Resolute to Indefinitely Idle Mersey Mill in Nova Scotia

From resolute Forest Products:

MONTREAL, June 15, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - Resolute Forest Products (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) today announced that it will indefinitely idle the Mersey newsprint mill located in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. The facility, owned by Bowater Mersey Paper Company Limited (BMPCL), is a joint venture between Resolute (51%) and the Washington Post (49%). The indefinite idling will be effective on Sunday, June 17, 2012. 

 

"The mill produces newsprint primarily for export markets and is unable to compete due to declining prices in those markets, caused mainly by unfavorable currency fluctuations, stated Richard Garneau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Resolute.  "The decision to indefinitely idle production at the facility was difficult as we are mindful of the impact it will have on affected employees and local communities. We have worked diligently with the provincial government, our employees, union leadership and other stakeholders but simply could not overcome the inherent challenges."

 

The Company remains committed to customer service and delivery of high-quality products and will work closely with customers to ensure a smooth transition.

 

This indefinite idling will reduce capacity by approximately 250,000 metric tons of newsprint. Approximately 320 employees at the Mersey paper mill, associated woodlands, Oakhill sawmill and Brooklyn Power Corporation will be affected by this action. Resolute will continue to work collaboratively with governments to ensure that impacted employees are provided support during this transition.

 

The Company is currently assessing the feasibility of selling all of its assets in Nova Scotia, including its private timberlands, the paper mill, sawmill and Brooklyn Power.

 

...
For further information:
Media and Others
Seth Kursman
Vice President, Corporate Communications, Sustainability and Government Affairs
514 394-2398
seth.kursman@resolutefp.com

 -srbp-

When rights are annoying #nlpoli

There’s something about this frivolous and vexatious thing that caught people’s attention right from the start.

Under the provincial Conservatives’ new secrecy laws, a cabinet minister can refuse to disclose information if he or she thinks the request is “frivolous or vexatious”. (sec. 43.1)

Leave aside the idea that a politician gets to decide on who gets information and who doesn’t.  As we learned from the Cameron Inquiry, Danny Williams and his political staff vetted access to information requests and blocked stuff they didn’t want to hand over or blocked people they didn’t want to give stuff to.  The law didn’t matter.  They refused.  They stonewalled.  They used every other trick in the book.

But that’s a whole other issue.

Let’s just look at this curious choice of words and see what they reveal.

Your Law School called… #nlpoli

The more they talk, the worse it gets.

In the House of Assembly on Thursday, justice minister Felix Collins gave some examples of what he would consider "frivolous and vexatious” requests for information.

Now before we go any further, we should explain what those words usually mean to lawyers.  After all, Collins is a lawyer so he should understand the concept.

This definition is taken from a 2010 Ontario Court of Appeal decision in a case called Pickard v. London Police Services Board (canlii.org via Morton’s Musings):

[19]  A frivolous appeal is one readily recognizable as devoid of merit, as one having little prospect of success.  The reasons may vary.  A vexatious appeal is one taken to annoy or embarrass the opposite party, sometimes fuelled by the hope of financial recovery to relieve the respondent’s aggravation.

One of the examples, Collins gave was of a person who asked for copies of e-mails sent and received by seven people over the course of year.  Frivolous and vexatious harrumphed the law school graduate. And now under Bill 29 a cabinet minister can dismiss such a request out of hand and save time and money.

There are a few problems with Felix’s example. 

And that was the point, Felix #nlpoli

Justice minister Felix Collins and his colleagues are having a bad week.  Felix and his buds want to limit public access to government information. They want to make it harder for people to find out what they are doing with public money.

People don’t like it and they’ve been making that clear to them.

Felix and his friends got especially angry when an assessment of their new secrecy rules showed that what Felix and company were claiming wasn’t true.  far from being a model of openness, transparency and accountability, the Conservatives were taking massive steps backward.

So infuriated did the Conservatives get that they issued a statement late Wednesday night taking issue with the CBC report.  The statement.  It read, in part:

The Department of Justice has reviewed the global ranking of countries assembled by the centre. What the news story does not make clear is that most countries that ranked the highest or strongest on this list are third world countries. Many of these countries are listed on travel alert watch lists, have known human rights abuses and high crime rates.

So?

More oil, less democracy #nlpoli

“Oil and democracy do not easily mix,” wrote political scientist Michael Ross in The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations, his 2012 study of the impact that income from oil development has on governments around the world.

Regular readers will recall this idea from an earlier post.

Countries that are rich in petroleum generally have lower economic growth and less democracy that countries that don’t have oil revenues. Ross puts this down, in part, to a relationship that citizens see between government revenue and government spending. 

Citizens in oil-producing countries, though, cannot directly observe how much their government collects in oil revenues.  They must rely on the government and the media for their information.  If they live in a democracy, the information is probably available. 

Probably available.

That assumes, of course, that the media in those democracies can find out the information and publish it.

The Vanished Records #nlpoli

Under changes to the province’s access to information law, briefing notes for cabinet ministers will be kept secret for five years.

Sounds like it might make some sort of theoretical sense.  Wait five years and then you can get the briefing note a minister used.

That’s hardly too much to ask, especially if government officials are just too busy to handle all those troublesome requests for information.

Great.

Well, what if the records don’t last that long?

The Secrets Policeman’s Bollocks #nlpoli

CBC demolished the false claims a couple of Conservative cabinet ministers made in order to justify their efforts to destroy the public’s access to government information.

Justice minister Felix Collins claimed that they had to cut down the number of information requests, which he said numbered in the thousands each year.  Service NL minister Paul Davis said in the House of Assembly: “"You know, they make countless and countless requests for information…”.

The Stacked House Filibuster #nlpoli

Democracy is a beautiful thing. 

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are witnessing its full beauty in the filibuster against the Conservative government’s latest assault on openness, transparency and accountability. 

Seat counts – seats count: the map #nlpoli

Here’s a map showing the possible seat results for an election where the Tories wind up with 41% of the vote, the NDP get 38% and the Liberals get 20%.  That’s basically the next public opinion poll from CRA if the current trending continues.

You would fight against disclosure too… #nlpoli

Rarely does one cabinet minister put on not one or two spectacular displays of incompetence in one session of the legislature, but justice minister Felix Collins has done that this spring in less than a month.

Freedom from Information: the sorry Connie legacy #nlpoli

“We will amend the Access to Information legislation to enhance the transparency of government actions and decisions.”

Danny Williams, Leader of the Opposition, February 2003

There truly is a greater fraud than a promise unkept.  That would be the promise that is consciously and deliberately broken.

In February 2003, the provincial Conservatives – then in opposition – pledged to increase public access to government information.  The latest round of changes to the provincial access to information law suggests they are continuing their practice of hiding as much information they can.

