Delivery #nlpoli

Michael Barber headed a group of officials for then-Prime Minister Tony Blair that was responsible for getting Blair's major commitments through the government bureaucracy and into practice.

They called it the delivery unit and Barber has become a prophet of what he calls the science of delivery. In many ways, delivery is just a restatement of some very well-known ideas about planning and project management.  What Barber has done, though, is put those ideas into a new package that has captured the imagination of people who have been facing the same problem of getting a huge bureaucracy to implement a simple idea.  From outside, you'd think that's what government does.  The reality is  - more often than not - very different.  And that's why people interested in politics and public policy have been taken with Barber's ideas.

Barber's just been able to garner lots of attention around the world.  Dalton McGuinty's staff were big advocates of Barber's philosophy and they have carried that belief with them to Ottawa for Justin Trudeau.

Closer to home there's never been any such creature.  There's also no talk of creating one.  Go a step further.  There's never really been the equivalent here of the policy unit that British Prime Ministers have used since around 1970s to come up with ideas in the first place.  The closest anyone came was the Economic recovery Commission in the 1990s.  Usually, the task of handling policy from the political side of government has come  - if at all - from one or two people in the Premier's Office in among a bunch of other things. Some staffers carry the title of "policy advisor" but that hasn't always been occupied by someone providing policy analysis and support to the political side of things advice. More often than not,  the job of evaluating whether or not something is worthwhile gets done by the bureaucrats.

If Kelvin's departure was no biggie... #nlpoli

According to Premier Dwight Ball,  Kelvin Parsons was never going to stick around for long as the Premier's chief of staff.

Okay.

Let's think about that for a second.

labradore's Labrador #nlpoli

For your summer reading enjoyment, here are five books on Labrador, courtesy of the always helpful Wallace McLean at labradore:

Elizabeth Goudie, Woman of Labrador

Originally published in 1973, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie's enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper's wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled her multiple roles as homemaker, doctor, cook, hunter, showmaker, and seamstress for her growing family. In the span of her eighty years, she witnessed radical changes to Labrador.

More Newfoundland books you should read #nlpoli

Yesterday you got Jerry Bannister's five books on Newfoundland.

Today you get an eclectic list from your humble e-scribbler:

1.  Jeff Webb,  The Voice of Newfoundland: A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939–1949.  This is a book about how radio helped shape Newfoundland at a crucial time in its social, economic, and political development. Grab the Kobo edition if you don't want the hard copy.

2. Consider Ray Guy:  the Smallwood years and Ray Guy:  the revolutionary years as one huge compilation of Ray Guy's political columns broken into two pieces.  Ray was a fine writer, more mythologised since his death than he was regarded through most of his life but that is often the way it is with prophets in their own land.  So many of the columns could be about more recent events.  Just the names have changed.

3.  Edward Roberts,  How Newfoundlanders got the baby bonus is a collection of columns the former lieutenant governor wrote for The Compass newspaper.  Each column is engaging, accessible, and informative.  Together they cover virtually every period in Newfoundland and Labrador history.  

4.  As a bonus,  Roberts included a suggested reading list in the back broken down by topic.  One of the books Roberts highly recommends is Jerry Bannister's The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832.  Roberts calls this one of the most important scholarly works about Newfoundland's history.  Roberts is right.

5.  John R. Martin is a retired physician who served as chief occupational medical officer for the provincial government from 1984 to 1992.  The fluorspar mines of Newfoundland: their history and the epidemic of radiation lung cancer combines the author's considerable professional knowledge and experience with prodigious research that included access to Alcan's corporate archives.

-srbp-

Emails, government business, and ATIPPA #nlpoli

During the Ed Martin fiasco,  an email turned up from Ken Marshall - then chair of the Nalcor board - to Premier Dwight Ball and natural resources minister Siobhan Coady about the board's decision to send Martin out the door in a way that maxed out his severance and other entitlements.

Marshall used his gmail account to send the message to Ball's government account and Coady's gmail.

Some folks raised a question about the appearance that Coady was using her gmail account for official business.  Coady denied she was doing it but now the Telegram's James McLeod has an access to information response that includes 70 pages of material sent from Coady's government email account to her gmail account.

The "new" Newfoundland #nlpoli

Every once in a while,  SRBP has featured a list of suggested books either for summer enjoyment or as in April 2006,  for anyone interested in reading about Newfoundland and Labrador.

A recent email reminded your humble e-scribbler that it was time to update the recommended list of books on Newfoundland and Labrador.  There are more than five and even more than 10 books you should read.

To get us started, here are some suggestions from a faithful support of the Bond Papers,  historian Jerry Bannister.  We'll feature some other lists as the summer wears on.

Two Solitudes #nlpoli

"Newfoundland and Canada, separate countries for so long, exist as two solitudes within the bosom of a single country more than 65 years after Confederation. They do not understand each other very well.  Canadians can be forgiven if they do not know much about Newfoundlanders beyond caricatures in popular media, let alone understand them.  But Newfoundlanders do not know themselves.  They must grapple daily with the gap between their own history as it was and the history as other Newfoundlanders tell it to them, wrongly, repeatedly."

That's an excerpt from " Two solitudes,"  my thoughts on Newfoundland, Canada and the Great War.  You can find it in in the latest Dorchester Review  now available.  [Available as a per issue purchase]

Check it out.

-srbp-

On came the Newfoundlanders...

"On came the Newfoundlanders,  a great body of men, but the fire intensified and they were wiped out in front of my eyes."

Private F.H. Cameron, 1st battalion, the King's Own Scottish Borderers,  watched the Newfoundland attack from a nearby shell hole. His battalion had been part of the initial attack by the 29th Division that had failed as German soldiers recovered from the initial barrage and manned their trenches and machine guns.

The Newfoundland battalion attacked alone across open ground from reserve trenches as the communications trenches and front lines trenches were already full of wounded.  Many fell dead or wounded before reaching their own front line and many more died trying to get through the few gaps in the wire that had been cut by the preparatory bombardment.

The battalion war diary recorded 26 officers killed or wounded and 658 other ranks killed or wounded.  Private Ron Dunn lay bleeding for most of the day from a pair of leg wounds and a chest wound before crawling back to his own lines later in the evening. He staunched the bleeding with his own field dressing and with clumps of bright green grass he pulled from the earth within his reach.  Dunn made it back to his trenches,  survived the war, and died in 1993.

Owen Steele was a young lieutenant and the officer commanding D Company.  He and 16 of his men survived the assault uninjured.  Steele was wounded by German shellfire within a week of the attack and died of his wounds.

The 29th Division, of which the Newfoundland battalion was a part, was a Regular Army Division made up of overseas service battalions recalled for active duty.  The Newfoundlanders joined the division in Gallipoli in September 1915 and covered the withdrawal from the beaches on two occasions in January 1916.

The Newfoundlanders were the only Dominion troops to take part in the attack on the opening day of the Somme offensive.  The South African 1st Infantry Brigade served as part of 9th (Scottish) Division and was in reserve on the first day of the Battle of Albert (1 to 13 July 1916).  It first took part in action on July 7, 1916.

-srbp-

The scribes on all the people shove

and bawl allegiance to the state,

But they who love the greater love 

lay down their life; they do not hate.

