In his last television interview before his death on Sunday from cancer, former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Frank Moores said he doubted the value of buying the Upper Churchill.
Moores said at the time it seemed like a good idea. He said that with all the difficulties of dealing with the Quebec government and trying to develop other hydro projects, the province could have done something better with the initial purchase price of $168 million.
Moores was evidently basing his second-thoughts on the fact that the purchase price represented 25% of the province's budget expenditure for the year. At the time, the province couldn't afford it.
Too bad someone didn't probe this a bit more with Moores, especially given all the mythology that has built up around the Upper Churchill.
Some of that mythology is spread by the buy-outs major proponent, John Crosbie. Crosbie's memoir, No holds barred, doesn't really provide much factual evidence to back his financial case for taking over the Upper Churchill. Some of it is couched in terms like "I have been told that..." Quebec gets something like $800 million whole the province gets a pittance. In another spot, Crosbie doesn't explain how a project that was going to cost the province money when it was a private sector project would suddenly be a winner if it was nationalized.
My favourite part, though, is the bit where Crosbie uses a drop in Equalization because of new revenues as a loss for the province and hence a reason for taking it over. It's the same bullshit argument he foisted recently during the Williams offshore fracas.
[Note: Number 1: the province doesn't lose any money in the scenario. Number 2: the feds fixed the problem in 1982 and might well have done it earlier had they been asked. As a result of a decision by the Trudeau government, the province actually has its Upper Churchill revenues hidden from Equalization. It's worth about $50 million annually to the province.]
BUT back to the point, and here is Crosbie's big but, it was an argument he rejected as utter nonsense in only the most crass and rude terms only someone like Crosbie could muster in 1990 when the provincial government tried to rework the Atlantic Accord (1985).
Maybe it is time for a public inquiry into purchase of the Upper Churchill by Crosbie. Put the old boy in the dock of public opinion with someone putting some hard questions to him.
At the very least, a solid historical analysis - no one has studied the Upper Churchill in detail - might finally put to rest some of the hot air emanating from people like John Crosbie. We'd all be able to see what happened and then maybe learn what mistakes to avoid the next time.
Crosbie's old boss doubted the value of spending 25% of a poor province's budget on a giant cash pit. At least Crosbie, described it as a cash pit in his memoir but as a justification for spending all that cash and saddling the province with all the debt from the construction. Of course, it wouldn't be the only time Crosbie ever changed his tune on a policy or an idea to suit his purpose at the time.
For those who want to do the math, Hydro's debt load of about $1.4 billion is counted against us by the banks and the provincial government when working out our current debt load. Go check the budget. It might be a relatively small portion of the debt today, which runs around $12.0 billion, but look at the figures for a decade ago. Hydro debt was $1.3 billion, part of a total debt in the budget of $6.8 billion and an accrual debt load of about $8.0 billion.
We are still paying for it today and listening to Crosbie justify the cutbacks and the layoffs from what may well have been his biggest public policy blunder.
12 July 2005
11 July 2005
Getting the deal - Danny Williams and Atlantic Accord polling
[Note: This is an opinion piece, intended to offer one possible explanation of events.
The following is an account of the offshore discussions between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador between January 2004 and January 2005. It is based on anecdotal information, correspondence between both governments, previous posts to the Bond Papers and on the research report submitted to the provincial government in January 2005 and recently released to news media.
References to strategy by the Williams' government are solely those of the author taking inferences from events and publicly available information.]
Getting the deal
Through the fall of 2004, attitudes grew increasingly gloomy among the Premier's Office staff in St. John's.
The original plan had been to snag a quick deal for extra cash from the offshore before the federal election. There was no detailed position paper, no legal argument that the federal government had somehow failed to live up to the 1985 Atlantic Accord.
What there had been was passion and attitude, playing up the sense of alienation from Ottawa and dissatisfaction among Newfoundlanders and Labradorians documented in research done for the Royal Commission on strengthening and renewing our place in Canada.
Premier Danny Williams found policy gold in the Young commission. A fiscal paper written by a former deputy minister of finance under Brian Peckford was readily adopted; one of its keystones had been an elaborate explanation of how the federal government was making billions from the offshore while Newfoundland and Labrador made a relative pittance from its "own" resource. Roger Grimes had been the latest of a series of provincial premiers to fail at having Ottawa rework the cash portions of the 1985 Atlantic Accord.
Here was a ready-made triumph for Williams.
Williams would tackle Ottawa like it was an insurance company, using a combination of the charm and bluster that had worked so often before in his private law practice.
Shag the facts.
Point to the shameful injustice of it all. Press Ottawa for cash. If they made an offer, up the ante and then seek more cash in public using whatever means possible. Ottawa Liberals would not want to be jammed up before a federal election, as Williams himself said in the early spring of 2004.
Play up the drama.
An impoverished province in desperate financial straits.
A new government in a province full of promise and hope, forced to slash services and freeze wages while billions in cash poured to ever-rich Ottawa.
Fight the case in the court of public opinion where, as Williams had learned through years of experience, the judge and jury are less concerned with pesky matters like details than in a real court-room. In public opinion's court, the more tears shed, the more money in the settlement.
And so it had rolled out.
The letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin in January 2004. Lengthy and relying entirely on a supposedly independent outside financial analysis, it made the case for a financial settlement from Ottawa that would make a modest adjustment to the existing Equalization offsets in the original Accord. This wouldn't be for grievance or indeed for justice. Rather, the feds would help because the money was needed to put a roof over the heads and food in the belly of Williams' 520, 000 clients.
The Prime Minister accepted the idea for further discussion later in January, sending his regional minister, John Efford, to meet with Williams and his officials in late February. Williams charmed Efford, couching the whole matter in the simplest of simple terms, ones that Efford was sure to accept. There was the news conference after the meeting in which Williams talked of there being a two-headed horse fighting for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Never mind that Efford would never, ever grasp either the political manoeuvering around him or the substance of the offshore revenue issue. If the feds coughed up cash, Danny would claim victory. If they stalled or rejected the idea, Efford was the easy scapegoat. He was no Crosbie, whose grasp of the facts and vicious tongue could dissect an opponent with the finesse of a broadaxe. Nor was he a Tobin. Efford was an easy mark.
There were claims by Williams of support from all the premiers. There were comments on the frustration of waiting for Ottawa to act. Behind the scenes there was little substantive provincial activity. There was no written proposal that spelled out Williams' ideas in legal detail. What they did slap together was an overhead slide show that would surely have suggested to anyone familiar with the Accord that the provincial officials didn't understand the history of the deal or the original deal itself. Anyone, like say Efford's deputy minister, who had helped negotiate the Accord in 1985 and who would likely remain opposed to the province's arguments based on his own knowledge of the original deal.
There was the odd short letter to the PM or telephone call. The letters said little more than: "Come on bye, ye gotta do something."
The goal was a commitment from the prime minister. No officials. No intermediaries. No getting bogged down in give and take. Williams wanted the words from Paul Martin's own lips: "I agree".
Williams got the commitment on June 5, 2005. The PM had accepted Williams' proposal, presumably the letter from January. Williams followed up five days later with a letter that thanked the prime minister for his accepting the province's position. Williams then restated the position increasing both the amount of money and duration of the deal from what had been discussed before, released it to the public and then set a deadline of the late summer for getting the thing finished.
The premier was not happy. He could never be happy. Every offer would be just short of what was required to make him happy enough.
and so the ante was upped.
A late summer deadline was set by Williams. Efford suggested it might be more like September.
By September, no deal had been reached.
The feds met a new October deadline for a proposal imposed by Williams but only just. Regardless of what was in the offer, Williams would never have accepted it. It wasn't his style. bad news for Williams though, came from the other provincial premiers who were finally waking up to a looming deal that had been, to now, underneath the national radar screen.
They realized that what Williams was asking for was a federal transfer to Newfoundland, equal to its offshore revenues, even if the province grew as rich as any other. Ontario's Dalton McGuinty would have none of it. He wrote to the feds stating Ontario's rejection of any such arrangement that smacked of Equalization as a provincial right. The letter of support he had written Williams finally surfaced, a note of such importance that his office couldn't find a copy. When faxed to them by Williams' staff it turned out to be little more than "the weather is here, wish you were beautiful" platitudes; certainly it didn't live up to the billing Williams had given it earlier.
So Williams stormed from a federal-provincial conference on Equalization without a deal and without suffering any closed-door gryping from his fellow premiers.
He sat with Don Newman on Newsworld and vented his frustration at Ottawa, his jaw clenching and unclenching visibly to the cameras. He started a news conference alongside his finance minister, cutting the whole affair off quickly by telling Loyola Sullivan that it was time they were going.
A confusing interview with CBC television's Carole MacNeil didn't help persuade national audiences that Williams wasn't looking to eat his oil cake and have his Equalization too.
More acrimony and then the December deadline.
In the meantime, the feds were hardening their position. They were refusing to play on Williams' terms or in his arena. Only Efford - his lack of influence in Ottawa painfully obvious with each passing day - would blunder to the public stage issuing a take-it or leave-it challenge on the October offer only to deny the plain facts of his statement when the public turned on him.
All the while, the province was being forced slowly to go where Williams had not wanted to go. After the October offer, St. John's started actually negotiating with Ottawa, sending off draft agreements, reworking clauses for the first time since the whole offshore issue had been raised with Ottawa 10 months beforehand.