Here are some examples of the sorry provincial Connie legacy of Freedom from Information:

• Ignoring the Black Letter (2005) In 2005, the Tories ignored the black letter of the access law and tried to hide public opinion polls.
• Aural is moral:  (2009)  Paul Oram didn’t have briefing notes, then he had ones with someone else’s name on them and then it didn’t matter because he quit politics.
• Oil Royalties (2009) 
• The Secret Inland Fisheries Review (2009)
• We can’t talk about the process because there is a process. (2009)
• Thousands for public speeches (2009)
• Schrodinger’s Purple Cat: (2010)  files that existed and didn’t exist at the same time.
• Tories hide spending documents from Auditor General (2012)
• Update – Williams afraid of whistleblower law
• Update – Tories hide spending documents from Auditor General
• Update – Privacy commish sues Dunderdale gov over “political” e-mails on gov comps, phones

-srbp-

Seat Counts and seats count #nlpoli

Last Friday, your humble e-scribbler gazed into the old crystal ball and produced a possible poll result if the recent trends continued.

If you reported them the way Corporate Research Associates does, you’d get the Tories at 42%, NDP at 38% and Liberals at 20%.

Wonder what that might mean to seat counts if you had that as an election result?

The Incendiary End Game in Corner Brook #nlpoli

As a rule, when a cabinet minister speaks publicly about a private sector company’s significant financial problems, things are not good.

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the world on Friday and Saturday that Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited had a heavy bank debt and an unfunded pension liability of about $80 million.  Kennedy said the mill that hasn’t made money since at least 2006.

Things are so bad that Kennedy  that he expected Joe Kruger was coming for a meeting to tell the provincial government he was closing the west coast paper mill.

So why was Kennedy gabbing about stuff he’d known about for some time but kept to himself?

So drop the writ, Nan #nlpoli

"I would go to an election tomorrow on these numbers," Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters on Thursday. "You know, these aren't bad numbers. Look where my opposition is."

Fair enough. They are pretty good.  It’s the trending that sucks.

But if Kathy Dunderdale is so confident in her strong public support and in the rightness of her Muskrat Falls cause, maybe she’d drop the writ and let the public settle the issue.

No experience preferred: energy corp pork edition #nlpoli

The provincial government announced the latest round of Pure Pork (TM)  patronage appointments on Friday.  They've stuck four people on the board of the provincial energy corporation.

Aside from Tory ties, the one thing the members of the board have in common is a complete lack of experience related to the operations of the energy corporation.

-srbp-

A sign of the problem #nlpoli

One of the reasons why the provincial Conservatives are in political trouble is that their communications are frigged up.

For those who are wondering, that is the relatively polite version of the technical term for it in the communications business.  Think of it like the B-52, one of the largest airplanes ever to fly.  The US Air Force used to say that the crews called it the BUFF:  big, ugly, fat fella.  Well, they didn't actually use the word "fella".  That's just the word the Air Force used so that prissy people wouldn't complain about hearing the word f**ker coming from someone in a light blue uniform.  For others, of another inclination, it's akin to why hippies used to refer to police as "pigs".

Anyway,  James McLeod has a thoughtful piece in his periodic blog over at the Telegram about something he and his colleagues in the Press Gallery have been having with government ministers for the past few months:  they won't talk about good news.

Basically it boils down to this:  ministers won't do media interviews until a bill hits second reading in the House.  Lately this has meant that the opposition and others are talking away about government initiatives days before the minister shows up for an obligatory, pro forma dog and pony show.

It can be a matter of days or weeks after it's been tabled before a piece of legislation makes it to the floor of the House of Assembly for second reading.
This interval is the crux of what we're talking about here today.

McLeod wanted an explanation so he went to Jerome Kennedy, the minister who is responsible for wrangling his team in the House.  Kennedy's response was that this was a time honoured practice going back before 2003.  The idea is that to talk about the bill before it was debated in the House would be an insult to the members of the House.

Well, Kennedy may think that's what is going on.  After all, that explanation is similar to what happens in court.

The truth is something far different. Your humble e-scribbler spent seven years dealing with the legislature in the early 1990s.  If that sort of thing was happening back then, your humble e-scribbler is drawing a complete blank in his old brain box about it.  You see, back in those days, sessions of the House lasted a long longer than they do these days.  Members got lots of time to prepare for debate.  They got the text of the bills well in advance and lots of people talked about one bill or another long before it got to the floor of the legislature.  Wide public debate is what everyone wanted, even when the government might have a bit of pain over things like the Lands Act in the early 1990s.

Somewhere along the line, the government party started to shorten up the time a bill got any discussion in the House.  Remember in the House of Assembly patronage scandal that some stuff went through the House in a day or two?  Yeah, well, this is part of the same thing.  What the government party used to do was try and jam the opposition up.  They'd keep a bill close to their chests until the last possible minute.  Then on the day the government decided to call second reading, they'd hold a media briefing in the morning, then have a briefing for the opposition, give them all the wording of the bill and call the thing for debate in the afternoon. 

The current crowd  - Jerome's crew after 2007 - were famous for it.  They took to the anti-democratic practice just like they loved another Tobin era practice called poll goosing.  The result was pure crap, of course.  The opposition got stampeded into going along with the government because they didn't have any information other than what they'd been fed.

If the House became dysfunctional in the process, to use Kathy and Danny's favourite word for it, it's because Kathy and Danny and some of the crowd before them made it that way.

It's also why they introduce big things like the access to information amendments in the last few days of a long session.  They want to limit discussion and get their way before anyone realises what is happening. 

Someone just said "coughexpropriationbillcough". 

Exactly.

So James does a fine job of highlighting a problem the current crowd are having.

And to go with it, there you have a bit more of the story.

The fact the current crowd are frigging themselves up apparently because of their misunderstanding just highlights why they are having basic political problems.

-srbp-

Poll Reporting #nlpoli

David Cochrane's report on the latest CRA poll is the tidiest one you will find.  He puts the whole thing in a context that anyone can understand even if some of the Tory twitterati will be apoplectic by the brute force logic of the poll and the trending.

Check out the Telegram story by James McLeod, which includes some commentary by a local political scientist.  

-srbp-

Describing the hole #nlpoli

“Premier Dunderdale has the highest personal popularity of all Atlantic Canadian Premiers” the Tory faithful tweeted and retweeted on Thursday night to help ward off the chill of recent polls.  It was the 21st century equivalent of clicking their ruby slippers together and whispering that there was no place like home.

Sadly for the darlings, they did not have Toto and this is not Kansas, anyway. 

The toll the Tories mentioned came from Angus-Reid. In it, 46% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians approved of Kathy Dunderdale’s performance while 44% disapproved. She may score the highest of the Atlantic Premiers but with the population evenly divided on her, she is not doing all that well.  As your humble e-scribbler reminded them, what they were really saying is that their hero du jour just didn’t suck as much as Darrell Dexter. Big deal.

Would you buy a hydro dam from these people? #nlpoli

Anyone who was wondering why the Tories ramped up the attacks on the NDP this week can now find the answer. The clue to the future is that the Tory attacks were pathetically weak and ineffective. Rather than deliver a killer virus, all the Tories did was help the NDP build up their immune system.