Wilfred Owen

"At a Calvary near the Ancre"

Interprovincial migration for morons #nlpoli

Some people got really excited on Wednesday by a report from the Fraser Institute that claimed this province had seen its first population loss due to outmigration in a decade.

There ya go, they cried:  proof the budget sucks and is driving people out of the province.

Well,  err... no.

The little savory details #nlpoli

Nalcor chief executive Stan Marshall said so much last Friday about Muskrat Falls, it's probably true that most people couldn't possibly take it all in.

One of the folks having a hard time understanding all this is Tom Johnson.  He's the guy the Conservatives appointed to serve as consumer advocate at public utilities board hearings.  In practice he has sided with Nalcor and the Conservatives on everything, including their plan to force consumers to bear the full cost of Muskrat Falls, no matter how much it cost in the end.

The past few days he's been turning up in the media saying that the government will keep the cost of electricity down so consumers don't see much of an increase.  Not much like supposedly what the Conservatives promised.  Even Nalcor hasn't been pushing that nonsense for a year or more so it's astonishing that Johnson sounds like he is still taking orders from Danny Williams' missus.

Friends and enemies #nlpoli

Craig Westcott tells a story from his short stint as communications director for the Liberals in opposition in the last days of Danny Williams and the early days of his handpicked successor, Kathy Dunderdale.

"I kept after the very small caucus we had to keep asking questions,"  Westcott said in an email to SRBP, "hoping that even if the media ignored us, some of the folks watching at home would cotton on to how bad the deal was.  That might generate some heat. It kept the flame of criticism and skepticism alive."

"We looked at everything from the lack of documentation to support Nalcor's demand projections, to the big question of water rights, the actual usage of Holyrood as part of the island's power supply for the previous 20 or so years, the free power to Nova Scotia, the privatization of the Labrador to Island transmission line to give [Emera] a cut,  the free block of power to Nova Scotia, the likely cost of Muskrat Falls-generated power, which early on we pegged at over 20 cents per kWh, and on and on. The deal was so flawed it was difficult to find anything positive in it."

One major problem Westcott ran into was that the local media weren't interested. "[CBC's David] Cochrane tired pretty quickly of the Opposition asking questions on Muskrat," Westcott said.  "He complained several times that we weren't asking anything new. Some days he walked out of the legislature after Question Period and made a point [of saying] that he wasn't going to scrum our guys because we were still on Muskrat. The other legislative reporters would follow him out."

A foundation of lies and deceit #nlpoli

You could feel the shock among the local media on Friday as Stan Marshall carefully dissected the insanity that is Muskrat Falls.

Didn't matter if you heard the voices on the radio,  watched them on television or read them online.   The reporters' emotional reaction transferred through whatever medium it was that conveyed their words.  Here it was laid out in stark detail:  billions over budget,  years behind schedule,  a financial burden for the province its people will be sorely pressed to bear and all of it built - in essence - on a series of false statements,  faulty assumptions, and anything but facts and reason.

Never mind that all of what Stan Marshall said was - in effect - already widely know and had been known for most of the preceding decade.  Here you had someone as rich or richer than Danny Williams telling them that Muskrat Falls was utter shite.  By the unspoken law of Newfoundland politics,  the poor benighted scribblers now had no choice but report it.

11 minutes and 11 seconds #nlpoli

Dwight Ball was at Memorial University on Thursday morning to represent the provincial government in a joint announcement with Judy Foote on some capital funding to finish the new science building on campus.

The announcement is good for the university,  good for the economy, and good for everyone involved.  It's the kind of good news story Ball desperately needs after a hideously bungled couple of months

And Dwight Ball spent all 11 minutes and 11 seconds in a scrum with reporters afterward talking about emails, one of which was triggered by this tweet on June 5 by CBC's Jeremy Eaton.

Ball's message through the whole scrum was to deny any responsibility in his office for a relatively minor incident two weeks ago in which government spent a couple of hundred dollars tearing down a few hundred crappy signs.

The truth behind the key message #nlpoli

Paul Lane, left (not exactly as illustrated),  says both the Liberals and Conservatives trained him to deliver scripted messages.  People are tired of that, Lane says.  "I believe people want the straight goods."

Straight goods.

The truth, in other words.

Interesting.

But did Paul actually say he would speak the truth?

Foundations #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Siobhan Coady was the latest in a long line of energy ministers from this province who have done the annual pilgrimage to the offshore technology show in Houston in early May.  "With our unique location," Coady said of Newfoundland and Labrador, " we have built a solid foundation, have incredible prospects, and look forward to the many opportunities for exploration and development on the horizon."

Those foundations must have been built by the same crowd that were pouring concrete in Muskrat Falls.  Not even four weeks later the whole shooting match is caved in.

Public interest served by contract disclosure #nlpoli

There's no small irony that NAPE is fighting to increase public disclosure of government spending while other public sector unions are busily trying to drag the public back into the Dark Ages by hiding the names of union members earning more than $100,000 a year in pay and benefits.

NAPE is trying to get access to contracts awarded by Eastern health to two privates companies.  The union appealed to the information commissioner and last week the commissioner issued rulings that Eastern Health should release the contracts.

NAPE is right:  it is in the public interest to have the contract details in public.  That's why the access law  says that it isn't an invasion of privacy to reveal the financial and other details of a contract to provide goods and services to the public.

That doesn't mean that NAPE is right that the public sector can supply the services in this case more efficiently than the private companies can. In fact,  there's good reason to believe that the public sector has a great deal of difficulty providing many services as cost-effectively as a private company can.

Regardless, the public has a right to know how its money is being spent and to make sure that citizens are getting the best return on their spending.  Competition between the public sector and the private sector might be a way of injecting some life back into the bloated, ineffective public sector and getting managers and workers alike to rediscover that it is is supposed to be about serving the public.

-srbp-

Developing a sustainable, diverse economy #nlpoli

When it comes to developing a successful economic development strategy, Edsel Bonnell has advice worth heeding.

He co-chaired the team that developed "Change and Challenge," the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan. The SEP "called for a transformation of culture, away from a dependence on government initiatives and government control and toward one based on individual initiative and private-sector entrepreneurship.

"The plan did not promise easy answers, nor did it fixate on one sector of the economy or on large megaprojects. Change and Challenge represented the result of a long development process that was itself crucial. The long period of discussion and consultation both inside and outside government helped to develop a consensus among those who took part in the discussions."  

Everything in the SEP represented a departure from the unsuccessful approaches we had already tried in the province,  all the ideas we knew were unsuccessful and yet the ones that the  Conservatives put back in place after 2003.  In many respects, it's how we got into our current financial mess... again.  

The process  - "the long period of consultation and discussion" - was an important part of the SEP's success.  The discussions helped build a strong agreement throughout the province about what needed to be done to develop a sustainable, diverse economy.  Not surprisingly,  Edsel recommends we try the same thing again.  He's described the approach very simply in two recent letters to the Telegram:  June 13 and June 18.   

Edsel may be a bit optimistic about how fast we might develop the plan:  this fall would be very fast.  But there is is merit in the idea of bringing all the parties together to set an apolitical task force on the track to build a plan to get us out of the very big hole in which we find ourselves. The politicians can't do it alone.  The bureaucrats can't,  and the business community can't. Nor can ordinary citizens fix things all by themselves.

-srbp-

Core Public Service Numbers #nlpoli

Somebody requested the number of public servants through Access to Information and the folks in the department answered only half the question.

