The Budget-Spending Disconnection #nlpoli

The provincial government announced on Wednesday that they will spend $2.0 million to fund new child care spaces across the province.

Through Budget 2012, the Provincial Government remains committed to providing affordable, accessible and quality child care services throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. Today, the Honourable Charlene Johnson, Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services, announced $2 million for the second year of the Family Child Care Initiative, one of several key investments to be included in Budget 2012 to support child care.

Sounds like good news and it is.

But this announcement is peculiar.

For one thing, we won’t get Budget 2012 until next week. Traditionally. that’s when you get budget announcements like this one. You’d get it after the finance minister delivers the budget speech. Sometimes you get announcements before-hand but those used to be rare.

Now what makes this announcement a wee bit more peculiar is that this news release and news conference was really about spending commitments continued from 2011. It’s really cash you would anticipate they would spend so getting it this year wouldn’t be a big deal.  There’s no sign they plan to spend more than originally announced, so if you look at this big production, you are left wondering why they bothered.

Quotas of happy news, someone is yelling from the cheap seats.  That’s likely part of it.  If you look at the list of news releases for the week, they issued four on Monday and three on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, there were seven, not counting the two notes sent to editors that there would be two spending announcements later in the day. They made four spending announcements on Wednesday, incidentally.

There’s no polling that we know of. There’s no major controversy at the moment so yeah, quotas of happy news would seem to be a likely explanation.

Let’s look at something else, though.  One local reporter tweeted on Wednesday questioning the announcement of funding already announced, in effect, last year. If they funded it last year “of course” there’d be funding in 2012.

He garnered a comment from the Premier’s communications director:

There are no 'of courses' when it comes to budgeting. Multiple variables at play-affordability being a primary one.

Can’t take anything for granted, even government priorities.  Many things can change from year to year.

Now puhleeze.  These guys have had more cash than any previous government in the province’s history.  They have more in cash in the bank today than most governments ever had in any given year.  In fact, they might even have more than they did in 2003.

These guys have billions in cash earning interest while they wait to spend it on Muskrat Falls. A fraction of the interest on that $4.0 billion or so would cover way more than the chump change for this child care program. Affordability was never an issue in this case.  There were no variables at play at all.

As for the rest of it what the Premier’s comms director seems to be saying is simply unbelievable.  Not a good spot for a communications person to be in, mind you, but there it is.

But while she seemed to making a very general statement, those words  - the many variables – sounds rather like something else.  And there seems to be more to this release and others of its type than just quotas of happy news.  One of the bigger things we are seeing in this child care announcement is the growing disconnection between government communications and government operations.

It’s functionally the same as all those other announcements they make for projects that don’t actually happen until months or years later.  These days, the government budget speech is less about government’s spending program for the year than it is about the show for the news.

Not so very long ago, the budget itself was part of an annual process that had a great deal to do with keeping a very keen eye on spending.  By the early fall, departments were already talking to cabinet’s most powerful committee – Treasury Board – to find out the gross spending limits for the next year. 

As the weeks and months of the fall passed, Treasury Board would sharpen their focus line by line until you basically could get the budget done by February or so.  That allowed the government to put the budget in the House by March and get it approved before the new fiscal year started on April 1.

You could set your watch by it, the process was so well timed.  And you could map your year for spending and accomplishment by it.  Treasury Board could tell you within fractions of a percentage point how much cash they would have and how much they would spend.

Some time after 2003, that all went to crap.  At first, it looked like maybe Loyola Sullivan was just copying the Paul Martin formula for success: tell them the worst case predictions, no matter how implausible.  When things turn out better, you look like a genius.

The serial government always seemed to have trouble doing more than one thing at a time.  By early 2009, though, the “stimulus” announcements bundled the examples into a convenient pile for anyone interested in looking.  Later that year, Paul Oram started a huge political controversy by making budget announcements in run up to polling month.

No one announces budget cuts in August.

Period.

What the Oram-initiated debacle made plain was the extent to which things inside the upper reaches of government had grown increasingly nebulous as time went by.  Some time after 2003, the usual seasonal markers people inside government could use to keep things on track - start and end of the fiscal year, for example  – just disappeared.  Rather than forecasting actual government activity, the budget was just a general statement of intentions that might or might not turn out to be true.

There were no longer any “of courses” for government.

Just think about that.  The Premier’s communications director may have meant something else in her tweet but this alternative interpretation would explain an awful lot about a government that seems to have a chronic problem with getting stuff done on time and on budget.

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The Wet Bandits, Taliban version

One mid-level Taliban commander turned himself in to Afghan authorities in order to collect the reward mentioned on the BOLO poster local authorities issued for him.

According to the Washington Post:

When U.S. troops went to confirm that Ashan had in fact come forward to claim the finder’s fee, they were initially incredulous.

“We asked him, ‘Is this you?’ Mohammad Ashan answered with an incredible amount of enthusiasm, ‘Yes, yes, that’s me! Can I get my award now?’” recalled SPC Matthew Baker.

A biometric scan confirmed that the man in Afghan custody was the insurgent they had been looking for.

“This guy is the Taliban equivalent of the ‘Home Alone” burglars,” one U.S. official said.

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Sick parade #nlpoli

When you are home with a cold, there’s not much to do besides doze and read.

And when you are a political nerd at home with a cold, what better prezzie could there be than the papers presented at the Midwest Political Science Association?   Not much, is the answer, except the Monkey Cage, which offered up the links to the MPSA and a bunch of other gems.

Here’s one from the Monkey Cage to hold you until the old e-scribbler brain is de-fuzied.

The Oil Curse:  New book. Along with oil goes less democracy and economic instability.  Who knew?

There are four qualities of oil revenue, according to Michael Ross that make them so attractive to governments.  Your humble e-scribbler broke them out from Erik’s =post to make them easier to read quickly:

1. “The first is just the sheer scale of oil revenues. Government budgets tend to rise exponentially with oil discoveries. Increased revenues by themselves are not necessarily problematic but the source of the revenue also matters.”
2. Taxes versus oil royalties:  “If governments are funded by taxes, they become more constrained by their own populace than when they are funded by non-tax revenues (see here a more generalizable version of that argument from Kevin Morrison).”
3. “Third, oil revenues are very volatile compared to tax revenues. Most countries have little control over the world oil price, which falls and rises quite dramatically. They have some control over new oil discoveries but luck also plays a major role. Volatile revenues make for volatile politics, although some mature oil rich states (like Norway or the UAE) have managed to find ways to cope with this.”
4. “Fourth, oil revenues are secretive and relatively easy to hide. This facilitates corruption and hinders accountability.”

On that last one it was interesting to watch the evening news the past couple of days.  People are talking about home care and crumbling infrastructure.  No one mentioned the $4.0 billion in cash the provincial government is sitting on. 

Now they haven’t hid it completely.  The number is in the budget and other documents. It’s just hidden in plain site, so to speak.

Oh and it is going to pay for Muskrat Falls, in case you missed that little point.  Muskrat Falls becomes – in effect – a giant tax on the public, incidentally, but that’s another issue.  If no one “authoritative” speaks about it and no one in the media reports it, then it doesn’t really exist.  Come to think of it, that point is in among the conference papers somewhere.

Anyway, ask Kathy, Dwight and Lorraine about The Cash sometime. 

See what the Muskrat backers say.

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De apples and de oranges #nlpoli

You’d swear that provincial government departments had to hit quotas of good news media releases.

Environment minister Terry French issued one on Monday that claimed that the provincial government had beaten its greenhouse gas emission targets for the province.

Wonderful stuff.

And for what year, you may ask?

2010.

Stop and think for a second.  Two paper mills shut down in the province in 2005 and 2009.  The third one shut one of its two machines.  The Voisey’s Bay nickel mine was closed for a chunk of 2010 because of a labour dispute.

In the meantime, there wasn’t much in the way of new industrial activity.

There are also 70,000 few people in the province not driving cars and not running their wood stoves or burning oil to heat their homes.

