One Danny does Two Ronnies #nlpoli

In an exclusive interview, VOCM's Fred Hutton caught up with Danny Williams to talk about Williams' latest project.

The former premier is teaming up with his old sidekick Ed Martin to headline a Florida dinner theatre tribute to the late, diminutive comedian Ronnie Corbett.

One Danny does Two Ronnies will premiere on the Labour Day weekend at his new dinner theatre in St. Petersburg.

Williams said he was looking forward to being back in the limelight.

He said that he is working on plans to tour arts and culture centres in Newfoundland and Labrador with the show in 2017 as the opening act on a triple bill with Anna McGoldrick and the Carlton Showband.

-srbp-

Good-bye John #nlpoli

In their last year in office, the provincial Conservatives went on a patronage bend on top of the patronage bender they started in 2003.  They came into office promising reform and - you guessed it - did exactly the opposite.  If there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept, then then Old Man and his cronies were the biggest political fraudsters in the history of political fraud.

We told you about this last July when Paul Davis appointed political operative John Ottenheimer to replace political operative Len Simms as head of the provincial government's housing corporation. After the Ottenheimer appointment, Davis and the Conservatives kept going with the questionable appointments.  The swap of the chief judge in Provincial Court remains highly suspicious and unexplained, as does the sudden firing of the High Sheriff.  The former is one the new Liberal administration genuinely could not do anything about.  The former High Sheriff is now suing the provincial government for wrongful dismissal.

The Liberals could have and should have done something about all the others.  It was a way of setting a new tone for their administration and demonstrating that things that are wrong cannot stand.  For some unknown reason, Dwight Ball would not commit to reversing the Ottenheimer appointment  - on principle - when Davis made it a year ago. When he took office, Dwight Ball decided to leave not only Ottenheimer but all the other Conservatives appointees in place.  And when he unveiled the new appointments commission, Ball had a third opportunity to set a new standard for government appointments by getting rid of the old, wrong ones.

He didn't.

Now, Ball has punted John Ottenheimer.  We do not know why.  No one from the provincial government did any interviews. The minister responsible for the housing corporation issued a news release announcing Ottenheimer's replacement.  Everything else that we know - including the size of Ottenheimer's severance - came from Ottenheimer himself.

How many days does a Provincial Court sit? #nlpoli

If you listen to some people,  Provincial Courts in the province are seriously overloaded such that with the loss of a couple of court houses - not judges, but buildings - we could see cases running upwards of 49 months or more and therefore causing massive constitutional problems.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, as statistics on Provincial Courts show.

Some others would have you believe the courts cannot become any more efficient than they are.

Again.  Truth.  That claim.  Not even close to the same thing.

So what is the sitch in the courts?

Justice and the budget #nlpoli

The latest in a string of little budget dramas ended on Friday afternoon. A group of lawyers that included former Conservative party president John Babb launched a court case to try and force the provincial government to re-open the courthouse in Harbour Grace.  So Friday afternoon ,  justice minister Andrew Parsons announced that the government had decided to reverse the decision to close the court buildings in Wabush and Harbour Grace.

Parsons said the government had managed to find savings to offset the cost of opening the courts. He also said the government would keep the courthouses open to avoid running afoul of  a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in  R.v. Jordan.  Babb made the same argument about the need for the courthouse in Harbour Grace.

Both Babb and Parsons know that the entire dispute here is over a building and a couple of jobs that go with it.  They also know that the particular building makes absolutely no difference to scheduling a trial.  And therefore, they both know that the SCC decision in Jordan had nothing to do - truthfully - with  Parsons' decision.  Why they said something other than the truth on Friday is another matter. 

In-house and cheap #nlpoli

Provincial government communications consists chiefly of making up vacuous comments for ministers to recite.

They are called key messages.  In the uncomms-speak of the government bureaucrats,  they are KMs, pronounced Kay-Emmzzz.

On Thursday, two rating agencies downgraded the province's rating with a negative outlook.  Not surprising but definitely not helpful since the government has already exhausted its political capital for nothing thanks to the complete disaster last spring.

Anyway, let's take a look at what Moody's said about the government's finances.  Specifically let's look at what they said about the negative trending.

The future of the information commissioner #nlpoli

Donovan Molloy will be the new information and privacy commissioner.  He'll do a fine job, to be sure, but there is something about the appointment that seems a waste of the talents of a fellow who has been the director of public prosecutions.

He'd have made a fine judge, but the last time he applied for that position Molloy got screwed over by the guy in charge at the time.  Eventually, the former deputy minister of justice managed to get himself appointed to a seat where - as he well knew - we didn't need a judge at all.  

And about 11 days after that,  the chief suddenly and for no apparent reason quit his job as chief judge. Cabinet replaced him just as quickly and with no reason whatsoever vaulted his wife - the third most junior judge on the provincial bench at the time - to replace him. 

All very odd, if not downright suspicious.  

Molloy would have also made a fine deputy justice minister.  Too late for that now.

The New Approach in Uncommunication #nlpoli

There are times when you look at a government news release and just laugh.

Apparently, people who catch fish illegally are now called "abusers."