But that's okay because the figures for the core public service are worth looking at anyway.

Regular readers will recognise the trend.  Starting in 2006,  the Conservatives went on a hiring spree.  They took the core public service from 6,792 in 2005 to 9,090 by 2011.  Bit of a steep drop between 2011 and 2012 and a steady decline since then.  As of the middle of May this year, there were about 7,978 people in the core public service. 

The Budget and the Economy #nlpoli

The Conference Board of Canada says the recent budget has tipped the provincial economy into a recession next year.

Finance minister Cathy Bennett says that's bollocks.

Let's see which is right.

Making the best of a bad deal #nlpoli

Here's the short version of  the implications flowing from Nalcor's announcement on Wednesday:

1.  Continuing Muskrat Falls is a political decision already made by Dwight Ball despite the evidence. It's like Ball's inexplicable desire to keep Ed Martin despite the incontrovertible evidence that Martin had mismanaged Nalcor generally and Muskrat Falls specifically.

2.  That said,  Stan Marshall is at least making the best of a bad situation.

Cash Debt and GDP #nlpoli

For those who find this stuff interesting, here are some numbers to mull over.

You may have heard of comparing the net debt to the gross domestic product. Somebody gave Tracy Perry a bunch of numbers to read out during the recent waste-of-time filibuster.  One of the problems with her numbers was that she wasn't always comparing apples to apples.  The numbers she used from the 1990s compared cash debt to GDP while the more recent figures use a completely different accounting basis to make comparisons.

There are problems with this, as we've noted before, not the least of which is that oil revenues tend to cloud the picture.So just for the sake of making a comparison,  your humble e-scribbler took the GDP figures presented in The economy, a document released with the budget.  For debt,  let's use the cash debt figures from the Estimates.  That'll make it easier to compare apples to apples over the next few posts as we wade through this.

It's all in millions of dollars.  In other words, the 31 thousand million means $31 billion.

Marc "Two Engines" Garneau and Bad Decision-Making #nlpoli

Cast your mind all the way back to the last time Canada bought new fighter jets.​

Ooop. 

 Lost most of you already.  

No memory back that far.

Well,  it was the late 1970s.  Canada needed new jets to replace the F-104 Starfighters doing duty for NATO,  the F101 Voodoos handling the defence of Canada role, and even the old F-5 Freedom fighters doing a stint on ground attack.

The finalists were the single-engined F-16 and the F-17/F-18.  The -17. for those who don't recall, was the land version of the -18.  Same aircraft just lacking the reinforced landing gear and other bits the navy aircraft needed to slam into carrier decks.

In the end,  the air force picked the -18, in no small part because it had two engines.  Lots of pilots said that when you are flying long stretches over the vast and largely empty North,  you needed the second engine in case one of them crapped out.

Now as we look at replacing those F-18s,  we are hearing precisely the same criticism levied by some like Marc Garneau at the air force's preferred choice, the F-35.  Only one engine.  No good.

The curious thing about that old F-16 argument is that it doesn't hold up.  The F-16 has proven to be a very successful aircraft still flown and loved by all sorts of pilots around the world 40 years after its introduction.  It's performed well in combat,  including in heavily defended hostile airspace where its many critics used to think it wouldn't survive.   The F-18 is also a very successful aircraft.  Available statistics suggest that the aircraft loss rates due to engine failure is comparable for the two aircraft.

Prejudices bolstered by misinformation is no basis for making decisions that affect people's lives. The story that a bunch of cabinet ministers will sort out the purchase of Canada's next generation  of fighter aircraft is troubling on two accounts.  First there is the prejudices issue.  Second, and just as important is that the cabinet ministers are unqualified to make such a choice. \

 To see how unsuccessful this approach can be we need only look at the Sea King replacement.  Close to 25 years after the air force picked the right aircraft, we are still struggling to get a new ship-borne helicopter in service.  The right choice - the EH-101 - fell victim to the political interests and whimsical decisions of the Liberals before the 1993 federal election. They not only cancelled the EH-101 purchase,  they delayed a decision on an alternative for years, needlessly. As it stands now,  the derivative of an air frame that first flew in the 1970s won't all be in service until 2021.  That's almost 30 years after the cancellation of the EH-101s.

Had the federal government gone ahead with the EH-101s at the time or had we bought EH-101s under a revised contract,  we'd have a proven, successful aircraft in service today.  As it is,  bad decisions have cost taxpayers billions in wasteful procurement and delays only to wind up with an aircraft that simply won't ever be able to do the job properly.  It would be hard to find a better monument to stupidity than the EH-101 cancellation and the subsequent helicopter procurement.  The current federal cabinet is in danger of making the same sort of bone-headed decision again with the new fighter aircraft.

-srbp-

What's wrong #nlpoli

As with a lot of things in local politics,  the most interesting thing wasn't the fact that Steve Marshall barred Roger Grimes from a hockey rink Marshall owns.

What was fascinating was the response of plenty of folks in the province.  Some just blew it off as childish or small.  And at least one even tried the old game of blaming "both sides" for being a good example of what's wrong with local politics.

And in the process, they all approved of the behaviour.

Turning Point #nlpoli

The Great Filibuster of 2016 came to an abrupt end on Thursday afternoon as the two opposition parties decided to pack it in, having gaining precisely nothing of any substance.

The filibuster confirmed the NDP are as politically impotent as they have always been.  Meanwhile, the Conservatives lack punch, depth, and direction.  The Liberals left themselves vulnerable and rather than do them lasting damage,  the opposition parties flinched at the crucial moment.  The result is that the Liberals now get to regroup and come back stronger, having learned powerful lessons out of the spring.

To give a sense of how ineffective the filibuster was, consider that on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Liberals were able to get two crucial pieces of legislation through the House.  In both the school boards election bill and the new greenhouse gas emissions bill, the Liberals got to calmly and rationally lay out the arguments in favour of their position.  The opposition meekly listened.

Environment minister Perry Trimper came away stronger in the public eye as a result.  Education minister Dale Kirby can be abrasive when riled but on this occasion he spoke eloquently about the bill the NDp had spent the earlier part of the session hammering him over.  Kirby also got to explain why full-day kindergarten was so important as part of the government's agenda.

Now with that in mind take a look at the CRA poll released on Thursday.

The 'eart of Darkness #nlpoli

No one would be surprised if a cell phone video turned up in the next few days on youtube showing Dwight Ball before he broke his silence and talked to reporters on Wednesday.

The video would be Dwight himself, in his office in the middle of the night, hunched in the corner, staring off into the inky blackness, the only light a faint glimmer coming into a darkened Premier's Office through the large picture windows.

Out of the shadows of the grainy, found-footage clip would be nothing but his voice,  a raspy, dry-throated whisper  over and over :  " the 'orror.  The 'orror."

The Fan Klub, Churchill, and taxes - update

As the provincial Conservatives and New Democrats filibuster the levy bill in the House of Assembly that Winston Churchill quote about taxes popped up again.

The ones pushing the quote hard on Twitter seem to be mostly charter members of the Danny Williams Fan Klub. That's not surprising given that responsibility for the financial mess,  the chronic, deliberate overspending and the morass at Muskrat rest solely on his shoulders.

The House and Twitter #nlpoli

Guest post by Simon Lono

The latest House of Assembly Twitter flap raises more issues that it first appears.  Leaving aside the wisdom of the timing, it’s worth understanding why the point was raised at all.