Bad move.

The news:  the provincial Conservatives had the support of 34% of respondents in the last Corporate Research Associates poll, about 11 percentage points ahead of the provincial New Democrats.

These are numbers you get if you take out the CRA skew of talking only about decideds.  Here’s a picture of the party choice numbers, including the undecideds since last year, just so we are all on the same page.

That black line is the undecideds.

Now here’s what it all means.

Is he that starved for attention? #nlpoli

The best answer to the Old Man’s latest bullshit about his mine and Muskrat Falls is what he used to say to companies that wanted to get the province’s non-renewable resources at a bargain:

• No more give-aways.

And on a related note, remember what he said to established Labrador miners in 2006/2007:

"We do acknowledge that this is a huge company which makes a big contribution," Williams told CBC News.

"By the same token, they also have to understand that we have to get a fair return for the people of this province."

Alderon should expect to pay the commercial rates for electricity set by the public utilities board using the current rate-setting approach,  not the taxpayer subsidised give-away Danny set up before he ran from office.

-srbp-

Emera waiting on Nalcor for numbers #nlpoli

Wonder no more, dear friends.

Stop  scratching your chin.

Now we know why Nalcor and Emera have not signed a deal now some four or five months after saying they were so close to finishing their negotiations that they didn’t need to set a new deadline.

Poll math refresher #nlpoli

In advance of the latest Corporate Research Associates poll, check out the SRBP post on the February results.

Here’s the Tory voter choice number, over time, compared to actual vote results in 2003 and 2007 and in 2011.

 

-srbp-

HCCSJ operational review a decade later #nlpoli

Talk of financial problems at Eastern Health brought to mind an operational review of the former Health Care Corporation of St. John’s, completed by the Hay Group and released in May 2002.

Go back to the official record of the House of Assembly – Hansard – and you’ll quickly be struck by the similarity between the way the opposition approached the issue then and now.

Consider these comments by Ross Wiseman, the Liberal who crossed the floor to the Tories and later served as health minister:

The union says, once again nurses and other health professionals in this Province are holding their breath to see if their jobs are going to be lost.

Fear of lost jobs. Wiseman asking the minister if he will reject the report.

All too familiar.

The Precipice Looms #nlpoli

Not surprisingly, Kruger issued an ultimatum on Tuesday to workers at its Corner Brook mill. CBC quoted the message from the company to the union in an online story:

"The first step to go forward will be to obtain a firm committment [sic] from employees by achieving a satisfactory agreement that will allow CBPPL to be competitive in the market," said the Kruger statement.

"Given the critical situation of the mill, this collective agreement will have to be reached by June 15 so that we can quickly move on to the next crucial step, which will be to submit the pension plan funding relief measures to a second vote and hopefully be able to apply them before the mill’s situation deteriorates any further."

-srbp-

The Kruger Nexus #nlpoli

As an astute reader pointed out in a n e-mail Tuesday morning, the Hebron-Muskrat Falls connection is not really as important these days as the the connection between the future of the Kruger mill at Corner Brook and the plan to develop the Lower Churchill.

Manitoba Hydro International noted that connection in their review of part of the Muskrat Falls project for the public utilities board. In instance, a relatively modest change in the project cost coupled with the closure of the Corner Brook mill, erased the Muskrat Falls advantage:

Also, should the existing pulp and paper mill cease operations, and its generation capacity be available for use on the system (approximately 880 GWh), and should the capital costs of both the Muskrat Falls Generating Station and Labrador-Island Link HVdc projects increase by 10%, the CPW for the two Options would be approximately equal.

Nalcor has no export markets for most of the electricity from Muskrat Falls.

The New Hebron-Muskrat Falls Connection #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy is right:

“There's obviously an obligation…on any member in this house when presenting a petition to ensure that accuracy, to ensure that statements made to this house are ones that can be relied on ... This is a very serious matter."

The obligation for accuracy doesn’t just apply to petitions.  It applies to everything a member of the legislature says.

And if the member of the House is also a cabinet minister or the Premier, then the obligation for accuracy goes up another few notches.

The paper-mill-sized elephant in the room… #nlpoli

From the CBC online story about the meeting between a raft of grim-looking provincial politicians and Joe Kruger:

Dunderdale said she expected there would be a second vote on the pension restructuring plan.
Once those issues are resolved, she said, the government is committed to stepping in to ensure that the mill is sustainable.

So while the pols are laying on the tough talk in a fairly obvious effort to sway the mulligan vote, what the rest of us should wonder is how much public money the politicians plan to pour into the mill to keep it running.

-srbp-

Another call for an oil investment fund #nlpoli

In a column in the weekend Ottawa Citizen, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute made a convincing argument for investing provincial government oil revenue in an investment fund:

Natural resource revenues, by contrast, gyrate wildly. The temptation, when prices are high, is to pretend those revenues will always exist, causing a cycle of booms and busts in public finances. Moreover if you acquire recurrent obligations on the basis of one-time asset sales, an inevitable day of reckoning comes. The natural resource is gone and you have a lot of public servants you can’t pay and a lot of people reliant on public services you can no longer afford.

This problem is resolved by using the money to pay off debt and then investing the rest and only spending the fund’s returns.

Ah yes, the temptation to spend irresponsibly – i.e. unsustainably - followed by the day of reckoning.

Sounds familiar.

-srbp-

The Bow-Wow Parliament lacks bark and bite #nlpoli

In the wake of the latest revelations of financial mismanagement in the provincial government, SRBP has been looking at some of the possible contributing developments over the past decade or more.

Last week, SRBP noted that it appears the provincial government broke up the treasury board secretariat around 2007.  They sent some of its bits off to one department and put the rump of its administration  – about the size it had been in 1968 -  under the finance department, as it had been before the 1973 reforms introduced by the Moores administration. 

At around the same time, the provincial cabinet started a series of massive annual increases in public spending that Premier Kathy Dunderdale admits is unsustainable.

And the same cabinet also ballooned the size of the provincial public service. Again, it’s something that Kathy Dunderdale admitted was something she and her colleagues now had to sort out.

These three things are connected. 

Even if the government loosened the constraints of its internal financial controls, there are other agencies that have a role to play in keeping an eye on the public treasury.

Province sinks more into inflatable shelter company #nlpoli

The provincial government is giving $50,000 to a company in Grand bank that makes inflatable shelters for industrial and emergency use, according to a news release issued Friday.

Dynamic Air Shelters Ltd. will [use the money to] engage the services of Advanta Industrial Design Group Inc. to conduct staff training and improve the company’s design and production processes. The company will also upgrade its computer systems and drafting software program.

Since 2006, Dynamic Air Shelters has received more than $4.0 million from the provincial and federal government.

-srbp-

NAFTA and Hebron #nlpoli

ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil have won a North American Free Trade Agreement appeal of a 2004 offshore board regulation that sets the amount of research and development money oil companies operating offshore must make in the province.