No one in Ottawa would say much of anything publicly, neither repudiating nor accepting Williams' June letter. What was growing increasingly clear, though, was that Williams could achieve nothing even close to his June claim of doubling oil revenues in perpetuity.
With the realization, came the gloom.
One last deadline was set: December.
Time for a Christmas present if the news was good or to label the feds as the Grinch if need be.
Off to Winnipeg for a new federal offer which Williams praised to the media on the way up. Public optimism soared, especially on the province's radio call-in shows which had become, since Brian Tobin's time, a popular poll used by Premier's Offices to gauge what the public was thinking. Williams seemed to live on Open Line himself. Later he would implement a policy that required each of the senior public servants in the communications division to spend almost one entire day a week in rotation doing nothing but monitoring the radio and having someone on to counteract criticism. No negative comment was to go unchallenged for more than a few minutes.
Public optimism was shattered as Williams stormed from the meeting, flew back to St. John's and scheduled a media briefing for December 22. He announced there was no Christmas present from Paul Martin. Williams' talked of getting a slap in the face.
Then he ordered Canadian flags to be taken from every provincial building. "Why would we fly their flag and pretend everything is rosy?" he told reporters at Confederation Building.
There is no sign he had planned the announcement or had discussed it outside of a limited number of close confidantes. The province's most senior public servant, for example, normally unflappable, scrambled from the room to have public works security guards get the flags down. The security guard himself, who appeared on every TV set on every TV news broadcast in the country for days afterward appeared like he had been roused from a sleep and handed a dust-covered and seldom-used dress uniform cap to look his best.
At the news conference, Williams himself systematically pointed to each flag behind him intoning "That one will be coming down and that one and that one." The pointing wasn't as telling as the tone of his voice.
For a man who needed national public opinion to be on his side, Williams' actions could not have produced a more disastrous result. Over Christmas the public dismay mounted at using the national flag as a political tool. Letters, faxes and e-mails poured into the Premier's Office. National opinion polls turned against Williams, including one in the Globe and Mail, Canada's erstwhile national newspaper which had already endorsed Williams' offshore goal.
Locally the move was a hit, especially among the province's anti-Confederates. Williams' tried later to blow off the national public reaction as being orchestrated by the federal Liberal communications team. He was well off the mark with this, the latest of his conspiracy theories.
Coming back after a Christmas and new year's break, Williams launched an offensive. He would head to Toronto to make the case to national media. [As it turned out, the Globe editorial the day after its editorial board met with Williams was hardly positive for the premier. Others would follow suit, telling WIlliams he should accept the deal in front of him.]
Williams would soften his line on the flags a bit, hinting that they might go back after a suitable period and no longer, as he previously wanted, once Ottawa met his demands. He would write the prime minister and announce so publicly, to shift focus to Ottawa.
In the meantime, Williams commissioned a poll. Ryan Research and Communications was a firm which Danny had come to rely upon increasingly for insights into public moods. The principal consultant, Karen Ryan, was an experienced market researcher who had worked for one of the country's leading marketing firms before branching out on her own. Ryan did work for Vic Young on the Royal Commission and had polled for Danny himself virtually every month from December 2003 onward. She was a natural choice.
On January 3, 2005, Ryan was asked to survey attitudes in the province on the offshore negotiations and on the flag. Work was to start on the 4th of January and finish as quickly as possible. The Premier's Office quickly decided on a national survey and so 800 surveys were administered across the country from January 4 to January 9, 2005 on top of the 400 in Newfoundland and Labrador that had been wrapped up on January 5th. Its purpose, as the research report's executive summary stated, was "to gain insight into and understanding of Canadian's support for Premier's Williams' efforts to secure 100% of provincial offshore royalties and whether they perceived that the Prime Minister should honor his commitment of June 5th, 2004."
On that basis, the research report, subsequently obtained by The Telegram is a curious document. Aside from the standard questions about age, education and income, there are only five specific questions about different aspects of the offshore oil issue. That is typical in simple surveys.
What isn't typical is the wording, the ordering or the structuring of the questions. It wasn't a push poll - not a poll at all, really, but a propaganda technique pioneered in the United States - but the Danny Williams' messages would get across nonetheless, if that was the goal. If nothing else, the poll would give Williams something he could talk about publicly to give the appearance things were going better than they were.
The first one basically asked if the respondent believed the Prime Minister should live up to his commitments, but it did so with wording that would likely lead a respondent to answer in the affirmative.
Specifically it asked: "On June 5th 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin publicly committed to accepting the proposal put forth by Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams that would see Newfoundland and Labrador keep 100% of its provincial offshore revenues. Do you believe that Prime Minister Martin should honor this commitment to allow Newfoundland and Labrador to keep 100% of its provincial offshore royalties?"
The question contained the Premier's key message, not once but twice, that the whole discussion was about the province keeping its own money. Intuitively, few would argue with the point, except those that understood the intricacies of federal-provincial financial arrangements or the Atlantic Accord. Few did, including cabinet ministers and former ministers. Facts weren't important; the message was.
Nationally, 72% of respondents agreed with the idea of honoring the commitment. Fully 96% of Newfoundlanders agreed, along with 72% of Westerners, 68% of Ontarians, 73% of Quebeckers and 84% of Martimers. Even with the polls margins of error - 2.83% nationally, almost five percent in Newfoundland and almost 8% in the other regions, the figures were unmistakable.
So too with the second question, which asked: "Overall, all things considered, how supportive are you of Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams' efforts to secure a deal with the Federal Government that would see 100% of Newfoundland's offshore revenue kept in that province?"
The responses were structured as a Likert scale, in which respondents are usually offered an equal number of positive and negative choices in order to gauge the intensity of their attitudes. In this instance, respondents were offered three positive choices (completely, mostly or somewhat supportive) and only one negative choice (not supportive at all), likely leading them to pick a soft positive one, even if they were actually opposed.
The total level of support was unmistakable with 72% picking one of the positive choices, but nationally, the individual positive choices were almost even. Outside Newfoundland and Labrador, where 73% supported the premier's efforts completely, or the Maritimes where 42% did so, the results were similar to the national figures, suggesting strongly that people had some reservations about the efforts.
The third question was about the flag and again was structured as a Likert scale with three positive and only one negative choice:
"To what extent do you support Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams' decision to remove Canadian flags from Newfoundland's government buildings to protest Prime Minister Martin and the Government of Canada not living up to the commitment to allow Newfoundland and Labrador to keep 100% of provincial oil revenues?"
There was no question as to how familiar people were with the issue, nor was there a simple question about the respondent's feeling about removing the flags. The question included the Premier's rationale for the move in detail.
Despite the leading nature of the question, having heard the same rationale about commitment's and revenues in two previous questions and despite the skewed nature of the scale which would tend to have respondent's pick a positive response, 60% of respondents nationally picked the sole, extreme negative choice.
The view was as clear in the regions across the country, even allowing the poll's margins of error. Respondents strongly opposed the flag move in every region except Quebec and Newfoundland. Even 63% of Maritimers were not supportive at all. In Quebec, where flag flaps were old news, the figure was 45% not supportive at all, the single largest response category by more than two to one.
In Newfoundland and Labrador 38% were completely supportive and 29% were not supportive at all. With a margin of error of almost five percent, those figures could be 33% completely supportive and 34% completely unsupportive. Those results were available to the Premier possibly as early as January 6 and may have prompted his admission to news media on January 7 that the flag issue had cost him support. Even at home, as Williams may well have known, his flag flap was a loser at worst, a distraction at best.
There is no way of knowing for sure, but it is interesting the coincidence that this polling was completed nationally on January 9 and that Premier Williams ordered flags raised on January 10. The move surprised everyone, coming, as it did, in the midst of a news conference to announce a call for expressions of interest in developing the Lower Churchill.
There is no specific date on the polling research report. Those familiar with polling know that it is possible to produce quick results that simply tally responses. Those could easily have been available to the premier by late on the 9th or early on the 10th.
With the flags back, the Premier removed a issue that had overshadowed his campaign on offshore revenues. On January 14, the Prime Minister released his reply to Williams' letter both accepting Williams' request for a face-to-face meeting as an attempt to resolve the ongoing offshore issue and making it clear that the federal government was never going to accept the June double-up scheme.
The deal reached in late January 2005 has been discussed in detail elsewhere. The first clause of the agreement repudiates the very basis on which Williams made his public case: the provincial government already received 100% of offshore revenues. ("This agreement reflects an understanding between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Nova Scotia that both provinces already are collecting and will continue to collect 100 percent of offshore resource revenues as if these resources were on land.")
In the end, the province accepted a cash lump sum of $2.0 billion, as had been offered in October but increased to reflect then-current oil prices. Other details of the deal did nothing to change the fact which had served as the foundation of the Young commission's report and Williams' case as well: Equalization and Equalization offsets would not continue if the provincial government no longer qualified for Equalization.
The lump sum was more than was on the table in the beginning but it fell far short of the provincial government's June objectives. It even fell short of its January 2004 goal.
But the deal was done.
And the Premier claimed victory.
The message was important, not the details.
Postscript:
Is there other provincial government Accord polling? Maybe.
Ryan Research conducted polling for the Williams administration almost every month from December 2003 to August 2004 and again in January 2005. Those are the polls that were paid for by the provincial government and which have been acknowledged publicly.
Despite a ruling by the province's access to information commissioner, the Williams administration is withholding any polls done by Ryan. They have released research done by other firms, despite the claim that polling done for Executive Council reveals cabinet deliberations.