The Telegram, in their Saturday thundering and mocking editorial condemned the whole exercise because “We actually have a right to know if you or your fellow MHAs don’t deign to come to work”.

This is true but ultimately irrelevant to the issue.  And like so many rules of parliament, pointing out absence or presence of members just seems silly until you examine why it’s there.

Entitlements and examples #nlpoli

Canadian income tax law requires that all people over the age of 71 must take payments from their registered pension plan.

Lorraine Michael is over the age of 71 and so she is collecting her pension from the House of Assembly.  She's earned it.  She's got every right to receive it.

Michael is also collecting her full salary as a member of the House of Assembly. The Telegram's James McLeod broke the story last winter.  Michael said two things about it.  First, she felt she was entitled to even more money because she was doing extra work in the House of Assembly as the de facto leader of the third party.  Second, Michael told CBC she had to double dip because that's what the law said she had to do.

Well, no, it doesn't really.

What's next for Nalco? #nlpoli

Just so that everyone is clear on this, it has taken Dwight Ball every single day from May 23 until June 2 to admit that he knew Ed Martin had received a severance payment on his departure from Nalcor despite the fact that Martin has supposedly resigned.

In effect,  Dwight Ball - as the chief representative of the only shareholder in Nalcor  - approved of the severance with his silence.  The same thing went for natural resources minister Siobhan Coady.

What's more, Ball reminded us all again that whatever happened with respect to Martin's contract was solely at the discretion of the Nalcor board, which has since resigned.

Right.

So what exactly has Dwight Ball's knickers in such a bunch?

Seriously.

Priorities #nlpoli

While everyone has been pre-occupied with Dwight Ball's psycho-drama this past couple of weeks, odds are most people missed a little bill that went through the House.

The second Loan Act for 2016 set the maximum borrowing for the province this fiscal year at $3.4 billion.  An earlier version had set the borrowing at $1.6 billion but that was actually too low once the Estimates appeared and showed the cash required to balance the books was $3.0 billion.

Some people might a bit shocked by the apparent doubling of the borrowing requirement but that really isn't the figure.  The $1.6 billion was wrong at the time it appeared in the House.

What you should notice is that the cash deficit this year has already increased by 13% and that was before the House session even finished.  40% of government spending this year will come from borrowing.

Meanwhile, Dwight Ball is worried about being held responsible for $6.0 million in severance to Ed Martin.

Maybe Dwight  needs to give his head a shake.  That is, if he can find time to pull it out of his  backside.

-srbp-

Anger Ball

Premier Dwight Ball got angry on Tuesday.

He's angry at the suggestion that he approved paying severance to Ed Martin.

Well, really he's angry at is how much Martin wound up getting now that the amounts are becoming known and unpopular but we'll get back to that.

There's actually no question that Ball was aware Martin got severance.  As the Telegram's James McLeod has noted,  VOCM's Fred Hutton asked specifically about severance on April 21.  Here's the exchange:

VOCM News Director Fred Hutton: Has Ed Martin’s severance been worked out yet? 

Martin continues to set provincial political agenda #nlpoli

On the surface, Ed Martin's statement on Monday confirmed what we already knew.

Dwight Ball knew about and approved of Ed Martin's severance payment from Nalcor.  Ball may not have known the precise detail of the amount Martin received from his severance  - about $1.4 million - and Martin's twin pensions.  James McLeod at the Telegram has chased down that angle on the story and is awaiting a reply from Nalcor about whether Martin took the lump sum payout option on his pensions.

But there is no doubt Ball knew about and approved of the arrangement to pay Martin severance even if the official story was that Martin said he quit.  Ball has said as much on several occasions, as noted by McLeod last week.  He's also made the fine - but entirely meaningless - distinction that he had no part in discussing the details of Martin's severance.

The Running Man #nlpoli

With questions swirling about what Premier Dwight Ball knew about severance payments to former Nalcor boss Ed Martin and when he knew it,  Ball has asked the province's auditor general to take a look at whether or not it was appropriate to pay severance to Martin.

Different question.

That's a pretty transparent effort to run away from the controversy that exists purely because Ball refuses to tell the truth about what he knew and when he knew it.

The Oracle of Brunei and The Prophet of Boswarlos #nlpoli

You know that the local news media are hard up for stories when they  post the musings about the current budget of somebody from Newfoundland currently swanning it in Brunei.

Well, it helps that the body is former Conservative finance minister Charlene Johnson, but if you look at what she said, it's hard to understand why she got any attention.

There are three things to notice about Charlene's ideas on how to save a penny or two that the local media didn't mention.

The Oracle on the Parkway #nlpoli

Crude oil was trading north of US$50 a barrel for about 30 seconds this week.

What with the government's cash deficit being $3.0 billion and all, CBC had someone write up a little story about what that would mean for government finances.

You will see a lot of these stories when oil jumps because they are easy to write.

Could we be richer than we think? the headline asked.

Good question.

$1 change in crude prices brings the government an extra $23 million.  That means we could get an extra $230 million if oil averaged $50 a barrel this year instead of the $40 the government assumed in the budget. Extra 10 bucks a barrel, right?

Okay.

So how much would crude oil have to hit in order to fix the financial mess for this year alone?

Last Rites #nlpoli

This week Premier Dwight Ball became the punchline to a joke.

Ball spent yet another day not giving straight answers to simple questions about what they knew and when they knew about Ed Martin's severance.  For good measure,  the opposition Conservatives managed to drag natural resources minister Siobhan Coady into the mess.  She had the same lines as Ball.  That's no good for her.

The Telegram's James McLeod tweeted on Thursday that Ball had denied in the scrum that afternoon that he knew any details.  Then someone reminded Ball of his interview with  his answer to VOCM's Fred Hutton during a news conference on April 21, the day after Martin's resignation.  Ball said that he would be speaking with Nalcor board chair "Kenny" Marshall to find out details of what Ball described as Martin's severance.  Later that afternoon,  Ball told reporters about the other payments approved by the board that morning, confirming in the process that he had spoken with Marshall immediately after his morning interview with Hutton.

McLeod is apparently planning a piece for the paper this morning that tries to document the twists and turns Ball's version of events has taken.  If anyone can pull it off, McLeod can.  What he will be doing, in effect, is writing Ball's political obituary.

Alarums and Excursions #nlpoli

Dwight Ball is hiding details of his involvement in the decision to give an enormous and unwarranted severance package paid to Ed Martin despite the fact Martin had quit as Nalcor's chief executive.

That became plain in Ball's responses to repeated questions from both opposition politicians and reporters on Wednesday.  They all asked Ball repeatedly if he discussed severance with Martin in either of two meetings the Premier had with Martin in mid-April. Ball's answer was deliberately evasive.  He had clearly rehearsed the wording precisely because he repeated it over and over and over again. The question required a mere yes or no in reply. Instead,  Ball said again and again that the matter of severance was one for the board.  Every word Ball said more than either yes or no confirmed that what he was saying was not true.

Ball also said repeatedly that he only became aware of the details of the severance on May 5. He stressed the word "details" because it is an important word for him.  Ball repeatedly stressed the word as if knowing the details of the severance were more important than knowing about and approving of the fact that Martin had received severance in the first place.