So yeah, it’s not surprising that greenhouse gas emissions in the province dropped to levels not since for 20 years. 

Not content to let the good news go, French’s news release included this quote:

“We have witnessed significant real economic growth of 63 per cent since 1990, driven by offshore oil growth, at the same time that our emissions declined.   This represents a significant accomplishment for our province.”

Talk about connecting two things that are completely unconnected.  The economic growth he mentioned is due entirely to the increased prices for oil and some minerals produced in the province.  if we had opened a bunch of new manufacturing plants and dropped the GHG emissions, then there might be something to crow about.

The truth is, hitting that emissions target was relatively easy. And, to be sure, it had absolutely nothing to do with economic growth.

If you had to admit that, though, French and his comms director wouldn’t have been able to put another notch in the tally toward their quota of bullshite for the month.

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An alternative to A Grit-Dipper merger #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Okay so this is about the federal parties, but Rob Silver has a provocative idea.

But why not start a discussion between Liberals, New Democrats, Red Tories, and young people who have never been a member of a political party in their lives about a new vehicle – a new party. Consider it a blank slate. If we were starting from scratch, what would we fight for? How would we organize ourselves? So while there would still by definition be trade-offs (unless you start a new party by yourself, it's impossible for there not to be in politics), hopefully by starting something new, instead of squishing together two organizations with existing rules and structures, you could avoid the easy-to-imagine analysis of “who's taking over who,” “who won and who lost” that permeates so much Ottawa groupthink. Instead you'd create a new party for the next century. Naive potentially, I know.

The worst-case scenario? There's nothing there, both parties go on their merry way with new leaders and life goes on. Either there's something there to discuss, or not. Something that can be agreed to, or not. Something that a big enough group of caucus and membership of the parties are willing to leave their existing party in favour of, or not.

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Drug stores, mail carriers, and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

As your humble e-scribbler pointed out in August 2011, the province’s drug store owners lost their fight against lower drug prices for consumers in the province.

Some of them – the so-called independents – are holding a news conference at some unspecified time later this week to explain just how badly they lost.  Surprisingly, that’s exactly how they plan to explain it:

This conference will outline the catastrophic losses to independent pharmacy from both the agreement imposed by government and the changes to generic prices forced by legislation.

That line is from early on in the notice they sent to news editors for tomorrow assignments.  Only later did they mention that the agreement the provincial government announced over the weekend might affect consumers badly.

It won’t.

Government officials know it won’t.

The same crowd of drug store owners uses exactly the same prediction of imminent catastrophe for drug store owners – and maybe their customers - any time the provincial government does anything to its provincial-funded drug plans. In the later 1990s,  it was in a racket over the dispensing fee drug stores charge. 

Despite the warnings of doom from many of the same drug store owners who are taking to the ramparts this time, the drug stores are still out there.  Sure the mix of “independent” to "chains" has shifted to near parity from a 66/33 split favouring independents. But when you realise that a decade and more ago that ratio in this province was already the flip of the situation across Canada, you can see that the locals aren’t doing so badly.

Don’t forget the really important point, though:  no one in the public is complaining they can’t find a drug store.

Consumers can still get their drugs.  They or their insurance company will pay less for them now.  And for seniors on the provincial plan, they are actually going to pay less than the mandatory price a decade ago. 

For consumers, this is nothing but a gigantic win.

For the record, note the dig in the notice at the president of the association representing all pharmacists (PANL). Consumers don’t give a rat’s backside about those internal feuds among the stores, either.

For the provincial government, this is one big win against the two opposition parties both of whom went to war for the drug store owners. Neither of the opposition parties sized up the issue politically.  That much is obvious.

The fundamental shag-up here is the same one that will affect the postal workers, incidentally.  A local union leader called one of the open line shows on Monday to gripe about how automation will get him on his rounds faster and help lower operating costs for the post office, which means hopefully that the cost of postage won’t be jumping up.

The guy went on and on about the inconvenience for him personally.  He talked about the possibility that some of his colleagues will lose their jobs because the improved speed and cost-effectiveness of the machinery.

Both the drug store owners and the postal worker are talking to themselves.  The people they need to win over in order to have a political impact are consumers.  Neither the drug store owners nor the postal workers have explained why consumers should give a toss.

The way your humble e-scribbler has framed the outcomes in both cases is how consumers will hear them or have heard them.

For those who have jumped ahead a bit, you can also see why the provincial government has been steadily losing support for its plan to jack up electricity rates and double the public debt or some such combination.   Consumers just don’t see any benefit for them in it.  A great many of them are flat-out opposed to the scheme.  They simply don’t believe Jerome, or Kathy, or Ed martin when they promise the moon and the stars but can’t deliver a simple report.

For those that don’t oppose it flatly, the rest are uncertain.  They have doubts.  The opposed and the unsure constitute a majority. If NTV and Telelink can scrape together the cash for a poll, they should do one very soon.  Telelink is the only truly independent pollster in the province on this issue with a track record for accuracy.

But where you’ve got it:  three groups, and all three suffering from the beginners fault of communicating with themselves instead of the people they need to persuade.

No surprise the three of them have lost or are losing badly.

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Our Secret Nation #nlpoli

Comedian Greg Malone is writing a book.

The title is Don’t tell the Newfoundlanders:  the true story of Newfoundland’s Confederation with Canada.

It is non-fiction.

Well, supposedly it is non-fiction.

That’s because any book or article with the “true story” in the title is pretty much guaranteed to be full of plenty of popular myths, fairy tales, folklore and just plain old bullshit.

The likelihood of getting the untrue story from any “true story”  goes off the dial when the book is about Confederation.  You see, since 1949, Newfoundland has had a thriving conspiracy industry centred on Confederation.  It rivals any of the grassy knoll, Area 51 stuff in the United States on any level.

And when you dig a little deeper you know you are going to get the real story that is as authentic as you might expect from an ersatz Barbara Frum. 

Last year, Mary Walsh interviewed Greg about his book when she filled in at The Current.  That’s a link to the audio and appropriately enough Greg follows on a discussion of humour in politics.  The blurb describes Greg’s book this way:

And he has uncovered what he says was a conspiracy to make sure Newfoundlanders did join Canada.

Yes, friends.

It is the same old schtick. 

Such old schtick, in fact, that historian Jeff Webb has already dealt with it. Such old schtick, in fact, someone made a movie out of it.

And it really is the same… old… schtick.  Malone credits the late Jim Halley as one of his inspirations for digging into Confederation.  With that starting point, you can be pretty much assured of what is coming. 

Malone doesn’t disappoint on that front.  Malone talks With Walsh about some Canadians lusting after iron ore and hydro-electricity in Labrador, the British/Canadian war debt written off against Confederation and all the rest of the stories that have been swirling around since the late 1940s.

There doesn’t look to be a fact, detail or argument from Malone you can’t find somewhere else.  And, inevitably, there are likely plenty of details Malone just never considered because they didn’t fit into his world view.

Apparently, the book is set for a Christmas release. 

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Related:

• Fantasy Island:  Flags of our Fathers edition
• Le declin de l’empire
• A tourist in her own land

Our failed state #nlpoli

The always sharp labradore has posted links to a report by the Foundation for Democratic Advancement on election finance laws across Canada.

You can find the full report here.  The Newfoundland and Labrador section starts on page 34.

The analysis (p. 38) reads, in part:

Based on the FDA scoring scale (see Conclusion section), Newfoundland and Labrador received an unsatisfactory score of 51.3 percent. This score means that Newfoundland and Labrador has numerous deficiencies in its electoral finance legislation and borders on a failed democratic state. The FDA believes that this legislation is not working in the interests of the majority in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Borders on a failed democratic state.

Doesn’t get much plainer than that.

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OK Go – Needing/Getting

A little something to cleanse your brain of all this political stuff.

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The Voice of Experience #nlpoli

Most of the people who have been talking about search and rescue the past couple of years – especially the politicians – know absolutely nothing about the subject at all.

At last, we have comments from someone who knows the subject from direct experience. 

