Locke and Muskrat Falls: some quick points #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Memorial University economist Wade Locke delivered a presentation on Tuesday night about Muskrat Falls, a project he had already endorsed publicly.

The Harris Centre at Memorial University, the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council and the MUN economics department’s Applied Economics Research Initiative sponsored the talk.

The pdf of Locke’s slides should be available from the Harris Centre website along with the video of the presentation plus the question and answer session that followed.

You can tell the topic is hot for two reasons.

First, they packed the main hall plus a couple of fair-sized rooms in which people could watch via the Internet.

Second, Locke started out his talk with a pre-emptive declaration that he was doing the talk on his own, that he wasn’t sponsored by anybody, under contract to anybody and that he valued his professional reputation above all else.  Locke insisted he believed everything he was saying, which should be pretty much a given.

Here are some quick observations:

You will pay for it all, plus profit.  Right up front, Locke pointed out the most obvious thing of all, namely that taxpayers in this province will pay for the entire project, plus a rate of return of as much as 12%.  Now Locke never said it straight out.  In fact, Locke never made it plain at any point during his talk who actually was paying the bill.

But it was there, just as your humble e-scribbler noted in October 2010.  That’s not clairvoyance.  That’s just what comes from research.

Toward the end of his presentation, Locke blew off any concern about the debt since that would all be recovered from the rates, no matter what.

Wade just never noted that the people in the room would be covering the entire shot.

Plus profit.

When an online question asked about Nova Scotians getting the electricity cheaper than the people who own the dam, Locke blew it off as an irrelevant consideration from an economic standpoint.

Situating the Estimate.  That’s what they call it in staff college.  You present the information that fits your pre-conceived solution.

And having already endorsed Muskrat Falls, presumably before he really knew anything about it, Locke basically recited the reasons why his initial conclusion was right and everyone else is wrong.

Locke started by torquing his description of the cost of the project.  A mere 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  As Jim Feehan pointed out in the Q and A, Locke had lowballed the number.  The cost of delivered Muskrat electricity would be 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour based on current estimates.

At least.

And that of course made all Locke’s subsequent comparisons useless.

They were useless because they effectively compared a misleading – bordering on the false – Muskrat cost to a cost for some alternatives.

Once you realise that Locke torqued the cost, you’d have to be suspicious of the basis on which he presented the costs of other projects.

Did he highball them?

Maybe. 

Problem is we don’t know.  People would have a right to be suspicious because Locke didn’t make it clear how he got either his Muskrat figures or his other cost figures for projects he contended were more costly.
Locke blew his own credibility, at least among people who actually knew what he had done.  Expect to hear more about that in the days ahead as word spreads.

Burn, Straw Man, Burn.  Early on the presentation, Locke savaged colleague Jim Feehan with a caricatured presentation of Feehan’s paper for the C.D. Howe Institute.  Locke presented Feehan’s argument [as] though Feehan believed government could use pricing to wipe out demand such that Muskrat wouldn’t be necessary.*

Feehan didn’t say anything close to that. 

Locke even trotted out the melodramatic – and ultimately childish -  line Ed Martin tried on about old people in the winter.

Feehan sorted Locke out at the end but Locke’s comments about Feehan were insulting to Feehan professionally and to the audience’s intelligence.  For a guy who defensively moaned about his own professional reputation at the front end of the talk, Locke had no trouble tearing into a colleague based on what was utter crap.

Controlling the Escalation.  As much as Locke got weepy over old people and high electricity prices and for all his teary comments about the impact of policy ideas on real people, Wade didn’t give a toss about Muskrat Falls and the impact its high prices would have on the same people he supposedly wanted to defend.

Locke referred to Muskrat Falls as giving government the ability to control price escalation.  The alternative – a completely false one – was to be at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices. 

Muskrat Falls will take care of the potential hike in electricity because of oil prices by guaranteeing the prices will shoot up regardless of what oil does.  And if oil goes down in price, local consumers will be stuck paying for Muskrat.

Former PUB consumer advocate Dennis Browne noted during the Q and A that Locke’s assumption of escalating electricity prices due to oil was false.  Electricity prices don’t jump up every year, like clockwork, and they sure don’t jump every time oil prices go up. 

Locke didn’t really answer Browne’s point.

Humour High Point:  Moderating the Q and A, Harris Centre director Dr. Rob Greenwood said that the Harris Centre was a spin free zone.  Evidently, Locke’s presentation  - after the price bullshit alone – wasn’t covered by the anti-spin rule or Rob didn’t pick up on the heavily torqued comments by the presenter.  Either way it was about the funniest thing that happened during the evening.

What debt problem?  There isn’t one according to Locke.  He flashed a slide that showed annual costs Nalcor would pay for given amounts based on certain interest rates. 

Worst case scenario, as your humble e-scribbler would put it: the gross public debt would show up as close to $20 billion (the current $12 billion-ish plus an additional eight billion in borrowing from Locke’s slide).

That would add annual debt servicing costs of $800 million for Nalcor.

That would show up on the annual public accounts, incidentally.

The debt would be funded, of course, because local ratepayers would be forced to pay the full amount need to pay the loans plus deliver a guaranteed profit.   But…

Locke didn’t do any calculation of the wider implication of any of that.  He just said any added debt would be no problem since there’d be revenue to cover it.

Yep.

All those old people on fixed incomes would be paying the guaranteed high prices Locke ranted against at one point and ignored at another.

What the Harris Centre should do next:  Locke’s presentation was weak.  All his pre-emptive apologies at the front end couldn’t cover over the flaws.

Locke’s analysis was far from complete and he torqued too many details for it to meet the standards people should be getting on such an important subject from the Harris Centre.

Aside from apologising to Jim Feehan for Locke’s remarks, the Harris Centre should organize a series of talks on Muskrat Falls.  The public would definitely profit from a better presentation on behalf of the project proponents as well as a fair presentation of arguments by Feehan and David Vardy.

40 slides too many:  Opponents of Muskrat Falls can explain in a few minutes why they have doubts about the project.

Simple.

Clean.

Factual.

Give a  knowledgeable supporter of the current administration and Nalcor, one hour of uninterrupted time, 48 slides densely packed with verbiage, and an attentive audience and he still can’t  explain why Muskrat Falls makes sense.

That should tell you all you need to know.

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*  [word in square brackets added to earlier version for clarity]

If this is bad… #nlpoli

Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary thinks that Marine Atlantic’s 4.5% fare increase will put the province at a disadvantage when it comes to tourism and economic development. 

Cleary is also concerned about the impact on ordinary Newfoundlanders and Labradorians:

“Living in Newfoundland and Labrador is not cheap. This fare increase will eventually further increase the cost of goods in our province — including food, which is already far more expensive than in other parts of the country,” Cleary said.

So if Marine Atlantic’s rate increase is so bad, according to Cleary, why is he so enthusiastic about driving up electricity rates in Newfoundland and Labrador by 45% or more and selling discount electricity to people in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in North America.

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Sucking eggs, debating Muskrat Falls and other wastes of time #nlpoli

Former natural resources minister Shawn Skinner thinks there House of Assembly should debate the Muskrat Falls deal.

Ditto his replacement, Jerome! Kennedy who likes to quote a supposed 1980 endorsement of the project by former Hydro boss Vic Young as proof there’s been enough talk about the whole thing.

Ditto the province’s New Democrats, who thing there should be a “special” debate.

The Liberals will likely go along with the idea, as well so that puts them all in agreement.

Debate implies a disagreement, though.  To have a debate, you would have to find people in the House of Assembly who are fundamentally opposed to Muskrat Falls.

Otherwise it would be like the Abitibi expropriation debate where everybody spoke in favour of the seizure bill and never voiced any concern for it, at all.

Find one member of the House of Assembly who is actually, unquestionably, unequivocally opposed to the Muskrat Falls project.

Find one.

Until you can, there’s no point in talking about a “debate” in the provincial legislature.

It’s just a waste of time.