That's the sort of distinction that only comes to a certain breed of lawyers or people who would describe *themselves* political strategists.  They think this sort of thing is clever.  It isn't.  It is merely too cute by half.  Everyone knows the ploy for what it is.  It's as transparent as saying someone has quit an important job to spend more time with his family.  No one believes that one because we have heard the same lie so many times. Had we all played a drinking game with Dwight Ball on Wednesday, we'd be in hospital with acute alcohol poisoning for taking a shot every time he dodged.

Ball digs himself deeper into hole #nlpoli

Dwight Ball's latest version of Ed Martin's departure from Nalcor only deepens the political quagmire into which the Premier and his staff have worked themselves with diligent effort and persistence.

Here's how.

Red Flags #nlpoli

If you want to understand the depth of Dwight Ball's political problem,  understand that as of Victoria Day,  Paul Lane - never the sharpest of political knives in any drawer - has gotten the better of the Premier politically for the second time in a week and the third time in a year.

The first time was when Lane managed to get Ball to accept him into the Liberal caucus as a perfect "fit."  That's no mean feat given that at the time Lane was a big part of the Conservative goon squad along with Steve Kent and Sandy Collins. Overnight, Lane went from being an enemy to a close ally.

The second time was last week when Lane managed to get out of the Liberal caucus with Dwight Ball's unreserved endorsement. Had it been up to him,  Ball likely would have kept Lane in caucus. As it is,  Lane got away without a single critical word from the Liberals.  They even allowed Lane to frame his departure right down to the point of letting Lane's old political ally Steve Kent tell the world the Liberals had resorted to tactless move of sending Lane an email that he'd been voted out of caucus.  

That endorsement has now given Lane his hat-trick,  allowing to emerge on Monday as an apparently credible voice opposing the government and its very unpopular budget.  Lane can say all the things the other critics have been saying but without the stigma of being a partisan. Lane is supposedly a disaffected Grit who wanted to stay with the Liberal caucus, instead of being a Tory or Dipper. Lane can criticise the Liberals with all the credibility of someone even the Premier and the Liberals agree with:  they don't like their budget either.

How government decides - From Bow-Wow to Basenji #nlpoli

The Liberals' signature policy initiative is Bill 1.

It is so important that it is the only piece of new legislation the Liberals have introduced in this session that is directly connected to their election promises.

Bill 1 creates a new appointments commission that is supposed to ensure individuals appointed to positions by cabinet will be selected as the result of what the proposed law calls a merit-based process.

A merit-based appointments process for every appointment is such an important policy for the Liberals that, when faced with their first significant appointment,  they abandoned their own process last week.

How the other half pays #nlpoli

Brian Jones.

Statistics Canada can be your friend.  CANSIM 204-0001 to be precise.

You don't have to manipulate numbers.

There are roughly 221, 455 who earn below the $29,600 median income for all tax filers in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The figures are for 2013, but the general pattern still applies.

The average income in that group was $15,900.  The median income (precise half-way point) was $16,600.

Two things:  the average person in this income bracket will NOT pay any of the levy because their gross income is less than the floor on the program.

Second thing:  the amount of gross income for these focus would be something around $3.5 billion if we used the average figure.  That's twice what you claimed.  Note that they pay about five percent of the total provincial income government tax haul.

Among the crowd above the half-way point for income,  you have 197,380 people.  They make - on average - $71,400 each.  That gives you about $14 billion.

No matter how you slice it, the problem is not that we don't take enough from the folks in the top.  The problem is that the people on the lower side of the divide make so very little.  What we should be doing is trying to figure out a way to build those folks up, not find a way to suck more out of the other half.

You see,  those 221,000 folks paid an average of $700 each in federal AND provincial taxes. That's $155 million in total to both governments.  The other half of the population paid $2.8 billion.

If you have people making $3.5 billion who pay $155 million in tax, they are giving, collectively about four percent of their income to income tax.  The folks on the other side of the line are paying 20%, collectively.  That's five times as much.

And you have to remember that the bulk of those folks  on the high side of the divide are making a lot less than the folks on the sunshine list, on average. There's not a lot of room to suck cash from the middle, in other words.

The numbers tell one story, honestly, without any manipulation beyond addition, and the other math functions.

The numbers will lie if you try to do math using ideology.

Don't manipulate numbers, Brian.

-srbp-

A different kind of P3

Paul Lane won Mount Pearl-Southlands in 2015 by a mere 241 votes.

In 2011, he won a seat in the House of Assembly by 700 votes.

Anyone who tells you Paul Lane is a popular politician hasn't looked at the facts.

Did you hear the one about the Lane and the Ball? #nlpoli

Paul Lane has taken Dwight Ball's measure.

How Ball and the Liberals respond to Lane's challenge will determine the fate of the administration.

You can tell by the way Lane threw down the challenge to Ball's leadership on Wednesday.  He voted with the opposition against his own caucus on an NDP motion about the budget. Then Lane announced he would be voting against the budget unless Ball made unspecified changes to the budget.

But Lane went a step further. He dared Ball to kick him out of the caucus:

Whether or not I remain a member of the Liberal caucus is totally in the premier’s hands. It’s not in mine. If the premier decides that he can’t have me there, I guess that’s his decision, and he’ll have to make that decision, he’ll have to stand by that decision.

That's not about Lane taking a position on a matter of principle. If Lane firmly believed the levy was such an evil thing, he'd cross the floor of his own accord. Weaseling about it, as Lane has done, is just a guy screwing over his colleagues. It's not brave. It's about the sort of pandering that got us in this financial mess in the first place.

A dose of reality for Lorraine and her friends #nlpoli

During Question Period in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Lorraine Michael asked the finance minister for the information that showed that 35% of the tax filers in the province account for 88% of the government's income tax revenue.

Lorraine should have been able to find the information for herself.

According to Statistics Canada (CANSIM 204-0001), the top 50% of tax filers in 2013 - all 197,380 of them - earned more than $31,400.  They paid an average of $14,200 in federal and provincial taxes and accounted for 94.8% of federal and provincial taxes.

So it isn't much of a stretch to see how a relatively small portion of the folks with an income in the province carry most of the tax burden.

The top 10% of tax filers in Newfoundland and Labrador  - 41,865 people - accounted for 51% of the federal and provincial taxes paid in 2013, the last year for which the table gives figures. They paid an average of $36,500 in federal and provincial income taxes. The thresh-hold to get into the 10% club was $89,200, which is less than Lorraine and her colleagues in the House receive as a base pay.

The median tax paid for the top 10% was $28,600.  That's an interesting figure because the median pre-tax income for the 418,000 or so people who filed taxes in this province in 2013 was $29,300.

But what about that One Percent Club?  Well,  the 3,135 folks who made more than $222,000 paid an average of $114,600 in taxes in 2013.  They accounted for 12.1% of federal and provincial taxes paid.

At the 50% level, 47% of the tax filing population paid 95% of the taxes.  Yes folks, that means about half the folks filing taxes accounted for about five percent of the government's total income tax haul.

At the 10% level, 10% of the tax filers covered 51% of the tax burden.

At the one percent level, 7.5% of the people filing taxes paid 12% of the taxes.

The information in plain view.  It's amazing that Lorraine and her friends find it so hard to believe there is no gigantic, secret stash of money hiding in the very small number of people who make a lot of money.

-srbp-

Six Rationalisations Pretending to Be Policy #nlpoli

Policy solves problems.