The gang at fish and wildlife caught a few of these "abusers",  according to the release, and these people are now facing charges related "to illegal poaching."

Okay.

No qualified candidates? What nonsense. #nlpoli

Let's make two things clear at the outset.

First, the Globe and Mail is a rag.  It's reputation has more to do with snobbery than the quality of its content.

So right away, that the Toronto rag  wrote a story about the fact there are no candidates from Newfoundland and Labrador in the finals for the Supreme Court seat vacancy is the political, intellectual, and legal equivalent of some entertainment television show telling us anything about anyone named Kardashian.

Second, no one ought to be named to the Supreme Court of Canada based on their province of residence.  The qualifications for sitting on the highest court in the country ought to be about anything but something that has nothing to do with knowledge of the law, sound judgement,  belief in justice or any of the other qualities we would cherish in a judge.

With that said,  it is preposterous that there are no qualified candidates for the SCC from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Utter nonsense.

The historic franchise decision #nlpoli

Tuesday was one of the most important anniversaries in our political history.

As labradore reminded everyone, July 19 was the 70th anniversary of the day on which residents of Labrador - male and female alike - were able to voted in elections in the place then known as Newfoundland.

We mark the anniversary of the dates when women gained the right to vote.  Well, in Newfoundland and Labrador we should do something to recognise the date on which the Commission Government enfranchised an entire swath of people who had previously been left out solely because of where they lived in the country.

Talk about a colonial mentality.

-srbp-

Apologise for what? #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Government of Canada never operated a single residential school for aboriginal people in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Not one.

That's why aboriginal people in this province weren't included in the settlement of the class action lawsuit several years ago and why they were excluded from the apology that went with the settlement.

The  recent settlement of a claim by aboriginal people in this province was an effort to make the lawsuit go away and in the process, the Government Canada:

• effectively absolved the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador of its legal and ethical obligation to all the people who attended residential schools under its exclusive jurisdiction and who suffered physical, sexual,  and psychological abuse at the hands of individuals at the schools, and,
• ignored people who are not aboriginal who suffered abuse in schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.  They will get nothing.

Now there's talk of an apology.

There should be one, but it should not be coming from Ottawa.  The only apology that means anything at all should come from the government legally and ethically responsible for running or overseeing the residential schools involved.

And someone needs to extend compensation to the non-aboriginal people who suffered abuse as well.

To do anything else is to perpetuate an injustice while making amends for another.

-srbp-

 

The right decision on shrimp #nlpoli

On the surface, it looks like a classic political compromise.  The federal government caved to political pressure and reallocated the shrimp quota to give more to the inshore sector.  But, they also lowered the shrimp quota by 42%, consist with the reduction in the stock since 2014.

Not surprisingly,  news of the quota reduction brought complaints from the fisheries union.  It remains, even without Earle McCurdy,  one of the most backward and reactionary agencies in the province. We have too many people in the industry chasing a dwindling resource but the fisheries union does not case about the sustainability of the industry.  The fisheries union and its political allies have no interest in reforming the industry into one that is sustainable and profitable for all those involved.

Donald Trump is a bad role model

One after another, folks who'd posted this Clinton ad to youtube either took it down or made it private.

Well, here is is from Hilary Clinton's youtube account. That one won't be going away. The latest Clinton ad is very simple and very effective.

Like a couple of recent Clinton ads, this one lets Donald Trump speak for himself.  That should have a strengthen Clinton voters and shake up undecideds and anyone leaning weakly either to Clinton or Trump.

These ads are not aimed at Trumpers.  The hard core Trump voters already love this kind of stuff.  This is part of the "telling it like it is" that they eat up. Everyone else either cringes at him already or has the capacity to at least shiver a bit when they hear some of this crap.

In an earlier version of this post, it read that the ads would have a "devastating" impact on Clinton voters. Some people didn't get the intended meaning, which, in hindsight was wrong.   This ad should reinforce Clinton voters and get to everyone except the hard core Trump voters.

-srbp-

If Jesus understood public relations... #nlpoli

Jesus understood public relations.

John 10:25 (Authorised Version)

Are you the Saviour?  Tell us plainly.

"I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me."

Saying something isn't as important as doing it. Actions speak louder than words. This is a really simple idea but you'd be astonished at how many people do not get it.

Dwight Ball isn't any saviour;  no politician is.  But given the massive hole Dwight is in, he'd do well to take some advice from Jesus.

Being there #nlpoli

Thursday is July 14.

Bastille Day.

It's also another anniversary.

Dwight Ball has been in office seven months.

In the latest edition of The Overcast, publisher Chad Pelley asks "What do we do if Dwight Ball resigns?"

That's a  reminder of where we are in this province.  A mere seven months into his first term, after winning a comfortably-large majority government,  people are demanding that Dwight Ball resign.  In the most recent poll Ball's personal popularity is south of 20%.  His party is in the same neighbourhood as is the level of satisfaction with his administration.

There is no precedent since 1949.   No precedent for the dramatic drop in a Premier's public support. No precedent for the calls that Ball resign.

And certainly no precedent for an article with that title that isn't panicked at the prospect the Premier might resign.

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?"