Only work by Ryan Research is being withheld.
The following is an account of the offshore discussions between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador between January 2004 and January 2005. It is based on anecdotal information, correspondence between both governments, previous posts to the Bond Papers and on the research report submitted to the provincial government in January 2005 and recently released to news media.
References to strategy by the Williams' government are solely those of the author taking inferences from events and publicly available information.]
Getting the deal
Through the fall of 2004, attitudes grew increasingly gloomy among the Premier's Office staff in St. John's.
The original plan had been to snag a quick deal for extra cash from the offshore before the federal election. There was no detailed position paper, no legal argument that the federal government had somehow failed to live up to the 1985 Atlantic Accord.
What there had been was passion and attitude, playing up the sense of alienation from Ottawa and dissatisfaction among Newfoundlanders and Labradorians documented in research done for the Royal Commission on strengthening and renewing our place in Canada.
Premier Danny Williams found policy gold in the Young commission. A fiscal paper written by a former deputy minister of finance under Brian Peckford was readily adopted; one of its keystones had been an elaborate explanation of how the federal government was making billions from the offshore while Newfoundland and Labrador made a relative pittance from its "own" resource. Roger Grimes had been the latest of a series of provincial premiers to fail at having Ottawa rework the cash portions of the 1985 Atlantic Accord.
Here was a ready-made triumph for Williams.
Williams would tackle Ottawa like it was an insurance company, using a combination of the charm and bluster that had worked so often before in his private law practice.
Shag the facts.
Point to the shameful injustice of it all. Press Ottawa for cash. If they made an offer, up the ante and then seek more cash in public using whatever means possible. Ottawa Liberals would not want to be jammed up before a federal election, as Williams himself said in the early spring of 2004.
Play up the drama.
An impoverished province in desperate financial straits.
A new government in a province full of promise and hope, forced to slash services and freeze wages while billions in cash poured to ever-rich Ottawa.
Fight the case in the court of public opinion where, as Williams had learned through years of experience, the judge and jury are less concerned with pesky matters like details than in a real court-room. In public opinion's court, the more tears shed, the more money in the settlement.
And so it had rolled out.
The letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin in January 2004. Lengthy and relying entirely on a supposedly independent outside financial analysis, it made the case for a financial settlement from Ottawa that would make a modest adjustment to the existing Equalization offsets in the original Accord. This wouldn't be for grievance or indeed for justice. Rather, the feds would help because the money was needed to put a roof over the heads and food in the belly of Williams' 520, 000 clients.
The Prime Minister accepted the idea for further discussion later in January, sending his regional minister, John Efford, to meet with Williams and his officials in late February. Williams charmed Efford, couching the whole matter in the simplest of simple terms, ones that Efford was sure to accept. There was the news conference after the meeting in which Williams talked of there being a two-headed horse fighting for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Never mind that Efford would never, ever grasp either the political manoeuvering around him or the substance of the offshore revenue issue. If the feds coughed up cash, Danny would claim victory. If they stalled or rejected the idea, Efford was the easy scapegoat. He was no Crosbie, whose grasp of the facts and vicious tongue could dissect an opponent with the finesse of a broadaxe. Nor was he a Tobin. Efford was an easy mark.
There were claims by Williams of support from all the premiers. There were comments on the frustration of waiting for Ottawa to act. Behind the scenes there was little substantive provincial activity. There was no written proposal that spelled out Williams' ideas in legal detail. What they did slap together was an overhead slide show that would surely have suggested to anyone familiar with the Accord that the provincial officials didn't understand the history of the deal or the original deal itself. Anyone, like say Efford's deputy minister, who had helped negotiate the Accord in 1985 and who would likely remain opposed to the province's arguments based on his own knowledge of the original deal.
There was the odd short letter to the PM or telephone call. The letters said little more than: "Come on bye, ye gotta do something."
The goal was a commitment from the prime minister. No officials. No intermediaries. No getting bogged down in give and take. Williams wanted the words from Paul Martin's own lips: "I agree".
Williams got the commitment on June 5, 2005. The PM had accepted Williams' proposal, presumably the letter from January. Williams followed up five days later with a letter that thanked the prime minister for his accepting the province's position. Williams then restated the position increasing both the amount of money and duration of the deal from what had been discussed before, released it to the public and then set a deadline of the late summer for getting the thing finished.
The premier was not happy. He could never be happy. Every offer would be just short of what was required to make him happy enough.
and so the ante was upped.
A late summer deadline was set by Williams. Efford suggested it might be more like September.
By September, no deal had been reached.
The feds met a new October deadline for a proposal imposed by Williams but only just. Regardless of what was in the offer, Williams would never have accepted it. It wasn't his style. bad news for Williams though, came from the other provincial premiers who were finally waking up to a looming deal that had been, to now, underneath the national radar screen.
They realized that what Williams was asking for was a federal transfer to Newfoundland, equal to its offshore revenues, even if the province grew as rich as any other. Ontario's Dalton McGuinty would have none of it. He wrote to the feds stating Ontario's rejection of any such arrangement that smacked of Equalization as a provincial right. The letter of support he had written Williams finally surfaced, a note of such importance that his office couldn't find a copy. When faxed to them by Williams' staff it turned out to be little more than "the weather is here, wish you were beautiful" platitudes; certainly it didn't live up to the billing Williams had given it earlier.
So Williams stormed from a federal-provincial conference on Equalization without a deal and without suffering any closed-door gryping from his fellow premiers.
He sat with Don Newman on Newsworld and vented his frustration at Ottawa, his jaw clenching and unclenching visibly to the cameras. He started a news conference alongside his finance minister, cutting the whole affair off quickly by telling Loyola Sullivan that it was time they were going.
A confusing interview with CBC television's Carole MacNeil didn't help persuade national audiences that Williams wasn't looking to eat his oil cake and have his Equalization too.
More acrimony and then the December deadline.
In the meantime, the feds were hardening their position. They were refusing to play on Williams' terms or in his arena. Only Efford - his lack of influence in Ottawa painfully obvious with each passing day - would blunder to the public stage issuing a take-it or leave-it challenge on the October offer only to deny the plain facts of his statement when the public turned on him.
All the while, the province was being forced slowly to go where Williams had not wanted to go. After the October offer, St. John's started actually negotiating with Ottawa, sending off draft agreements, reworking clauses for the first time since the whole offshore issue had been raised with Ottawa 10 months beforehand.
No one in Ottawa would say much of anything publicly, neither repudiating nor accepting Williams' June letter. What was growing increasingly clear, though, was that Williams could achieve nothing even close to his June claim of doubling oil revenues in perpetuity.
With the realization, came the gloom.
One last deadline was set: December.
Time for a Christmas present if the news was good or to label the feds as the Grinch if need be.
Off to Winnipeg for a new federal offer which Williams praised to the media on the way up. Public optimism soared, especially on the province's radio call-in shows which had become, since Brian Tobin's time, a popular poll used by Premier's Offices to gauge what the public was thinking. Williams seemed to live on Open Line himself. Later he would implement a policy that required each of the senior public servants in the communications division to spend almost one entire day a week in rotation doing nothing but monitoring the radio and having someone on to counteract criticism. No negative comment was to go unchallenged for more than a few minutes.
Public optimism was shattered as Williams stormed from the meeting, flew back to St. John's and scheduled a media briefing for December 22. He announced there was no Christmas present from Paul Martin. Williams' talked of getting a slap in the face.
Then he ordered Canadian flags to be taken from every provincial building. "Why would we fly their flag and pretend everything is rosy?" he told reporters at Confederation Building.
There is no sign he had planned the announcement or had discussed it outside of a limited number of close confidantes. The province's most senior public servant, for example, normally unflappable, scrambled from the room to have public works security guards get the flags down. The security guard himself, who appeared on every TV set on every TV news broadcast in the country for days afterward appeared like he had been roused from a sleep and handed a dust-covered and seldom-used dress uniform cap to look his best.
At the news conference, Williams himself systematically pointed to each flag behind him intoning "That one will be coming down and that one and that one." The pointing wasn't as telling as the tone of his voice.
For a man who needed national public opinion to be on his side, Williams' actions could not have produced a more disastrous result. Over Christmas the public dismay mounted at using the national flag as a political tool. Letters, faxes and e-mails poured into the Premier's Office. National opinion polls turned against Williams, including one in the Globe and Mail, Canada's erstwhile national newspaper which had already endorsed Williams' offshore goal.
Locally the move was a hit, especially among the province's anti-Confederates. Williams' tried later to blow off the national public reaction as being orchestrated by the federal Liberal communications team. He was well off the mark with this, the latest of his conspiracy theories.
Coming back after a Christmas and new year's break, Williams launched an offensive. He would head to Toronto to make the case to national media. [As it turned out, the Globe editorial the day after its editorial board met with Williams was hardly positive for the premier. Others would follow suit, telling WIlliams he should accept the deal in front of him.]
Williams would soften his line on the flags a bit, hinting that they might go back after a suitable period and no longer, as he previously wanted, once Ottawa met his demands. He would write the prime minister and announce so publicly, to shift focus to Ottawa.
In the meantime, Williams commissioned a poll. Ryan Research and Communications was a firm which Danny had come to rely upon increasingly for insights into public moods. The principal consultant, Karen Ryan, was an experienced market researcher who had worked for one of the country's leading marketing firms before branching out on her own. Ryan did work for Vic Young on the Royal Commission and had polled for Danny himself virtually every month from December 2003 onward. She was a natural choice.