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Epic Fail Snail Mail

If you wanted to promote something that was better than ever, especially high definition television, you certainly wouldn’t like to use a piece of snail mail that wound up in your humble e-scribbler’s snail mailbox looking like this:

The ultimate HD experience does not mean heavy water damage and tattered edges all the way around.

Amazing.

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Rebirth for one, and for the other? #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The federal Liberal convention this weekend shows just exactly how out to lunch the overwrought media commentary about the devastated Liberal party has been. 

Around 3,000 delegates.  Some said there were more than that;  others said there were fewer.

Lots of interested and interesting discussion.

And a new president.

Keeping party membership is a good thing.  One of the reasons political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador are in an abysmal state is the absence of a working membership system in any of them. Basically a party without membership becomes easy prey for the backroom types who thrive on secrecy.  They can manipulate the whole thing, one way or another and they do.

Memberless parties also create a world in which voters have no particular attachment to the party and its principles.  Again, the parties in Newfoundland and Labrador are classic examples of this sort of thing.  Voters shift back and forth among the parties with ease largely because there is nothing to distinguish one from the other.

The elected types are no different.  They all – basically – support exactly the same sorts of things.  If it is popular, they will back it.  That’s one of the big reasons why the NDP and Liberals have been basically just red and orange chapters of the Danny Fan Club since 2006 or so.

They haven’t opposed anything, except for show.

They still don’t.

So while the federal Liberals are already well on the way to change, the provincial Liberals are, well, not.

Talk of their demise is anything but exaggerated.

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Dan-O-Matic Translator still works #nlpoli

If David Vardy was wrong about Muskrat Falls or about the concern some people have about publicly criticising Tory pet projects, Danny Williams wouldn’t be attacking Vardy personally.

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Muskrat Falls, the kamikaze venture #nlpoli

Not surprisingly Nalcor’s Ed Martin latched onto a pretty  superficial argument to dismiss economist Jim Feehan’s critique of Muskrat Falls.

"I go over to see my Dad, an 80-year-old gentleman living on his own, and I say to Dad, 'I have a solution for you — why don't we raise your electricity rates so high that you won't use electricity?' ... He's going to say to me, 'I think you're going to have to find another solution here.' "

Premier Kathy Dunderdale wasn’t far behind.  As VOCM put it:

Dunderdale says Feehan's argument that electricity rates are artificially low and that people will use less electricity if the prices were increased, is something government simply does not agree with. She says their primary focus is to keep electricity rates low. 

Dunderdale never explained why she thought prices weren’t artificially low.  Odds are she doesn’t know whether they are or they aren’t low or what impact changing the way energy is priced might have.

Like most politicians, she is probably contented with the rather simplistic view that created the current system.  Low prices are politically good.  “[T]ry selling that,” writes the Telegram editorialist on Friday, “to a pensioner on a fixed income.”

Such a discussion on the doorstep is a scary prospect, to be sure, even if you understand all the nuances of the issue.  In Dunderdale’s case, though, it isn’t a question of understanding anything except that this deal is done.

Period.

When Danny announced it, nothing could stop it.

There are no more decision gates.

There are no off-ramps and no climb down spots.

Once Danny announced this project and cabinet backed it in November 2010, they put us all on a non-stop march to debt.

The Tories are impervious to logic.

None can penetrate.

They cannot be dissuaded.

CBC cornered Danny Williams somewhere on Friday and asked him about the critics.  Williams said that when he put this deal together, Williams got the top minds to work it out.  This deal must be perfect one can take from that.  And since Williams had only the best, all others must be inferior creatures.  The decision is already perfect.

Such is the delusional world, the blind world, the supremely arrogant world in which he and his heirs live.

So far removed are Williams, Dunderdale, Jerome Kennedy, Shawn Skinner and the rest of the Muskrat mafia from reality that they cannot see the pure insanity of the claim that their primary focus, as Dunderdale put it, is keeping energy prices low.

Feehan’s paper, as the Telegram editorial quoted, uses figures that translate out to an increase in electricity prices from 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 13.5 cents per kwh, all without Muskrat. he was talking about the price consumers pay.

Even if we accept the wildly unrealistic assumptions Dunderdale and company are using for Muskrat Falls, their own numbers show that the cost of making electricity at Muskrat Falls will be at least 14.3 cents per kwh and as much as 16.5 cents. 

That isn’t the price consumers will pay.  They will have to pay for Muskrat Falls, plus all of Nalcor’s other operations, plus newfoundland Power’s costs of distribution and a healthy profit to both.

If those Nalcor assumptions about project costs – a mere 15% over-run, for example – turn out to be as ludicrous as experience suggests they are, then you can be damn certain that consumers will be paying way more than 16.5 cents per kwh just for Muskrat Falls.

If Ed Martin explained his Muskrat Falls plan to his father and then laid Jim Feehan’s idea in front of him, you can bet which one Martin Senior would jump at. 

The logic isn’t hard to follow. 

The math is actually pretty easy.

If Ed were to add that the Williams/Dunderdale/Martin idea was to trade away possible high electricity prices for guaranteed high ones, then Ed’s Dad would probably keel over.

Williams, Dunderdale and Company want to make sure that domestic electricity prices in Newfoundland and Labrador are the highest, not the lowest. That’s what their own information says.

It’s like Tom Marshall’s claim that he wants to fight the public debt. And his way of doing that is  - in effect – to double the debt by building Muskrat Falls.  That’s the only conclusion you can reach from their own information.

Its proponents would have you believe that Muskrat Falls is the divine wind that will save us all.  The reality is that the project looks like a kamikaze of a different sort altogether.

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Related:

Hold off on the Lower Churchill, James Feehan, National Post, (January 2012):

“Apparently, the province is unconcerned that pushing ahead, as opposed to waiting for a more comprehensive report, might hurt the credibility of the PUB assessment itself. Now, doubts about the project have company: doubts about the process.

The way forward is clear: At the very least, Newfoundland and Labrador should hold off on the Lower Churchill until a better set of facts is in front of the public, and the legislature. And the province would do well to take the time to ponder a broader set of options, including setting better energy policy. Muskrat Falls will wait, and a wider set of long-run options, including a transmission corridor that better serves provincial and pan-Canadian needs, will present themselves in due course.”

Williams announces political exit plan  (October 2010):

“It gets better. Weak electricity prices coupled with the front-end loading of capital on Muskrat Falls would likely mean power sent to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the United States could only sell at heavily discounted prices. Even Muskrat Falls power at a break even price would likely be too expensive for the markets to bear.   That’s an old and fundamental problem with trying to sell Labrador power so far away from Labrador.

No problem for NALCOR, these days. Thanks to changes made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2006, the Hydro Corporation Act, the Public Utilities Act,  and government policy, NALCOR wouldn’t suffer any losses. The company can export all the discounted power it wants  knowing that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will wind up paying for it.”

Debt, electricity rates and Muskrat Falls  (August 2011)

Muskrat falls deal will succeed:  Nalcor boss (December 2011)

Beleaguered utility blows raspberry at regulator #nlpoli

Nalcor should be able to supply information to any regulatory or review process for the Muskrat Falls project because the company should have already reviewed exactly the sorts of information those regulators or reviewers in order to approve its project for development.

The fact that Nalcor hasn’t been able to meet a single deadline, especially for the public utilities board process speaks volumes about Nalcor’s fundamental  problems.

The public utilities board process, don’t forget, is one in which Nalcor and the provincial government have constrained the PUB scope of inquiry and time scales/

Still Nalcor is frigging it up.

So what does a company do with a project more and more people are questioning across the board?

They send a letter to the public utilities board chairman that, in effect, blows a raspberry at the regulator.

To paraphrase:  we’ve given you pages of stuff and met your people lots of times despite the fact we are really, really busy doing other stuff.  So there.

What doesn’t sound good, though is this line in the last paragraph:

Nalcor wants to ensure that the process and final Board report is both balanced and a fair representation of the information presented.

So Nalcor chief executive Ed martin is now setting up a pre-emptive defense in case the utilities board review dumps on Nalcor.