At it's simplest level,  policy answers a question.

Cancelling Muskrat Falls is a good example.  We are facing a financial crisis.  Muskrat Falls is a huge expense.  There's the problem.  Turn it into a question and it becomes whether or not we should cancel Muskrat Falls.

To answer the question, you'd have to look at other issues. Muskrat Falls  was supposed to be the answer to our power needs. We'd have to look at that issue:  do we need the power?  We'd have to look at finances:  can we afford it? What would it cost to take one course versus another?  We'd have to ask about legal implications:  what do our legal commitments say we must do?

Implicit in those questions is the idea of alternatives.  What choices do we have?

A written report on those questions would have some structure to it.  You'd expect it to start out with a clear statement of the question the author reviewed.  It might even be posed as three options: continuing as we are,  halting the project completely, or an intermediate options like slowing the project,  cancelling bits of it, and so on.

The paper would review the existing state of the project and then project ahead based on what we knew.  Then it would have to branch off from today to examine each of the answers to our string of questions.  Given the size of Muskrat Falls and the complexity of itl you'd imagine any serious discussion of cancelling the project would take months to prepare, would involve a great many people, and would certainly take more than 10 sheets of paper.  Just to make sure you appreciate the magnitude of what we are talking about, go back and look at just a tiny bit of the paperwork prepared for the public utilities board review of the project.  The Manitoba Hydro report was enormous.

Now read the 20% of a document prepared for Dwight Ball's cabinet released to CBC under the access to information law.This briefing note is apparently about the implications of cancelling the project.

Responsible Government #nlpoli

Many of you may not have heard of Jerry Dean until this past week.

Jerry is from Botwood. Last fall the people on Exploits district elected him as their member in the House of Assembly.  He's been a around the block a bit.  His official biography says he worked for Abitibi for 30 years and since 1997 he's been active on his town council and in some volunteer groups.

Last week Jerry said something in the House of Assembly that got some folks upset on Twitter. That helped get him some media attention  - here's the TransCon and CBC versions - and so the fellow has been getting a bit of a rough ride.

Up the harbour and down the shore... once more #nlpoli

Here's another one that started life as a column at the old Independent. 

And, as with "The politics of history" it can serve as a reminder of just how little has changed in local politics over a very long time.

In this case, it shows how little has changed in a very short time.

As it turned out, Danny Williams and his colleagues didn't create private sector jobs.  They created public sector ones that they knew were unsustainable. 

The politics of history (again) #nlpoli

Originally written for The Independent in 2003 "The politics of history" has become a post that continues to resonate with your humble e-scribbler if no one else. it first appeared in July 2005, came back in a reprint in 2010, and now re-appears once more.

Some of you will have read it at least once before. I you recall it, then you will probably feel those uncomfortable sensations of familiarity as you look at politics today and then think back on the recent past. Readers who have only recently discovered these scribbles will hopefully get a jolt out of it to make you think about the repeating patterns in local political rhetoric. 

Clearly we are not on a mere merry-go-round of words.  We are on one in which ideas and actions come back again and again.  The time between the repetitions seems to be decreasing. There is one glaring error in the post.  Voters are not getting better at spotting the charlatans. They embrace them more fervently than ever.

Stunnel mania #nlpoli

Right off the bat, let's fess up to a mistake.

The 2004 research into the Stunnel cost "cost a total of $351,674, with a contribution of $281,339 from ACOA and $70,335 from the province." You can find the figures in the original news release from February 2004.

That means that the latest study into the potential for a fixed link between the Great Northern Peninsula and Quebec is a bit more than double the cost of the 2004 study.  But notice that the province is going it alone this time and to the tune of 10 times what it cost the provincial government more than decade ago to get to the same place.

In other words, the fixed link to the mainland is technically feasible but economically nutty.

Choices and values: ideologically-driven nonsense versus reality #nlpoli

Memorial University history professor Robert Sweeny discovered something recent.  he discovered that the finance minister's budget speech and the Estimates contained two different sets of numbers.

Hot on the trail of this discrepancy,  Sweeny delved deeper. He clacked out a really long account - even by SRBP standards - of his search for the truth. Then the folks at theindependent.ca  posted the whole thing including a very big table documenting how some parts of the government were getting less money and others were getting more.

There was only one conclusion.  Well, only one for Sweeny.  This was all part of a vast international conspiracy.  "Cathy Bennett, the fast-food millionaire, has pulled a fast one on the public,"  concluded Sweeney. "The finance minister is either incompetent or dishonest—take your choice—but she most definitely must be held accountable, as too must Premier Ball. The very quality of our democracy depends on it."

If the quality of our democracy depends on the melodramatic twaddle Sweeny is peddling, then we are royally shagged.

Measuring Thick: either or edition #nlpoli

While Des Whelan was clacking out his column for Saturday's Telegram one of the editors -  Brian Jones  - came at the government's financial mess from another direction the day before.

In the bizarro world of local politics,  people think that Des Whelan and the business crowd are on the Right while Jones and his friends in the NDP and the public sector unions are the Left.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as some famous politician once said.

"Bennett and Ball’s first tough decision was straightforward,"  wrote Jones. "It was to determine who is more important: the people of this province, or the credit-rating agencies in New York?"

It's telling that Jones sees it as a choice of one or the other. It's also revealing that he found it hard to watch what Jones described as "trolls, Liberal diehards and people secretly ashamed of having voted for Ball spout predictable putdowns."

What was his example of a put-down?  “'What’s your solution?' they demand, as if any and all alternative suggestions are automatically unrealistic and impossible."

If that is an insult, poor Jones isn't going to want to read any further.

Measuring Thick: business edition #nlpoli

You cannot manage what you cannot measure, says Des Whelan, president of the Board of Trade this year.  Des gets a column in the province's largest daily newspaper.

Des is right.  You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Unfortunately for Des, we can measure the Board of Trade's record on the public sector spending, debt, and policies over the past decade.

We call the measure  Thick.

Thick measures 4.

Hole in ground to give Labrador "advantage of fixed link" to mainland: premier #nlpoli

The provincial government will spend $750,000 this year to study the feasibility of digging a hole from the Great Northern Peninsula to Blanc Sablon, in Quebec.

SRBP told you on Tuesday that the goof-ball idea - last dismissed as a waste of money in 2005 - will get another check to see if any of the stupid has worn off it in the past 11 years.

The goofiness doesn't end there.

The feasibility study came up in the House of Assembly on Thursday.

Apparently, the people of Labrador need a fixed link from the island to the mainland. People are wrong to dismiss the idea as a waste of money. That would deny the people of Labrador of a great opportunity.

Here's Premier Dwight Ball defending the feasibility study:

For the Member opposite to simply to say that it is a waste of money, to give the Labrador portion of this province the opportunity to see the advantage of a fixed link.

Doesn't Labrador already have a fixed link to the mainland?

Just a question.

The other side of the hill - choices and values 2 #nlpoli

Wednesday's post - Choices and values - came from the perspective of someone outside the echo chamber of politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ordinary voters - who mostly do not work for the government -  don't feel like the pain from this budget is shared fairly by all.  They just don't believe any assurances that everyone else will feel comparable pain in the future.

But on the other side of the hill, the politicians have a perspective that we shouldn't ignore either.