On January 3, 2005, Ryan was asked to survey attitudes in the province on the offshore negotiations and on the flag. Work was to start on the 4th of January and finish as quickly as possible. The Premier's Office quickly decided on a national survey and so 800 surveys were administered across the country from January 4 to January 9, 2005 on top of the 400 in Newfoundland and Labrador that had been wrapped up on January 5th. Its purpose, as the research report's executive summary stated, was "to gain insight into and understanding of Canadian's support for Premier's Williams' efforts to secure 100% of provincial offshore royalties and whether they perceived that the Prime Minister should honor his commitment of June 5th, 2004."
On that basis, the research report, subsequently obtained by The Telegram is a curious document. Aside from the standard questions about age, education and income, there are only five specific questions about different aspects of the offshore oil issue. That is typical in simple surveys.
What isn't typical is the wording, the ordering or the structuring of the questions. It wasn't a push poll - not a poll at all, really, but a propaganda technique pioneered in the United States - but the Danny Williams' messages would get across nonetheless, if that was the goal. If nothing else, the poll would give Williams something he could talk about publicly to give the appearance things were going better than they were.
The first one basically asked if the respondent believed the Prime Minister should live up to his commitments, but it did so with wording that would likely lead a respondent to answer in the affirmative.
Specifically it asked: "On June 5th 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin publicly committed to accepting the proposal put forth by Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams that would see Newfoundland and Labrador keep 100% of its provincial offshore revenues. Do you believe that Prime Minister Martin should honor this commitment to allow Newfoundland and Labrador to keep 100% of its provincial offshore royalties?"
The question contained the Premier's key message, not once but twice, that the whole discussion was about the province keeping its own money. Intuitively, few would argue with the point, except those that understood the intricacies of federal-provincial financial arrangements or the Atlantic Accord. Few did, including cabinet ministers and former ministers. Facts weren't important; the message was.
Nationally, 72% of respondents agreed with the idea of honoring the commitment. Fully 96% of Newfoundlanders agreed, along with 72% of Westerners, 68% of Ontarians, 73% of Quebeckers and 84% of Martimers. Even with the polls margins of error - 2.83% nationally, almost five percent in Newfoundland and almost 8% in the other regions, the figures were unmistakable.
So too with the second question, which asked: "Overall, all things considered, how supportive are you of Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams' efforts to secure a deal with the Federal Government that would see 100% of Newfoundland's offshore revenue kept in that province?"
The responses were structured as a Likert scale, in which respondents are usually offered an equal number of positive and negative choices in order to gauge the intensity of their attitudes. In this instance, respondents were offered three positive choices (completely, mostly or somewhat supportive) and only one negative choice (not supportive at all), likely leading them to pick a soft positive one, even if they were actually opposed.
The total level of support was unmistakable with 72% picking one of the positive choices, but nationally, the individual positive choices were almost even. Outside Newfoundland and Labrador, where 73% supported the premier's efforts completely, or the Maritimes where 42% did so, the results were similar to the national figures, suggesting strongly that people had some reservations about the efforts.
The third question was about the flag and again was structured as a Likert scale with three positive and only one negative choice:
"To what extent do you support Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams' decision to remove Canadian flags from Newfoundland's government buildings to protest Prime Minister Martin and the Government of Canada not living up to the commitment to allow Newfoundland and Labrador to keep 100% of provincial oil revenues?"
There was no question as to how familiar people were with the issue, nor was there a simple question about the respondent's feeling about removing the flags. The question included the Premier's rationale for the move in detail.
Despite the leading nature of the question, having heard the same rationale about commitment's and revenues in two previous questions and despite the skewed nature of the scale which would tend to have respondent's pick a positive response, 60% of respondents nationally picked the sole, extreme negative choice.
The view was as clear in the regions across the country, even allowing the poll's margins of error. Respondents strongly opposed the flag move in every region except Quebec and Newfoundland. Even 63% of Maritimers were not supportive at all. In Quebec, where flag flaps were old news, the figure was 45% not supportive at all, the single largest response category by more than two to one.
In Newfoundland and Labrador 38% were completely supportive and 29% were not supportive at all. With a margin of error of almost five percent, those figures could be 33% completely supportive and 34% completely unsupportive. Those results were available to the Premier possibly as early as January 6 and may have prompted his admission to news media on January 7 that the flag issue had cost him support. Even at home, as Williams may well have known, his flag flap was a loser at worst, a distraction at best.
There is no way of knowing for sure, but it is interesting the coincidence that this polling was completed nationally on January 9 and that Premier Williams ordered flags raised on January 10. The move surprised everyone, coming, as it did, in the midst of a news conference to announce a call for expressions of interest in developing the Lower Churchill.
There is no specific date on the polling research report. Those familiar with polling know that it is possible to produce quick results that simply tally responses. Those could easily have been available to the premier by late on the 9th or early on the 10th.
With the flags back, the Premier removed a issue that had overshadowed his campaign on offshore revenues. On January 14, the Prime Minister released his reply to Williams' letter both accepting Williams' request for a face-to-face meeting as an attempt to resolve the ongoing offshore issue and making it clear that the federal government was never going to accept the June double-up scheme.
The deal reached in late January 2005 has been discussed in detail elsewhere. The first clause of the agreement repudiates the very basis on which Williams made his public case: the provincial government already received 100% of offshore revenues. ("This agreement reflects an understanding between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Nova Scotia that both provinces already are collecting and will continue to collect 100 percent of offshore resource revenues as if these resources were on land.")
In the end, the province accepted a cash lump sum of $2.0 billion, as had been offered in October but increased to reflect then-current oil prices. Other details of the deal did nothing to change the fact which had served as the foundation of the Young commission's report and Williams' case as well: Equalization and Equalization offsets would not continue if the provincial government no longer qualified for Equalization.
The lump sum was more than was on the table in the beginning but it fell far short of the provincial government's June objectives. It even fell short of its January 2004 goal.
But the deal was done.
And the Premier claimed victory.
The message was important, not the details.
Postscript:
Is there other provincial government Accord polling? Maybe.
Ryan Research conducted polling for the Williams administration almost every month from December 2003 to August 2004 and again in January 2005. Those are the polls that were paid for by the provincial government and which have been acknowledged publicly.
Despite a ruling by the province's access to information commissioner, the Williams administration is withholding any polls done by Ryan. They have released research done by other firms, despite the claim that polling done for Executive Council reveals cabinet deliberations.
Only work by Ryan Research is being withheld.
Generic Obit-generator
Newly developed is this simple list of phrases for people writing obituaries, especially of former politicians:
- He was a great man/she was a great woman.
- H/She was a great Canadian.
- H/she was hard-working. Variation: H/she was a tireless worker.
- Politician: H/she worked on behalf of the people of his/her province/Canada. Vary location as appropriate; may be combined with "hard-working" quote from above.
- His/her death is a loss for [insert name of province here]/[Canada]. May combine both province and country for extra emphasis.
- H/she was committed to making the world/province/city/community a better place.
- We owe him/her a debt of gratitude. [the reason for the debt is irrelevant]
Now that you have seen this list, take a peak at this VOCM story, and the Premier's official statement, and the Prime Minister's statement on the death yesterday of former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Frank Moores.
While you're at it, here's the CBC web story. Click on the link to an audio clip of Brian Tobin, who apparently has been rehabilitated as a public commentator. Note a few things: the number of names Tobin drops particularly in the story about being on a military "jet" [If it was actually a jet at altitude and a door seal broke, odds are good we wouldn't be hearing any reminiscences from Tobin and all the other people on the plane]; the cell phone dingling in the background at one point; the reference to Tobin's previous life as a "journalist".
I have written a few of these things in my time and not every one was a gem. At least, I tried to make it appropriate to the person being remembered.
- He was a great man/she was a great woman.
- H/She was a great Canadian.
- H/she was hard-working. Variation: H/she was a tireless worker.
- Politician: H/she worked on behalf of the people of his/her province/Canada. Vary location as appropriate; may be combined with "hard-working" quote from above.
- His/her death is a loss for [insert name of province here]/[Canada]. May combine both province and country for extra emphasis.
- H/she was committed to making the world/province/city/community a better place.
- We owe him/her a debt of gratitude. [the reason for the debt is irrelevant]
Now that you have seen this list, take a peak at this VOCM story, and the Premier's official statement, and the Prime Minister's statement on the death yesterday of former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Frank Moores.
While you're at it, here's the CBC web story. Click on the link to an audio clip of Brian Tobin, who apparently has been rehabilitated as a public commentator. Note a few things: the number of names Tobin drops particularly in the story about being on a military "jet" [If it was actually a jet at altitude and a door seal broke, odds are good we wouldn't be hearing any reminiscences from Tobin and all the other people on the plane]; the cell phone dingling in the background at one point; the reference to Tobin's previous life as a "journalist".
I have written a few of these things in my time and not every one was a gem. At least, I tried to make it appropriate to the person being remembered.
10 July 2005
Frank Duff Moores (1933-2005)
The second premier of Newfoundland and Labrador after Confederation and successful businessman, Frank Moores died today in Perth, Ontario of complications from liver cancer.
Gregarious and affable in his public and personal life, Moores won three general elections as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party (plurality, 1971; majority, 1972 and 1975) before retiring in 1979. His term as premier saw the completion of Smallwood-era megaprojects, purchase of the Upper Churcill project and the development of oil and gas policy by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
He later helped organize the successful campaign of Brian Mulroney for national progressive Conservative leader and later prime minister. Moores started a powerful and influential consulting business in Ottawa shortly afterward.
