The polls remain discouraging for Liberals #nlpoli

Heading into their convention this weekend,  the provincial Liberals have another poll that confirms what all the other polls have said for the past six months or so.

For those misled by reports about the MQO poll like CBC's initial one, see the bit down below.

Here's what you get when you take all the polls over the past six months together,  and make allowances for variations like the margin of error.

Three points:

• Only about 16% of respondents think Dwight Ball is the best choice for leader.
• If an election were held tomorrow,  somewhere between 20% and 25% of voters would pick the Liberal.  
•  About 60% of people think the government is headed in the wrong direction.

Not good.

All the reboots and changes and visions have done precisely nothing to change public attitudes about the Liberals and their leader.

How much do we owe? #nlpoli

CBC Radio Noon had board of trade president Des Whalen in the studio on Monday.  

Board of Trade thinks the debt is about $13 billion today.  Don't talk about Muskrat Falls.  That's in the past.  Yeah, well, when your humble e-scribbler challenged Des on the numbers the best he could come up with was "it's a really big number."

Kid you not.  That was all he had.

For the record, here's a table that shows the provincial government's total liabilities, taken from the annual Auditor General's reports.

If you cannot make out the picture as it is, you can click on it or read on for the high points.

The total of everything you owe, right now,  is about $29 billion. The St. John's Board of Trade says it is only $13 billion.  Yes,  well it hasn't really been that number low 2004.  The Board of Trade's favourite project - Muskrat Falls  - adds another $15 billion onto that $13 billion right there. Whelan got hung up on the idea the other crowd actually reduced debt.  The numbers make it plain that they didn't.  There's $28 billion without batting an eyelid.

Things get worse from here.

The Muskrat Circus rolls back into town #nlpoli

Stan Marshall appeared out of the shadows on Tuesday to do a round of interviews with every media outlet in town.

He told NTV what he told everyone else:  the cost of the protests and the environmental work coming from the agreement that ended the protests will slow the project and cost money.  Stan also said something that is true but that upset a lot of people.  We don't know for sure that the clearing  called for under the agreement will actually reduce the methylmercury output from the project.

In the CBC version of his interview, Marshall acknowledged that the folks at Nalcor hadn't always done a good job of explaining what was going on with the project.  Marshall pointed out something that is both undeniable and true:  lots of people involved in the protests really had no idea what methylmercury was. They were legitimately afraid but they were afraid of the unknown.

Building higher walls #nlpoli

A new government security policy does everything short of banning people from Confederation Building altogether.  Visitors to the main government building in St. John's now have to enter through a single entrance in the basement of the building at the back.  There's no parking available and the whole thing is so congested that on busy days people will have to line up out through the door into the parking lot to get into the building.

The real reason for the change is budgetary.  The politicians can save a few bucks by cutting off public access to the Confederation Building through one or two doors. Tight behind that as a reason for the new policy was a poop-in-the-shorts over-reaction to the recent protests.

So out-to-lunch are the folks behind this scheme that they forced toddlers from the staff daycare to make the trek outdoors to the entrance on the other side of the building when they tried to go on a parade through the building to show off their Hallowe'en costumes on Monday.

Just to show you how crazy the Poopy-Pants Brigade are about this security stuff,  take a look at the hastily scribbled sketch at the right. Confederation Building day care is located behind the East Block in a space that used to be occupied by the roads testing crowd from motor vehicle licencing.

To get in the main building,  the kids have been traipsing for years along the short route to where the X is.  This year the urchins had to take the other red line around to the only way visitors are now allowed in the building.

Mind you, the official reason for the policy is - as James McLeod reported in the Telegram on Saturday - concern about the safety of our politicians.  "Multiple sources also indicated that government MHAs have recently been receiving death threats,"  McLeod wrote.

"The number of threats that are coming in to MHAs is really, really ramping up. There is a significant risk threat,” one source said.

And, at that point,  you should smell a rat.

Ball, Bennett, Williams, and Marshall #nlpoli

One of the things finance minister Cathy Bennett told NTV's Issues and Answers this weekend was that the Premier Dwight Ball scrapped the fall mini-budget in September in favour of his own Grand Strategy for Moving Forward in a Generally Advancing Fashion with Vision.

Ball scrapped the financial course laid out in the budget because of the way people reacted badly to it. If anyone asked Ball asked him about it,  he would deny the polls had anything to do with the change of plans. Then again, last week's marathon meeting had nothing to do with protesters at Muskrat Falls either.

The change of direction actually happened much earlier than September.  Dwight Ball made it pretty clear last summer he'd reverted to his old plan.  That consisted of keeping government on the strategic course the Conservatives set in 2006ish:  spend as much as possible and change government organisation and spending only by the smallest necessary to shift money from one spot and put into another.

Sunshine, lollipops, and fluffy kittens #nlpoli

Finance minister Cathy Bennett read words that tried to make the provincial government's financial situation sound better than it was forecast to be last spring.

For all the wonderful words in Bennett's scripted remarks, Bennett could not hide the truth. Her tone of voice was more sombre and depressed than if Premier Dwight Ball had been there himself - rather than in Ottawa for a Memorial University fund raising dinner - and had done his very best Eeyore impression. Bennett was so stiff and wooden in her delivery that it seemed like her motions were written down as well, in stage directions: "As you can see from the slide  [look at slide,  pause,  then look back at script]...".

Then there was the bizarre bit at the end where Bennett thanked people. The reference to her cabinet and caucus colleagues, in the back of the room, seemed like a very obvious attempt to make it appear that they were firmly behind the government's actions. It was so obvious though that it would have the opposite effect.

Three for Thursday #nlpoli

Quebec opposes more federal cash for Muskrat Falls

The Government of Quebec has always opposed federal loan guarantees for Muskrat Falls on the grounds that it skews the hydro playing field.  This week, they just renewed their objections as the provincial government tries to score a second $5.0 billion guarantee.

Speaking of Ottawa and the loan guarantee,  Dwight Ball is skipping the financial update this morning to go to Ottawa.  Ball's doing a Memorial University alumni dinner but is he going to meet with anyone to talk financial aid for the province?

Expect as much sunshine as they can imagine

The midyear financial update is coming at 11:00 AM this morning.  There was supposed to be some word on the gas tax.  Expect some concrete information on when they will start to eliminate it. Invariably the provincial spring budget contains some fictitious numbers.  Over the past decade the government loved to low-ball tax revenues.  This would inflate the deficit and make it look much better at Christmas time, when the Conservatives used to do the mid-year update.  We might see a few of those little surprises.

What you will most definitely not here is any talk of cuts to spending by the government.  Those days are over.  And if finance minister Cathy Bennett hints at cuts, expect a long season of protests from now to the spring as people apply the Mustafa Principle in spades.

The Mustafa Principle #nlpoli

Go back to Friday's post about false choices.

That's where you will find the explanation for the 11 hour marathon meeting.  The final agreement is more about the Premier's need to appear to be in control than it is about the substance of the decision.  That's because the government had already agreed to the major demand for clearing.