Steve Reid is a retired helicopter pilot and was recently the commanding officer of 103 Squadron in Gander.  He knows what it means to risk his life for others.  He’s also got a letter in the Gander Beacon.

On the time to launch, a favourite one of a couple of the local political ghouls:

A 30-minute (daytime)/two-hour (off hours) posture provides unfair representation of the actual reaction times that SAR crews routinely achieve.  For 103 Squadron, a typical response from the flight line averages 19 minutes or less, while a quiet hour response usually takes just under an hour.

On the constant comparison with fire departments:

It would be great if all it took to launch a SAR aircraft was to turn a key to start an engine and then race down a highway, but this is not the case.  There are important factors to consider each time, such as en route weather conditions, air traffic control obligations and other specific mission requirements

He also talks about the growing mission for SAR since the 1940s and with it, the growing expectations:

And with this evolution, there are new pressures to contend with, such as an implied obligation for 103 Squadron helicopters to remain postured on the island in support of offshore activities, not to mention the long-standing support that the RCAF has provided to Newfoundland and Labrador for cases that fall under provincial jurisdiction.  These include support to ground SAR cases, which encompass all other forms of distress that are not automatically classified as aeronautical or maritime distress as well as humanitarian efforts such as hospital-to-hospital patient transfers.  Recognizing that Newfoundland and Labrador has unique geographic, meteorological and accessibility challenges, the number of cases for which the RCAF provides supplemental support outside of its federal mandate far exceeds all other provinces.  Most have dedicated resources assigned o meet their specific provincial obligations.

Read the whole letter.  It brings a reward you cannot get from anywhere else.

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DND to shut down 5 Wing base housing #nlpoli

From David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen:

■ Military housing at Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg will be shut down.

The story appeared on April 11.

Biggest take away from that right up front is that all those Conservative promises for the last half dozen years about Goose Bay remain the total bullshit they always were.

Someone should ask Leo Abbass, John Hickey and other federal Conservative backers all about that.  After all, if DND sheds all that housing, that battalion or the UAV squadron or all the other BS that Leo and John campaigned for just isn’t showing up.

Then someone should contact local developers and see what a sudden dump of good affordable housing will do to the local market. 

Potentially very good for consumers.

Likely not so good for speculators.

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Fun Facts: Hibernia gas and Holyrood #nlpoli

From Stephen Bruneau’s submission to the public utilities board hearing on the Muskrat Falls project:

In 2010, the withdrawal and use of natural gas as a fuel for electrical generation and heating was greater for Hibernia alone than was the total oil-fired energy used at Holyrood for the same year.

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Breastfeeding Controversy for HITS FM #nlpoli

HITS FM morning crew  has stirred a bit of controversy for his remarks on April 11 about breastfeeding.

There’s an excellent account of it at Meeker on Media.  The HITS crew gained the ire of Tara Bradbury for his remarks about celebrity Mayim Bialik who is breastfed her son when he was aged three and a half years.

Bradbury commented , in part:

Beyond the surprise, I'm disappointed that Randy, being in a position of celebrity in this province, would help perpetuate a stigma that our Department of Health, hospitals, public health nurses and other health groups have been busting their butts for years trying to eradicate. 90% of Canadian moms choose to start breastfeeding their newborns; in this province, only 63% do. By the time these babies are six months old, only 10 per cent of them are still breastfed.

She’s right.  Breastfeeding rates in this province are appallingly low.

You can find the audio file on the HITS FM website.  That link came via Dara Squires’ blog where you’ll find even more on this controversy.

Scroll down a bit in her piece and you will find a link to a Canadian Public Health Association paper on breastfeeding in this province.  it dates from 2006 but the information is still pretty much the state of affairs today.

The provincial government still doesn’t have a breastfeeding policy.

Figuring out a policy really isn’t all that hard to do.  You have to wanna.

Breastfeeding:  it’s what your tits are for.

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Torquing public safety #nlpoli

Search and rescue on the east coast of Canada is one of those cases where you can complain that all three political parties  - provincial and federal - are guilty of playing slimy political games and you’d be right.

The latest move is the return of a CH-146 Griffon helicopter to 444 Squadron in Goose Bay, Labrador.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The return.

Trip 4 used to have three helicopters.  In order to send some helicopters to Afghanistan, the Royal Canadian Air Force took one from here and one from there.  One came from Goose Bay.

And now that the Afghan deployment is over, Trip 4 is getting its helo back.

Any connection between the two events is entirely coincidental.  Well, except when politicians tie the two together in a way that is as disingenuous as other political and media comments on the search and rescue issue..

Defence minister Peter Mackay tied the two issues together:

"This helicopter represents another resource that can contribute to Canada's Search and Rescue system in support of primary responders in this region."

That quote is from CBC.

And intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue said much the same thing:

“That will bring the number of helicopters from two to three and that will give full services to 5 Wing Goose Bay for their needs, as well for any request for ground search and rescue," he told reporters in St. John's.

The rest of the CBC story carried on with the same omissions and distortions used by the Fifth Estate in an earlier story they broadcast.

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Another critique of Linda Ross #nlpoli

In a CBC Radio commentary [audio link] Heather Davis  - a former co-ordinator of the women’s centre in Corner Brook – criticises the Advisory Council on the Status of Women and its president Linda Ross for Ross’ recent comments about violence against women:

Everyone is demanding answers after a recent murder suicide, notes Davis, everyone except the provincial organization whose job that is.

Davis says there is a “disconnect” between the provincial advisory council and local women’s groups.  She identifies the cause:  the provincial government  - maybe the minister responsible – decided to appoint the president rather than follow past practice and leave it to women’s groups in the province to recommend the right person to head the advisory council.

Interesting.

Seems there are a few people who have problems with Linda Ross.

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So then what will they do? #nlpoli

Let’s make no bones about it. 

Even at the deepest darkest moments after the death of Meech Lake, federal-provincial relations were never as bad as they are right now between the crowd in Ottawa and the crowd in Sin Jawns.

Danny Williams put all his political credibility into his anything but Conservative campaign.  He pledged to campaign across Canada to defeat the federal Conservatives.

Williams lost.

Big time.

Sure he changed his goal at the end – as his failure became painfully obvious - and all the local media just repeated his reimagined version of the ABC campaign, but the truth is Williams screwed himself and the rest of us politically with his little ego-stunt.

Kathy Dunderdale decided the best way to fix that was to campaign for Harper in the next election.  Okay, well she thought it best to say she would campaign.  Whether she did or not depends on who you talk to.

And that worked out so well that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador can’t get the Prime Minister of Canada to return her phone calls.

The latest idea Kathy had was to give the deputy minister of the intergovernmental affairs secretariat a new job.  He will spend an unspecified amount of time “conducting a horizontal review of federal-provincial agreements to determine their efficiency and effectiveness.”

Does that mean Sean will lie down while he studies?

Seriously.

WTF is a “horizontal review”?

Now this is such an important initiative that the only word of it is in a news release announcing yet another shuffle around of members of the senior public service.  Sean gets this new gig.  Meanwhile, someone will fill in for him. 

No word on what criteria Sean will use to determine efficiency and effectiveness or indeed what federal-provincial agreements they are including in the review.  Most likely it is the deals that shift federal cash into provincial hands so the hands can hand it out to other provincial hands.

These agreements cover things like the federal gas tax transfer to municipalities,  money for bridges,  and big transfers for health, social assistance,  and education.

We are talking big money, too. Last year, federal transfers to the provincial government totalled more than $1.0 billion.

No word on how long Sean will take.

And there’s no word about what the government will do with Sean’s report once he gets it done.

Perhaps Kathy will call Steve and…

Errr… maybe that might not be such a good idea.

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Afghanistan Infantry Firefight

A short video from an unspecified rotation by 3rd battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan.  The video is from a helmet-mounted camera worn by a soldier using a C-9 light machine gun

Note that at one point a rocket propelled grenade passes over the soldier’s head.

 

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Nalcor backs natural gas for electricity #nlpoli

Just for a bit of fun, go back to December 2010 and read about Ed Martin and his views on generating electricity from natural gas.