Nalcor’s management of the Muskrat Falls project just keeps getting worse. 

And that only serves to further undermine confidence in the company.

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Cheaper Muskrat Alternative: Part Whatever Gigantic Number we are at now #nlpoli

Hydro-Quebec just signed a deal to purchase 150 megawatts of electricity produced by biomass.

“The price for the power, in 2012 dollars, will be 10.6 cents per kilowatt hour, the average price for power awarded in 2009 to successful bidders on a biomass power program set to supply the hydro grid in 2012,” the [Montreal Gazette] paper reported.

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The limits of myth busting #nlpoli

Coming to The Rooms in February:

Wednesday, February 22, 7 pm
The Limits of Myth Busting:
Popular and Professional Histories of Newfoundland and Labrador

What is the relationship between myth and history? And are myths rooted in history? Join Dr. Jerry Bannister as he shares his thoughts on the role of historians and popular mythologies in understanding our province’s past.

Mark your calendars.

This one should be as good as the last one.

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Muskrat Falls: from worse to worser for Dunderdale and Company #nlpoli

Add Ron Penney to the list of former senior provincial public servants questioning Muskrat Falls and/or the way the provincial government is handling the project.

In a letter to the Telegram, the former Peckford-era [deputy] justice minister joins with David Vardy to call for a full, independent review of the MF proposal through the public utilities board.  Vardy, a former Clerk of the Executive Council, and Penney, one of the team that negotiated the 1985 Atlantic Accord, say that they have followed the discussion and that given the serious of the issue “fully expected” that the public utilities board would get the time needed to complete its review properly.

We were therefore not surprised by the recent request by the board to have the deadline extended for the completion of the reference until June 30 and fully expected Minister Jerome Kennedy to provide the extension. 

We were shocked by the immediate decision of the minister to deny the request. The stated reason is to allow a debate in the House of Assembly in March but there is no reason why the House cannot debate this in July, following the completion of the reference.

Penney and Vardy call Muskrat Falls the largest public works project ever undertaken in the province and “the most important public policy issue ever to have faced Newfoundland and Labrador”.

It requires careful and comprehensive independent analysis and a public debate, informed by that analysis. That is the purpose of the reference to the board and to restrict that review does a disservice to the people of the province.

They say that the project may “expose us [i.e. the people of the province] to significant risk”.  They are absolutely right and most of that risk, don’t forget is undisclosed.

Vardy and Penney draw attention to points that will be very familiar to SRBP readers:

Major infrastructure projects like this inevitably cost considerably more than originally estimated so we might well double the debt of the province at a time when it is likely that offshore revenues are in decline and our expenditures are increasing to meet the challenges posed by our changing demographics.

The solution, they argue, is to let the PUB assess all potential options.

The board should be allowed to consider the other issues that have been raised publicly over the past year such as the use of natural gas as feedstock for the Holyrood thermal plant, incentives to reduce demand during the winter peak, conservation measures, and estimates of future population and electrical load growth, among others. Furthermore, we maintain that these issues are legitimate questions within the review of the isolated island alternative to Muskrat Falls, even though we believe that the board should be unfettered in its mandate.

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‘eavy ‘angs the ‘ead #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome! Kennedy is wading deeper and deeper into the political morass called the Muskrat Falls project these days and finding that it is a sticky, stinky, mess.

For not one, but two days running, Jerome has been trying to explain to VOCM’s afternoon radio call-in host why Jerome and the Nalcor gang are right and everybody else is wrong. 

On Wednesday,  Jerome talked about a bunch of charts and tables he must have sent over to the host.  They both talked about what the tables showed:  how prices for electricity will be this if Muskrat goes ahead and will be that if it doesn’t.

“Will” as in “guaranteed to be.”

Only problem for Jerome! is that his numbers aren’t guaranteed anything at all.  They are speculation.  They are based on assumptions.  – at best – highly speculative. 

The price might be this. 

Or it might be something else entirely.

It all depends on what assumptions you make. 

Take, for example,  two of the key assumptions.

For Muskrat Falls to make any sense at all, crude oil must go to at least $200 a barrel and stay there.  Anything less than that and taxpayers are better off not building Muskrat. 

Second, Muskrat must also cost the projected price or less.  Odds of that happening are very small.  Jerome! insists that Nalcor has that one covered.  They have included in their estimates a possible cost over-run of 15%.

Unfortunately, the current provincial government (Nalcor and government are indistinguishable) couldn’t deliver pizza and guarantee a mere 15% cost over-run.  Government capital works projects these days are usually at least 50% more than they predict. On some projects they’ve gone 100% over budget. 

You get the point. 

There is only one combination of circumstances where the Danny/Jerome/Kathy idea for Muskrat Falls  works out for taxpayers and a bunch of combinations in which it doesn’t.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know the odds of winning Lotto Jerome! are pretty small.

There are other aspects of the Muskrat Falls case that don’t make sense either, like the potential alternatives to Muskrat Falls, the export prospects and the forecasts for energy demand.  Critics of the project have systematically demolished all of them.  Not one survives to this day intact.

And yet Jerome! and Kathy Dunderdale and Nalcor keep pushing them.

Things didn’t get any better for the MF gang on Wednesday.  Economist Jim Feehan dissected an underlying problem in how the province sets electricity prices.  Tackling that one would encourage consumers to change some of their more wasteful ways they use energy. Lowering demand also lowers the need for expensive megaprojects.  Feehan’s approach could, if current trends continue, allow Nalcor to avoid the most expensive megaproject in the province’s history,  mothball the Holyrood plant and deliver consumers affordable electricity into the future.

If Feehan’s idea isn’t the only solution it’s one of the elements that a responsible provincial government would include in its energy policy for the province. 

Feehan’s commentary is a sign of how the opposition to Muskrat Falls is growing.  This time last year, Feehan thought Muskrat was a great – if pricy  - idea. Having taken a hard look at the project, Feehan has changed his mind.

Feehan’s comments also reflect the way the discussion is going.l  Critics of Muskrat Falls are looking not only at the weaknesses of the proposal itself, but also at the shortcomings of the current administration’s energy policy.

That’s good for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

But for politicians like Jerome!, it means that two days of chatting up Paddy will turn into three and maybe more.

And the chances of winning more people to the cause just keep getting smaller and smaller.

Much like the chances that building Muskrat falls the way Jerome! and Kathy want to will deliver any benefit to the people who own the resource.

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Great Minds Think Alike: “Jinkies!” edition #nlpoli

Ruh roh!

What do Danny Williams, Kathy Dunderdale and Sarah Palin have in common?

They  - and their bootlickers and wannabe bootlickers - all like to blame their own problems and shortcomings on people who write online. It’s all political bullshit, of course, but you can almost hear them saying “It would have worked too if it wasn’t for those pesky blogsters….and their dog! “

Scooby-doobie-doo!

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Local economist questions Muskrat plans #nlpoli

From the CD Howe Institute:

NEWFOUNDLAND’S ELECTRICITY OPTIONS: MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE REQUIRES AN EFFICIENT PRICING REGIME

Jan. 11, 2012 – James P. Feehan

Newfoundland [and Labrador] should hold off on plans to develop a power project on the Lower Churchill River in Labrador, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Newfoundland’s Electricity Options: Making the Right Choice Requires an Efficient Pricing Regime,” Memorial University economist James P. Feehan says the province should first reform electricity prices to better reflect costs and reduce consumption, then assess its options.

For the study go to: http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/ebrief_129.pdf

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The real story of the Ottawa office #nlpoli

Nobody’s been in the job since since January 2010.

There’s no evidence that the two people who held the job actually did anything substantive during the time from 2004 to 2010 that someone held down the position known derisively as the Ambassador or – as your humble e-scribbler preferred – the Premier’s Personal Envoy to Hy’s.

And yet it still took Premier Kathy Dunderdale a full year and then some of her own term as Premier, plus the experience of interviewing a few potential replacements to realise what Premiers before Williams knew:  the whole thing was a foolish waste of time.

Lord sufferin’ dynamite, Old Man.