Moores began working with the family fish business, becoming president of the company before entering politics in 1968 as the member of parliament for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception. Moores became provincial Progressive Conservative leader in 1970 and set about rebuilding the party for an anticipated provincial general election. His coalition of disaffected Liberals like John Crosbie, T Alex Hickman and Val Earle and lifelong Conservatives like Anthony J. (Ank) Murphy, Gerry Ottenheimer and Tom Hickey won 21 seats in the 1971 general election compared to 20 seats for the Liberals under Joe Smallwood and one seat held by the New Labrador Party candidate Tom Burgess.
After much political manoeuvering by Smallwood, the lieutenant governor invited Moores to form an administration in January 1972. Political uncertainty caused by shifting political allegiances and resignations led Moores to seek issuance of a writ of election. Under the slogan "The time has come", Moores won a majority over the Liberal Party led by Edward Roberts.
In his first term as premier, Moores completed several of the projects begun by Smallwood including a crude oil refinery at Come by Chance and the Upper Churchill hydro electric development, which Moores' administration later purchased from the private developers Brinco along with that company's mineral and timber rights throughout the province.
In his second term, Moores' administration started a major fisheries initiative in which the province extended loans to fishing businesses. Discussions with Quebec over recall of upper Churchill power proved fruitless and Moores began talks to develop the Lower Churchill's hydroelectric potential.
Moores may be remembered as the premier under whom the provincial government began seriously to establish provincial regulations for offshore oil exploration and development under energy ministers Leo Barry and later Brian Peckford. During Peckford's term as energy minister in the second Moores administration, the provincial government released a position paper which laid out the provincial government's claim for ownership of the offshore resources.
Gregarious and affable in his public and personal life, Moores won three general elections as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party (plurality, 1971; majority, 1972 and 1975) before retiring in 1979. His term as premier saw the completion of Smallwood-era megaprojects, purchase of the Upper Churcill project and the development of oil and gas policy by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
He later helped organize the successful campaign of Brian Mulroney for national progressive Conservative leader and later prime minister. Moores started a powerful and influential consulting business in Ottawa shortly afterward.
Moores began working with the family fish business, becoming president of the company before entering politics in 1968 as the member of parliament for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception. Moores became provincial Progressive Conservative leader in 1970 and set about rebuilding the party for an anticipated provincial general election. His coalition of disaffected Liberals like John Crosbie, T Alex Hickman and Val Earle and lifelong Conservatives like Anthony J. (Ank) Murphy, Gerry Ottenheimer and Tom Hickey won 21 seats in the 1971 general election compared to 20 seats for the Liberals under Joe Smallwood and one seat held by the New Labrador Party candidate Tom Burgess.
After much political manoeuvering by Smallwood, the lieutenant governor invited Moores to form an administration in January 1972. Political uncertainty caused by shifting political allegiances and resignations led Moores to seek issuance of a writ of election. Under the slogan "The time has come", Moores won a majority over the Liberal Party led by Edward Roberts.
In his first term as premier, Moores completed several of the projects begun by Smallwood including a crude oil refinery at Come by Chance and the Upper Churchill hydro electric development, which Moores' administration later purchased from the private developers Brinco along with that company's mineral and timber rights throughout the province.
In his second term, Moores' administration started a major fisheries initiative in which the province extended loans to fishing businesses. Discussions with Quebec over recall of upper Churchill power proved fruitless and Moores began talks to develop the Lower Churchill's hydroelectric potential.
Moores may be remembered as the premier under whom the provincial government began seriously to establish provincial regulations for offshore oil exploration and development under energy ministers Leo Barry and later Brian Peckford. During Peckford's term as energy minister in the second Moores administration, the provincial government released a position paper which laid out the provincial government's claim for ownership of the offshore resources.
Ask a simple question...[Update II]
Ignore the simple answer.
You have to hand it Ryan Cleary.
He is relentless in his pursuit of something or other.
The real problem for readers of the Independent is that it is hard to know sometimes what he is after or why he can't seem to find what everyone else has already uncovered.
But he keeps digging.
And reporting that he and his staff can't find stuff.
And blaming other people for not telling them what they should have been able to find out on their own.
Like Ryan's column in this week's Independent in which he complains that the Spindy crew couldn't find out the answers to a few questions. There's a front page story by Clare-Marie Goose on the whole thing, but more of that later.
Well, here are the questions and the answers.
1. How much does the federal government make from the oil industry on the Grand Banks?
I don't have the most up-to-date figures right at hand but I can give you a decent idea of what the federal and provincial government are taking in; at least I can give you a sense of the proportions. In fact, this information has been posted to the Bond Papers before and, if memory serves, I e-mailed a chart to Ryan when he was making up his six part series on how Canada bleeds us white. Even though the tables I sent Ryan are factual, nothing even close to it ever appeared in print.
When Husky presented the White Rose development proposal they paid local economist Wade Locke to estimate the treasury impacts for both governments of the project over a 15 year life-span. The figures for provincial royalties are based on a price per barrel of US$20.
(A) Provincial:
Of direct revenues, only the province collects royalties from offshore production, just as in Alberta and exactly as the Atlantic Accord (1985) provides. As well, the province collects corporate and personal income taxes and the payroll tax.
Locke estimated that provincial direct revenues from White Rose would be $908 million over the life of the project. Annual royalties were estimated to be a little under $30 million.
(B) Federal:
Direct federal revenues consist only of corporate and personal income taxes. Locke estimated the feds would make $741 million in direct revenues.
But here's an important point to recall. Provincial royalties are tied directly to the price of a barrel of oil; federal corporate taxes are not. With oil trading at three times the figure in Locke's estimate, provincial royalties alone jump dramatically while federal revenues won't.
There are also some indirect revenues as well, resulting from spin-offs from the oil business and from the impact economic growth has on things like reduced social assistance costs or increased premiums for employment insurance. Ms. Gosse's story points that out - sort of - but only mentions the indirect federal revenues; the provincial government collects indirect cash as well, like say its portion of the HST on refined petroleum products.
Incidentally, Jim Wright from Memorial University is right when he suggests the offshore has larger impacts on the federal treasury than the provincial one. In Locke's analysis, it is easy to see that the most significant source of federal revenue comes from its corporate income taxes. After all, the feds can tax a corporate head office in Calgary or a sub-office or business in Ontario that someone can add in as being revenue from the offshore. That just reflects the fact that the feds can tax across the country, but provincial governments only tax within their provinces.
[By the way, using that same sort of approach, Ralph Klein actually makes cash from Hibernia through his provincial taxes. Is he next on the hit list for cash?]
The second biggest treasury impact for the feds comes from Canada Pension and Employment Insurance premiums that result solely from increases in employment levels. The Newfoundland and Labrador government doesn't have any program even vaguely like that so it would be hard for it to collect the same type of revenue.
For the sake of at least starting to answer the Spindy question, let's just stick with the direct figures since they are...well...direct. Armed with that information, the Spindies could certainly get a sense of how the revenues flow to Ottawa and St. John's, even if the exact figures weren't readily available.
2. How much does the federal government collect from Alberta's oil? What's Ottawa's take of a dollar of crude in Alberta versus here?
In both, Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa does not make any money from a barrel of oil, that is if we look directly at royalties.
Under the real Atlantic Accord, offshore oil is treated exactly as if it were on land.
Pretty simple so far?
Therefore, the federal government doesn't collect a penny from royalties in either province.
If you are asking something else, go back to question 1.
3. How does Ottawa own "our" oil?
Part of the problem here may be that Ryan doesn't actually want to read anything that has been written on the two offshore decisions from the early 1980s. Ryan just likes to mention the Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1984 but something tells me he is ignoring the answers on this one because they interfere with his pre-conceived editorial slants.
Here's a link to the 1984 so-called Hibernia reference to the SCC from the Government of Canada. The Supreme Court of Newfoundland decision on the provincial government reference isn't online but a trip to the province's library system will get it easily. There are enough mentions of it in the link I just gave, though, that you can get a good sense of it.
Anyway, here it is in a nutshell.
Offshore oil actually doesn't belong to Canada (or any part of Canada) in the same way oil under land does.
Under international law, Canada has exclusive rights to exploit sub-seabed mineral resources.
The Supreme Court of Newfoundland determined and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld in two completely separate references that since the right to exploit the resources is a result of Canada's external sovereignty, under the Constitution, exclusive legislative rights to the offshore rests with the Government of Canada.
BUT, under the real Atlantic Accord, the Government of Canada agreed to share management rights and gave this province certain powers under the real Atlantic Accord that basically give the provincial government virtually all the benefits of offshore oil without actually having legal title to them.
Pretty neat idea, huh?
It's actually not hard to understand at all, unless you want to deliberately misrepresent stuff for some reason.
Any oil on land, though, is treated exactly the same here as anywhere else in the country. The rig that is busily pumping oil from a couple of wells on the Port au Port is pumping royalties directly to St. John's. Here's a little quirk though. Any of that oil out to three miles from shore belongs to this province and this province alone. That puts us in a position unlike any other coastal province.
Guess who decided that.
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld a decision from the Supreme Court of Newfoundland in the ruling Ryan likes to ignore. That too upsets his anti-Ottawa slant, so I guess there's an answer and a question both of which can get ignored down in a building that ironically housed a place called "The Light"..