Fascinating stuff, in light of recent discussions.

Go back and read it.  You won’t be disappointed.

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Note-to-self update:  Don't type posts late at night.  Generating natural gas from electricity, indeed, as the first version said.  That would be like storing Muskrat Falls electricity in the Smallwood Reservoir to use later on.

And in other Muskrat Falls news… #nlpoli

The Telegram editorial:

Oh, so now it's electricity for mining ventures that need the power. So here's a question for the good minister: Muskrat Falls is supposedly going to increase rates to island customers to some 16.4 cents a kilowatt hour. What rate does Kennedy expect that the mining companies will pay? That certainly doesn't sound like a price high-use mining companies would appreciate - so will ordinary power consumers on the island be subsidizing corporate customers?

The Toronto Star:

OTTAWA—It seemed like a stroke of political savvy — at the time.

But now, a political storm may be gathering on the eastern horizon over a popular campaign promise by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to give a $4 billion loan guarantee to Newfoundland’s Lower Churchill hydroelectric development.

…

If you follow Twitter comments, you’ll see that Tonda MacCharles’ piece in the Star caused a few people of the Tory persuasion some degree of angst.  They bitched about its inaccuracy.

Thing is, the story is fair and accurate.

The problem is that the Conservatives have been consistently frigging up their pitch for the deal.

It really is that bad.

The rest of can’t all be wrong.

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If you ain’t got yer pride, Muskrat Falls version #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, speaking with David Cochrane on this weekend’s On Point with David Cochrane:

“What we have to do is put aside ego and pride, put aside political grandstanding…”

Now in the coded political language of Newfoundland and Labrador, why might Jerome want to distance himself from those qualities?

Why indeed?

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A fresh smear of lipstick #nlpoli

CBC’s online version got the story right from the most recent episode of On Point with David Cochrane:

Natural Resources Minister Jerome Kennedy says the Newfoundland and Labrador government is not back-pedaling in how it is handling the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, even though the governing Tories are already planning measures they had ruled out.

And Kennedy is being absolutely straight with people:  the provincial government is not changing its direction.

Most emphatically and absolutely no change.  It’s Muskrat Falls or bust.

The ruling Conservatives are just changing the tone.

They are changing the appearance of things as they try and recover from the very serious blow delivered recently by the public utilities board

Look at what Jerome told David Cochrane.  two phrases in particular leap out:

“You have to show as a politician that you are flexible and open to listening to what the people are saying … what we are trying to do is assure the people of the province that everything is being considered…”

Show.

Not be.  Not do.

Show.

Open to listening.

Not actually listening. Or listening and then changing.

Just listening.

And that’s what this latest development is really all about: the appearance of change without actually changing.

Odds are very good that the government’s polling – done by Nalcor’s advertising agency – is showing that the government’s intransigence is undermining their credibility even further. Their strategy isn’t working.  People aren’t willing to just put blind faith in Jerome and Kathy and Fairity O’Brien.

That polling would very likely lead to advice for Nalcor and the government to change how things look.  Image, after all,  is everything for some people.

You wouldn’t need to poll, though, to hear people wonder aloud why the government is proceeding with this project at break-neck speed and despite the thoughtful criticism from a bunch of very smart people with tons of credibility.

You could also tell earlier on that the critics’ comments about Muskrat Falls did serious damage to the government case for Muskrat Falls.  Jerome Kennedy attacking them personally.

So now there will be a debate in the legislature.  As Jerome noted for On Point, the government has to introduce a piece of Muskrat Falls legislation this session anyway so they will now just have a bigger form of that debate.

Hang on a second.

What piece of Muskrat Falls legislation?  They’ve never mentioned that before.  Maybe we’ll find out what the legislation is about but notice that for all the promises Jerome made about assuring everyone that the government will put information in front of people, he hadn’t mentioned that important piece of information before.

The problem is not image.  It’s credibility.  They say one thing and do something else.

This new piece of legislation for Muskrat Falls will come before project sanction.  Logically, friends, that pretty much wipes away any suggestion in Kennedy’s comments later on with David Cochrane that Muskrat Falls might not happen.

Not surprising that Jerome didn’t mention it before now. Makes it kinda hard to assure people you could walk away from Muskrat Falls without batting an eyelid if you are planning to change the laws to pave the way for it before you’ve supposedly decided to get on with it.

So anyway, once again Jerome Kennedy wants to reassure people in the province that they will have all the information the public utilities board couldn’t get plus reports on wind and natural gas in order to assure the people of the province that Nalcor has considered all options before picking Muskrat Falls.

He mentions reports on wind and natural gas that some companies will complete for Nalcor. 

Just remember what Nalcor and the provincial government have always said.  You can find it in a blog post by Nalcor boss Ed Martin over at Nalcor’s “leadership” blog, posted April 5:

Nalcor examined a broad selection of generation supply options to meet the island’s growing and long-term electricity needs including: nuclear, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, coal, continued oil-fired generation at Holyrood, simple and combined cycle combustion turbines, wind, biomass, solar, wave and tidal, hydroelectric developments on the island and Labrador and electricity imports.

They looked at it all before picking MF.  You name it: they studied it.

Supposedly.

So what’s with the new studies?

Good question. 

If the MFers had really had looked in detail at everything before picking Muskrat Falls, then they would  - Number One – already have those studies and would not need to produce “reports”, and  - Number Two – they’d have already released them to show that the alternatives just don’t work.

Yes friends, you are already getting the distinct aroma in your nostrils of the spore from rattus politicus pinocchiosa.  That is one honking big rat turd you smell, too.

You see, we know what these reports will say.  We know because Jerome told us.

March 6 in the House of Assembly:

MR. KENNEDY: … We have looked at natural gas, Mr. Speaker, extensively. In fact, I can say to the Leader of the Opposition, I met with Ziff Energy out of Calgary on the weekend while in Toronto on another matter. They concluded, clearly, that the importation of gas from the United States is not economically feasible. Mr. Speaker, we know, clearly, that the building of a pipeline from the Grand Banks is not feasible. If the Leader of the Opposition has other options, I would like to know what they are.

March 7:

MR. KENNEDY: … I have met with different consultants in this area, most notably Wood MacKenzie out of New York and PIRA out of New York. We have discussed the issue of the pricing of natural gas and the effect of shale gas on markets and electricity markets.

This past weekend, Mr. Speaker, I met with a company called Ziff Energy out of Calgary. I met with them in Toronto. We outlined to them the proposals that had been put forward by various critics of the project and the conclusion reached, Mr. Speaker, by all of these consultants, experts, not self-professed experts, Mr. Speaker, the conclusion reached is the importation of natural gas is not economically feasible, nor is the building of a pipeline from the Grand Banks.

Remember Jerome’s penchant for slagging the critics”  “Not self-professed experts”.  You can tell that all those critics, none of whom are self-professed anything, are causing Jerome and his mates lots of trouble.

And if that doesn’t jog your memory, here’s Jerome from March 13:

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ed Martin, the President of Nalcor, outlined in great detail the steps that they had taken in terms of looking at the options for Muskrat Falls, Holyrood refurbished. They indicated that at the Decision Gate 2 process, liquefied natural gas was screened out. Mr. Speaker, as Mr. Martin indicated, it was a fairly easy decision at that point because the viability of building a 350 to 650 kilometre pipeline from the Grand Banks just did not work. I am not aware of any LNG study.

Mr. Speaker, I have indicated on several occasions, I have met with experts, notably Wood MacKenzie in New York, PIRA in New York, and Ziff Energy of Calgary and discussed natural gas. I have indicated that the opinions given to us unanimously are that natural gas is not going to work. There are no studies or reports that I am aware of. If there are, they are in the eight boxes and I suggest that the Opposition go through them.

To paraphrase Jerome’s line until now:  We looked at it all.  We’ve talked to the experts.  They tell us we were right the first time.