That is absolutely stunning.

And it tells you so much about how two successive Premiers and their administrations actually work.

They led with their strong suit:  the hyper-torqued official announcement that was long on the bullshit and short on the truth.  As a result, most of the conventional media reports were full of it, too.  Take the Ceeb’s account as an example of the type.

As some media accounts of the Premier’s scrum with reporters make it sound, Dunderdale has found a new way of doing things, what with ministers, deputy ministers and other officials talking to their federal counterparts.  And with communications better now that Kath and Steve are on the same wavelength, the Ottawa office is just not needed anymore.

No sir.  There’s a new energy in town and, by gosh, the release assures us all “it made sense to have our Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs Secretariat assume responsibility, over the long term, for the functions that would have been carried out through the Ottawa office.”

Whatever functions the office did perform – there were no people in it, evidently – they were such that over a six year period, the big job in the office sat vacant for about half the time.  So whatever the crowd in Intergovernmental Affairs are taking on, odds are it wasn’t much.  They will just carry doing what they have done since the 1970s:  deal with their federal and provincial counterparts on a variety of issues.

So you caught that, right?

Since the 1970s, IGA has been doing all the things people claim this personal envoy job did. And they kept doing it all the way through the time this office existed, whether someone worked in it or not.

Now while your humble e-scribbler can say this based on his own knowledge of the provincial government and from seven years in the Premier’s Office, you really don’t have to go by that alone.

Consider the version of events by no less a person than Bill Rowe, the first personal envoy to Hy’s,  Rhodes Scholar, radio host, writer and secret police report leaker extraordinaire.  His insider’s account of things he was outside the room for made it plain Rowe did nothing while he was there.

There is no mention in the book’s of anything Rowe actually accomplished.  Well, aside from wait around for a cell phone and a laptop and arrange to have his used snow tires shipped up to him from Sin Jawns.  Like there was no place up there to buy new ones. 

Now Rowe sold a lot of those books.  Mainlanders are especially gullible, it turns out.  Hopefully, the guy made a few bucks of the book.  But if he only cleared a twonie, then his time in Ottawa at taxpayers’ expense was infinitely more productive for Rowe than it was for the people who footed the bill for his sojourn on the Rideau.

Our man in a Blue Line cab – Rowe’s eventual successor - did no better, although he stayed longer. Danny Williams acknowledged as much when Fitz packed it in at the end of his one and only contract.  Williams found him a nice new job back home.  Williams insisted the office in Ottawa would remain open, to be filled eventually with some other incumbent.

Kathy Dunderdale said the same thing after Danny handed over the Premier’s Office to her. Last June,

“The office serves a great purpose when it’s functioning the way that it should,” she told a Telegram editorial board [last] Wednesday. “And it’s important to me that we maintain that.”

Nothing changed in the intervening six months or so, except Dunderdale’s talking points. The bottom line remains now as it has since Danny Williams decided to give his old alum chum a nice perk;  the job was a total waste of public money.  Public servants in this province and cabinet ministers never stopped doing the work they and their predecessors have done.

The fact that it took the Tories two years to shut the office down and that it took Kathy Dunderdale a full year to arrive at an incredibly simple  - and glaringly obvious – conclusion tells you this is a government that consistently has a hard time getting things done.

In other words, not a thing has changed since the serial government took office.

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A legislative first in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

If the province’s Liberals live up to the promise made in a news release issued Monday, they’ll make local legislative history.

Andrew Parsons, MHA for Burgeo-La Poile, announced today that he will be introducing a Bill to regulate the opening of the House of Assembly in the future.

Since Confederation, opposition political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have contented themselves with taking one afternoon a week to debate a meaningless resolution.

While they’ve had the ability all along to introduce bills that could become law, no opposition party has ever tried before.  It’s so common elsewhere that no one really pays attention to it.

Of course now that Parsons has told everyone, you can expect the NDP will start drafting bills and the Tories will try to figure out some procedural reason to stop it. 

Good luck on the latter.

On the former that just means the Tories will have a much harder time in the House this spring than they expected.

And when the governing party has to work hard during a legislative session, that’s only a good thing.

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OCI jams provincial fisheries minister #nlpoli

The CBC online account is on the Ceeb’s website (here). That’s pretty much what everyone has been reporting, namely the impact fisheries minister Darin King’s comments on Friday had on Ocean Choice International.

Check the company’s news release and you’ll see that is also what the company started out with:

Sullivan said remarks by fisheries minister Darin King have left global customers, employees and the people of  Newfoundland and Labrador questioning the credibility of the company, something he said should never have happened.

Attacks on a private sector company that adversely affect the company’s financial position is old hat for the provincial Conservatives.  It’s the same tactic Tom Rideout, right,  used on Fishery Products International when he was fisheries minister.

To be fair, King isn’t doing the same thing.  His comments on Friday came more out of a short-term political need to make it look like he was doing something besides looking impotent.

In the end, King made a statement everyone knew rang a little hollow:  no one believed the government would issue a permanent exemption on processing anyway.  Then he took a shot at OCI that led the company to come out in an even stronger position.  Except among the usual gang of myth mongers and ignorant windbag politicians, people in Newfoundland and Labrador looking at OCI’s position will appreciate the sensible, rational tone of it:

However, when these discussions veer off to public commentary that is damaging to our reputation, we must take exception.

…

I respect the right of the province to make decisions on matters before them. And, I respect government’s decision to disallow permanent exemptions on flatfish and redfish.

…

We understand now that government is in receipt of all information requested to date, apart from minor clarifications received today. (a direct refutation of King’s claim)

In reply, King can lash out again or let the comment from OCI go by. Either way, King loses.  If he lashes out, his eventual and inevitable capitulation by granting long-term exemptions will look like he collapsed under pressure from the company.  And if he let’s the comments slide by, King will look like he is afraid of OCI.  When he inevitably grants the company long term exemptions, he will look like he collapsed in fear.

How does Darin King win? 

At this point, King can’t win.  He can only hope to limit damage. Whoever advised him to issue the news release on Friday should get the boot for being a political moron.

Arguably, the only politician in a worse position is Liberal fisheries critic Jim Bennett.  As CBC quotes Bennett:

"You can't blame a company for taking as many liberties as the government will let them take."

Anyone who thinks the current fisheries crisis is caused by slack government regulation of the industry and greedy irresponsible fishing companies running roughshod over everything and everyone is either a fool on his own or a fool taking advice from an even bigger idiot.

There’s just no polite way to put it.

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A familiar, fishy tale #nlpoli

Scientists told some American fishermen before Christmas that the cod the fishermen depend on for their livelihood are in danger of disappearing unless the fishermen change their ways.

Frig off, say the fishermen.

People from this province will recognise the drama.  Evidence says one thing.  A whole bunch of people deny it.

The drama continues to this day in Newfoundland and Labrador as the same people who have fought steadfastly against reforming the fishery continue their struggle.

You can spot the denial experts because they all got sucked in by a news release from the fisheries department last week. ‘Ocean Choice International Denied Permanent Redfish Exemption” screamed the headline.  Hooray, screamed the Deniers.  That’ll teach the Latest Evil Ones that they cannot pull a fast one.

Yes folks, there is no crisis.

It’s all just made up.

Now of course, the provincial government won’t grant a permanent exemption.  The fisheries minister and his colleagues are still in denial about the scope of the fisheries crisis and the need for dramatic change.

But in a few weeks time, Darin King will have to do something.  Odds are he will give OCI what it really wants, namely the end of restrictions on its processing licenses that force the company to process fish in this province even if it isn’t profitable to do so.

They won‘t be permanent exemptions.

But they company will get exemptions.

The reason is right there in the release:

“Yesterday we learned that OCI intends to proceed with plans to fish redfish from quotas purchased from license holders in Nova Scotia. The company has said if we provide an exemption, they will land the fish in Newfoundland and Labrador, otherwise it would be landed elsewhere.”