I could probably tackle the other questions furrowing Ryan's editorial brow but I just thought I'd deal with the major ones.
As a final point, it is really strange that in Claire-Marie Gosse's story, the Spindy reports provincial revenues this year from oil as being only $215 million.
For one thing, anyone who paid attention to the March budget knows that the province based that projection of royalties on a relatively low price of oil. The whole issue was well-dissected in the media at the time (not in the Spindy though) and here at the Bond Papers.
It gets better. If I recall correctly, CBC news reported just last week that current estimates of provincial revenues will add about $400 to 500 million to that figure.
Back in the winter, Wade Locke used these figures when discussing provincial offshore revenues. Note that the figure for this year is somewhere around $600 million.
How in the heck did the Spindy miss that one?
Ms. Gosse also neglects to point out that the Terra Nova project will move to a higher royalty tier this year, largely as a result of oil prices coupled with the lower start-up costs from not building a gravity based structure. Either Clare-Marie didn't know that information - it was widely reported - or she knew better than to write something that would praise a project her boss hates.
Anyway...
Ryan's column started out just fine. He pointed to the different ways reporters get information, noting that at the Spindy they try asking questions.
Ok. I'll buy that.
After filling up lots of space with many words, he ends with a flourish:
"In the end, the Independent is left with a choice: scrap the story about how the offshore pie is divided or point out the shortage of facts and the trouble it takes to get them.
Either way it's a story."
As with so many Spindy pieces, neither Ms. Gosse's writing on the offshore nor Ryan's column are stories.
Unless, that is, one was reporting on the bizarre inability of a newspaper that prides itself on investigative journalism, yet which can't seem to find it's backside in broad daylight with both hands.
[UPDATE: A regular reader pointed out in an early morning e-mail that I forgot to include the federal shares in Hibernia.
Yep, I did. No excuses.
That would have to be added in to a calculation, but oddly that was missing from the Indy piece as well, so I don't feel quite so bad.
The offshore is an issue which is greatly misunderstood and most of the public commentary over the past two to three years has been founded on more myth than fact. As my morning correspondent noted, each project has to be examined differently for a number of reasons. Again, he is spot-on.
The Bond Papers grew out of my own frustration with the high level of noise and very small signal found in the offshore discussions.
All that does, though is point to the need for an investigative newspaper like say...ooooh...the Indy... to invest some time and energy in an investigation, followed by the reporting. Report the facts - not the preconceived ideas. Actually explain stuff to people.
That would be awesome news.]
[UPDATE II: Another faithful reader of these e-scribbles fired off an e-mail to point out that if the fed's share of Hibernia is included in a calculation, then consideration has to be given to its cost of acquiring those shares.
Again, another valid point.
Two things occurred to me after writing the original post and the first update.
First, if one were to include the federal government Hibernia shares, then one might actually want to look at what share of a typical offshore barrel of oil is claimed by the oil companies themselves. This might actually be a more interesting study. One must take into consideration the economics of the thing, such as the relatively high costs and of course one must admit that the party taking the financial risks is naturally entitled to a handsome share of the revenues.
In that respect, the federal Hibernia shares are not substantively different from the Exxon ones. As I believe I noted in the early days of this blog, it is passing strange that the Premier has not to date complained about the oil companies revenue shares. Yes, I know he is trying something on with Chevron but until now, it is an issue he hasn't bothered with. More importantly though, I don't recall hearing the Spindites, the Open Liners or any of the pseudo-nationalists attacking the oil companies with any vigor.
Second, if one is to divy up relative revenue shares of all types, then one will actually be dealing with a notional barrel of oil that is worth a lot more than US$60.
No matter how you slice it, the information is out there. One merely has to look for it and accept what one finds.
And that really was the point of the original post.]
You have to hand it Ryan Cleary.
He is relentless in his pursuit of something or other.
The real problem for readers of the Independent is that it is hard to know sometimes what he is after or why he can't seem to find what everyone else has already uncovered.
But he keeps digging.
And reporting that he and his staff can't find stuff.
And blaming other people for not telling them what they should have been able to find out on their own.
Like Ryan's column in this week's Independent in which he complains that the Spindy crew couldn't find out the answers to a few questions. There's a front page story by Clare-Marie Goose on the whole thing, but more of that later.
Well, here are the questions and the answers.
1. How much does the federal government make from the oil industry on the Grand Banks?
I don't have the most up-to-date figures right at hand but I can give you a decent idea of what the federal and provincial government are taking in; at least I can give you a sense of the proportions. In fact, this information has been posted to the Bond Papers before and, if memory serves, I e-mailed a chart to Ryan when he was making up his six part series on how Canada bleeds us white. Even though the tables I sent Ryan are factual, nothing even close to it ever appeared in print.
When Husky presented the White Rose development proposal they paid local economist Wade Locke to estimate the treasury impacts for both governments of the project over a 15 year life-span. The figures for provincial royalties are based on a price per barrel of US$20.
(A) Provincial:
Of direct revenues, only the province collects royalties from offshore production, just as in Alberta and exactly as the Atlantic Accord (1985) provides. As well, the province collects corporate and personal income taxes and the payroll tax.
Locke estimated that provincial direct revenues from White Rose would be $908 million over the life of the project. Annual royalties were estimated to be a little under $30 million.
(B) Federal:
Direct federal revenues consist only of corporate and personal income taxes. Locke estimated the feds would make $741 million in direct revenues.
But here's an important point to recall. Provincial royalties are tied directly to the price of a barrel of oil; federal corporate taxes are not. With oil trading at three times the figure in Locke's estimate, provincial royalties alone jump dramatically while federal revenues won't.
There are also some indirect revenues as well, resulting from spin-offs from the oil business and from the impact economic growth has on things like reduced social assistance costs or increased premiums for employment insurance. Ms. Gosse's story points that out - sort of - but only mentions the indirect federal revenues; the provincial government collects indirect cash as well, like say its portion of the HST on refined petroleum products.
Incidentally, Jim Wright from Memorial University is right when he suggests the offshore has larger impacts on the federal treasury than the provincial one. In Locke's analysis, it is easy to see that the most significant source of federal revenue comes from its corporate income taxes. After all, the feds can tax a corporate head office in Calgary or a sub-office or business in Ontario that someone can add in as being revenue from the offshore. That just reflects the fact that the feds can tax across the country, but provincial governments only tax within their provinces.
[By the way, using that same sort of approach, Ralph Klein actually makes cash from Hibernia through his provincial taxes. Is he next on the hit list for cash?]
The second biggest treasury impact for the feds comes from Canada Pension and Employment Insurance premiums that result solely from increases in employment levels. The Newfoundland and Labrador government doesn't have any program even vaguely like that so it would be hard for it to collect the same type of revenue.
For the sake of at least starting to answer the Spindy question, let's just stick with the direct figures since they are...well...direct. Armed with that information, the Spindies could certainly get a sense of how the revenues flow to Ottawa and St. John's, even if the exact figures weren't readily available.
2. How much does the federal government collect from Alberta's oil? What's Ottawa's take of a dollar of crude in Alberta versus here?
In both, Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa does not make any money from a barrel of oil, that is if we look directly at royalties.
Under the real Atlantic Accord, offshore oil is treated exactly as if it were on land.
Pretty simple so far?
Therefore, the federal government doesn't collect a penny from royalties in either province.
If you are asking something else, go back to question 1.
3. How does Ottawa own "our" oil?
Part of the problem here may be that Ryan doesn't actually want to read anything that has been written on the two offshore decisions from the early 1980s. Ryan just likes to mention the Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1984 but something tells me he is ignoring the answers on this one because they interfere with his pre-conceived editorial slants.
Here's a link to the 1984 so-called Hibernia reference to the SCC from the Government of Canada. The Supreme Court of Newfoundland decision on the provincial government reference isn't online but a trip to the province's library system will get it easily. There are enough mentions of it in the link I just gave, though, that you can get a good sense of it.
Anyway, here it is in a nutshell.
Offshore oil actually doesn't belong to Canada (or any part of Canada) in the same way oil under land does.
Under international law, Canada has exclusive rights to exploit sub-seabed mineral resources.
The Supreme Court of Newfoundland determined and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld in two completely separate references that since the right to exploit the resources is a result of Canada's external sovereignty, under the Constitution, exclusive legislative rights to the offshore rests with the Government of Canada.
BUT, under the real Atlantic Accord, the Government of Canada agreed to share management rights and gave this province certain powers under the real Atlantic Accord that basically give the provincial government virtually all the benefits of offshore oil without actually having legal title to them.
Pretty neat idea, huh?
It's actually not hard to understand at all, unless you want to deliberately misrepresent stuff for some reason.
Any oil on land, though, is treated exactly the same here as anywhere else in the country. The rig that is busily pumping oil from a couple of wells on the Port au Port is pumping royalties directly to St. John's. Here's a little quirk though. Any of that oil out to three miles from shore belongs to this province and this province alone. That puts us in a position unlike any other coastal province.
Guess who decided that.
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld a decision from the Supreme Court of Newfoundland in the ruling Ryan likes to ignore. That too upsets his anti-Ottawa slant, so I guess there's an answer and a question both of which can get ignored down in a building that ironically housed a place called "The Light"..
I could probably tackle the other questions furrowing Ryan's editorial brow but I just thought I'd deal with the major ones.
As a final point, it is really strange that in Claire-Marie Gosse's story, the Spindy reports provincial revenues this year from oil as being only $215 million.