Nothing changed at all in his discussion with David Cochrane over the weekend, except the cosmetic shift in tone we’ve already noted.  Any claims or suggestions to the contrary are simply unfounded.  you won’t need an expert study to see why.  To borrow a phrase the lawyers like:  the thing speaks for themselves.  Res ipso loquitur.

And even with a make-over, Muskrat Falls is still in trouble and the strategy the government is following is still Arnold Ziffel with a new smear of lipstick.  They are ploughing ahead with Muskrat Falls and all the sound advice in the world won’t persuade them to change their course.

We know that because finance minister Tom Marshall said it on province-wide radio this week, before Jerome tried to change the tone of government’s MF message track:

The opposition will get its say, then the government will get its way.  That’s how democracy works.

That isn’t how democracy ought to work. It is, however, how Jerome and his friends know it does work around these parts.  They just get shy when people realise it.

- srbp -

Word of the Day: gormless #nlpoli

Russell Wangersky:

At this point, the Official Opposition is floundering around looking for an issue, and they can't see that they are trampling around so heavily that they've pounded their moral high ground right down into the bottom of the barrel.

My advice to the clearly gormless opposition, whose members, without a doubt, are unable to hear the sound of their own voices?

Point out simply that the provincial government should do the right thing. Advance the argument. Or move on.

You're not standing up for the little guy any more.

You're just standing up to further your own ends.

The word applies not only in this particular case of Yvonne Jones and the Winters tragedy, it’s been the word to describe the entire caucus for quite some time.

- srbp -

Patronage and seals… #nlpoli

Thursday’s announcement by fisheries minister Darin King should give you a pretty big reminder that the local political scene remains mired in the past.

The provincial government is giving a private sector company a $3.6 million.  They are calling it a loan.  In effect, the provincial government is going to pay a cash subsidy directly to fishermen to kill twice as many seals as the company involved could buy. That’s according to a company official at the news conference on Thursday. 

Interestingly enough, this is exactly the type of subsidy that helped to decimate the cod stocks since it encourages fishermen to over-harvest the resource.  The excuse for it is much the same as well:  it is supposedly just bridge financing to help the industry get through some difficult times now. Things will get better in the future.

There’s no truth in it of course.  There never has been.  Those are just the official excuses the politicians need to avoid the decisions that are tough but that would actually improve the fishery.

Even more interestingly, there’s a growing international effort to wipe out these subsidies. Yet while people around the world are trying to change the behaviour that led to the loss of our fish stocks, the locals are just carrying on as if everything was just peachy.

This looming change in the fishery and the fish markets is part of the story behind the more recent fisheries crisis, by the way, but that’s another issue. 

One sentence in the seal subsidy release leaped out.  it’s down towards the bottom. It’s vague and written in the passive voice, which likely means the person who wrote the release was just filling up space.  Here’s the claim:

The value of the industry to the provincial economy has been estimated at close to $100 million in total in recent years.

“has been estimated”.

By whom?

Well certainly not the provincial government.  The fisheries department website gives information for three years.  They are from a time before the most recent collapse of the markets:

The Sealing Industry contributed on average approximately $16 million to harvester’s income, and approximately $37 million to the provincial economy in the last three years:

• 2006: approximately $30 million in landed value and approximately $55 million to the provincial economy.
• 2007: approximately $11 million in landed value and approximately $32 million to the provincial economy.
• 2008: approximately $7 million in landed value and approximately $24 million to the provincial economy.

From $30 million in landed value and $55 million in total in 2006 to a mere $7.0 million in landed value and $24 million total value two years later.

So $100 million in total value to the economy?  Only, if you add up a bunch of years and that doesn’t seem to be what they meant.

This province won’t have a viable, local fishing industry in the future as long as the provincial government sticks with bad policy ideas like doling out cash to fishermen and local companies as they did in the seal announcement on Thursday.

- srbp -

Common sense – the rarest element #nlpoli

There’s a tee-shirt. 

This one is from zazzle

And it is true.

Common sense is so rare these days it should be classified as a super power.

It would be subject to the Roommate Agreement’s friendship rider.

Just sayin’.

- srbp -

Time to end the despicable abuse #nlpoli

Through her shouting and bawling it is hard to know if Yvonne Jones does not know what she is talking about or does not care.

Either way, the result is the same.

On Wednesday, Jones kept up her shouting about the tragic death of Burton Winters.  She has been talking about it in the House of Assembly every day the House has held a session for the past month.  The only day Jones didn’t rise in the House was when she and two of her colleagues went to Ottawa for a media stunt with federal Liberal members of parliament and the two New Democrats from this province.

Jones asked the Premier – yet again - if she would hold an inquiry into Winters’ death.  A month ago, there might have been a reason to do so.  Jones and few other political ghouls first tried to pin the tragedy on  federal officials. While Jones and the ghouls went off in pursuit of their own political agendas,  no one asked a few simple questions to provincial officials.  After all, ground search and rescue is a provincial responsibility.

Now let us be clear. Just because people are responsible for conducting a search does not mean they must be responsible if the search ends with finding a dead body. Your humble e-scribbler has pointed to the provincial officials before, not because they screwed up, but because they had information that should have put to rest any questions, concerns or doubts about the events in Makkovik.

No one asked for and no one volunteered the information.  One media outlet had the man with answers in their lap and instead asked him about something else.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale was content, at first,  to play the same game and go off to Ottawa for answers for questions that were irrelevant to knowing what happened. She even worked the federal defence minister to cook up a protocol change about when someone made a telephone call, as if that mattered then or now. It was pure theatrics and nothing more.

Despite the political misdirections, the public did get a very good  picture of what happened over those fateful few days in late January,  They had a very good timeline on  CBC’s website very shortly after the tragedy.  On February 10, the federal government released an internal report by National Defence officials on the incident as well.  It had plenty of detailed information on the provincial government’s actions. 

On March 7, though, when the House debated a resolution on the Makkovik tragedy, someone finally gave an account of events from the provincial government perspective. To his great credit, municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien gave a simple and clear account of things.  Unfortunately, quite a few people - your humble e-scribbler included – never saw or heard O’Brien’s speech. 

There is no need for an inquiry. By March 7th at the very latest, anyone who earnestly wanted to understand what had happened in Makkovik in late January could have known. 

A young boy went missing.  Police and local volunteers went searching where they thought he might be.  As it turned out, they had support from a helicopter that was in the area.  The police called provincial officials who, as they always do, called on a contracted helicopter service to help.  They couldn’t fly because of weather conditions at that time but came as quickly as they could.

Provincial emergency officials tried to get another helicopter from National Defence.  An inspection turned up a problem with a fuel line which they corrected.  Other than that, they had the same weather problems the commercial helicopter pilots had.

When the weather cleared, the commercial helicopter arrived and joined the search.  The searchers turned up signs of the young boy hours later.  They asked for and got help from the joint rescue centre in Halifax.  They sent a helicopter from Goose Bay and a long range patrol plane with equipment that could find heat from a human body at great distances.

The helicopter found other signs before nightfall and weather forced them to call off the search.  The next day the commercial helicopter located the boy’s body.

There can be no question about what happened.  The events are now well known to anyone who cares to find out.  The accounts of the search are consistent and always have been.  Many people acted in good faith and in a sincere effort to find a lost boy. Through no fault of anyone, they did not find the boy before he died.

For some unfathomable reason, Yvonne Jones seems determined to smear the young boy’s blood on someone – anyone -  even though there is not a single shred of evidence to support her efforts. She is prepared to invent or imagine all sorts of faults and failings for all sorts of people. 

Premier Kathy Dunderdale is Jones’ latest victim on that account.  The Premier often has trouble getting things straight.  On this issue, she has done a great many things except cut to the simple and plain truth.  But to be fair to her, Dunderdale has not been misleading anyone or confuddled her accounts, as Jones claimed on Wednesday.

In her relentless blood-smearing efforts, Jones also tried on Wednesday to invent some delay by provincial officials in calling the federal government for help.  There was no delay and Kevin O’Brien was again right to call Jones out for her political grandstanding:

You are playing politics with a tragedy, I say to the hon. member. Appalling!