They filed the appeal in 2007

That means the oil companies will have to pay the much lower fixed amount for research and development accepted by the provincial government in the Hebron final agreement.

-srbp-

Dunderdale rejects Locke’s advice on Muskrat #nlpoli

Sometimes you agree with people.  Sometimes you don’t.

All it means is that you agree sometimes and disagree at others.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale didn’t seem to understand that point when she spoke to the St. John’s Board of Trade back in January:

Memorial University economist Dr. Wade Locke, has concluded Muskrat Falls is the least-cost option by a factor of 2.2 billion dollars.  

It is interesting to me that the most vocal and ever predictable critics of the Muskrat Falls development were quick in their attempts to disparage the work of Dr. Locke – something they had not done previously when Dr. Locke has presented on, for example, the province’s financial position.

The Premier liked what Wade had to say because it matched what she wanted.  Well, these days, Kathy is in the same spot as the unnamed “most vocal and predictable critics” she found interesting six months ago.

Mismanagement and Media Math #nlpoli

CBC’s online story takes a weird tack on the tale of recent financial and management problems at Eastern Health, the province’s largest regional health authority.

CBC headlines its story “Hospital Tim’s never came close to predict profit”.

That’s true but the full story is so much more interesting. While the profit may have been less than originally predicted, the facts are the outlet worked as intended for most of the time its been in operation:  it made money.

The losses, though, are spectacular and recent.

Hebron Development Approved #nlpoli #cdnpoli

From the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board:

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) announced today that the Hebron Development Application is approved.

At its April 27, 2012 meeting, the Board approved the Hebron Benefits Plan and Development Plan subject to the conditions outlined in Decision Report 2012.01. In its deliberation with respect to these plans the Board considered advice provided in the Benefits Plan and Development Plan staff analysis as well as recommendations resulting from the Report of the Hebron Public Review Commissioner.

Under the Atlantic Accord Implementation Acts, Fundamental Decisions of the Board must be ratified by both governments before they can be implemented. The Board’s Approval of the Hebron Development Plan was a Fundamental Decision. The approval of the Development Plan by both governments now enables ExxonMobil Canada Properties Limited to proceed with development of the Hebron Field, which is estimated to contain 707 million barrels of oil.

-srbp-

What she said… visionary leadership edition #nlpoli

Newly minted Premier Kathy Dunderdale from her 20 Questions interview in the Telegram, December 24, 2010:

Still, Dunderdale maintains being premier was never on her radar.

She says she’s not the kinds of person who envisions things 10 years down the road, but prefers to live in the now.

“If you live your life more in the moment, the rest of it will work its way out.”

-srbp-

The Root of the Problem #nlpoli

Mr. Speaker, if the members opposite think that the level of scrutiny that we do over a $3 billion expenditure in health care is to take every single health authority and work down line by line by line through every piece of that, I do not know what they are thinking over there.

Health and community services minister Susan Sullivan, House of Assembly, May 30, 2012

Let’s hope that health minister Susan Sullivan doesn’t sit on the treasury board. 

That’s a committee of cabinet created under the Financial Administration Act.  Passed by the House of Assembly in 1973,  the Financial Administration Act was one of several great reforms of public administration in the province introduced by the Conservatives after they defeated Joe Smallwood and the Liberals in the 1972 general election.

Every provincial government and the federal government has a treasury board.  It is typically the most important or one of the most important cabinet committee by virtue of its control over money and people within government. Treasury board is also the only cabinet committee whose existence is set down by law.

The treasury board’s main job is to oversee how the provincial government and its agencies spend public money. 

The Provincial Public Debt…again #nlpoli

As often as they say it, the facts don’t bear out the claim some politician like to make about the provincial public debt.

The Premier did it again in the House of Assembly Tuesday evening.  We can all give her a bit of a break since she was on her feet and obvious her blood was up. 

But still, this is an old claim that is as false now as it was when the Tories first started using it a few years ago.  And frankly, Kathy Dunderdale should have a better grasp of the facts.  Otherwise what some people think is visionary leadership is just another delusional politician on a rant.  Heaven knows our province has been saddled with enough of those.

The Hard Road Ahead #nlpoli

If the provincial government can actually get control on its spending and head down the road to management reform along the lines that Eastern Health’s Vicki Kaminski talked about on Tuesday, then they are headed down the right road.

What they said…Part Deux #nlpoli

Basic public relations problem.

Say one thing.

Say another thing.

A few weeks later, do something else, twice over.

For starters, here’s the what Premier Kathy Dunderdale said in the House of Assembly in March about job cuts and the provincial budget:

What they said… #nlpoli

Here’s what Premier Kathy Dunderdale said on March 6 about possible job cuts in the provincial public sector (emphasis added in all):

Mr. Speaker, we have not talked about cuts….Front-line health and education services will be exempted.

Here’s what education minister Clyde Jackman said on March 29:

I spoke at an NLTA meeting a little while ago; I said to them, we are looking at our budgets across departments, but the Premier said there will be no frontline cuts.

And then there’s what health minister Susan Sullivan said on May 28, the day before Eastern health’s planned announcement:

Mr. Speaker, our resolve has not changed. There will not be any cuts in programs and services. The announcement that you will hear tomorrow will lay out some particular initiatives that Eastern Health wishes to embark upon, but we have made our commitment firm to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; there will not be cuts in programs and services, Mr. Speaker.

Do those words all mean the same thing?

-srbp-

Health Care Employment in NL #nlpoli

For those getting ready for this afternoon’s announcement by Eastern Health, here are some figures from Statistics Canada on employment in the health care sector in the province from October 2003 to December 2011.

The Premier and Open Line #nlpoli

Once upon a time,  premiers would spend time on radio talk shows every now and then taking calls from the punters.

Not so since 2003 and the New Approach.

Well, not so until Monday when Kathy Dunderdale spent two and a half hours with Randy Simms. regular readers of these e-scribbles were likely surprised at the number of times the Premier said exactly what SRBP's been saying for the past seven years on big topics like unsustainable public spending and the impact an aging population in the province will have on spending and the economy.  

As for the appearance, apparently, she thought it was just going to be a phone call.  Big difference.

Three take-aways:

• The miscommunication about what she was doing could be a clue as to one of the problems the Premier and her staff are evidently having.  Among other things, she must have a light work day if she could look at her schedule and not notice the 2.5 hours blocked out for VOCM.
• Something's up with Dunderdale's polling numbers.  The only time Danny ever changing his pattern was when his polls were off.
• The past two premiers, the current finance minister, and another former cabinet minister agree with SRBP that the Tories' public spending has been and is unsustainable.  That should frig with a few Tory heads out there.

Bonus take-away:

• Telling your political opponents to stop doing something is a guarantee they will keep doing it.  You really do have have to realise you are in a hole before you realise you need to stop digging.

-srbp-

Monday Potpourri #nlpoli

A new poll by CROP (via Paul Wells) shows that Quebeckers support having students at Quebec’s post-secondary colleges and universities pay more for their education. 