For one thing, anyone who paid attention to the March budget knows that the province based that projection of royalties on a relatively low price of oil. The whole issue was well-dissected in the media at the time (not in the Spindy though) and here at the Bond Papers.
It gets better. If I recall correctly, CBC news reported just last week that current estimates of provincial revenues will add about $400 to 500 million to that figure.
Back in the winter, Wade Locke used these figures when discussing provincial offshore revenues. Note that the figure for this year is somewhere around $600 million.
How in the heck did the Spindy miss that one?
Ms. Gosse also neglects to point out that the Terra Nova project will move to a higher royalty tier this year, largely as a result of oil prices coupled with the lower start-up costs from not building a gravity based structure. Either Clare-Marie didn't know that information - it was widely reported - or she knew better than to write something that would praise a project her boss hates.
Anyway...
Ryan's column started out just fine. He pointed to the different ways reporters get information, noting that at the Spindy they try asking questions.
Ok. I'll buy that.
After filling up lots of space with many words, he ends with a flourish:
"In the end, the Independent is left with a choice: scrap the story about how the offshore pie is divided or point out the shortage of facts and the trouble it takes to get them.
Either way it's a story."
As with so many Spindy pieces, neither Ms. Gosse's writing on the offshore nor Ryan's column are stories.
Unless, that is, one was reporting on the bizarre inability of a newspaper that prides itself on investigative journalism, yet which can't seem to find it's backside in broad daylight with both hands.
[UPDATE: A regular reader pointed out in an early morning e-mail that I forgot to include the federal shares in Hibernia.
Yep, I did. No excuses.
That would have to be added in to a calculation, but oddly that was missing from the Indy piece as well, so I don't feel quite so bad.
The offshore is an issue which is greatly misunderstood and most of the public commentary over the past two to three years has been founded on more myth than fact. As my morning correspondent noted, each project has to be examined differently for a number of reasons. Again, he is spot-on.
The Bond Papers grew out of my own frustration with the high level of noise and very small signal found in the offshore discussions.
All that does, though is point to the need for an investigative newspaper like say...ooooh...the Indy... to invest some time and energy in an investigation, followed by the reporting. Report the facts - not the preconceived ideas. Actually explain stuff to people.
That would be awesome news.]
[UPDATE II: Another faithful reader of these e-scribbles fired off an e-mail to point out that if the fed's share of Hibernia is included in a calculation, then consideration has to be given to its cost of acquiring those shares.
Again, another valid point.
Two things occurred to me after writing the original post and the first update.
First, if one were to include the federal government Hibernia shares, then one might actually want to look at what share of a typical offshore barrel of oil is claimed by the oil companies themselves. This might actually be a more interesting study. One must take into consideration the economics of the thing, such as the relatively high costs and of course one must admit that the party taking the financial risks is naturally entitled to a handsome share of the revenues.
In that respect, the federal Hibernia shares are not substantively different from the Exxon ones. As I believe I noted in the early days of this blog, it is passing strange that the Premier has not to date complained about the oil companies revenue shares. Yes, I know he is trying something on with Chevron but until now, it is an issue he hasn't bothered with. More importantly though, I don't recall hearing the Spindites, the Open Liners or any of the pseudo-nationalists attacking the oil companies with any vigor.
Second, if one is to divy up relative revenue shares of all types, then one will actually be dealing with a notional barrel of oil that is worth a lot more than US$60.
No matter how you slice it, the information is out there. One merely has to look for it and accept what one finds.
And that really was the point of the original post.]
09 July 2005
Outing another Lower Churchill company
Rob Antle's July 6 2005 story in the Telly on a proposed underwater cable to carry Lower Churchill power into the Maritimes ("Proposal would skip Quebec") was based on this story by Stephen Maher in the Halifax Chronicle Herald from Monday, July 4.
Keep your eyes peeled. There may be other Maher stories coming. He's been working on this for a while now.
In any event, both stories report on a proposal by British Columbia company Sea Breeze Power to run a power cable under water from Labrador to either Prince Edward island or Nova Scotia to hook into the Maritime power grid.
Certainly, the idea is technically feasible. Engineers can put the arse back in a cat with enough time and money.
Time isn't an issue here.
It's money and that's what ultimately affected the Upper Churchill too, despite the nonsense foisted on local audiences by everyone from former politicians to crap talk mavens.
It's the financing that remains a question. Someone has to pay for it and if it is built as part of the overall project, the one paying will be the end user. The project economics will have to ensure that the power gets to a consumer at a competitive price.
Note in Maher's story that some unnamed industry experts predict Labrador power can be taken to an American market for little more than a third the current market price of electricity in New York.
Be very skeptical of those figures, if only because the source is unnamed.
Be skeptical too because megaproject proponents (and their official and unofficial supporters) grossly underestimate the cost of their projects. They deliberately minimise the costs. The undersea cable idea has been around since the 1960s and what prevented it from working then was cost.
There's an interesting reference to an unnamed source in Newfoundland who talks about the premier heading off to New York to try and get financing for the secretive Sino-Energy deal.
Note that according to the unidentified source Premier Williams' requests for financing were rejected in New York because the idea wasn't seen a viable.
If that's true, (and I'd be very skeptical of the source unless the name is revealed or the information confirmed) then we have yet another piece in the mysteriously secret deal that involved a Chinese company under sanctions in the US for illegal arms shipments. Rob didn't report that part in his Wednesday story likely because he couldn't confirm it and I doubt very much that you'll see anyone here coming forward to comment on it.
Energy minister Ed Byrne lied to the House of Assembly about discussions with the company and government kept secret its business dealings with the company for upwards of six months before suddenly springing the news. These include a secret memorandum of understanding that gave the alliance of two Canadian and one Chinese state-owned company unrestricted access to any information they wished on the Lower Churchill project.
Later revelations by ousted Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Board member Danny Dumaresque suggest the sudden revelation may have be triggered by fear in the Premier's Office that some members on the Hydro Board, who were questioning the projects internal financial arrangements, might leak news of the secret Chinese deal.
Local news outlets never really got to the bottom of Sino-Energy.
There are a couple of other things worth noting from these two stories:
1. Quebec is a net importer of electricity.
2. The shortest route and the cheapest costs of production and hence the greatest potential profit come from selling the power into Quebec.
3. Sea Breeze's Eugene Hodgson knows how to pitch a story (see the quotes at the end of the Maher piece) but his deeper understanding of Lower Churchill power may not be quite as slick.
4. There are actually several proposals that have been confirmed, even though these stories note only one.
- We know about the joint Quebec-Ontario government proposal which includes SNC Lavelin as the construction manager. This proposal also includes a significant upgrade to the power grid between Ontario and Quebec around Cornwall, an area very familiar to Fortis Inc.
- There is another proposal from Quebec alone. Since Lower Churchill talks resumed in 1990, Quebec has insisted it has sufficient demand for the Lower Churchill power to be the only customer. While the Prem's Office may be silent, there is reportedly another proposal from Hydro Quebec.
- There is supposedly a proposal from Upper Churchill engineer and Stunnel proponent Eric Kierans. I wonder what it might involve.
Keep your eyes peeled. There may be other Maher stories coming. He's been working on this for a while now.
In any event, both stories report on a proposal by British Columbia company Sea Breeze Power to run a power cable under water from Labrador to either Prince Edward island or Nova Scotia to hook into the Maritime power grid.
Certainly, the idea is technically feasible. Engineers can put the arse back in a cat with enough time and money.
Time isn't an issue here.
It's money and that's what ultimately affected the Upper Churchill too, despite the nonsense foisted on local audiences by everyone from former politicians to crap talk mavens.
It's the financing that remains a question. Someone has to pay for it and if it is built as part of the overall project, the one paying will be the end user. The project economics will have to ensure that the power gets to a consumer at a competitive price.
Note in Maher's story that some unnamed industry experts predict Labrador power can be taken to an American market for little more than a third the current market price of electricity in New York.
Be very skeptical of those figures, if only because the source is unnamed.
Be skeptical too because megaproject proponents (and their official and unofficial supporters) grossly underestimate the cost of their projects. They deliberately minimise the costs. The undersea cable idea has been around since the 1960s and what prevented it from working then was cost.
There's an interesting reference to an unnamed source in Newfoundland who talks about the premier heading off to New York to try and get financing for the secretive Sino-Energy deal.
Note that according to the unidentified source Premier Williams' requests for financing were rejected in New York because the idea wasn't seen a viable.
If that's true, (and I'd be very skeptical of the source unless the name is revealed or the information confirmed) then we have yet another piece in the mysteriously secret deal that involved a Chinese company under sanctions in the US for illegal arms shipments. Rob didn't report that part in his Wednesday story likely because he couldn't confirm it and I doubt very much that you'll see anyone here coming forward to comment on it.
Energy minister Ed Byrne lied to the House of Assembly about discussions with the company and government kept secret its business dealings with the company for upwards of six months before suddenly springing the news. These include a secret memorandum of understanding that gave the alliance of two Canadian and one Chinese state-owned company unrestricted access to any information they wished on the Lower Churchill project.
Later revelations by ousted Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Board member Danny Dumaresque suggest the sudden revelation may have be triggered by fear in the Premier's Office that some members on the Hydro Board, who were questioning the projects internal financial arrangements, might leak news of the secret Chinese deal.
Local news outlets never really got to the bottom of Sino-Energy.