Amen to that.

Jones’ behaviour has been appalling.

But there is an even better word for it and no one should be afraid to tell it to Jones at every opportunity:  despicable.  Yvonne Jones’ behaviour is utterly despicable.  It is beyond contempt.

There are times for politicians to fight for their constituents.  And there are times when responsible political leaders must help a community to heal.  In this case, Jones should be helping people to come to terms with a tragedy.  Instead, Jones is tearing open their wounds each day.  She is abusing people who have put their trust in her to do the right thing. She is being grossly irresponsible.

And whether she simply has no idea what she is talking about or does not care, the end result is the same:  a young boy’s family, friends and neighbours and thousands of other sincere people across the province continue to suffer the most horrible mental anguish.  They should not have had to endure it for one second longer than necessary. Yet as a result of Jones’ actions, they have been deluded into looking for blame where there is none to be had. They have been misled into thinking there are some secrets  or mysteries yet to be discovered. They have suffered now for days and weeks and months longer than they needed to. There is no excuse for it.

Jones has had help in this monstrous abuse.  She received it from other politicians.  She has received it from the news media.  

And above all she has received it from her caucus colleagues and her party leader, Dwight Ball.  They have not just stood by and allowed her to carry on.  They have joined her, as Ball did for the Ottawa stunt. There are no words in the English language strong enough to condemn Jones for grandstanding over others’ grief or for Ball who has simply acquiesced to Jones at every turn.

Let Wednesday be the last day for this despicable abuse of Burton Winters’ family and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Jones and Ball should let people begin to find some small measure of comfort from their anguish. If instead, Jones and Ball persist on their current course, then they deserve whatever political consequences they suffer.

It’s time for them to stop the despicable abuse.

- srbp -

Offshore Board Lays Charges Against Suncor #nlpoli

From CNLOPB (with some style edits):

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) has laid three charges against Suncor Energy Inc., Operator of the exploration drilling program at the Ballicatters M96-Z well located in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin on Exploration Licences 1092 and 1113, for alleged offences related to a spill of synthetic based mud (SBM) from the mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) Henry Goodrich operating in the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Area. SBM is a heavy, dense fluid used during drilling operations to lubricate the drill pipe and balance reservoir pressure.

The charges result from an investigation by C-NLOPB Conservation Officers following a report of a spill of 26,400 litres of SBM into the ocean on Monday, March 28, 2011 from the drilling rig.  The Operator is charged with causing or permitting a spill into the Offshore Area, failure to ensure that drilling fluids were stored and handled in a manner that would have prevented pollution, and failure to ensure that drilling fluids were handled in a way that did not create a hazard to safety or the environment.

The C-NLOPB is the independent joint agency of the Governments of Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador responsible for the regulatory oversight of petroleum activities in the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Area, including; health and safety for offshore workers, protection of the environment during offshore petroleum activities, management and conservation of offshore petroleum resources, compliance with the provisions of the Accord Acts that deal with Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador employment and industrial benefits, issuance of licences for offshore exploration and development, and resource evaluation, data collection, curation and distribution.

Sean Kelly M.A., APR, FCPRS
Manager of Public Relations
C-NLOPB
Tel:             709-778-1418     
Cell:             709-689-0713  

- srbp -  

The excitement is obvious #nlpoli

That’s a screen capture of the CBC online story about something srbp told you about last December.

It speaks for itself.

- srbp -

Remember these words #nlpoli

When asked in the House of Assembly about the company hired to look at some aspect of using offshore natural gas to generate electricity, Premier Dunderdale said this:

Mr. Speaker, this is not a study; it is a report.

Just remember those words when Dunderdale inevitably uses the report to claim that she and her officials have “studied” natural gas and dismissed it.

- srbp -

And if she was wrong about that, too… #nlpoli

There are two things in this world.

There is what actually happened.

And then there is what Premier Kathy Dunderdale says.

The two have very little to do with one another.

Last week, it was federal budget cuts.  Kathy said one thing.  Reality was something else.

This week, it is the public utilities board.

Kathy was so pissed at the board for not giving her the answer on Muskrat falls she wanted that she tore gigantic strips off them in the House of Assembly:

What they have come back and said – we are not prepared to make a recommendation unless we have sanction numbers, Mr. Speaker. The question is, when they asked for an extension at the end of December to the end of June, it was for public consultation purposes. …[emphasis added]

And what actually happened?

Check out a series of letters from the board to the natural resources minister  - Shawn Skinner, at the time - about the deadline the provincial government set for the review. 

September 22:

The Board is not formally requesting an extension at this time because we cannot provide a realistic alternate date until we have a better idea as to when Nalcor will answer the outstanding information requests and file the Submission contemplated in the Terms of Reference further outlining the projects.

Nalcor was having trouble getting information to the board so they let government know the board couldn’t meet the deadline.  They committed to propose an alternate date once they had a better sense of when Nalcor could get their stuff together.

Skinner’s successor finally answered the September letter... on December 12:

The House of Assembly is scheduled to open on March 5, 2012. During its sitting, the House will be busy with a throne speech, budget, and regular legislation. Therefore, it is imperative that we receive the report by March 31, 2012 to ensure that Members of the House of Assembly are not constrained in their ability to examine and debate the report.

Andy Wells replied four days later.  Here’s the first sentence in the second paragraph in which the board asked for a deadline in June:

The reason this extension is necessary is Nalcor's failure to provide the required information in a timely fashion.

The letter includes a timeline for province-wide public consultations, a technical conference and greater participation by the government’s appointee, called the consumer advocate.

So you can see already that what Kathy said and what happened are not on the same planet, let alone in the same room.  Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are closer together.

Andy got his reply from Jerome on December 23:  no.  March 31 is it.  Get ‘er done.

So no one would be surprised if, during the course of the next few weeks, the folks at the board didn’t bother to write back saying that they needed some up-to-date information from Nalcor.  They knew they wouldn’t get it and they certainly wouldn’t be allowed any more time.

You will note in Jerome Kennedy’s letter and in Kathy Dunderdale’s recent comments that they like to refer to the terms of reference the board followed.  This is important, you see because it shows that the provincial government was trying to force the board to look at only certain aspects of the project and deal only with certain information in order to arrive at one conclusion, the one the government wanted to hear.

And that’s important because of something else the Premier said on Monday:

We provided all of that information in the mandate to the PUB, the mandate they accepted to review those numbers…

To accept something suggests that you had a choice about it. 

Well, friends, that little comment by the Premier isn’t true either.

Under section 5 of the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994, the board had no choice but accept the terms of reference set by cabinet and report by the deadline government imposed.  The board didn’t have a choice.

So if Kathy Dunderdale is wrong about this, was wrong about the impact of federal layoffs in the province, and has been wrong about so many things so many times since 2003, what are the odds she is right about just one really big thing called Muskrat Falls?

What are the odds?

- srbp -

Credit rater gives Emera “negative” outlook #nlpoli

The Chronicle Herald reported Tuesday that credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s had changed its rating for Emera from “stable’ to “negative”.

The problem is the capital requirement in order to meet the Nova Scotia government’s green targets.  CH quoted Standard & Poor’s analyst Nicole Martin:

Meeting that renewables goal will require a “meaningful capital expenditure program,” according to Martin. The upshot: Nova Scotia Power’s ability to cover a growing debt load will depend upon the timing and size of rate increases granted by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board, which sets power rates in the province.

That heightens what Martin calls “regulatory risk due to the potential for rate shock.” Last November, the board granted Nova Scotia Power an average rate increase of approximately 5.1 per cent for all customers effective Jan. 1.

The rating means the company will have to pay more in order to raise the cash for all those transmission lines it would have to build as part of any deal with Nalcor for Muskrat Falls.