This was always a simple choice between clearing or not clearing the Muskrat Falls reservoir area of soil and trees before the final flooding.  In the meantime, Nalcor needed to hold back water to avoid an accidental, uncontrolled flood that would damage the work site.

The government accepted the major demand last week when they accepted the notion of some clearing of soil and vegetation.  Some morphed to all in the final version and, in the meantime, Nalcor gets to carry out its planned hold-back of water.

So what changed?

Truth and Reconciliation #nlpoli

Long ago, so long ago no one remembers when, they did away with Virtue in Newfoundland​ politics.  To be on the safe side, they slit the throats of her twins, Truth and Justice, and tossed the little corpses on top of their mother's still-moving body before leaving the three in a shallow, unmarked grave in the woods.

Newfoundland politics is a daily metaphor of that Original Sin. This fall, we are seeing the crime repeated everywhere with more people drawn in than ever before. Such is the power of modern media.  Such is the state of democracy that mortal sin, like political power, is no longer the exclusive domain of the rich and powerful.  Everyone can get their taste.

There is no monument to Virtue and her murdered children but if Muskrat Falls is ever finished, we can perhaps use it to remember what happened, who was involved, and why.  That is the only way you can reconcile,  the only way you can sincerely balance the accounts  - financial, historical, political - one with the other.

Small town politics in the big city newspapers #nlpoli

The federal Liberals created a new process to pick judges for federal court appointments.  The process - as the Globe pointed out on Thursday - was to ensure they could ensure future appointments would be more reflective of the diversity of the country.

On Saturday,  the Globe editorial praised the recent announcement of a white, middle-aged man  - with no experience on the bench before taking a politically-soaked appointment to the trial division in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001  - as the first appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada from the far eastern province.

This appointment, heralded widely in Newfoundland as recognition of the province's identity, was not a case of playing identity politics, according to the Globe editorialist.

And,  the appointment of yet another grey-haired white guy was an affirmation of the government's new diversity process in appointments.  This was a triumph of qualifications over political connections, the Globe stated emphatically even though there is no evidence that what the Globe said is true or that the person who wrote the editorial was not under duress, mentally impaired, or drunk at the time.

A vintage Globe performance all-'round, in other words.

The editorial is quite obviously the result of something other than an unbiased assessment of anything.

But is it the result of some connections between the Globe and the folks behind the appointment?

Or is it yet another case of the Toronto Globe passive-aggressively poking at the Toronto Star?

You see The Star featured a story on Friday about newly minted Supreme Court Justice Malcom Rowe's decision in R v. S.B, a 2016 case from the Court of Appeal in which Rowe wrote the decision for the court.

The three justices on the panel criticized the trial judge for allowing the defendant's lawyer to read to the jury sexually explicit texts between the complainant and her lover as well as the graphic transcript of a consensual sex tape she made with her husband.  The Star story explains that the "complainant alleged she’d been raped vaginally and anally by her husband, and assaulted several times. He was acquitted on all counts by a jury."

The three appeals justices diverged on the outcome while agreeing the trial judge had made serious errors.  Then Chief Justice Derek Green, the dissenting voice, felt a new trial was necessary since the jury might well have reached a different verdict were they not exposed to the evidence of her sexual that had been presented to them inappropriately.

Rowe and his colleague White disagreed.  “I have reached this conclusion with reluctance given the unfair manner in which the complainant was dealt with,” Rowe wrote for the majority. 

“Nonetheless, I am persuaded by counsel for the respondent that the complainant, by her untruthfulness and the inconsistencies in several areas of her testimony, gravely undermined her credibility.”

“I think, by and large, what (Rowe’s) decision shows is that the criminal justice system is really quite bankrupt when it comes to dealing with our huge social problem of sexual assault,” [University of Ottawa law professor Constance Backhouse told The Star], “I think it says more about that, than it does about Justice Rowe.”

And a couple of days earlier, the Star editorial pointed out  - no d'uh - that Rowe hardly stands an appointment that reflects diversity.

Seriously.  And this is what the Globe missed in its rush to endorse the political nonsense represented by Rowe's appointment. 

News and editorial opinion, as it seems, is like politics. It is nothing if it is not local.  And, as in this case, it is nothing but local hogwash circling the boots of people who consider themselves Canad'as elites. Why people ever thought the Globe was more than a small town newspaper written by and for people with a small-town mindset is amazing.

Why people outside Tronna put so much stock in anything in its pages is an even greater mystery.

-srbp-

Massive re-write:  29 May 2019

The political dynamics of Muskrat Falls #nlpoli #dip-o-crites #cdnpoli

The people of Labrador who have now occupied the work camp at the construction site are exercising the only political influence they have in the only way they have been able to influence events thus far on this project.

There'll be a post later in the week to run through how we got to this place.  For now, let's just understand the political dynamics right now. People ignored by everyone else in discussions about this project have taken the only action they knew how to take. This is one of those disjointed protests that happens every once in a while.  It has a life of its own.

Outsiders see it from their own perspective.  Remember that as you see New Democratic Party politicians federally and provincially or local townie celebrities or mainlanders professing their undying solidarity with the indigenous people of Labrador in their fight against blah blah blah. Yeah. Whatever.

In 2010 and in every year since then,  these same people sided with the people building this project in Labrador. They backed the project despite the fairly obvious lies the proponents told, despite the many financial problems with the project, and despite the environmental problems including the problem with methylmercury. These folks had other interests then and their actions now are driven by interests other than the cause of the protesters.

False choices #nlpoli

It's not often you can see a "half-way" compromise as plainly as the one the provincial government announced on Wednesday about Muskrat Falls.

Government's starting point was to flood the reservoir now and not do any additional clearing of the area to be flooded.  The protesters wanted to hold off on flooding for a bit and to clear vegetation and topsoil from the flood area.

On Wednesday government opted to flood now but to do some clearing, plus have some folks do a study to see if more clearing would be good.  That's pretty much half way between the two positions.

And not long after that, you could see plainly that the attempt at compromise had no effect.

The Reverse Midas Touch Rides Again #nlpoli

The crowd running this place these days has an unrivalled ability to look at a problem and find the worst possible response imaginable.

On Wednesday,  natural resource minister Siobhan Coady and environment minister Perry Trimper announced that the government would tell Nalcor to keep flooding the Muskrat Falls reservoir but at the same time, they will have to cut down more trees and clear more vegetation from the flooding area.

This solves nothing.

Rumpole and Reversible Error #nlpoli

Brian Tobin's favourite judge may be on his way to the Supreme Court of Canada but along the way he will probably have to answer a few questions about his decision in the appeal in R v S.B.

The case is on its way to the Supreme Court of Canada and Rowe will have to appear before a House of Commons committee before his appointment is confirmed.

Justice Malcolm Rowe wrote the decision with Justice Charles White concurring.  Chief Justice Derek Green dissented.