Then you put that with King’s guiding principles, as reported by the Telegram:

… no [provincial] government subsidies for the fishery, and making moves that maximize the benefit of the resource for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

King is just pretending because he is politically jammed up.  He gets praised today but in a few days or weeks, the same people will be attacking him.

Denying reality is a familiar, fishy tale whether you are in New England or Newfoundland.

The only difference is how long it takes for reality to take hold.

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Politics and Numbers #nlpoli

Regular readers of these scribblers will recall that we’ve discussed some problems that people have with math. 

More specifically we’ve talked about numeracy problems, which is a little bit different.  That’s not just the arithmetic functions – add, subtract, multiply, divide – but also with things like logic and reasoning.  According to some sources, as many as two out of every three people in Newfoundland and Labrador lack the basic ability with math and logic to function in a modern society.

That gets to be a pretty scary idea when you realise the importance of numbers, counting, math proportions and all the other number-related ideas that we run into during the course of a day. 
Numbers play a big part in politics just like they do in everyday society.

One of your e-scribblers favourites was the notion of the provincial government being too poor to spend money on this that or the other. It’s a line the current crowd ruling the place used to toss out when ordinary people wanted something, even though the Conservatives always managed to come up with billions of public dollars for their own projects.

We are talking before 2008, mind you. Back then, Danny Williams got a lot of political mileage by making all sorts of wild and in some instances completely false claims about the state of the province’s finances.  When it came to federal transfer payments,  the level of false information was truly astounding.

Somewhere in the midst of all that your humble e-scribbler called one of the radio talk shows and threw some numbers on the table.  The regular callers, some of them fairly obvious government plants were spouting off all sorts of thoughts and ideas.  Around the same time, the guy who is currently the Bloc NDP member of parliament for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl ran a newspaper.  His “balance sheet” on Confederation contained a raft of information carefully selected to “prove” his predetermined conclusion.

Anyway, what your e-scribbler tossed out were then- current figures on what each government spent each year in total on public services.  The figures also came for different sectors.  They were delivered on a per capita basis.  That means the numbers showed how much the government spent for each person within the province.

Traffic to start the New Year by #nlpoli

1. More on the polling controversy
2. Effective Speechmaking
3. Whose camp is it anyway?
4. Seven Habits of Spectacularly Ineffective Politicians
5. SRBP at Seven
6. A challenge for Premier Dunderdale. (so far, not a peep from her)
7. What?  No equity stake?
8. Christmas goodies
9. The question of democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador
10. Williams’ old political promises:  Labrador

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Separated at birth: little plumber version #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Nice to see former natural resources minister Shawn Skinner at an Ice Caps game Friday night.

The place was rocking especially as the Caps sloughed off the holiday stupor after the first period and started playing some hockey.

Ever notice that sometimes when you look at Shawn you can’t help but wonder where his cap went?

Seriously.

Shawn walks by.

You have the thought.

And then the stadium sound system starts blaring out the little plumber’s theme music.

Way friggin’ spooky.

Hop, you little plumber!

Hop, hop hop!

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So much for senate reform #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Surely to mercy, if Prime Minister Stephen Harper was halfway serious about senate reform he could find someone else from Newfoundland and Labrador besides Norm Doyle to take up a senate seat.

Maybe Harper could have found someone other than a  guy who has been recycled more times than a university freshman’s one good shirt.

And even if senate reform wasn’t the reason for making the appointment, there has got to be someone in the province who has distinguished himself or herself in the arts world, academia, social policy activism or business who could take up the appointment.

If Norm Doyle got the job, the list must have been made up of Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador who hadn’t followed Danny Williams blindly and who could be reached without a séance.

The last thing the senate needs is another political hack taking up space, drawing a nice salary (on top of his public sector pension) and not doing very much else besides.

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Williams’ old political promises: Labrador #nlpoli

Now that Danny Williams is a special advisor to a company with a nice little iron ore project in western labrador, maybe we should look at Danny Williams’ political promises about resource development.

Maybe we can get some idea of what advice he might give his new client.

In 2003, Williams promised that he would stop the give-aways of our resources.  Specifically, Williams promised that he would:

“Ensure nonrenewable [sic]resource developments benefit future as well as present generations by controlling the pace of development, promoting value-added product manufacturing, and spending royalties in ways that have long-term benefits across generations.”

That sounds like a good idea. Surely, he still believes in those commitments.

In 2003, Williams had some pretty firm ideas about what needed to happen:

“Developing a healthy and competitive mineral sector is a solid strategy for ensuring the Province's future prosperity. From the mining and processing of ore through to product manufacturing and assembly, the mineral sector can make a vital contribution to economic growth and employment in both urban and rural regions of the Province.

• A Progressive Conservative government will work with the industry to remove barriers to value-added activities, and to make the industry the most high-tech, productive and socially responsible in Canada.
• Our goal is to increase the activities associated with the processing of minerals in the Province and related business activities in the service and supply industries, such as construction, energy, engineering and environmental services, research and development, equipment parts and supplies, and financial and legal services.

A strong mineral industry for the Province will be built on progressive legislation that will:

• Require that ore concentrate be processed to a finished metal product in the Province where it is feasible to do so.
• Secure preferences for local companies in supplying goods and services to the industry, first choice of jobs for residents of the Province, and training when there are skill shortages.
• Link royalties and taxes to market prices and the extent of value-added activity undertaken in the Province.
• Provide for a detailed geological database compiled from geological surveys and mapping programs that identifies new mineral exploration targets, and makes geoscience information easily available to everyone.
• Support development of the Province's mining sector through tax incentives for prospectors and exploration companies.
• Ensure lands are returned to a natural state after completion of exploration and mining and quarry activities.

he certainly believed those things in 2007.  When the popular Premier sought re-election, Williams committed that he would

• continue to discharge our responsibilities to ensure mineral exploration, mining and mineral processing operations in our province return full and fair benefits to Newfoundland and Labrador
• work to attract secondary and tertiary mineral-based processing and manufacturing operations to Newfoundland and Labrador communities

… [and]

• work with Labradorians to achieve increased benefits from resource developments associated with mining operations in Labrador West and at Voisey's Bay and hydroelectricity development on the Lower Churchill River.

Guess that means Danny won’t be advising the company to ship unprocessed iron ore out of the province.

Get ready people of Labrador.

If Danny delivers on his old political promises, you will not be able to stand the prosperity.

Of course, now that he isn’t a politician any more there’s no guarantee he will still push for the same ideas he used to talk about.

Maybe someone should ask Williams about give aways and getting the most for the people of the province from their resources.

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What? No equity stake? Alderon takes Danny Williams on board as “special advisor” #nlpoli

From the corporate news release issued on January 5:

Alderon is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Danny Williams, QC, former Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, as Special Advisor to the Chairman of Alderon.  Mr. Williams served as Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from October 2003 until November 2010, retiring from the position at a time when his government had an approval rating of over 80%.

Alderon is developing its 100% owned Kami Iron Ore Project located within the Labrador Trough, next to the mining towns of Wabush, Labrador City and Fermont. The Kami Project currently hosts an NI 43-101 indicated mineral resource of 490 million tonnes at 30.0% iron and an additional inferred mineral resource of 598 million tonnes at 30.3% iron contained within three zones: North Rose, Rose Central and Mills Lake. Up to an additional 18,000 m of infill drilling will be carried out during the 2012 Winter Drill Program with a view to upgrading a substantial portion of the currently defined inferred resource to the indicated resource category in preparation for the completion of a Feasibility Study in Q3 2012.

Based on the recently completed Rose Central Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA"), Alderon plans to commence commercial production in 2015 at a rate of 8 million tonnes per year ("Mtpa") at a concentrate grade of 65.5% iron. Alderon has initiated the Federal and Provincial Environmental Assessment Process and the registration documents include a provision to increase planned production from 8 Mtpa to 16 Mtpa as part of a second phase capital expansion.

Alderon expects the development of the Kami Project to provide significant economic benefits to Newfoundland and Labrador including the creation of over 1,500 full time jobs over a period of 20 years including 268 jobs directly at the mine and concentrator, 1,254 jobs indirectly for local service and support groups and 768 temporary jobs during construction. These job creation forecasts are based on the 8 Mtpa production scenario only.