Some observations:

• Odds are this is why Emera and Nalcor haven’t signed a deal for Muskrat Falls yet.
• This also explains why the companies gave themselves an indefinite deadline for finishing talks even though they were supposedly so close to getting one done two months ago.
• If Emera drops out, expect the chances of a federal loan guarantee to head to zero. 
• The Tories in Newfoundland and Labrador might still push ahead with the project – they are just that wacky – but it would be a much more convenient excuse to cut their political losses.
• Don’t forget that Emera will have to run its part of the Muskrat deal through their utilities regulator.  If rate increases are stressing Emera already, watch out when the Muskrat risk hits.

- srbp -

Arrogance, thy name is Tom Marshall #nlpoli

Speaking on VOCM’s Open Line on Tuesday, finance minister Tom Marshall explained what will happen in the House of Assembly during the Muskrat Falls debate coming up in June:

The opposition will get its say, then the government will get its way.  That’s how democracy works.

That pretty much sums up the fundamental problem in this province since 2003.

- srbp -

The Charge of the Lightweight Brigade #nlpoli

The provincial government got the public utilities board review on Muskrat Falls on Saturday.

Two days later, Premier Kathy Dunderdale didn't stand in the House of Assembly and deliver a ministerial statement laying out the government's response.  Instead, she waited until the opposition parties asked her questions about it.

Dunderdale said she'd now hold a debate in the House of Assembly.  Her exact words delivered somewhere around 2:00 PM:

When all of that information is in the public purview, Mr. Speaker, which we expect will not be until probably the end of June, we will call the House together for a full debate in case the House is not sitting at that time.

At 2:40 PM, her office issued a news release that purported to give government's official response to the PUB report.  The thrust of the release is that the provincial government is ploughing ahead to project sanction, otherwise known as Decision Gate 3:

The next steps will involve analysis of Decision Gate 3 information – the most up-to-date information on load forecast, fuel price forecast, defined capital costs, and system integrated studies.

Damn the torpedoes!  You can hear the Premier delivering those stirring words, shouting them over the great din in cabinet caused by the gnashing of teeth about the PUB. Full speed ahead! she cried in order to encourage her staff on in the face of growing adversity.

And the debate in the legislature?  Well, in the news release the "Provincial Government is prepared to have a special debate in the House of Assembly...".  Gone from "will call the House" to "is prepared" all in the space of a half hour or so.


Yeah.


Maybe less Farragut and more Cardigan. 


Half a league, half a league, half a league onward all in the valley of Muskrat rode the six hundred, or in Kathy's version, the 20 or 30.


Yes.


That's more like it.


The Charge of the Lightweight Brigade.

- srbp -

If she was wrong about this… #nlpoli

As we told you on Monday, the ever attentive labradore caught Kathy Dunderdale in a pretty outrageous comment last week on the impact the federal budget would have on the province.

‘Not much’ was the thrust of her comment.

And it was pretty much her comment to the Telegram’s James Macleod.  Here is the quote:

"We've got about 600 federal jobs here in the province," she said.

"If the cuts are going to be about five or six per cent, then that'll translate into between 20 and 30 jobs for us."

You see there are actually about 7400 federal employees in the province.  Cuts of five percent would work out to be a heckuva lot more than 20 or 30.

Well, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael put the question to the Premier in the House of Assembly on Monday, as any opposition politician worth her salt would do:

How could she have been so wrong about the number of people working for one of the biggest employers in this Province?

It’s a good question.

To her credit, Kathy Dunderdale fessed up:

Mr. Speaker, I take full responsibility for the miscommunication. It was entirely mine. I meant to say 6,000, between 250 and 300. I omitted a very important zero in all of those numbers; the fault was mine, not the newspapers.

Unfortunately, Lorraine dropped it at that point and went for some questions about Muskrat Falls and the PUB.  She might have had more fun poking at just how the Premier could make such a monumental screw up. 

After all, if the Premier could be so completely out to lunch on the impact of the federal budget on the provincial economy, and well, like she’s been wrong like that more than a few times before, maybe her assurances about Muskrat Falls are equally reliable.

There are many ways to skin a muskrat, grasshopper.

- srbp -

The PUB and the MFers #nlpoli

Right off the start, the title goes back to a humorous tweet a few months ago.  It went something like this:

If Muskrat Falls is MF, then does that make its supporters MFers?

You gotta laugh at this stuff, folks, because if you didn’t you’d either cry or turn into Dexter. Based on her performance in the House of Assembly on Monday, if Premier Kathy Dunderdale doesn’t lighten up, she is gonna stroke out.  No amount of publicity in a running magazine that heralds her as a “celebrity” can change that.

Frankly, Kathy should laugh at the predicament she and her colleagues put themselves in.

It is pretty funny, after all.  First  Danny and the boys at Nalcor made up this “Build Muskrat First” project over the course of a few months in 2010 so the Old Man could get out of his political career with a flourish.   They had nothing to go on except a 30 year old study, so they cobbled together enough justifications to make it look good.

And off they went.

The joint federal-provincial review was about something else, so they could  - and did, as it turned out – breeze by whatever it found.  Since the Liberals exempted all Churchill River hydro projects from the public utilities board back in 2000, the project wouldn’t have to pass through any real scrutiny.  What Danny’s successor and her crowd wound up doing instead is hand the board a reference question carefully structured to deliver the answer the government and Nalcor wanted. 

In the event, the public utilities board asked for more time to do its work.  Kathy Dunderdale and Jerome Kennedy shut them down. End of March, they said. The opposition parties started talking about a debate in the House. Jerome and Kathy said no way.

That got to be a fairly consistent Tory talking point after a while:  Piss off.  There’s been enough talk.  Let’s get on with it.  This thing has been studied to death.  More problems turned up with the project.  More viable alternatives appeared.  More credible critics and opponents turned up.  The worse things looked for Muskrat Falls,  the more Kathy and Jerome and the gang wanted to stop talking and start spending.

“We need to get to sanction,” Dunderdale told NTV’s issues and Answers a few weeks ago.

Basically up to Monday, things were moving along the government’s chosen path. Then the public utilities board decided they wouldn’t play any more: 

The Board concludes that the information provided by Nalcor in the review is not detailed, complete or current enough to determine whether the Interconnected Option represents the least-cost option for the supply of power to Island Interconnected customers over the period of 2011-2067, as compared to the Isolated Island Option.

In the House of Assembly, the best Premier Kathy Dunderdale could work up was a load of nothing.  She and her staff had the PUB report for days.  On Monday, no one stood to announce the government response as a ministerial statement.  No one stood to talk about a debate, more studies and research or anything of the sort.  Had the Tories done that, they would have neutered the opposition questions immediately and regained control of the story.

Instead, they reacted and Kathy Dunderdale reacted with stuff that doesn’t matter:

Mr. Speaker, when you are looking for a full, independent analysis which is what we were trying to do with the PUB review …  the PUB walked away from its responsibility, the terms of its mandate, to give us a recommendation. A recommendation that had already been endorsed by Navigant, by Manitoba Hydro, by the Consumer Advocate Mr. Johnson and his expert Knight Piésold, and Dr. Wade Locke. They all concur that it is the least-cost and we need the power. The PUB was not able to arrive there.

Everyone knows the government cut off the PUB from its set-up, so there’s no way it was ever an independent review.  Navigant is a long-standing consultant for Nalcor. Independent?  Pfft, as the Old Man would say.  Political appointee Johnson an independent reviewer?  Double pfft.

And Locke?  He didn’t even do the calculations and everyone knows it.

All that’s left is Manitoba Hydro.  They did some work for the PUB and turned up more problems with the Muskrat Falls project than ever. One of the biggest failings MHI found was that Nalcor just didn’t do a major study they should have done – according to best industry practices – before they let the project through Decision Gate 2.

Then Dunderdale tossed out the gem:  she will now have a debate, a special debate in the House by the end of June.  Only a couple of days earlier, her natural resources minister flatly rejected the idea.  They really are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

After all that, if you aren’t chuckling at least, then you have no sense of humour whatsoever.

So Muskrat Falls will drag on for another few months.  The criticisms will mount.  The government will look ridiculous and incompetent and all as a result of its own bungling, its own miscalculations. In the end, it may die an ugly death, perhaps stabbed by the very people who helped create it.

