Ontario found out when they flicked Ernie Eves’ Conservatives from office, that they weren’t in good financial shape as they’d been told.  Instead they were in the hole to the tune of five or six billion extra.

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