...

It's only after all sorts of information that isn't about Danny Williams and his new appointment that you get a comment from Williams about his appointment.

From the way this news release is written, the most important thing to know about Danny is that he was Premier and left the job when he had a really high approval rating. 

Interesting.

So anyway, Williams will see some familiar faces at Alderon.

Brian Dalton is on Alderon board of directors.  Regular SRBP readers will remember him. Dalton is president and chief executive of Altius.  They made a proposal on financing the Lower Churchill.  And when a refinery project Dalton was backing had some financial difficulties no less a person than Danny Hisself dragged Kathy Dunderdale to the Middle East in an unsuccessful effort to scare up some investors.

Danny likely also knows John Baker, who is also a director of Altius among other things.

If Danny drops by the offices, he will likely smile when he sees Gary Norris, Alderon’s executive vice president of government and community affairs.  You see, Gary used to work for Danny as Clerk of the Executive Council.

Gary retired the same time Danny did.

The same day, even.

Try playing six degrees of separation in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

You’d be lucky to get two steps.

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Seven Habits of Spectacularly Ineffective Politicians #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“Run government like a business” is an old line. 

Some people use it as a rallying cry for success and innovation. 

Others think of it as a recipe for disaster.

Regardless of which side of that argument you come down on, you can sometimes find value in applying ideas from one sector to the other. 

Take, for example, a list of seven habits attributed to business leaders who screw up published online at forbes.com recently.  It’s a variation on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People except you learn positive lessons from the negative experiences that illustrate the bad habits. 

Included in the forbes.com column are some warning signs as well.  Those are indicators that while your business leader might not have the full-blown bad habit, he or she is headed in that direction.

And bear in kind:  some of the companies cited in the article were successful for a period of time or appeared to be quite successful. Over the longer term, though, things weren’t quite that good.

So what would happen if you took the seven habits of what forbes.com called unsuccessful business executives and applied them to politicians? Let’s have some fun:

Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment.

Think of this as the idea that they can do no wrong, that everything they think or say is genius and that they crap brilliance every minute of ever day.

Unlike successful leaders, failed leaders who never question their dominance fail to realize they are at the mercy of changing circumstances.They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

The rules only apply to other people.  They don’t apply to us.

They live in a bubble.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does. 

Warning Sign  #1:  A lack of respect

You won’t even need to think too hard to come up with an example of a politician who consistently shows an utter lack of respect – and sometimes outright contempt – for other people and their ideas.

While those other links are to a couple of Danny Williams’ defining characteristics, that lack of respect thing is one Kathy Dunderdale leads in.  She loves to claim that her opponents are stupid or incompetent and usually that’s the sum total of her argument.

Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests.

Warning Sign #2: A question of character

House of Assembly spending scandal.

And if you want something creepy, you can always go back to the Old Man’s 2007 claim:

I think I represent in my own heart and soul the hearts and souls of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

It’s hard to think of a statement in which someone confuses himself with the whole.

Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers.

If anyone can think of a time when Danny Williams ever took advice from someone else and acknowledged it publicly, then by all means share the story with the rest of us.  Did he ever take disagreement with his pronouncements well?

If you want a Dunderdale example, consider her approach to Muskrat Falls.  She  and her team of geniuses  have all the answers. So far Dunderdale hasn’t heard a single criticism of the project that makes her doubt the wisdom of ploughing ahead with the project.

And, in any event, all the critics are picking at little things in their predictably partisan way so what would they know?

Warning Sign for #3:  A leader without followers

Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them.

Think about the bizarro need to call people who wrote letters to the editor just to sort them out or blast them as traitors.

Let’s not forget the periodic expressions of concern about the handful of people who didn’t love Hisself unconditionally.  In the Straits after the by-election he sniffed about how much he had done for people and yet they didn’t vote for his hand-picked candidate.

The Old Man may not have relentlessly eliminated anyone but the Yes-Men and Yes-Women but he was overly concerned with dissent.

Warning Sign #4:  Executive departures

Think Beth Marshall in Health,  Florence Delaney or the executive level churn in the public service under Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale. 

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image.

Poll goosing.

Public comments about having to spend 50% of his time dealing with counter-spinning negativity.

Micromanaging an access to information request to withhold copies of his public speeches.

Clinical example of this habit.

Warning Sign #5:  Blatant attention-seeking

This Hour Has 22 Minutes in a Hurricane

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles.

Muskrat Falls.

Warning Sign #6:  Excessive hype

Pick an example.  There are too many to list since 2003.

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

Danny Williams:  the Ultimate One Trick Pony.. 

Prime Ministers.

Oil Companies.

A lawyer from GFW.

Randy Simms.

If Danny Williams wasn’t lacing into someone for something, he just wasn’t having a good day. 

Warning Sign #7:  Constantly referring to what worked in the past

Anybody recall that offshore oil agreement thingy?

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Whose camp is it anyway? #nlpoli

Leo Abbass, mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Regular readers will know him already.

Quoted this time by Voice of the Cabinet Minister about a controversial work camp a company wants to build in his community.  VOCM linked the camp to Muskrat Falls, and so did Leo, according to the version on the story they had on Tuesday:

The Mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay says in order for work to continue on the Muskrat Falls project, a work camp has to be built in his town.  The proposed camp by the Shaw Group on Kelland Drive has come under scrutiny by area residents who think the 300 person sleeping and eating facility should be built elsewhere. Others, meanwhile, think local residents are not being given fair job opportunities. Mayor Leo Abbass says the attention that this work-project is receiving online seems to be based on what he calls 'the mixing of issues'.

He refers to one note on Facebook which says that the person was shocked that these jobs were being offered to outside people before they were offered to local residents. He says the expertise is not available in his town, and engineers and technicians have specialized skills and they will be brought in for this project. 360 members have joined a Facebook page opposing the development, which would require town council to amend its development regulations.  Abbass says public submissions will still be accepted until January 12th, and he hopes a public meeting scheduled for Thursday on the matter will help clarify the confusion. He says he thinks people are jumping the gun on what this project is all about. He says the grief that he is hearing right now about this work camp seems to based on what he calls 'a lot of misconception out there'.

Problem.

The work camp has nothing to do with Muskrat Falls, according to no less an authority than the people proposing the multi-billion dollar debt scheme.

“Nalcor not involved with proposed Kelland Drive camp” is the title of a post by vice president Gil Bennett on the Nalcor blog.

I assure residents that Nalcor Energy is not involved in this proposal by Shaw Group. Their proposal is not a requirement for the Muskrat Falls Project.

Bennett also outlined the local benefits scheme for Muskrat Falls.

On Wednesday, VOCM was still running the story connecting the camp to the Muskrat Falls project.

And they were still mentioning Leo Abbass who was also making the same connection.  The Wednesday version:

A public meeting will take place tomorrow night to discuss the construction of a controversial work camp in Happy Valley- Goose Bay. The local town council is proposing to amend its development regulations, which has residents worried that the 300-person camp would be built too close to homes. The camp will provide food, services, and shelter to engineers and technicians working on the Muskrat Falls project. Happy Valley-Goose Bay Mayor Leo Abbass says having a work camp in town is better than the situation in Labrador City and Wabush. He says contractors in Lab West have been buying up living spaces, a move which further tightens the housing market.

He says the work camp project in Happy Valley-Goose Bay will help alleviate the possibility of contractors buying existing properties, and then using them to house their workers. The proposed work camp has generated a fair bit of opposition from area residents, who have set up a Facebook page opposed to the project.

Leo has a bunch of problems, evidently, not the least of which is squaring his version of what the camp is about with what the Muskrat Falls people are saying.

One of the ways of doing that might be for Leo to have town officials look at any municipal regulations that would hinder growth in the town.  Leo could also talk to his provincial government buddies about shifting their regulations that hinder development of affordable housing.