What’s more, they think that the law which tries to force protesting students back to class is a bad idea.

Take these results together and we begin to see the wisdom of crowds — not the ones in the street, necessarily, but of the whole population. Opinions are divided, but in the main, Quebecers:

• think it is more legitimate to ask students to contribute more to their education than to say they have paid enough.

• believe Law 78 asks for things a government should be able to ask of its citizens — i.e., that it’s a legitimate law;

• don’t think Law 78 will make student refuseniks more likely to cough up their tuition money — i.e., they don’t think it’s a pertinent law.

The Other Damn-Fool Fisheries Policy #nlpoli #cdnpoli

About 30 years ago, Kathy Dunderdale started out her political career fighting against fisheries reform.

Last December,  she scolded fish plant workers in Marystown for turning out 18 weeks work that would have qualified them for employment insurance and kept their plant open.

She continued her fight against fisheries reform over the weekend in a series of interviews with national media about the federal government’s proposed changes to the employment insurance system.

All’s Not Fairity in Love and War #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale should appoint municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien to handle intergovernmental affairs.

While Dunderdale is busily lobbing hand grenades at the federal government, Fairity is taking a very different attitude:

The Dunderdale-O’Brien Confusion #nlpoli

In a scrum on Wednesday, May 23, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:

“What we are talking about, in fact, is a two hour window here.”

In the House of Assembly on Thursday, May 24, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:

I have asked Minister MacKay for an explanation of the gap that occurred on January 30 in the search when there was a five-hour period that they were not engaged in the search. The answers are not satisfactory; the protocols need to be changed.

There is no five-hour period in the Burton Winters search that matches whatever Kathy Dunderdale is talking about in that exchange in the House of Assembly.  In fact, it’s pretty hard for anyone with even a sketchy knowledge of the events in Makkovik in late January and early February to figure out what Kathy Dunderdale is getting on with.

The Perfect Storm #nlpoli

“In the fishery of the very near future,” SRBP wrote in February, “fishing subsidies like federal employment insurance wage subsidies,  state-sponsored marketing schemes and the stalinist political control of the economy… will all go by the wayside. International trade talks are already laying the groundwork for massive change.”

The very near future arrived this week.

Dare to be Stupid

-srbp-

And she believes this crap is brilliant #nlpoli

Arguments are so much more convincing when claims match with the evidence.

Otherwise you wind up with a credibility gap.  It’s bad enough for ordinary people, but when you are – for example – the Premier of a province, having people doubt that what you say is true, you are pretty much headed for disaster.

Now Kathy Dunderdale has had a problem with getting things straight before, so, for many readers of these e-scribbles, this latest episode will come as no shock.  They can just look at this as more evidence of the problem the Premier has with figuring out a whole bunch of things lately.

Feds call Dunderdale’s bluff #nlpoli

In an interview with CBC’s David Cochrane, federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue called Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s bluff about a public inquiry into the death of Burton Winters.

Penashue said:

"This is a legally initiated process and everyone would have to co-operate."

Dunderdale has criticised the federal government over Winters’ death.  That’s despite Dunderdale acknowledging – eventually – that provincial officials had responsibility for conducting the search for Winters when he went missing.  As recently as Tuesday, Dunderdale continued to try and smear Winters’ blood on federal officials.

The Fairity of Regurgitation #nlpoli

Municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien stood in the House of Assembly on Wednesday “to highlight the continued progress in implementing the Provincial Waste Management Strategy in our province.”

Wonderful stuff it could have been.

The only problem is Fairity really didn’t provide an update.

Dumbed down or just clearer language? #nlpoli

Via Monkey Cage comes a link to a study that shows that the average speech comprehension level in the United States Congress has dropped a full grade level in the past seven years. It’s dropped to 10.6 from 11.5.

Over the past 16 years,  the Republicans and Democrats have traded places when it comes to scoring lower grade levels on the comprehension scale.  The party scores were never more than 0.2 or 0.4 apart, but since 2006, the Republicans score lower than the Democrats.

Grandmother, what big teeth you have #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Political leaders have a moral duty to the people they serve.

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 the wake of the tragedy in Makkovik, Premier Kathy Dunderdale should be helping people to come to terms with a tragedy.  Instead, the Premier is abusing people who have put their trust in her to do the right thing.

Public debt and financial mismanagement #nlpoli

A few days ago, Stephen Taylor posted a table from a 2010 study that showed how big Quebec’s public debt is compared to that of countries around the world.

The results weren’t pretty.

A similar comparison for Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t pretty either.

Fiscal conservative, you say? #nlpoli

One of the more curious comments from provincial Conservative supporters lately has been the claim that they support the current Connie administration provincially because they – the supporters – are fiscal conservatives.

labradore has already challenged one such claim with a look at the provincial labour force figures.  Here’s the chart from labradore’s post. It shows the public sector as a share of the total provincial work force:

Yes, friends, the “fiscally conservative” provincial government has produced a massive increase in the size of the provincial public service since 2007.  And, lest any of these “fiscal conservatives” try to justify the Connie actions with talk about the unions’ favour excuse – catch-up – notice that the chart shows that Newfoundland and Labrador had no catching up to do.

While you are at it recall that the current labour force in the province is the largest it has been for quite a while.  So the current “fiscally conservative” provincial Conservatives employ a larger percentage of a larger labour force in a very fiscally unconservative way.

But there’s more to it than that.

Making bad decisions: the Twitter edition #nlpoli

The Premier’s communications  - Glenda Power  - sent a couple of twitter messages to CBC’s Curtis Rumboldt on Friday.  She was apparently correcting him on the impact closing Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited would have on the Muskrat Falls project.

Simply put, that’s not true.

It worked so well for Roger #nlpoli

Kathy Dunderdale is apparently off to Ottawa.  According to voice of the cabinet minister:

There's no word on when the Premier will be flying to Ottawa, but according to the MHA for Mount Pearl South [Paul Lane], it will be soon. Representatives from the Premier's office have confirmed that Dunderdale has requested to meet with the feds sometime in the near future.

Meanwhile the Fisheries Minister says he's making a separate visit. Darin King says he'll be meeting with his federal counterpart to express concerns over the continued cuts in Newfoundland and Labrador. King says the fishing industry, search and rescue, and everything attached to the sea is of importance. He says the fight is not over.

She needs to work out some “fustrations”, maybe.

More likely, she is trying on the “Fighting Newfoundlander” suit to see if it fits.  The fact she is trying it on – after explicitly rejecting it when she took over from Danny – is another symptom of the basic problem. If she had a plan, a set of priorities, an agenda, then she wouldn’t have the problems in the first place that are causing her frustrations.

Another Premier tried this once.