In the original case,  S.B. was acquitted by a jury of "two counts of sexual assault upon C.M. in addition to six charges of assault (five against C.M. and one against another complainant), one count of assault with a weapon (against C.M.) and one count of careless use of a firearm." (R. v S.B.,  2014 NLTD(G) 84)

In the appeal,  Rowe wrote that notwithstanding "the serious errors made by the trial judge outlined above, the jury verdict should not be set aside. I have reached this conclusion with reluctance given the unfair manner in which the complainant was dealt with." (2016 NLCA 20)

The War of the Flea Circus #nlpoli

Muskrat Falls has become a three-ring flea circus.

In the first ring, we have the political ambulance chasers, a.k.a. Maudie Barlow and the Council of Xenophobes. The Safari Saviours rolled into town last week, issued a fill-in-the-blanks news release, and then frigged off having successfully tutted a few tuts and gained the media coverage they wanted,.

They, at least, want to end the project, which is more than you can say for the folks staging all sorts of protests here and there.  The folks in the third ring are likely the majority of folks in the province. They want Muskrat Falls finished,  no matter what the cost.  The only difference between Gil Bennett and Bill Gauthier is that Gil actually wants to spend less public money on a project that never made any sense at all.

In the centre ring of the circus we have the province's New Democrats and the self-described "progressive" white folks in the south.  The Dippers sent a letter to the Premier on Monday demanding that he open the House of Assembly "forthwith" in order to give the circus a bigger stage.  Make no mistake,  the Dippers don;t want to stop the project either.  They just want to slow things down a bit.  The NDP, like the Liberals and Conservatives and the overwhelming majority of people in the province want Muskrat Falls at any cost.

The Dippers, like some others, just want you to think they are against the project.  That is the flea in our flea circus.

And that, of course, is the flea in our circus.  It is the thing people insist is there  even when it obviously is not.

Caribous, Choice, and Craziness #nlpoli

For a while, it looked like one of the island's major communities wouldn't be able to put a senior hockey team on the ice for the new season.  Low ticket sales were threatening the Clarenville Caribous.  After a bit of publicity,  the team managed to sell enough tickets to finance the team.

There's no way of knowing if changing demographics were affecting the Caribous.  Clarenville has enjoyed a small boom driven largely by Hebron construction at Bull Arm. As that project is winding down,  the local economy is likely to shrink a bit.  Maybe some folks didn't want to shell out for hockey tickets given the local economic slow-down and the potential for more taxes or cuts coming from the provincial government.

We shouldn't be surprised, though, if more and more of these sorts of stories turn up as our population shrinks,  gets older, and migrates into some of the major centres, particularly St. John's.  After all, we've heard from municipal leaders over the past couple of years that some towns are having a hard time finding employees or even enough people to form a council.  In some places, councilors are picking up garbage and doing other jobs that the town would normally hire someone to do.

Refitting the USS Nimitz (CVN-68)

Ordered in 1967,  laid down in 1968,  launched in 1972 and commissioned in 1975,  USS Nimitz is the lead ship of  a class of 10 aircraft carriers in the United States Navy.  They form the backbone of American naval power in the world.

The ships in the class will be replaced by the Gerald R Ford class.  Current plans call for the navy to retire the Nimitz between 2025 and 2027.

The video documents part of the recent repair and refurbishment of the Nimitz at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.  It highlights refurbishment of the rudder,  catapult, and anchors and chain as well as the fabrication and installation of new sponsons on the hull.

-srbp-

The politics of Sally Albright #nlpoli

A surprisingly large number of people loved Monday's post about the political impotence of protesting against Muskrat Falls now that the thing is pretty much finished.

As if to confirm their impotence,  some of the protesters turned up on Tuesday at the government's dog and pony show.  The Premier cut out the back door to avoid them but most of the participants went out the main entrance and stepped around the folks laying about at the protest.

There was a bit of cynical joke, of course, because what was going on inside the "consultation" was a display of political irrelevance for all the folks in the building.  The whole idea of these consultations is to make people feel like they are playing some role in making government policy when, in reality, they are just being played for fools.

Eeyore and the Blustery Day #nlpoli

Premier Dwight Ball stood up before a hand-picked crowd at The Rooms on Tuesday and told them they were there to help develop a strategy for the future of our province.  They would look over some ideas the government crowd had worked up,  sit around tables talking with "facilitators" as part of this gigantic consultation, and then the government crowd would figure out what the final strategy should look like.

In his speech,  Ball said that we were in the current financial mess because the crowd running the government before now had followed a strategy of strategies.  They'd have a strategy for ever problem. One year they came out with 10.  All developed according to the same basic formula:  issue - idea - consultation - cogitation - strategy.

The Liberals would do things differently, Ball said. How they would be different he could not say. Maybe it was that instead of doing a health strategy and a n innovation strategy and a fisheries strategy, Ball and his crowd were going to have One Big Strategy.

But somehow,  the same was different to Ball's way of thinking and all would be wonderful as a result.

The Bigger Picture #nlpoli

Whatever the provincial government is doing about its own spending or the provincial economy generally or whatever it is up to starts at 9:00 AM.

They announced an invitation-only event by Twitter a week or so ago that made it sound like the Premier would be the key player all day.  On Friday, the official announcement made it plain Ball is showing up for the kick-off and wrap-up. Another announcement had him with another minister doing a funding announcement at 10:00 AM.

Oh yeah, and that invite-only thing had transmogrified into a case where "the general public" can participate by live video using social media.

There you have it:  can't tell you what they are doing because they do not know what they are doing, otherwise known as "making-it-up-as-they-go."

No encouraging at all, but let's skip over that sort of eye-roll inducing stuff and think about some of the bigger issues.  We can then keep an eye open to see how they turn up - *if* they turn up - in this stunt at The Rooms.

Politics as masturbation #nlpoli

"I am warning you.  Don't make me wear my pikachu costume."

Demonstrations at Memorial University and at Nalcor headquarters on Friday show the extent to which Newfoundland politics has become little more than irrelevant stunts staged chiefly for the personal amusement of the folks with the expensive cellphones.

The protesters do not want to stop the project. A few people who turned up *think* that was the goal. But the university students' union representative quoted by the Telegram about aboriginal rights made it plain in her CBC interview she wasn't interested in stopping the multi-billion dollar blunder cum boondoggle. 

Just as well.  The project is basically unstoppable and has been for years. That is also the position of all three political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador:  we cannot afford to let this project stop.

Sweat Equity - new ISER book on housing policy #nlpoli

Sweat Equity

Cooperative House-Building in Newfoundland, 1920–1974

C.A. Sharpe and A.J Shawyer 

"The lack of decent urban housing — a problem neither new nor unique to Newfoundland — was widely recognized during the twentieth century. After numerous piecemeal attempts to find a solution, a remarkable and successful government-supported “sweat equity” program was established in 1952, where homes were built cooperatively and, upon completion, became owner-occupied. This labor (about 2,000 hours per man) was accepted in lieu of a down payment. 

"Tracing public policy during the Commission of Government and the early days of the Smallwood administration, and sourced from archival material and interviews with surviving members of the cooperatives, Sweat Equity outlines how people in Newfoundland tried to solve the housing shortage themselves by building more than 500 houses in the 1950s and 1960s.