If Leo and his council want to avoid the housing nightmare they have in Labrador West, then some regulatory changes would be far easier than backing a work camp for a project that the work camp apparently isn’t connected to in the first place.

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More on the polling controversy #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Susan Delacourt, from The Star, December 30:

Canada’s polling industry could be in for a shakeup in 2012, after some major knocks to its reputation in 2011.

Regular readers will recall the controversy from the federal election and from the fall provincial election from the series on polling and politics.

The Delacourt article mentions concerns voiced by pollsters themselves,  including comments by Ipsos chief executive Darrell Bricker.  He complained about the polling firms themselves and the media and how they report polls.

Delacourt also has some observations by Nik Nanos:

The MRIA [the industry association in Canada] does have a code of conduct and does audit polling firms to see whether they meet its “gold-seal” standard, says Nanos. But he’d like to see MRIA being more active in investigating members, and when it finds problems, Nanos believes the association should be publishing details of the polling transgressions, either on the website or through periodic bulletins.

The SRBP series included the MRIA standards. One of the tidbits that didn’t make it into the series was the standards contained in an FAQ produced by Newspapers Canada in 2008.  The broadcast media don’t have any industry standards at all as best as your humble e-scribbler could find, let alone anything close to these standards for newspapers. 

When I publish an opinion poll, what do I have to include?

If you publish a "real" opinion poll that is - not an unofficial "streeter" - you are required to include certain information if you are the first person to release the information or if you publish it within 24 hours of its first release.

You must include:

• the name of the sponsor of the poll
• the name of the organization who conducted the poll
• the date on which or the period during which the poll was conducted
• the population from which the sample of survey respondents was drawn
• the number of people contacted to participate
• the margin of error, if applicable

As newspapers, you must also include:

• the wording of the survey question
• instructions on how to obtain a written report of the survey results.

If I sponsor an opinion poll, are there any additional requirements?

If you sponsor a public opinion survey, you must, after the release of the survey, provide, on request, a written report that contains the following information:'

• the name and address of the sponsor of the survey
• the name and address of the person or organization that conducted the survey
• the date on which or the period during which the survey was conducted
• Information about the method used to collect the data from which the survey results were derived, including:
• the sampling method
• the population from which the sample was drawn
• the size of the sample
• the number of people asked to participate in the survey and the numbers and percentages of them who did not participate in the survey
• the number of people who refused to participate in the survey and were ineligible to participate in the survey
• the dates and time of day of the interviews
• the method used to recalculate data to take into account the results of participants who expressed no opinion, and any weighting factors or normalization procedures used in deriving the results of the survey
• the wording of the survey questions and the margin of error

A sponsor may charge up to $0.25 per page for a copy of the report.

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of information.  Following this standard would go a long way to correcting many of the problems with media reports of polling, including their own polls.

Too bad newspapers don’t follow the standards at all.

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Christmas Goodies #nlpoli #cdnpoli

A couple of provocative articles turned up online over the holidays.  Now that everyone is getting back into the work-a-day groove, check them out.

Energy consultant Tom Adams took a hard look at Muskrat Falls and gave it a failing grade.  Adams doesn’t limit his comments to the MF project alone.  He also takes a look at the current rate structure:

The prevailing electricity rate structure for service on the island also suggests that the government is not serious about seeking the lowest cost options for meeting the province’s energy needs. The sale of power during the winter is highly subsidized, with the financial losses recovered by overcharging the rest of the year. Although this rate design is normal utility practice in far too many jurisdictions, given the cost structure for the power sector on the island where two thirds of the power is supplied by hydro-electric facilities, this practice is particularly wasteful of public resources. It would be interesting to know how much potential energy from on-island hydro-electric facilities is spilled during the spring, summer and fall. The prevailing rate structure encourages electric heating, where the power to drive those electric heaters is derived from oil. Using the oil directly for heating would be about three times as efficient as using the oil indirectly through electricity. If the government was really serious about mitigating the high economic and environmental costs of oil-fired generation, why would such a wasteful pricing methodology be allowed to persist?

How much gets spilled, Tom?  Crap loads.  The island is also in a situation where huge amounts of hydro currently spill because of deficiencies in the interconnection  between the main part of the island and the bit where a goodly part of the population lives.

As for the pricing structure, that’s the result of a chronic lack of policy direction from the provincial government and weakened oversight by the regulator. It’s the same climate that spawned the Muskrat Falls monster. 

When you are done with that, take a look at the second biting online commentary by CBC’s John Furlong.  He’s the host of the Fisheries Broadcast and one of the most seasoned journalists in the province. That gives him an impressive background which, of course, is the polite way of saying “he’s seen it all and he doesn’t swallow the bullshit”.

An example:

The union might not like it, the people in Marystown might not like it, and the people in Port Union might not like it, but it's time to lay down the over-heated rhetoric, be in the vanguard of this change and do something constructive.

You can tell Furlong is hitting the target by the vicious personal attacks on him from the anonyturds in the comments section of the CBC website.  This is his second sharply worded opinion piece.  it really livens up the CBC website.  Here’s hoping they make more use of him.

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SRBP at Seven #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Sir Robert Bond Papers turns seven years old today.

The purpose remains simple enough, as described in the first anniversary post:

While much has changed in the past year, the core goal for the Bond Papers is still the same: to contribute to an informed discussion of public policy issues. It started with the offshore and in the first few weeks that proved to be the issue that dominated.

Since then, there have been posts on everything from the fishery to alleged spy planes flying through Newfoundland and Labrador, Titan missiles and economic development. Some posts are light-hearted and humourous. Others have been deeper and wordier. Whether they succeeded in being funny or serious, as the case may be, is best left to its readers.

On the fourth anniversary, in 2009, your humble e-scribbler posted draft whistleblower legislation. 

In 2011, the anniversary post went by the wayside in favour of the daily fare:  Muskrat Falls financial problems.

This morning, your humble e-scribbler started a new short series on democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

All are typical of what this corner of the Internet has become in the last seven years.  SRBP is not just about adding to the voices out there.  It’s about getting at the layers underneath.  It’s about explaining the why behind arguments and beliefs.

SRBP has also become about advocating for new initiatives.  When the province’s most popular politician Danny failed to deliver his promise of whistleblower protection, your humble e-scribbler delivered it.  Look through the archives and you’ll find all sorts of policy ideas for the fishery, the economy and education and early childhood development.

And in some areas, your humble e-scribbler has been telling you things you won;t find anywhere else.

SRBP was an immediate opponent of the Abitibi expropriation.  It was fundamentally wrong, as a matter of principle.  The government never told the full story of why the expropriated the hydroelectric properties in central Newfoundland.  Finding out that the government botched the whole thing and expropriated environmental cesspools made it only more stupid than it was at the beginning.

After a brief examination, your humble e-scribbler also became a firm opponent of Muskrat Falls.  In the year since Danny Williams announced the scheme, more people have joined the ranks of the critics and opponents.  As more people learn more, they invariably realise the project is wrong.

SRBP’s critique goes much further than just picking at bits and pieces of one small part of a much larger problem with the current administration’s policy.  Your humble e-scribbler has already proposed an alternative way to manage the province’s electricity resources that will genuinely work in the public’s best interest.

As SRBP enters its eighth year, the ultimate judge of its success or failure is you, the reader. There are many thousands more of you today than there were seven years ago.  You send e-mails, make comments on posts or in some cases, pull your humble e-scribbler aside for a quick chat.

Politicians used to make angry phone calls in 2005 to gripe about a comment or opinion.  In 2007, the Old Man took to threatening your humble e-scribbler publicly.  In 2011, his successor gave the ultimate compliment to those of us who toil online by singling us out in her year-end interviews.

All of that speaks to the fact that people are interested in what they read here.  As long as they keep coming and as long as your humble e-scribbler can keep going, the Sir Robert Bond Papers will be here.

Thank you for your support. 

Thank you for your interest.

And to each of you, every wish for a happy and prosperous and healthy New Year from your humble e-scribbler.

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The question of democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador #cdnpoli #nlpoli

“A democracy only works really well,” according to Kathy Dunderdale, “when people are asking questions.”