Changes in Corner Brook #nlpoli

1. You’ll get a very good sense of what is going on at Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited from Gary Kean’s piece in the Saturday edition of the Western Star.   As hard as it might seem to believe, some people thought the company was bluffing about the financial state of the mill.
2. Meanwhile, political bums are very tight.  Would a mill closure – if it came – hasten Tom Marshall’s exit from politics or delay it?
3. While all that is going on, Imperial Oil’s terminal at Corner brook is up for sale as a result of the company’s announced plans to shut its Dartmouth refinery.
4. Update:  CBC has posted the raw video of natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy’s scrum on Friday about CBPPL. Find it here:  http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/NL/Featured/2169456094/ID=2236615293

-srbp-

Death watch in Corner Brook for province’s last paper mill #nlpoli

Kruger, the owners of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, are reassessing the viability of the mill in the west coast city on Friday after unions at the mill rejected a company proposal to restructure the company’s pension plans.

In a statement issued Friday, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy said:

We are facing a grave situation, one which could potentially lead to the closure of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited. Kruger is now reassessing the viability of its operations in Corner Brook. This obviously could have very serious ramifications for the employees and the entire Corner Brook area.

The provincial government wants the company and the unions to negotiate a settlement to the dispute.

Built in 1923, the mill at Corner Brook was the second paper making operation in Newfoundland after the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Corporation mill at Grand Falls.  AbitibiBowater announced that it would close the mill at Grand Falls in 2008.  The provincial government expropriated the mill and all of AbitibiBowater’s assets in the province before they could shut the mill.  Ab closed its Stephenville operation in 2005.

The Corner Brook mill is heavily subsidised by the provincial government.  It is the largest private sector employer on the west coast of the island.

-srbp-

The Federal-Provincial Puzzle #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale is frustrated.

“Extremely frustrated”

“What is it that we have to do down here to get your attention?” she asked, rhetorically, on Thursday.

She expressed that frustration in the House of Assembly in response to questions from Liberal leader Dwight Ball and in a scrum with reporters.  Dunderdale aimed her barbs most especially at defence minister Peter MacKay.

If the Premier is having trouble getting her message through to the federal government, attacking an influential cabinet minister in public for something he didn’t do won’t help matters.

It just piles bad tactics on top of flawed strategies.

Stephen Harper’s Goose Bay promise #nlpoli #cdnpoli

 

-srbp-

Household Division Band Rehearsal

This one is for all the musicians…band musicians, that is.

The bands of the guards regiments of the Household Division are among the best bands of their type, made up of the some of the finest musicians in the world.

Here’s a massed rehearsal recorded earlier this month and posted to youtube.  leaving the music to one side for a moment, it’s fascinating to watch the director and how he conducts the rehearsal.  Watch how the musicians respond to his direction and how they adjust and adapt.

-srbp-

Felix the Crap #nlpoli

Justice minister Felix Collins offered a spectacular example on Wednesday of how serious is the current administration’s political problem.

Collins makes a complete arse of himself trying to explain why he and his colleagues are refusing to act on a promise they made in 2007 to introduce legislation that would protect public servants who disclose information  - in the public interest - about wrongdoing in government.

The video of Collins’ scrum with reporters is worth watching

How’s that again, Jerome? #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in the House of Assembly on Wednesday explaining some of the financial aspects of Muskrat Falls:

The one thing I need to make clear though to the people of this Province that any equity investment in Nalcor is on the basis of the project being sanctioned. The money stays in the Department of Natural Resources and is then disbursed to Nalcor as money is spent, Mr. Speaker. Also, it does not go to the net debt of the Province because it is a capital investment. In this particular case, Mr. Speaker, we have a revenue generating asset which can produce monies and revenues for this Province, along with hydroelectricity, for 100 years. [Emphasis added]

In the first bit he describes how the cash goes from the provincial government to Nalcor.  That would be the $2.9 billion they plan to spend on the dam itself. 

The problem comes with that bit in bold print.

Here we go again #nlpoli

Few people who pay attention to public life in this province will forget the abuse the provincial government  - particularly former Premier Danny Williams  - heaped upon Max Ruelokke for having the temerity to be a better candidate to head the offshore regulatory board than the guy the premier wanted to stuff in the job.

Ruelokke had to sue the provincial government to force them to do what the law directed.

So detestable was the provincial government’s – i.e. Danny’s  - behaviour that the judge who heard the case stated in his decision:

Having considered the above, I find that the conduct of the Respondent (in relation to the Applicant) has been callous and “reprehensible” and is deserving of “reproof and rebuke”.  Accordingly, I will exercise my discretion and award the Applicant his solicitor and own client costs.

We may be headed for the same mess again.

Exit Problems

For those who remember the post from 2009 on problems some paratroops have had exiting the aircraft, here’s one that makes the old heart stop.

There is no audio so it is hard to tell exactly what happened.  In any event, the fellow dangling on the end of the fouled static line and parachute assembly eventually gets to live thanks to the Hung Up Parachutist Release Assembly. 

While the soldier is dangling, the crew in the back of the transport break out the HUPRA parachute rig and hook it onto him.  They eventually release him and the guy floats to the ground. You can see the red nylon of the HUPRA pack just as the guy floats downward.  His landing was likely a hard one, but at least he lived.

-srbp-

Significant Digits: 2016 #nlpoli

Four years from now, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation and Hydro-Quebec will automatically renew the 1969 power contract for another 25 years.

Everyone knows that, surely.

What you may not recall, though, is that 2016 is the year that the federal government will renew its annual payment of $8.0 million to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador under Term 29 of the Terms of Union.

In 1996, the provincial government negotiated an advance on the Term 29 payments totalling $130 million. Here’s the quote from the 1996 budget speech:

Under the Terms of Union, the Federal Government is committed to an $8 million annual payment to the Province in perpetuity. In light of our unique economic and financial circumstances, the federal government will advance amounts payable under Term 29 over the next three years, when the funds are needed most. The regular annual payments of $8 million will resume in 20 years.

We will receive $50 million of the advance this year. The federal government has agreed to provide us with another $80 million over the three year period.

Of course, while people call them Term 29 payments, they are actually the amount set by the commission appointed under Term 29 to study the financial position of the Newfoundland and Labrador government within the first decade after Confederation.

The commission was to recommend “the form and scale of additional financial assistance, if any, that may be required by the Government of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador to enable it to continue public services at the levels and standards reached subsequent to the date of Union, without resorting to taxation more burdensome, having regard to capacity to pay, than that obtaining generally in the region comprising the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.”

The legislative authority for the payment comes from the Newfoundland Additional Financial Assistance Act. 

-srbp-

Don’t remind her, Tommy #nlpoli

The townie Tories are all a-twitter over federal Dipper leader Thomas Mulcair’s endorsement of Sheilagh O’Leary for mayor of Sin Jawns in the next municipal election.

On Monday, reporters asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale about Mulcair’s comments.  Here’s a bit of what she said, via CBC:

"I don't know how somebody who doesn't live here, is not on the ground, doesn't appreciate the demographics to start with and the particular issues, could be offering advice on who is best suited," said Dunderdale outside the House of Assembly Monday. [capitalization corrected]

“So the frig what?” would seem like a better, i.e. appropriately dismissive, response.  Instead Kath used a comment that begs for the retort that she does it all time:  talks about stuff when she doesn’t “appreciate the demographics” or understand what is going on.