"This critical monograph-length study — the first of its kind on the subject — is the story of how the Commission of Government and the then new provincial government recognized the desperate need for decent accommodation and what they did to provide it."

Available online from the Institute for Social and Economic Research or in bookstores.

-srbp-

Canada's Dippers: taking the democracy out of politics #nlpoli

The guy who didn't know what electoral district he lived in  likes proportional representation.

Provincial Dipper boss Earle "More Austerity" McCurdy was so excited Wednesday that he talked to a parliamentary committee about it and even got all frothy about it on Twitter.

If proportional representation is such a wonderful thing, then Earle must have included it in his party's election platform last fall.  Right?

Go check it out.  

Look for any reference at all to proportional representation. 

We'll wait.

Take your time.

The trouble with transparency - CADO version #nlpoli

"How do you deal with a government computer system that is hopelessly out of date it wants you to 'update' your Internet browser to a version that is actually three version older than the one you are using?"

That would be the online search for the government registry of deeds, companies, and lobbyists.  The thing was already ancient in 2009 when SRBP first wrote about it. The thing was nine years old then. These days it is around 16 years old and is still chugging along.

Someone else took a poke at the database by asking for an electronic copy of the record through the access to information law. In addition to requesting the data,  the person offered an observation that the database wasn't truly access as required under the access law because the software was so old:  "I am of the opinion that these records are not truly available to the public. Currently a user must access this database online using Internet Explorer 7, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and leaves the end user vulnerable to malware spyware. I doubt Ministers would be permitted to use IE7 at Confederation Building due to the threat of digital exploits. The CADO system built by x-wave is incredibly outdated."

The trouble with transparency #nlpoli

Last week, the provincial government's communications gang tweeted a picture, which we have reprinted on the right. It was supposed to show where Premier Dwight Ball is on his little sojourn to tomorrowland that he calls "our fiscal future."

You can see how they have crossed off a whole bunch of milestones on the way along.  Supposedly we are now at the "Focus and Refine" stage.  Next thing to come is the "Report of Choices" due at some unspecified point in the fall. Notice the diamond-shaped point there called the fall fiscal update.

The Liberals haven't told us when the update will come.  First we have to get through this thing on October 11 at which a bunch of hand-picked leaders from various "sectors" of our society will get to see what choices the government has already made for "our fiscal future."

This is "consultation" in GovSpeak. In LibSpeak, it is Transparency,  one of the Five Points of the Liberal Plan for Strategic Word Capitalization.

The Strategic Two-Step #nlpoli

There's a sheet of paper taped on the underside of one of the drawers in the Premier's desk on the 8th Floor.

It's very old.  No one knows for sure how long it has been there but there are countless rings from countless coffee cups on it and more than few circles from the underside of rum bottles.

On the back, there are a couple of spots where it looks like people jotted down messages and phone numbers. You know, like someone had the sheet laying around on the desk and it just happened to be the closest bit of paper handy.

You can barely make out  "Doyle - Panama" and long string of digits including what looks like a bank account number after the word Caymans.  In another corner there's a woman's first name with couple of numbers and a note :  "Frank - call her back for Christ sake.  Gerry"  

On the other side, the words are in Courier 10 point from an IBM Selectric.

At the top, in all caps and underlined, it reads  WHEN IN TROUBLE...  The first bullet is one word:  Pander.   The second bullet is:  Pick a fight with Ottawa.

The Way Forward #nlpoli

Last December, Dwight Ball laid out his plan to deal with the provincial government's financial problems.

Ball made the comments to CBC's David Cochrane a week or two after he'd been sworn in.  This was after he'd been briefed on the provincial government's financial situation, so he'd had a chance to get over any shock and figure out a plan to cope with an unprecedented financial mess.

Depending on whether you go with what Ball said last year or what he said at the Liberal fund-raising dinner last Thursday,  Ball was totally shocked to find out how bad things were or didn't bat an eyelid because he knew exactly how bad things were.  Take your pick.

Either way, here's what the newly minted Premier said were his three ways to handle the unprecedented financial mess:

Jerome! rides again #nlpoli

Retired justice David Riche is the only independent person who has examined any information about Don Dunphy's death.

Hired by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as an outside reviewer of its investigation into Dunphy's death,  Riche had an unusual but informed perspective.  Riche's comments to reporters last week about the Dunphy shooting and the police investigation did not fit with the carefully fabricated, self-serving comments made over the past few months by the police officer who shot and killed Dunphy.

That's why former justice minister Jerome! Kennedy smeared Riche this week.  Kennedy wants to damage Riche's credibility.  Kennedy represents the police officer who killed Dunphy and who will be,  not surprisingly, the focus of much of the public inquiry conducted by Justice Leo Barry.

The fact that Kennedy's unprincipled and unwarranted attack is so transparent in its purpose means it will be ineffective, at least as far as Barry's inquiry will go.  But the prospect that Kennedy will try to turn the make the inquiry a circus is cause for public concern and condemnation.

The letter Peter Whittle got #nlpoli

This is the letter Peter Whittle got from his colleagues on the school councils federation executive. Whittle resigned today.

Samson sale price "reflective of risk": Galgay #nlpoli

Jonathan Galgay sent along an email to add some information to the post last week about the city's tax assessment for the property at 50 Beaumont Avenue, also known as I.J. Samson school.

He's adds some useful background about how the city arrived at a value:  the waited for the sale. 

Galgay also adds some other information that matches up - ironically enough - with the reasons the school-board offered up for the relatively low cost of the sale despite the fact it's a big piece of land in the centre of town.

"The sale price,"  Galgay wrote, "would have been reflective of the risk associated with the unknowns for the cost of environmental remediation , demolition of the building and uncertainty with regard to redevelopment potential related to the necessary rezoning of the property."

Exactly.  The property is worth what the market will pay for it.  And the property, as it is, comes with lots of risks, as Galgay noted.

Funny thing is that a couple of weeks ago, Galgay wrote to the provincial auditor general asking for an investigation into the process of tendering and sale of the land and building.  Galgay said he was "disgusted" by the sale.  Plus, as Galgay notes below,  the city can reassess the property as it is developed and increase the tax bill to reflect any future development. That's pretty much what folks in the real estate industry said two weeks ago.

Through others' eyes #nlpoli

For Newfoundland's pseudo-intellectuals,  the Toronto Globe and Mail is a kind of one-handed reading material.  They use one hand to scroll down the Internet site looking at stuff.  They use the other to stroke the keys of their computer until it spurts indignation all over the screen about something someone in the Globe said or didn't say about Newfoundland.

They are an easy bunch to click-bait, as the Globe editors showed this past weekend. The province's gaggle of celebrities took to the Internet to slag columnist Margaret Wente or Confederation.  Hans Rollman exploded in a ball of perpetual, fabricated victimhood. Ed Riche pretended he was above it all and, always one to spot a hot, if insubstantial, trend,  CBC produced an online piece about the negativity.

On Monday, the corp even got Wente to suffer through an interview about her recent trip to Fogo Island. "Do you understand how wrong you were?"  Grand Inquisitor Debbie asked the penitent mainlander. "Do you repent your sins?"