Opposition Leader Dwight Ball told a Western Star interviewer that “my job is to ask questions with substance…”.

Not to be outdone in the spate of year-end interviews, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael tied the health of democracy to asking questions:

If our natural resources standing committee ... were operating like a House of Commons committee or like the committees in Nova Scotia, we’d have a fully open discussion on Muskrat Falls.

Not surprisingly, all three party leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador agree on what constitutes democracy in the province.  They lead parties that agree on everything but the fine details. 

Not surprisingly, the three leaders discuss democracy solely in terms of what happens in the provincial legislature.  The only disagreement they have, such as it is, centres on the questions the opposition parties ask.  The NDP want more time to ask questions.  The Liberals want to ask better questions and the Conservatives claim variously that there is enough time for questions as things stand or that the quality of them is low anyway so more time wouldn’t make things better.

In one sense, democracy is about questions.

It is about people who want power – like Kathy Dunderdale, Lorraine Michael and Dwight Ball – asking the rest of us in the community to support them at election time.  We support them with the one thing that we all have in common:  our individual vote. Everyone in the community has exactly the same kind of vote. And it is our individual vote that is the foundation of everything else that happens in our democracy.

In between elections, democracy is about those people who get enough support to form a government asking “May I” when they want to do something. That’s essentially what they do in the House of Assembly.

They pose the question to the other members of the House, whether from their own party or the other parties and individuals who won enough votes to sit in the legislature. 

You’ll find that quite literally in the procedure.  The Speaker will “put the question” on a motion, a resolution or a bill to the House and ask the members to vote.

Ask a question. 

Vote on an answer.

Decision made.

All starting from the fundamental question put to individual voters at an election to chose individuals who will represent those voters in the legislature.

Things weren’t always that way.  But starting almost 800 years ago, in those countries that follow the British parliamentary tradition, people started to place limits on what the government could do without the agreement of the people ruled by the government.

The 1689 Bill of Rights brought together many of the features of our modern democracy that we often assume have always been around and that people have always accepted.  Freedom of speech,  freedom to stand for and to vote in elections to the legislature and the need for the legislature to meet regularly are all contained in the 1689 Bill of Rights. They survive today: some changed, some the same.

At the core of the whole thing is choice.  People chose their representatives to sit in the legislature.  We select those representatives to stand in for each of us every day between elections.

We do not elect a government.  We elect people to the legislature, to the House of Assembly.  Out of those people, we get a group to run the government.  And those people running the government must come back to our direct representatives for approval for what they want to do, especially when it comes to spending public money.

There are two other ideas that go along with choice and who gets to chose.  One of these is that choices must be based on information.  The legislature’s day-to-day business is built around debate and the exchange of information. 

The other idea is that the information and choice must be in public.  The legislature has space for people to sit and watch what happens.  News media and others can report on what happens.  The legislature keeps an official record – Hansard – that people can read.

Seen from that perspective, those political comments about questions and the legislature don’t look all that good or convincing.  Looking at some recent history, one can find a host of examples  – from the spending scandal to the Abitibi expropriation fiasco  - that show the bad things that happen when politicians operate in secret. 

You can also see that the Premier’s excuses for keeping the legislature closed simply don’t make sense.  If she feels that her current job is a “rare privilege”, then Kathy Dunderdale needn’t remind herself of that fact every day, in secret, in her office. 

She can show up in the legislature and demonstrate that she gets the point:  if you want power in this province, the you have to stand up in the legislature and ask “May I?”

The purpose of the House is to subject those with power to public examination and to the test of debate, discussion and disclosure.  The Premier and her colleagues should want the legislature to be open as much as possible.  They should want to tell us about their plans, present their case and convince us all that they have good ideas.

How very odd it is, then, that the Premier admitted at the end of last year that she and her colleagues don’t have any thing ready to present to the House.  This is the case despite the fact they’ve been in office since 2003 and the Premier herself has held her job for more than a year.

At other times, Dunderdale has said that she kept the legislature closed because the House was dysfunctional.  The opposition parties were weak. Who will hold them accountable for what they say, she wondered. 

The answer is simple:  the ordinary people of Newfoundland and Labrador will.  If the opposition political parties are as weak as Dunderdale claims, then they won’t be able to hide away from public scrutiny either.  Exposing yourself to examination works both for those with power and those who want it.

The fact that the Premier and her colleagues avoid the House as they do and denigrate the legislature as the Premier does, she demonstrates nothing less than contempt for the people of the province.

To be fair, though, none of the parties in the House can really escape blame on this point.  All parties have  helped to create the current climate. Dunderdale controls how often the House sits.  But the other parties went along unquestioningly with the special ballot laws that undermine the right of individuals to stand for election.  Some even openly suggested making this a one party state.  Perhaps that explains why they slipped things through the House with a nod and a wink and stood idly by as their colleagues abused the fundamental rights we have enjoyed. Now they may not see it that way. They may believe that what they have done is absolutely right in every respect.

But they were not right.

It is not okay.

The attitude and actions of politicians in the province in recent decades are why the state of democracy in our province is, itself, in question.

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Effective Speechmaking

Scan down the list of recommended blogs and you’ll see a link to Max Atkinson.  He’s a British academic whose made a sideline career out of being a communications consultant.

While many of you have likely never heard of him, Atkinson has had a significant impact on modern speech making through his writing and consulting work. Much of what people now take for granted or what they consider to be established fact actually came out of Atkinson’s research over the past 30 years or so.

Dig into Atkinson’s background a bit and you will inevitably come across reference to his success with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. Before that, though, Atkinson gained public notoriety when he appeared on a British television program called “World in Action”.  They hired him to coach an inexperienced political activist as she delivered some public remarks at a Social Democratic Party conference.  She earned a standing ovation for her four minute speech.  Once the program aired, Atkinson’s phone started ringing with calls from other politicians who wanted his help.

The program is 27 minutes long.  Atkinson posted a good quality copy of the whole thing to his blog in 2010 as well as a youtube version which is broken into segments.  The picture quality on the segments isn’t that good. Bear in mind, though, that the thing came from a video tape made 25 years earlier.

Here’s the last bit with the actual speech, as delivered.

If this is all the time you have, that’s fine.  But if you want to get the full effect, go back and take the time to watch the whole thing.  You’ll find the impact of the speech is much greater.  You can spot some of the techniques employed.

The segment is about winning applause.  If you watch the whole thing, you’ll see how to deliver an effective speech.

Enjoy!

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A challenge for Premier Dunderdale #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“In any thriving democracy, sound public policy can only come through informed debate and discussion.”

”Beginnings” , SRBP, January 3, 2005.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale thinks that at least some of the opposition to Muskrat Falls comes from picking at “snapshots” of the project instead of looking at the big picture. 

Truth is the three political parties in the province all support her project.  The NDP are all in.  The Liberals are just quibbling over minor details.

The Premier also spent a fair chunk of time in her year-end interviews talking up her critics online and running down the debate skills of her opponents in the legislature.

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador deserve to hear the Premier’s detailed, passionate argument in favour of the multi-billion dollar Muskrat Falls.

They also deserve to hear a detailed, passionate argument her plan.

Since they aren’t going to get that from the province’s political parties, here’s the simple solution:

The Premier can debate your humble e-scribbler.

In public.

One night only.

Book a big enough hall, sell tickets and open the thing to the news media and to online coverage.

We can sort out the date, time place and format.  We’ll find a moderator.

Proceeds from  the event will go to the charity of the debaters’ choice.  Your humble-e-scribbler will give his share to the Arthritis Society.

The Premier can take all the time she needs to get ready but since she has her own deadlines to meet, we should be able to get the thing done before Easter. 

The Premier is backed by the mighty forces of Nalcor.  She has the army of bureaucrats in the Confederation and all the communication coaches, debate trainers, technical experts and pundits she can hire.

Your humble e-scribbler has himself, a couple of buddies and the Internet.

The Premier should have no problem at all.

All she has to do is accept the challenge.

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