The Old Wooden Guitar

An innovative cover of “Somebody that I used to know”…

And, the inevitable parody of the creative cover that is creative in a whole other way…

-srbp-

The Old Wooden Mace #nlpoli

The Telegram’s James McLeod took some time during a recent Estimates committee hearing on Monday to dash off a post at his blog about the ceremonial aspects of the legislature proceedings.

He mentions the number of items in the House of Assembly chamber that came as presents from other provinces after Confederation.  He finishes off with this bit:

Arguably the coolest gift of them all came from B.C. They gave us a massive gold mace. The mace is so cool, it actually gets a parade every day when the House is sitting - it's a small parade, just the Speaker, and a handful of other folks, but still, a parade! You can read more about the mace here, including the old wood one that sits outside the public galleries.

The wooden mace on display in the public gallery of the House of Assembly is the one used in the first parliament in Newfoundland in 1832. How it got there is a story in itself.

The Zen of Political Disasters: Becoming A Hole #nlpoli

As SRBP noted in an earlier post, the first step in getting yourself out of a hard political spot is to recognise that you are in a hole.

What often happens – as seen in the provincial Conservatives and the Burton Winters tragedy up to now – is that they cannot see that they are in a hole in the first place.

On Monday, the local Connies took it a step further.

Nanny State 2: Yes, Kathy. You are in a hole. #nlpoli

When you are in a hole, the old political saying goes, you should stop digging.

That is wonderful advice.  Many the politician could have saved himself political grief by following it.

The only problem with such good advice is that it is not as easy to take as it seems.

Workload Measurement #nlpoli #nspoli #cdnpoli

One of the most telling indicators of what government does is how much legislation they put in front of the legislature for approval.  After all government can only do what it is allowed to do by the House of Assembly.

Active governments that are doing lots of work usually have lots of new laws or amendments to existing ones.  They are called bills until they are approved by the members of the legislature.

Compare Newfoundland and Labrador with Nova Scotia and you can get a striking contrast between two neighbouring provinces

The Nanny State #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale refused to meet with Burton Winters’ family to talk about the boy’s tragic death last winter.

The explanation offered by both the Winters family and the Premier herself is that the family wanted to talk about details of the search effort.  As such, the Premier would not meet with the family.  She referred them, instead, to municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien who is also the minister responsible for fire and emergency services.

The Premier’s lingering political problem just got worse.

The Comprehension Constant #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale seems to have a chronic problem of saying things that are not correct and also saying things she does not mean.

This is not just a poor imitation of George W. Bush.  Kathy Dunderdale is in a league of her own.

How to make bad decisions: The Self-Delusion Problem #nlpoli

Politicians don’t set out to screw up but their good intentions are no proof against making bad decisions.

The Twitter Perspective #nlpoli

Tories on Twitter act like twits. Then they complain in the House of Assembly that other people are misbehaving.

Yes, they are hypocrites.

The Difference Between Their Dippers and our Tories #nlpoli

When it comes to transparency and accountability for megaprojects, the New Democratic government in Nova Scotia is light years ahead of the Progressive Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador

The Poster Child for Useless #nlpoli

One of the rationales the provincial government has used to justify Muskrat Falls is the idea that the island will have electricity shortages starting in 2015 and by 2020 there’ll be blackouts, brownouts or some sort of unspecified catastrophe.

If you missed it, here is one official version, from The Economy, 2011:

After years of planning and analysis, Nalcor’s subsidiary, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro (Hydro), determined that developing Muskrat Falls is the least-cost solution to a looming electricity shortage in the province, which is expected in the next five to 10 years.

In 2015, Newfoundland and Labrador will reach a capacity deficit when, at peak times, capacity needs may not be met. By 2019, the province will experience an electricity deficit, where the province’s overall electricity demand is greater than what is available.

It’s the worst kind of fear-mongering but it is what they’ve been saying. 

The solution to that looming crisis is pretty simple, according to the provincial government.  Again, here’s what The Economy 2011 lays out:

Hydro assessed the options for new generation sources to avoid the capacity and electricity deficits. The Muskrat Falls project, coupled with a transmission link project to the island, was determined to be the least-cost option.

So with all that as prologue, consider this question posed by Dean MacDonald stand-in Dwight Ball in the House of Assembly on Tuesday:

… what is the government’s plan to those energy blackouts that residents will experience between 2015 and 2018?

You can guess what the answer was from natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy.

Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question is quite simple. What will prevent the brownouts and the blackouts between 2015 and 2020? Muskrat Falls.

If you are not either banging your head against the table or crapping your pants with laughter at this point, then you are just not paying attention.

This is funny stuff.  You could not possible script a more ridiculous line of questioning at this point in the public debate over the hydro-electric megaproject.

You could not make this stuff up.

Given the Premier’s penchant for telling us that Nalcor is filled with geniuses of other-worldly origins, one might more sensibly ask how it could be that the rocket scientists at Nalcor managed to let the island get into the state where we are on the verge of catastrophe.

After all, that is the logic of their argument.  In 2010, they noticed that the power needle was flirting with the edge of the red zone and the Big E. 

How in the frack could they have missed so obvious a thing?   After all, it is their job to keep an eye on that stuff.  They are supposed to make sure the people who pay their bills have a stable, reliable and low cost supply of electricity.

Now, as a politician, you’d ask the aggressive question because it shows pretty clearly that what Kathy Dunderdale says about Nalcor and  their actual demonstrated managerial competence are two different things.  After all, an opposition political party is supposed to ensure that the government accounts fully “for the management of the public affairs of this province…”.

By contrast, Dwight Ball asked questions  on Tuesday that would normally come from a Tory backbencher sucking around for a promotion to cabinet. For the leader of the Opposition, the questions  were amateurish and reeked of incompetence.

The other questions that Ball asked on Tuesday, like pretty well everything he’s done so far this session, have shown Ball to be the poster child for everything that is politically useless and ineffective. With only one exception, the rest of his caucus have been no better.

Small wonder that the Tories spend all their political energy attacking the province’s New Democrats. The Tories know that the Liberals are more a political threat to themselves than they are to anyone else.

-srbp-

A river runs through it #nlpoli

Jerry Bannister’s paper “A river runs through it:  Churchill Falls and the end of Newfoundland history” is now available in the latest issue of Acadiensis.

“A new Sprung Greenhouse”: one year later #nlpoli

Since May 8 was the 25th anniversary of the announcement that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador were going into the cucumber business, it seemed fitting to give a link to a post of April 5, 2011.

The title of the old post was “A new Sprung greenhouse in the wilds of Labrador.” 