Choices and values #nlpoli

Gerry Rogers, a New Democrat member of the House of Assembly, got a bit enthusiastic on Twitter the other night about "building [a] budget fr[om] set of values/priorities," as if that wasn't what every budget is.

David Easton, the American political scientist, described politics as "the authoritative allocation of values."  A budget is the way the government puts its financial resources to work to accomplish its goals.  The budget is a visible symbol of the political system at work.  it shows you what the politicians think is most important. The budget shows you what the politicians value.

In their hour-long show on CBC Monday night,  Premier Dwight Ball and finance minister Cathy Bennett talked about their values a lot.  You might have had to listen to find them buried under a bit of bureaucratic jargon but they are there.  You'll also have to look past false choices, as in Bennett's claim on Monday that the only alternative to the levy was "some type of [additional] cuts, and that wasn't something at this particular point that we thought made sense."

Province to spend $750K to study feasibility of hole in the ground #nlpoli

At a time when the provincial government does not have any money to spend foolishly, it is hard to fathom why cabinet is taxing books to raise $1.0 million and yet spending $750,000 through the Environment and Conservation department to update a feasibility study done in 2004 into building a tunnel to connect the Great Northern Peninsula to Labrador.

It is putting a tax on knowledge to pay for stupidity.

We are talking about the Stunnel, or Stunned Tunnel. Regular readers will recall the Stunnel idea got some powerful support in 2003.  You'll find a post in 2005 that described the project as it stood a year or two earlier:

The Stunnel "would cost $1.3 billion or thereabouts. It would need an average of 1400 cars travelling across it per day, with a peak of 3, 000 per day, in order to be viable. Proponents also claim it would produce upwards of 40, 000 direct and indirect job during construction, although this would last for a total of three years. Using the ever popular argument, proponents say the Stunnel would be an engineering marvel and attract tourists from around the world. "

The original feasibility study cost only $100,000. As SRBP summarised in early 2005,  the study concluded you could build the cheapest option - a bored tunnel that ran an electric train back and forth - for about $1.7 billion. The government would have to put in pretty much all of that and it would take 11 years to finish.

We don't need to spend seven and a half times that much to figure out how crazy the Stunnel idea still is.

A cut too far #nlpoli

There's a scene in the movie A Bridge too far where the British soldiers are trying to push down a road as part of a major attack on the Germans in September 1944.

The whole plan was built, according to the movie, around dropping parachute troops at key bridges and then having ground troops charge along a single road.  The soldiers on the ground had 48 hours to get to the last of the airborne soldiers, who were at Arnhem.  They didn't make it, hence the idea that the plan always involved going one bridge too far.

There are wrecks everywhere and the dead are everywhere after the first clash in the campaign.  As soldiers clear the way and take away the wounded, one officer looks up at another who is sitting on a scout car.  How do the generals expect them to keep up the pace under these conditions, the fellow asks looking up.  The fellow sitting on the armoured car has his binoculars and is scanning the road ahead.  J.O.E Vandeleur,  played by Michael Caine, looks down at his cousin, Giles,  and says:

"You don't know the worst. This bit we're on now?"

"Yes,"  says Giles, quizzically.

"It's the wide part."

Flying the checklist - Government's comms problem Part II #nlpoli

The Liberals under Dwight Ball have had a steady run of problems with managing issues, policies, and positions.  The current mess they face with the 2016 budget is really nothing more than a very big version of the problems they have had continuously for the past 18 months.

Last year, some Liberals thought they had solved the problems by changing around some people who had the word "communication" in their job title. Nothing changed. That confirms that the problem isn't at the level of the people they changed around. The problem is higher up the decision-making chain and has much more to do with how the Liberals look at the world than it is with how a particular staffer does a job.

That was the point in Tuesday's post.  Today, we are going to look at another aspect of the Liberal problem, namely the organisation they have taken over in government.

Not fit for it, indeed #nlpoli

Once upon a time not so long ago, you would think politics in this province was a mash up of  Nineteen eighty-four and Animal Farm.

These days,  the Orwellian times in which Danny Williams thrived seem a kindergarten compared to the Franz Kafka novel which we now inhabit.

"Before any election the [Auditor General] should make public the financial state of the province,"  some fellow said on Twitter Wednesday morning. 

"This should be done yearly by a non-partisan person. hold the gov accountable, TO US VOTERS,"  said another fellow in reply.

"It's already done,"  said one of the Known Critics.  "It's called the Public Accounts [issued by the Auditor General every year]."

"REALLY???"  replied the US VOTERS guy.  "Liberals say this, PC'S say that.. which is it? who do ya believe?"

Winston Churchill and taxes (revised and updated) #nlpoli

You have probably seen the quote and a picture of Winston Churchill flying around Facebook or Twitter since the provincial government introduced its budget in the House of Assembly a couple of weeks ago.

"For a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."  Winston Churchill.

People don't like the massive jump in taxes and the creation of new fees and charges like the levy. They pass this around as their statement of protest.

Three things to know about the quote, besides the fact that Cathy Bennett used it in the budget debate last year to argue against a hike in the HST:

MQO poll shows big Liberal slide #nlpoli

Just for the fun of comparison, here's the CRA polling results for a year covering the last time the provincial government saw a change of party and the new crowd introduced a killer budget no one expected.

The Conservatives dropped from 55 points in November 2003 to 33 points in May of the next year.

They only climbed out of the hole by abandoning their austerity program and launching a costly jihad against Ottawa.

Delivering a bad budget is one thing.  Delivering a bad budget very badly is something else entirely.

That's why, As bad as the polling numbers are for the Liberals in MQO's April 2016 poll, there is nothing in it that's surprising to anyone paying attention to local politics.

The Government's ongoing Communications Problem - the political side #nlpoli

To understand the communications problem the Liberal administration faces,  look at the first and so far only decision they have taken on communications to date.

Everything stays just as it is.

Nothing changes.

Nobody changes.

The official excuse a Liberal minister will offer when asked is that the cost of severance would be too great to get rid of them all.

But as bizarre as it was to leave directors of communications for Conservative Premiers in charge of communications for a new Liberal administration, the partisan bias of some of the folks in the jobs isn't the point.

The problem is that their entire approach to communications has been an obvious, dismal failure for five years.  Today, we'll take a look at the political problem the Liberals have.  On Friday, we'll dissect the Conservative mess the Liberals continue to use.

Ring access ruling blames wrong culprit #nlpoli

To understand why access commissioner Ed Ring's ruling issued last Monday was troubling, you have to know some back story.

Ring was ruling in an investigation over an access request for two reports that should be in the Premier's Office.  An access request for copies of the reports got the reply that the office doesn't have them.  The actual response used the bureaucratic phrase "no responsive records."

Whoever went looking for the records appealed to Ring, Ring's office investigated, and then the report came out.  Ring chastised the Premier's Office for not keeping better track of its stuff.  In essence, he laid the blame for the missing files on the current crowd in the office.

That's wrong.

More worrying wobbles #nlpoli

You have to get very seriously concerned when a cabinet minister can't or won't answer a simple question that has only one, simple, direct answer.

Next week,  the provincial government,  the province's access to information commissioner, and some agencies will appear in court to deal with an application from the teacher's union and the nurses' union to roll back the clock on the public's right to know. Bill 29 did not go far enough for them.

The law says what it has always said:  the public can find out the name of the person in a public service position, the position the person occupies, and the remuneration the person gets for doing the job.  It's a fundamental point and the words are written plainly, in black letters, in the current access to information law, just as they have been in every access law since the first one in 1981.