Yes, said Wente looking like she was going to tear-up any second. "I got Newfoundland wrong,"

Never, in the history of journalism, has so much been made by so many about so little.

No help, not my department, and missing records #nlpoli

Starting a little over a hundred years ago,  the Government of Newfoundland  publishing a list of public servants by name, showing their job title, the department they worked for,  the annual salary,and the Christian denomination to which they belonged.

Since 1981 and the passage of the first freedom of information law in the province,  anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador has been able to request information about people employed by the provincial public service.  You can get the title of a position, the name of the person currently holding the job and the amount paid to the person for doing the job.  The House of Assembly reaffirmed that right in the 2002 version of the access to information law,  the infamous Bill 29 amendments, and in the current version, drafted in 2014 by an expert panel.

Telegram reporter James McLeod sent a series of requests last winter to government departments and agencies.  He asked for a list of positions in which people on the government payroll made more than $100,000.  McLeod was trying to put together his own version of a so-called Sunshine List. Most organizations answered McLeod's request and provided him with the list.  There was no legal reason to withhold the information.

What the English school district did was fascinating.

Illegal deletions okay in NL: access commissioner #nlpoli

Shortly after he took office a month or so ago,  newly appointed information commissioner Donovan Molloy told CBC there had been a "substantial increase" in the number of access to information requests since 2015 when the House of Assembly passed a new access to information law.

True, said the always accurate labradore, but that was only in relation to the two years when Bill 29 seems to have reduced the number of requests. People had filed 343 access requests up to the first part of August. That would work out to about "800-and-some requests completed for the year," according to labradore, "which would be something of a surge compared to Bill 29 levels, and even, to a lesser degree, compared to pre-29 levels.*

"But, apart from a hypothetical surge during the balance of the fiscal year, the statistics do not support the Commissioner’s concerns. ... To the extent that there has been a surge in request volume since the 2015 unravelling of Bill 29, that may just as easily be accounted for by the fact that, in the post-Bill-29 era, the public is simply more aware of their right to access public records, and, thanks to the elimination of application fees and the praiseworthy creation of an online filing system, more able to exercise that right."

Those comments are a good starting point, though for a couple of posts on the current state of the province's access to information law.  What you will see in this two-part series is that there are  enormous obstacles to public access to government information.  The obstacles come from the way bureaucrats apply the law.  They produce their own problems and, in one of the most serious obstacles, illegal censorship gets the seal of approval from the province's information access watchdog.

Reforming the way government works #nlpoli

Conservative and New Democrat goons are fapping themselves into a frenzy on Twitter over Bern Coffey's appointment as Clerk of the Executive Council.  Qualifications don't matter, they would have it.  Bern Coffey's appointment is partisan just because Coffey is a Liberal and therefore it is bad.  No Liberals should be appointed to anything.

Derpy Conservative David Brazil dismissed Coffey in an interview with NTV News because Coffey has no connection to the provincial public service. He's an "outsider" supposedly. The facts are irrelevant: Coffey spent a couple of decades as a highly successful Crown prosecutor before he set out on his own about 16 years ago.

Dipper boss Earle McCurdy thinks Coffey is "lacking the right qualifications" although McCurdy had no idea what the right qualifications would be other than, say, not being Liberal.

For his part,  Premier Dwight Ball told NTV that Coffey's job will now involve "challenging" the province's public servants so that the government has the best information possible when making decisions.

Such is the shallow nature of provincial politics these days.  Even Dwight Ball's comments don't accurately reflect what is going on.

City assessed school property at sale price #nlpoli

City councillor Jonathan Galgay attacked the school board and the provincial government over the sale of IJ Samson school for $189,000 after the purchaser put the thing on the market for 10 times that much.

Galgay wrote to the provincial auditor general asking him to investigate the sale.

Two things.

First,  a property is worth what the market will pay for it.  Galgay can get as excited as he wants but the fact is that the bids demonstrated the value of the property in the current market.

Second, Galgay might want to check out the official city hall view of 50 Bennett Avenue.

St. John's municipal records show that the City of St. John's assessed the former junior high school as a business property with a value of... wait for it... $189,000.

Seems awfully convenient that the numbers matched up like that.  If Terry Paddon investigates this sale, he should expand his inquiry to include city hall.  Something smells awfully funny. Well, besides the stink from the budget Galgay brought in last year

-srbp-

Update:  Sale price reflective of "risk":  Galgay

Not talking but talking about something #nlpoli

It took them a few days but the folks at Nalcor managed to put out a statement that addressed the possible talks with Hydro-Quebec about the Lower Churchill.

They didn't post it to the Nalcor website or anything but a few people were flicking it around on Tuesday.  They must have tweeted it out or something.*

Anyway, here is a picture of it.

Now we can see what it says, line by line.

Grits and Cons play dodge-fact over Labrador hydro talks #nlpoli

"There are no discussions between this government and the  Quebec government."

That's part of a statement sent out by email to local reporters from natural resources minister Siobhan Coady's office.  You can't find it on the government website or the party website.  Coady was responding to a release from provincial Conservative leader Paul Davis challenging Dwight Ball to state the administration's plans for the province's hydro resources in Labrador.

Words matter. No one has suggested that the two governments were talking about anything.  The talks would take place between Nalcor and Hydro-Quebec and, whether we take Nalcor boss Stan Marshall's own words or the local scuttlebutt,  the talks are going on between the two companies.

Worst possible time for HQ deal #nlpoli

If the rumblings from Labrador are correct, an opinion column in lapresse - "Why Quebec should regain Labrador" - this weekend both fits right in and provides a cautionary tale for us all.

Pierre Gingras  - right - spent 31 years with Hydro-Quebec (1966 to 1997) building large hydro-electric projects like Manicouagan and James Bay.

Gingras thinks the time is right to rescue tiny Newfoundland from itself and a very old injustice done to Quebec.  After all,  Gingras notes, people in Quebec should recall that, owing to what Gingras calls the "shenanigans of certain [but unnamed] financiers"  the Privy Council  in London tore Labrador from Quebec in 1927 and gave it to the British colony of Newfoundland without any protest from Canada.

Changes in the fishery #nlpoli

Your humble e-scribbler was on The Broadcast with Jane Adey, discussing the campaign to split the inshore fishermen from the FFAW.  Give it a listen if you missed it: CBC podcast.

Three points:

First, there are a couple of conflicts of interest inherent in the union.  One is the conflict between the interests of inshore fishermen on the one hand and the plant workers on the other.  The other is the conflict between the unions job of representing the workers' interests to the provincial and federal government versus the union's practice of taking cash from government to run projects and programs.

Both of these have been around for a while. They have been controversial.  But this is the first time anyone has raised it as a major political issue.

Prov gov finances headed south #nlpoli

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is offering its bonds on the American market, according to Bloomberg News.  VOCM reported it locally on Wednesday.

The provincial government hopes that its high interest rates will attract investors.  "We are providing some of the highest yields in the country among provincial borrowers,"  deputy finance minister Donna Brewer told an investors conference in New York a couple of days ago.