Note how little has changed in a year:  Kathy Dunderdale is still insulting people left and right.  The reasons for her reliance on endless personal digs remain the same.  That reflects badly on her even more now than it did then.

her grasp of economics and the economics of her pet project remain today as abysmal as they were then.

And yes, the goal is still to have the people of Quirpon and Flower Hill pay the full cost for the electricity.  Any others will get it free (Nova Scotians) or far below the cost of producing it.  That’s what Kathy Dunderdale meant when she said:

They are not going to buy it from us, Mr. Speaker, for 14.3, so we have to go into the market and sell at what the market can bear.

The markets in the United States and elsewhere in northeastern North America cannot bear Muskrat Falls electricity even at the artificially-deflated cost of seven cents a kilowatt hour.  That is without the cost of getting it from eastern Labrador down the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to wherever the crowd at Nalcor might want to sell it. 

To put that in perspective and to explain the connection to the Sprung cucumber fiasco, consider the basic economics of the project as laid out by the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage website:

A single Sprung cucumber cost $1.08 to produce, but sold for 63 cents in Atlantic Canada and just 25 cents (US) in Massachusetts.

That’s exactly the same concept as Muskrat Falls.  Well, exactly the same except that Sprung was actually able to sell product outside Newfoundland and Labrador.

And if you go back and look at all the controversy that swirled around the project and the defences of it mounted by the provincial government, you’ll likely start to feel decidedly uneasy.

It will all be too familiar.

- srbp -

Related:

• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 2
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 3
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 4

The politics of logic and history #nlpoli

“Government does not work on logic,” a wise man once told your humble e-scribbler.  “It works on the basis of history.”

When faced with a new problem, people tend to do what they did before, not what might make sense in the new circumstances.

You can see that the preference for history over logic in Kathy Dunderdale’s comments on Monday about what she and her colleagues would do for communities where the town fish plant had closed.

Mr. Speaker, we are doing the same thing for these workers, and will do for others the same thing we did in Stephenville, Grand Falls-Windsor, and Harbour Breton.

That would include moving in some provincial government jobs to stuff some cash into the local economy.  So if adding more provincial government employees is an integral part of Kathy Dunderdale’s response to the problems in these six communities, you can be damn sure she won’t be chopping any jobs.

Then again, regular readers of these scribbles already knew that claims to the contrary were bullshit.

The rest of Dunderdale’s comment are just routine political drivel:

We are committed to communities in this Province that find themselves in economic distress. We do not always have the answers at hand. There are not easy answers to be found by anybody, but we walk the walk with communities, Mr. Speaker. We do not just talk the talk.

And when she was done with drivel, she just popped out some truly vacuous bullshit:

Wherever the journey takes these people, their government will be there with them, and we do our best to diversify the economy and meet their needs in the meantime.

Diversify the economy.

Yeah.

Well, the economic development record of the current crowd is exactly zilch.  They spent so much time obsessing over polls and the Lower Churchill after 2003 that they simply didn’t do anything to diversify the economy.  And what they did try – giving away public cash by the bag-full – simply didn’t work. They haven’t been able to pay people to create jobs here.

Here’s how SRBP put it a couple of years ago comparing government spending in the mid-1990s with the current practice:

The province’s business development and economic diversification efforts – ITT then and INTRD and Business today – take less of a share of the budget now.  That’s despite government claims that it has a plan to expand the economy and that the plan is in place.

Mind you, the amounts spent have increased.  For example, the cost of operating the departments has gone from about $50 million for the Industry, Trade and technology department to about $66 million spread over Business and Innovation, Trade and Rural Development today.

The amount available for business investment is also up:  $18 million then compared to $29 million. Even then, though, the province’s business department -  the vehicle through which Danny Williams was once supposed to personally reinvigorate the provincial economy – actually doesn’t do very much with the cash in the budget.  Sure there are plenty of free gifts – like Rolls Royce – or the apparently endless supply of cash for inflatable shelters.

But as the Telegram discovered two years ago, the provincial government spent nothing at all of the $30 million budgeted for business development in 2007. And earlier this year the Telegram confirmed that in the past three years, less than one third of the $90 budgeted for business attraction was ever spent.

The result is that we have a very fragile economy.

Government does not work on the basis of logic.  They go with what they did before.

Like that has worked so well  for them so far.

-srbp-

Pots and Kettles #nlpoli

Pots and kettles are a staple of Newfoundland politics.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale in the House of Assembly on Monday, May 7:

We have had the Member for Torngat Mountains this morning on every media outlet in the Province talking about a cover-up of the Burton Winters tragedy, Mr. Speaker, in the face of the correction put out by the RCMP, propagating incorrectness for political advantage, I suggest, Mr. Speaker, instead of a pursuit for the truth. It is very offensive, Mr. Speaker, and then he wants an all-party committee.

Pay attention to those words:

“Propagating incorrectness for political advantage…instead of a pursuit for the truth.”

Okay?

Got the image?

Then there’s Kathy Dunderdale talking with Randy Simms about her Muskrat Falls megadebt project:

…the expertise that's at Nalcor, one of the finest companies, state-owned companies, in the world I would submit to you, the best brains, the expertise, built the Upper Churchill, running the Upper Churchill for 50 years without a hitch, …

None of the people at Nalcor built Churchill Falls.

None of them.

Not a one.

And strictly speaking Nalcor’s predecessor  - Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro – didn’t build it either.

So Dunderdale’s comment there would be pretty firmly in the category of “not true”.

It gets worse for her.

The Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation commissioned Churchill Falls in 1971. That would be 41 years ago. 

Not 50. 

The date people use for the purposes of the figuring out when the 1969 contract expires is 1976, though, which is, 36 years ago.

Again:  not 50.

And at the end of her little rant, Dunderdale said this about the people at Nalcor these days:

…these people just get dismissed...

That would be another entry in the “not true” category. 

People don’t dismiss the lovely people at Nalcor and all their expertise.  Some of us just don;t agree with them when they make certain unsubstantiated claims about Muskrat Falls .  There’s a none-too-subtle difference.

On the other hand, Kathy Dunderdale dismisses the opinions of people who disagree with her just because they disagree with her.

And, of course, she has a record of getting stuff wrong.  Call it “propagating incorrectness” if you wish.

Whether or not she does this stuff for political advantage, political gain, to support her political agenda or just because she thinks she is doing the right thing – like Randy Edmunds likely does – it all pretty much comes out to the same thing in the end.

-srbp-

The Black Letter of the Law #nlpoli

You’d think that someone who approves laws, including this amendment to the Highway Traffic Act in 2010, would understand  what the words mean:

Cellular telephones and other communication devices

176.1 (1) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle on a highway while holding, or using a hand-held wireless communication device or other prescribed device that is capable of receiving or transmitting telephone communications, electronic data, email or text messages.

The penalty for a conviction under this section of the Highway Traffic Act is a minimum of $100 or two days in jail and a maximum of $400 and 14 days in jail.

Politicians elected since 2003 should be familiar with this offence since one of them was done for it in 2008, before they broadened the scope of the section.

- srbp -