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.

- srbp -

A fundamental lack of competence #nlpoli

One crowd can’t even successfully rig a process they set out to rig from the start.   So now the Premier wants to have a debate she earlier rejected as unnecessary in a legislature she once called dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, another crowd of politicians decides to frig off to Ottawa to support one individual’s personal campaign to be the next Labrador member of parliament when they should have been home working on a much bigger issue for the whole province.

Both speak to a fundamental lack of competence.

- srbp -

Electricity regulator balks at judgment on Muskrat project #nlpoli #nlpoli

From the report by the public utilities board on Muskrat Falls:

The Board concludes that the information provided by Nalcor in the review is not detailed, complete or current enough to determine whether the Interconnected Option represents the least-cost option for the supply of power to Island Interconnected customers over the
period of 2011-2067, as compared to the Isolated Island Option. (p. iv)

You can tell the provincial government isn’t happy.  In their media advisory, they posted the link to the general Muskrat Falls information page and not to the report itself. If they wanted you to read it, they’d have given you the direct link right up front.

This report likely also explains why On Point panellists Shawn Skinner and Lana Payne spoke about the project like it was already dead or dying.  When Skinner said the board’s report would have a watered-down impact as a result of government decisions, he wasn’t talking about overall impact.  He was talking about the potentially positive impact the report could have to persuade people Muskrat was the good choice.

- srbp -

Numbers and other information #nlpoli

People aren’t stupid.  They just don’t know stuff.

Politicians are no different.

In Kathy Dunderdale’s case, labradore had an absolutely devastating post last week about the Premier’s reaction to the impact that federal budget cuts might have on the province.  The Premier said that there were only 500 hundred or 600 federal employees in the province so the jobs losses might be only 20 or 30.

As labradore noted:

As per Statscan's CANSIM Table 183-0002, there was an annualized average of about 7400 full-time-equivalent (FTE) federal government jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2011.

A five to six percent reduction in federal employment, if applied uniformly across the country, would result in the elimination of about 375 to 450 fedgov FTEs in the province.

“Would result”  might be more accurately stated as “might result” since we still need to see lots of details to tell exactly how the federal budget cuts will work out in practice. 

But still,  Dunderdale was a long way off on the math.  The potential size of the cuts could be 15 times larger than Dunderdale projected, unless she has some inside information she isn’t sharing.  So yeah close, if by close you mean one fifteenth of the possible number.

For another tale of information and politics, consider Lorraine Michael and Dwight Ball on this week’s edition of On Point with David Cochrane.  Toward the end of their segment, Ball noted how much his view of Muskrat Falls has shifted in the past year.  He’s gone from support to something a little less than complete support.

Note two things.  First, Ball supports Muskrat Falls; not surprising, the entire Liberal caucus does.  He just thinks the government should wait a second and look at those other ideas before going ahead.  The only difference between Ball and Dunderdale is how fast he would approve the project.

Second, Ball  obviously trusts the provincial government completely and implicitly. Odds are, Ball assumed that he didn’t need to think about Muskrat Falls. He didn’t need to listen to the critics. Heck, he could just assume the critics were kooks and crackpots.  They had to be wrong because government has all those smart people working there. 

This sort of thinking doesn’t apply just to Ball and the Liberals.  You could say the same thing of Lorraine Michael and the New Democrats.

Heck, listen to the politicians on the panel that Cochrane assembled  for the weekend’s show and you’d hear much the same thing, in one version or another.  Shawn Skinner likes Muskrat Falls.  He just thinks the government may have undermined support for the project by the way they’ve responded to critics and sped along the public utilities board review. 

Federation of labour president Lana Payne said basically the same thing.  Splendid project undermined by a lousy sales job.  One representing the government view and the other representing an opposition party and both believe exactly the same thing.

Interesting.

Skinner used to be a provincial cabinet minister.  You expect him to love this project.  But the Liberals and the New Democrats can only muster up a minor criticism of the Tories based on process alone.

Seems odd.

Seems stunningly superficial, and to be frank, it is.

They accept the government’s contention about natural gas without question, as well.  None of the oil companies want to develop it, supposedly, because they can’t make money at it, therefore, natural gas sitting off our shores is unavailable to the people of the province to meet their own energy needs.

In any other place on the planet, the government would be pushing for the development of the cheapest source of energy for its own people.  In Newfoundland and Labrador,  all but a couple of politicians – literally no more than two at the moment - agree that people should have one of the most expensive forms of electricity available instead and give away some of it to other people.  The only quibbles are about things like how best to convince the public they should pay for their electricity through the nose.

Now given the earlier comments they made – Dwight Ball was surprised to find all these cheaper alternatives that hadn’t been explored – you’d think maybe that Ball, Payne and the others might start to wonder if everything else Kathy Dunderdale and the Tories have been saying but be less than accurate as well. Maybe the problem with Muskrat falls is a bit more complicated than just some lousy marketing decisions.

Evidently not.

Now when most of us don’t know stuff, that’s one thing.

But when politicians -  the people we trust to look after stuff – don’t know stuff, or don’t bother to learn stuff, that’s a whole other thing entirely.

And that whole other thing sure as heck ain’t good.

- srbp -

How stupid are voters, anyway? #nlpoli

Poke around some political websites over the past couple of months and you’ll find a few columns on the question of how much voters are paying attention to politics in the run-up to the American presidential election.

These will give you a good sample:

• Politico:  “Dylan Byers on Media” -  CNN’s John King suggests Americans are uniformed of world events
• Politico:  How much do voters know?
• The American Prospect – Most voters aren’t stupid

Take a few minutes and read those articles.  One of the things you’ll appreciate when you get to the last one is that, as Matt Corley points out, voters aren’t stupid. That is, they don’t lack the intellectual ability to figure something out and make a decision.  What they lack is information about some subjects.

The issue that those three articles all mention is gasoline prices.  American presidents can’t do much to change gasoline prices.  Most Americans apparently think he can. Not surprisingly, therefore, Republican candidates spend a chunk of their time bashing Barack Obama over American gasoline prices.

We’ve had the same issue here within the last decade.  The incumbent Liberals introduced something called Petroleum Products Pricing, a system that supposedly regulates the price of gasoline and other fuels and ensures they are “reasonable”.  The whole thing was a charade, of course, but the system stays partly because it is popular and partly because it has proven to be a cash cow for government. 

That’s not the finest example of public ignorance and the politicians who preyed on it, though.  To find that one, you’d have to look at the claim that the federal government took oil royalties from the provincial government through the federal government’s Equalization program.  The federal government never did any such thing but that didn’t stop a provincial royal commission and two successive Premiers from going to war with Ottawa to try and right the imaginary wrong.

The second premier started his administration with a jihad over the royalties.  They talked about cracking open the 1985 Atlantic Accord and renegotiating it.  Finance minister Loyola Sullivan held a news conference in which he announced the shocking news that as provincial government revenues from its own sources went up, Equalization went down.  He never bothered to mention that this was exactly how the system was supposed to work.

In the end, he and his boss settled for a $2.0 billion cheque.

And that was the end of it.

Still that didn’t stop a raft of politicians and a few other informed commentators like Wade Locke from suggesting it was much more than that.  Some people still believe that the cash windfalls that swelled the provincial treasury from 2006 onward all came from that deal.  They didn’t.  They came from the oil royalty regimes dating back to 1990 and oil prices that have skyrocketed to historic heights due to international political and economic uncertainty.

People in the province  - like people in any part of North America – don’t spend a lot of time thinking about politics.  And there are a great many things, like the inner workings of Equalization or how oil royalties make money for the province, that they simply leave to other people to figure out.

Voters aren’t stupid.  They just leave those things to others, like politicians.

Voters expect those politicians to understand the details of complicated issues.  They expect them to look after things while the voters get on with taking the kids to school and hockey practice and all the other stuff that occupies a normal life.

They just don’t expect politicians to tell them things that aren’t true.  Sad to say, politicians sometimes seem to have a problem with that one. 

- srbp -