Now you know what Anne Squires sounded like after someone gave her Ron Ellsworth's telephone number.

The cost of silence #nlpoli

The St. John's Board of Trade and the provincial Employers' Council aren't happy that the government has shelved its plans for a mini-budget in the fall.

The appropriately-acronymed BOT even held an emergency meeting of some of its members, after which BOT president said his members were in a "sombre mood."  Employers' Council executive director Richard Alexander said the changes to the budget plan were "quite scary."

Now flip back a few weeks.  Word that bankruptcies in the province were up led a bunch of people to blame last spring's budget.  Richard Alexander is in that Telegram story telling folks the government should have slashed spending instead of hiking fees and taxes. There's another comment in there from a local bankruptcy trustee who essentially pulls an "I told ya so".  Back in the spring, the same guy warned that the budget would drive up the number of bankruptcies in the province.

That's all nonsense, of course.

A no-holds-barred review #nlpoli

Bill Rowe started out with a bright future.

Rhodes scholar.

Youngest cabinet minister in the province's history.

Leader of the Liberal party.

And then he imploded in a fireball fuelled by unfettered ego and spectacularly bad judgement.  Knowing they were stolen, Rowe took police reports on a fire investigation involving a provincial cabinet minister and passed them around to every newsroom in town.  Correctly identified as the source of the leaked reports by a judicial enquiry,  Rowe's political career was over.

Million dollar baby #nlpoli

The provincial government has paid more than $830,000 to Wade Locke and companies with which he is associated since 2003, according to information released under the provincial access to information law. The information covers 22 contracts and contract renewals for the natural resources and finance departments as well as the provincial energy corporation.

More than $75,000 of that total has come since the Liberals took office in December 2015. Nalcor hired Locke in mid-2015 to provide the company with an assessment of the economic impact in the province of the company's operations.  The initial contract, started in June 2015, was valued at $87, 891. Nalcor renewed the contract in August and December 2015 and again in July 2016.   The total value of the four contracts is $176, 791.

Best Choice for Premier #nlpoli

Premier Dwight Ball has the lowest leader choice numbers of any Premier in Newfoundland and Labrador since November 2000.

The chart shows the Corporate Research Associates numbers in every quarter for every Premier in that period.

To help situate you in the long sequence,  there are a couple of points marked out.  That first peak is November 2003.  There was a big drop right after as Danny Williams and the Conservatives tried to trim spending.

Notice that next higher peak.  It was February 2005, right after Williams left Ottawa with a cheque for $2.0 billion.

A clear course to dangerous political shoals #nlpoli

Lots of political activists are looking at the latest CRA quarterly poll.  The Liberals think it is great that they are rebounding so quickly.  Supporters of the other two parties think it is wonderful the three parties are tied and Paul Davis thinks it is great he is doubling Dwight Ball in popularity.

And sure, you can see that if you look at the numbers.  Here's the usual SRBP chart, updated to include these figures.  Bear in mind,  we've given the party choice here as a share of all respondents.  That puts the Grits at 23 with the Dippers and Cons tied at 22.

Reporters have been talking up the Liberal numbers, saying the party has rebounded.  And Paul Davis is vowing to stay on and fight the next general election based on this poll.

All lovely stuff and all of it really superficial.

Dependence and Independence #nlpoli

For those who might be interested,  Tuesday's post on Churchill Falls and Wednesday's post on the road to Muskrat Falls are a summary of a draft on hydro-electricity development that's been in the works for a couple of years now. It was supposed to be the chapter of a book but it got out of control and might be worth turning into a book.

Sometimes you get caught up in the details of things so it's useful to take a step back and look at the broader themes that emerge from your writing.  One that hadn't appeared before now was the consistency that ran from Joe Smallwood in 1949 through Moores and Peckford in the 1970s and 1980s,  Wells and Tobin in the 1990s and finally Roger Grimes.  

Each of their administrations had as its goal the development of the provincial economy to the point that the provincial government would no longer be what Smallwood called a poorhouse. His vision was a "growing prosperous province of independent families."  That's not surprising if you know anything of Smallwood's experience in Newfoundland from the 1920s onward.  He had disagreements with the federal government, the most famous being the 1959 row over Term 29 payments.

Jerusalem, Eldorado, and Perdition #nlpoli

Part I:  The development of our country
_______________________________

The Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador website "aims to provide school students and the general public with a wide range of authoritative information on the province's history, culture, and geography. It is based at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Faculty, graduate students, and professional writers contribute articles, while undergraduate students provide support as research assistants."

That statement of authority is one of the reasons why the introductory sentence to its section on the impact of Churchill Falls is so intriguing:

The Upper Churchill Falls hydroelectric project remains one of the most notorious ventures in Newfoundland and Labrador's resource-development history.   

There is no such thing as the "Upper Churchill Falls" project.  There is no upper Churchill Falls or, indeed, a lower one.  There is simply Churchill Falls.

Flip. No. Flop. No. No. Wait. Flip. ... #nlpoli

01 August 2016 - "Continuing continuity"

“This is not about cutting,” Ball told reporters on Thursday morning at a news conference. “This is about where we can create new sources of revenue for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.” 

It may be different from what the budget said, or what people thought it said, but in truth abandoning cuts and looking for new money is what Dwight Ball promised he would do lst year. This is Dwight Ball's fetish for consistency even in the face of changed circumstances. 

This is the sequel to Continuity with Change.  

This is Continuing with Continuity.

22 August 2016 -  "Message Control"

Flip ahead three weeks from the big media briefing.  Ball does a bunch of media appearances the day after his political appointments' story broke.  He told VOCM that - hold on - we can expect more cuts in the fall from the mini budget.  "Expect service cuts" and "difficult choices"  the VOCM headline warned.   

Now, suddenly,  there's a return to the earlier plan. 

Which is it? 

When Dwight Ball says something,  how do we know what commitments we can believe and what ones we should doubt?

06 September 2016 -  No fall budget.  Just usual financial update:  Dwight Ball.

This is the sort of basic policy confusion that got Ball to 17% in the polls.  This is the sort of thing that will keep him there.  Ball's abysmal polling numbers will keep him mired in this sort of situation until he dunderdales* or until the caucus and party barry** him.

-srbp-

*  quits long after the party can do anything to change their own political fortunes.  After Kathy Dunderdale, who quit abruptly in January 2014, leaving her party another 22 months only to die at the polls in November 2015.

**  gets the flick.  After Leo Barry whose colleagues in the Liberal caucus ousted him as leader in 1987.

The development of our country #nlpoli

Today, the development of Churchill Falls is popularly perceived as a failure.  Newfoundland is portrayed as the victim of a shrewd and untrustworthy lot in Quebec.  They hoodwinked Joe Smallwood,  the Liberal premier of Newfoundland at the time, and have continued to steal from Newfoundlanders through the patently unfair 1969 power contract.

The Churchill Falls power plant cost a little over $1.0 billion (about $6.1 billion in 2015) to build between 1969 and 1971.  With an installed generating capacity of almost 6,000 megawatts,  it was one of the largest if not the largest hydroelectric plant in operation at the time.

Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation delivered the project on budget,  achieved initial operating capacity five months ahead of schedule and finished the whole project a year ahead of schedule.

Revenge for the humiliation of Churchill Falls remains at the centre of provincial politics, as it has since the late 1970s.  Redress of the grievance has been the most common term for the political goal of the Newfoundlanders, but as Danny Williams and the provincial Conservatives made it out in 2010, revenge was really their burning passion.  Muskrat Falls was not merely Williams' legacy.  It was the means by which Newfoundlanders would break what he called Quebec's stranglehold on his province's economic future in Labrador.

In this pair of posts, we will look first at Churchill Falls.  The second, coming tomorrow,  will look at the years since 1972, culminating in Muskrat Falls.

Switching feeds #nlpoli

Some of you noticed a problem on Monday morning with the Twitter posts from SRBP.  You sent me a message and I fixed the problem.

The solution was to switch the autoposting to a new service and that seems to work just fine. You can tell the difference, by the way, because Feedburner used the google name in the shortened URL, while the new autoposter uses bit.ly.

SRBP has used Google's Feedburner service to autopost the morning offering.  That worked fine until this weekend.  Maybe it had something to do with the Twitter feed I installed on the blog on Sunday. Maybe.  But it doesn't matter.  Feedburner is history for Twitter.

SRBP will continue to use Feedburner to support the folks who get the morning post in their email inbox but for other services, SRBP now uses Twitterfeed.

Hopefully, that fixes the problem.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

As a reminder, for the next couple of days we'll be looking at Churchill Falls (Tuesday)  and the reaction to the 1969 contract (including Muskrat Falls) on Wednesday.

At some point in September, we'll also take a revised look at Newfoundland "nationalism."  That one has been brewing for quite a while but the Churchill Falls story is a good way to lead into it.

Also coming this month:

• new installments in the Zero-Based Governing mini-series,
• an overview of the phases of Newfoundland economic development,
• Dwight Ball and the "we are learning" philosophy,
• some observations on the politics of salvation,
• the provincial government's role in the economy, and,
• access to information under the 2015 law...  how are things going?
• plus a few other juicy morsels as we head toward the Bond-iversary on January 3.  12 years coming up.

-srbp-

Supporting and Opposing #nlpoli

If you get any kind of enjoyment at all out of watching people tie themselves in knots,  point out to a New Democrat that their party supports Muskrat Falls.

Oooo - eee you are in for a ride.

But let's make it clear.  The provincial New Democrats most certainly do not oppose Muskrat Falls.

No sir.  Never have.

Two for Friday #nlpoli

There's a long weekend coming up, so here is a simpler post.

There'll be an SRBP post on Monday but the biggie for the week should be Tuesday.  There's been so much talk about the Churchill Falls contract renewal on Thursday that we really need to take a look at Churchill Falls and compare and contrast the situation with Muskrat Falls.  Hopefully,  we can do that in one post.  If not, there'll be two back-to-back on Tuesday and Wednesday.

There are few more posts coming this fall that have been brewing for a while.  They are also related to one another, as it turns out,  although the connections might not seem obvious at first.

For those who wondered about it and who found the Zero-Based Governing post interesting,  there will be two more coming.  In the follow-up, we'll have a go at the Phase 2 part of the process for a couple of departments.  That's the more detailed functional analysis that will reveal the extent to which the number of departments as such is not an indicator of how big the government is.  After that,  a regular reader's experience in another province inspired a third post in that series that will look at the areas where federal and provincial jurisdictions overlap.

For today, though,  let's highlight some posts on other local political blogs.  labradore had a go at the electoral office on Thursday over the absolutely ludicrous amount of time they take to issue election reports.

When you've done with that,  Uncle Gnarley gnawed at Muskrat Falls and water management on Thursday as well.  Lots of detail.  Regular readers of Gnarley or here will find a lot of it very familiar but it is useful to bring it all back now and again, as Des does in fine style in this post.

-srbp-

We won't walk to a nearby walking trail #nlpoli

The Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay commissioned a consultant to look at possible future development of a sand pit in a residential area of the town. You can read the report at the town website.

The consultants first held a public meeting open to all town residents.  Then they tried other ways of soliciting opinions, like setting up a booth in the local mall. Then they did a survey of a sample of town residents.

Out of all that, the consultants figured out two interesting things.  First, they "determined that the individuals which would most effected [sic] by the development would live within a 400-meter radius of the area of interest."  Second, they community feedback through all those means told them that 400 metres was also "the maximum distance that the average person would walk to reach a park or recreation area."

Who does he think he is fooling? #nlpoli

New England states need electricity.  They have a preference for green sources of energy,

"What we have to offer, both in hydro and in windpower, can be part of [a green energy] solution," Premier Dwight Ball told his eastern Canadian counterparts and the governors of the New England states at their annual international meeting.  CBC reported Ball's comments, which is where that quote came from.

Wonderful words.  

All wonderful.

Except for one teensy problem.

Ball's comment is a gigantic pile of crap.

And the governors know it.

Big News or something #nlpoli

Yes it is a slow time of the year for news.

But you do have to wonder about some of the Big Stories lately:

1.  What precisely did Kathy Dunderdale say that was worth three days of CBC television, radio, and online coverage plus a Pam Frampton column?

Did she say even one thing that was new?

Interesting?

2.  Is it news that yet another premier from Newfoundland and Labrador has gone off to yet another conference flogging the Lower Churchill... with nothing to show for it but a news release?

Seriously.  

• 1997:  Brian Tobin
• 2006:  Danny Williams
• 2007:  Rhode Island MOU
• 2009:  Danny Williams
• 2009:  Danny and Ahnold
• 2010:  Danny Williams
• 2011:  Kathy Dunderdale and a tour of the construction site
• 2011:  New England-Canada business development group
• 2011:  KD and the governors' "keen interest"
• 2013:  KD and the NEG
• 2015:  Paul Davis and the national meeting of American governors.
• 2016:  Dwight Ball

And that isn't the result of a serious search.

3.  Will it be news that those premiers didn't sell one electron from the damn dam because even totally subsidised by all those people on low and fixed incomes in Newfoundland and Labrador, Muskrat Falls is still too friggin' expensive?

So far it hasn't been  - not even in 2009 - which would actually make that a genuinely new story.

4.  Critch does a Dwight impersonation and Dwight appears on stage.  We are thisfaraway from a string of guest appearances on 22 minutes that drags on like an hour.

-srbp-

Tourism Indicators #nlpoli

These days,  Chris Mitchelmore does what Steve Kent used to do:  hype tourism numbers.

More people.

Tourism is big.

Yay.

Hooray.

Yeah, well, take a breath.

Zero-based governing #nlpoli

The provincial government has been going through a spell of something called zero-based budgeting as part of its ongoing efforts to cope with the massive government financial problem.

ZBB, as it is known, examines the budget in detail, justifying each expenditure,  not just the changes from year to year that would be considered in the usual way of budgeting.  You started from a base of zero,  as the name implies.  If the government makes any changes in the budget this fall, they will be out of this ZBB approach.