Asked about the challenge to public access to information from some public sector unions,  Siobhan Coady told the Telegram's James McLeod "I will talk to Justice on what their position is, and I’ll have to get back to you on Monday."

How exactly can the minister responsible for the public's right to know not know what the government position will be?

Seriously.

Not just another pretty face #nlpoli

Stan Marshall is the guy who should have been running Nalcor in the first place.

Well,  if you wanted to make a successful business out of Nalcor, Marshall is the no-guff leader you'd want.

Marshall's resume speaks for itself.  His knowledge of the electricity business is unrivalled in the province. His experience in running a profitable corporation and expanding it internationally is undeniable.   During his 20 years at the helm of Fortis,  as the Telegram's Ashley Fitzpatrick reported in 2014, Marshall grew the company's assets from $1.0 billion to more than $18 billion.

Offense and Defense #nlpoli

If you're not on offense, you are on defense.

And in politics, if you are on defense, you are losing.

The Liberals wound up on the defensive yet again Wednesday with the resignation of Ed Martin and the entire Nalcor board.

To be sure, Williams-era appointees like Martin or former board chair Ken Marshall have been responsible for the mess that is Muskrat Falls. The province will be better off seeing the backside of them if only because they can no longer make a very bad situation they alone created all the worse.

The political problem for Premier Dwight Ball and the Liberals is in how Martin left.

Getting while the getting is good. #nlpoli

As if on cue,  Danny Williams' publicist tweeted praise for Ed Martin as soon as news broke that Danny Williams' right-hand for so many years was leaving the energy corporation Williams created.

Almost an hour later, she flipped out a statement from the former Premier himself praising Martin, Nalcor, and Muskrat Falls in terms that were eerily similar to ones Premier Dwight Ball had used when he announced Martin was leaving Wednesday morning.

Reporters raced across town in a late winter storm to get from Ball's scrum to hear what Martin would say. Martin began with a recitation of his accomplishments and threw heaps of praise at the men and women of Nalcor.  He spoke in the most glowing terms of everything Nalcor was doing including Muskrat Falls.

And then he explained that he was leaving.

Time to go.

In 2010,  shortly after unveiling Muskrat Falls,  Danny Williams quit suddenly, unexpectedly too.

Time to go, he'd said.

Actions and words #nlpoli

The provincial cabinet has known since January - at least - that the powerhouse at Muskrat Falls is only 15% completed despite a huge payout to the contractor.

That's what Nalcor reported to the committee of provincial bureaucrats named by the Conservatives to get a report from Nalcor every now and again.  They can't do anything else except receive the reports and pass them on to cabinet.  They still do it under the Liberals.

The company hired by cabinet to conduct yet another review of information supplied by Nalcor that government already had included a little table of progress on major components at Muskrat Falls.  The powerhouse is a major component.

But it isn't on EY's table, shown at right and released earlier this month.  It's lumped in with "spillway" and shows it is supposedly almost 40% complete.

There's a lot of difference between 15 and 40.

Responsibility #nlpoli

In the middle of all the screaming as the government unveiled its budget on Thursday,  the editor of a regional business magazine asked,  apparently in all seriousness,  "Biggest question of #Budget2016, How did NO ONE know that prev gov't spending was so out of line with revenues?"

Writing from her sabbatical in far-off England,  a CBC reporter with more than 20 years experience offered that the budget had "the reek of the wickedest hangover after a long, massive binge to end all binges."

"In 23 years in the biz,"  said the one to the other,  "what I'm seeing from afar looks like no other budget I've ever seen."  

"Same,"  said the other to the one.  "I've been following budgets around Atlantic Canada for 18 years and can't remember anything quite like this."

The simple observation on the second point is that we have seen budgets precisely like this one before, at least in the extent that it raised taxes and fees on all sorts of things.  We went through it routinely in the 1970s and in the 1980s and even into the early 1990s.  Budgets just like this one are well within the experience of both those observers' lifespans in this province and certainly within their professional lifespans.

So in observing the observers,  your humble e-scribbler found their shock a wee bit curious.  The only thing that was even more bizarre was the question about how no one had seen any of this coming.

The Austerity Budget Pantomime #nlpoli

According to the Oxford dictionary, financial austerity means "difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure."

Reduce government spending.

Three key words.

The most important is reduce,  meaning to lower or to  lessen.

Keep that in mind.

The Rasputisa and the 2016 Budget #nlpoli

The speech finance minister Cathy Bennett read in the House of Assembly on Thursday was as horrible as the reaction most of the province have been having to it.

That's not surprising given that the entire budget communications program was the product of precisely the same folks who delivered repeated political and policy disasters for the former Conservative administration.  And if that wasn't bad enough, everyone - the Liberals included  - picked the anniversary of the Titanic disaster to deliver a very hard budget.

To get a sense of the problems with Thursday's budget, take a look at two fine examples of just how politically tone deaf the speech was.

The first one:  "As our Premier has said, knee-jerk reactions have created mistakes that, unfortunately, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are paying for now."

Bennett's speech writer didn't give an example so folks will likely fill in their own.

The Incrementalists #nlpoli

Today is budget day.

There's been lots of speculation flying around, most of it a confirmation that people have little real information about anything. If you have been paying attention, though, you can probably make a fairly good guess at what Thursday's budget will look like.

What follows is based entirely on what Dwight Ball and his ministers have done and said in public, combined with a general knowledge of the provincial economy, the budget process and that sort of thing.

Read this now and in a few hours you can see how close this is to the actual budget.

The Rasputitsa #nlpoli

Before we even get into this, let's be clear:  the EY review commissioned by the provincial government was never, ever about cancelling Muskrat Falls.

Not even remotely or theoretically.

Dwight Ball said so in December:  "cancelling this project is not what this review is about.”

The provincial government just wanted the external contractor to give it a better sense of what the project would finally cost.  Faced with a record deficit on top of the government's financial problems, the Liberals wanted to know how much they were on the hook for.

That's it.

Bring out yer dead #nlpoli

In the end there was something perfectly fitting in the way New Democrats dumped their failed leader.

Every pundit around and lots of New Democrats believed that Mulcair would easily pass the leadership test.  They figured he'd have no problem getting close to the 70% vote against a leadership convention.

Last fall, all sorts of people  - including a raft of New Democrats - assumed the party would coast to victory in the general election.  Just 30 more seats to go they told us just before the vote.

And in both cases,  the result was quite the opposite of what everyone believed.

The value of inquiry #nlpoli

Information is good.

Information is the basis of knowledge.

Information is also power.

That's why people who have information don't want others to have it.

The power that comes from knowing is why some politicians, government officials and others, historically, have raised all sorts of objections to laws that allow people to obtain government information.  They like the fact that they have power and they aren't anxious to let others have it

Sun burn #nlpoli

On Friday morning, Memorial University political scientist Amanda Bittner told a CBC Radio audience that the Telegram’s government-compiled list of public servants making more than $100,000 a year served no useful purpose.

Lists like this are often called "sunshine" lists after the first one, published in Ontario since 1996.

Bittner dismissed the results of a dozen access to information requests as nothing more than a "patchwork" of information in a  “random Google document.”

On Saturday,  the Telegram showed how stunningly wrong Bittner was.