When he chucked a few deputy ministers overboard a week or so ago,  Premier Dwight Ball said that these extremely small changes in the organisation of his administration came out of the realisation they had enough deputy ministers to run the Ontario government.

Quick aside:  This is a common Ball-splanation for his actions.  "We" have learned something.  They ditched Cathy Dornan as a communications advisor because "we" had learned enough so "we" didn't need her services any more.  "We can do it all in-house.  Changes in government organization:  "after seven or eight months in office,  "we" know more now than we "we" did earlier.  Just flag that whole idea in your mind.  There's an SRBP post coming on it just because it is a rather curious  - but revealing - way of looking at the world.

For our purposes, though,  let's just notice that what it obviously means is that Ball and his folks don't have anybody thinking about the basics of government organization.  They have a former ACOA boss running Government Renewal Initiative - called GRIM in-house - but whatever he is doing,  it seems to be largely an out-placement service for recently retired ACOA senior executives.

So if nobody else is doing any big picture thinking about government,  we should give it a try.

Late Summer Reading #nlpoli

From the University of Toronto Press:

"The years after Newfoundland’s confederation with Canada were ones of rapid social and economic change, as provincial resettlement and industrialization initiatives attempted to transform the lives of rural Newfoundlanders.

"At Memorial University in St. John’s, a new generation of faculty saw the province’s transformation as a critical moment. Some hoped to solve the challenges of modernization through their rural research. Others hoped to document the island’s 'traditional' culture before it disappeared. Between them they created the field of 'Newfoundland studies.'

 "In Observing the Outports,  historian Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars of lexicography, history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, and geography laid the foundation of our understanding of Newfoundland society in an era of modernization. His extensive archival research and oral history interviews illuminate how scholars at Memorial University created an intellectual movement that paralleled the province’s cultural revival."

Contents

• Introduction 
• Chapter One: Viewing the Universe Through Newfoundland Eyes: The Dictionary of Newfoundland English 
• Chapter Two: Writing History 
• Chapter Three: Herbert Halpert and Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland: Collecting Folklore
• Chapter Four: Cat Harbour: Anthropologists in Outports 
• Chapter Five: Peopling of Newfoundland: Mapping Cultural Transfer and Settlement
• Chapter Six: Communities in Decline: The Study of Resettlement 
• Conclusion

-srbp-

Same circus #nlpoli

Somewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador,  someone may not have heard the news.

There is oil and natural gas in the ground under water off our coast.

Never mind that this has been widely reported since the 1960s when someone first started exploring seriously out there.  Never mind, either, that we have had oil fields producing oil and filling the provincial government's bank account with billions of dollars since the late 1990s.

Some people might have missed that we have oil and has.  And we have a lot more than anyone is currently producing.

It is out of concern for these couple of folks living in a cave possibly in the Annieopsquotch Mountains that the provincial government has held a news conference to announce the latest estimates of how much more oil might, possibly, theoretically be out there.

Well, either that or it is polling month and the politicians are in deep political trouble this year, like their predecessors were last October when they held a news conference to announce last year's estimates of theoretical future gloriosity lurking somewhere underground. Maybe.

Wanna talk loopholes? #nlpoli

Regular readers shouldn't be surprised to discover the Liberals put a giant loophole in their independent appointments commission law that said, in essence, that they didn't have to use the commission if they didn't want to do so.

Danny Williams did exactly the same thing in 2004.

In fact,  the very first words in the fixed-election section of the House of Assembly Act say that nothing prevents the Lieutenant Governor from calling an election or proroguing the House of Assembly whenever he or she wants.  So election dates are fixed except when they are not fixed, which is all the time.

The Headpiece of the Staff of Ra-Ra #nlpoli

The provincial New Democrats claim the Liberals broke their own independent appointments commission law when they appointed a bunch of folks to senior executive positions in the provincial public service last week.

Right off the bat, let's be clear:  the appointments didn't break the new Liberal signature law.

That's because the law has a gigantic loophole built into it.

Section 4 of the Independent Appointments Commission Act says that the lieutenant governor-in- council or the minister making an appointment "shall consider the recommendations of the commission in making an appointment."  The definition of an appointment is one made under another Act or to a position listed in the schedule at the end of the IAC Act.

Pretty clear.  This is the purpose of the new Act, right there.  Appointments get made based on recommendations of the new commission.

And having read that, the Dipper geniuses wrote their news release.

But this is like the headpiece of the Staff of Ra and the Dippers only had one side of the headpiece.

The very next section of the IAC Act is the loophole.  It's the bit where they take back everything the law said they had to do.

Message Control #nlpoli

Memorial University professor Alex Marland has a new book on the market.  Brand Command is about political communications.  Marland interviewed a lot of people and did a lot of research for this very big book that lots of people should read.

One of the big ideas in the book is that politicians these days are very keen on something called message control.  They have a fetish for consistency so that everyone is singing the same things from the same hymn book, as the metaphor goes. It's an old idea and there are many reasons why politicians like to be consistent.  For one thing,  repetition across many means of communication increases the likelihood the message gets through.

On another level, though,  consistent messaging means ultimately that actions match words.  The message of the words must match the message in the action that makes those words real.

In that sense,  message consistency is about credibility and values and trust. Politicians like to tell people what they believe in and  how they will make decisions. Voters don't spend a lot of time thinking about government so they want someone they can trust to make decisions they agree with or can generally trust are the right ones.  When political analysts talk about "connecting with voters"  that's what they are getting at. 

The real connection voters need to see is the one between the words used to make promises with the actions that follows.  That connection makes the words credible 0 literally, believable - the next time there are words about what the politician will do.

Anything that attacks a politician's credibility is bad and when - as in Ball's case - the wounds are all self-inflicted, then you know there is a huge problem.

So why did Dwight Ball fire John Ottenheimer?

Being from there #nlpoli

Some people are very agitated at the prospect that the next justice of the Supreme Court of Canada might not "represent" Atlantic Canada like Justice Thomas Cromwell does.

How exactly does one represent a region on a court or anywhere else for that matter?  Do you have to come from there, for argument sake?  Born there?

Well, Justice Cromwell is from Ontario.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is touted by some as a sure bet to get the appointment.  From Saskatchewan. Taught law at Dalhousie,  University of Toronto,  Notre Dame and a few other places her bio doesn't mention.  Does that sort of thing count in her favour, seeing as she has experience living and working across the country?

The next person appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada should get the job based on merit that is related to the law and justice.  Everything else - including facility with French - should be secondary.

-srbp-

The word is "curious" #nlpoli

B'y, it is really hard to call the changes announced on Wednesday as a "shake-up" of the public service or any kind of major change to anything really.

Aside from chucking a very small number of people out the door,  this change to the structure of government didn't do much of anything but leave you wondering what the point was.

There have been rumblings of these changes going back months.  Folks looking for some sort of massive shake-up in the fall might be disappointed to discover this was it.  Most likely the next big news we will get is in the budget next spring.

But let's run through Wednesday's head-shaker-upper-whatever.