There are a couple of other things worth noting from these two stories:
1. Quebec is a net importer of electricity.
2. The shortest route and the cheapest costs of production and hence the greatest potential profit come from selling the power into Quebec.
3. Sea Breeze's Eugene Hodgson knows how to pitch a story (see the quotes at the end of the Maher piece) but his deeper understanding of Lower Churchill power may not be quite as slick.
4. There are actually several proposals that have been confirmed, even though these stories note only one.
- We know about the joint Quebec-Ontario government proposal which includes SNC Lavelin as the construction manager. This proposal also includes a significant upgrade to the power grid between Ontario and Quebec around Cornwall, an area very familiar to Fortis Inc.
- There is another proposal from Quebec alone. Since Lower Churchill talks resumed in 1990, Quebec has insisted it has sufficient demand for the Lower Churchill power to be the only customer. While the Prem's Office may be silent, there is reportedly another proposal from Hydro Quebec.
- There is supposedly a proposal from Upper Churchill engineer and Stunnel proponent Eric Kierans. I wonder what it might involve.
08 July 2005
We will fight them in the tube stations - Update
Over at Macleans, Inkless Wells beat me to use of one of my favourite Churchill quotes.
He does link to a very short message from a Londoner who was in the underground this morning to the thus-far anonymous murderers who planted the bombs.
As Paul says, can anyone think of a worse target for terrorists than London.
Then he links to this guy who demonstrates the value of saying things simply, concisely, accurately and clearly.
WARNING: The language in the link is NOT for the faint of heart or those easily offended.
UPDATE: For those who think the Internet can't make someone famous for unusual reasons, take a look at the number of comments Andrew from London has received. Click here.
He does link to a very short message from a Londoner who was in the underground this morning to the thus-far anonymous murderers who planted the bombs.
As Paul says, can anyone think of a worse target for terrorists than London.
Then he links to this guy who demonstrates the value of saying things simply, concisely, accurately and clearly.
WARNING: The language in the link is NOT for the faint of heart or those easily offended.
UPDATE: For those who think the Internet can't make someone famous for unusual reasons, take a look at the number of comments Andrew from London has received. Click here.
Trevor Taylor - up tarring the roof
Thankfully, Trevor Taylor came down off the roof and took some time to call Bill Rowe on Crap Talk, the afternoon call-in show on VOCM.
That is a tongue-in-cheek reference to his opening comments about trying to re-shingle the roof and repair the eaves on his mother's house. When my grandmother was ticked off with someone repeatedly asking where so-and-so was, she'd always say he was up tarring the roof. With some of the tired voices from the past calling open line shows altely, I wish some of them were actually up tarring a roof.
As busily as I was trying to scribble down notes, I finally just stopped and listened to his frank comments on the issues in the fishery and current government policy. It was such a broad swath of topics that there was no way to keep up with him.
If people actually listened to what he is saying, they'd understand he is probably one of the best fisheries minister the province has ever had. There are no illusions clouding his judgment. Taylor speaks with a lifetime of knowledge about the fishery and it shows. He is genuine and sincere.
As Trevor climbs back out on the ledge to fix the eave he should consider pulling together a bunch of people for an informal brain-storming session on the future of the province's fisheries. Rather than go through the usual dog-and-pony shows of Royal Commissions or public consultations, maybe Trevor would call a few people who normally don't get called. ignore the tired voices and let them shingle the tumble-down shacks of their worn-out complaining. Maybe he could call a few people who usually never discuss fisheries issues but who might just have some creative ideas.
Give them a hammer, a pile of shingles and some nails.
Then get to work.
Have a chat in the summer sunshine and chew over what is going on and more importantly where we need to go with the fishery in the province.
My morning e-mailer noted that we can't have a fisheries policy here, just a fish processing policy.
I disagree.
I am firmly convinced that if we brought the right people together, we can find a new fisheries policy that would change Trevor's life for the better and put something on paper that federal fish minister Geoff Regan couldn't ignore.
The worst that will happen is that the province will be right where it is now and a couple of the helpers will wind up with a skill to fall back on in hard times.
The best is that we might actually be able to bring about some fundamental and meaningful changes to the benefit of everyone in the province. Taylor is the kind of guy who could not only bring together the right people; he could also persuade people to give the group's ideas a try.
At the very least, his mom would have a roof that isn't shingled with the best of intentions.
That is a tongue-in-cheek reference to his opening comments about trying to re-shingle the roof and repair the eaves on his mother's house. When my grandmother was ticked off with someone repeatedly asking where so-and-so was, she'd always say he was up tarring the roof. With some of the tired voices from the past calling open line shows altely, I wish some of them were actually up tarring a roof.
As busily as I was trying to scribble down notes, I finally just stopped and listened to his frank comments on the issues in the fishery and current government policy. It was such a broad swath of topics that there was no way to keep up with him.
If people actually listened to what he is saying, they'd understand he is probably one of the best fisheries minister the province has ever had. There are no illusions clouding his judgment. Taylor speaks with a lifetime of knowledge about the fishery and it shows. He is genuine and sincere.
As Trevor climbs back out on the ledge to fix the eave he should consider pulling together a bunch of people for an informal brain-storming session on the future of the province's fisheries. Rather than go through the usual dog-and-pony shows of Royal Commissions or public consultations, maybe Trevor would call a few people who normally don't get called. ignore the tired voices and let them shingle the tumble-down shacks of their worn-out complaining. Maybe he could call a few people who usually never discuss fisheries issues but who might just have some creative ideas.
Give them a hammer, a pile of shingles and some nails.
Then get to work.
Have a chat in the summer sunshine and chew over what is going on and more importantly where we need to go with the fishery in the province.
My morning e-mailer noted that we can't have a fisheries policy here, just a fish processing policy.
I disagree.
I am firmly convinced that if we brought the right people together, we can find a new fisheries policy that would change Trevor's life for the better and put something on paper that federal fish minister Geoff Regan couldn't ignore.
The worst that will happen is that the province will be right where it is now and a couple of the helpers will wind up with a skill to fall back on in hard times.
The best is that we might actually be able to bring about some fundamental and meaningful changes to the benefit of everyone in the province. Taylor is the kind of guy who could not only bring together the right people; he could also persuade people to give the group's ideas a try.
At the very least, his mom would have a roof that isn't shingled with the best of intentions.
Outside the box - The politics of history
An early morning e-mail from a regular reader caused me to go back and review a column I had originally written for the Independent back in its early days. I don't recall if it ever appeared in print; something tells me it did.
The e-mail took issue with my Jack Byrne post, noting specifically that I was remiss (and maybe partisan) in failing to note that the Job Creation Program ( form of make-work) was actually an invention of Beaton Tulk.
Ok. I didn't point it out, but partisan had nothing to do with it. Anyone who does follow my stuff will realise that I have been as critical of the Tobin/Tulk crowd over things as anyone else. In fact, I know I have made the point on many occasions that Tobin marked a return to Peckfordism on a whole bunch of levels.
The point of my Byrne post (in case I wasn't clear) was that in the absence of a policy, governments tend to default to either bureaucratic or partisan genetic memory. Hence, the blatant make-work program Byrne announced. I also drew the parallels between Byrne's talking points and those of Glenn Tobin nearly two decades earlier.
While I had thought about this old column before, it seems appropriate to resurrect it now since it speaks to the basic idea that political rhetoric in this province seems to come around again and again. There's no point in pretending the column is comprehensive and elegant; it isn't. I was grappling with finding possible explanations for what seems to be an obvious phenomenon.
Reviewing the column now about 18 months after I wrote it, the only thing I would disagree with is the conclusion: I was wrong. People here don't seem to tire of having the same carpet threads being pushed in front of them again and again. Actually, I'd have to admit that over the past 18 months we have seen old ideas and old threads being sold time and again at their original price, marked up to account for inflation.
Jack Byrne just wound up being the latest salesman. Whether the ideas were his, those of his colleagues or solely those of the Premier is irrelevant from where I sit.
I am just astonished that we keep doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result.
Anyway, here's the column as it was originally presented...
The politics of history
History is a powerful thing in Newfoundland and Labrador politics.
In his victory speech a few weeks ago, premier-elect Danny Williams pledged that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians had voted to seize control of their destiny using words eerily reminiscent of Smallwood, Peckford and Tobin. "There will be no more giveaways. The giveaways end right here and right now!"
Why are we stuck on this rhetorical merry-go-round?
One reason is that political leaders take a Calvinist approach to history. As Calvin told his stuffed tiger Hobbes many years ago, people reinvent history to suit modern prejudices and to fit modern needs. We spin our history, old and new, reweaving the threads of fact to suit the immediate need. Tories blame the Liberals for job cuts in the early 1990s, conveniently forgetting the world recession, and the abysmal state of the province'’s finances. New Liberals blame old Liberals for the Upper Churchill give-away. Nationalists blame foreigners for everything from the collapse of responsible government to current resource "giveaways", all the while forgetting that we have controlled our own destiny for most of the past 200 years.
The second reason is that spin seems to work. Politicians like to get elected. Brian Tobin and Brian Peckford won huge majority governments promising that one day the sun will shine, that we will be masters in our own house or that not one teaspoon of ore will leave the province. They hammered at the giveaways, vowing never again. At least in Peckford'’s case, he stuck around long enough to make a decision, yet, as good as his intentions were in signing the Atlantic Accord, newer politicians have found in that deal their latest scapegoat.
The third reason is that politicians are people and people like sameness; it'’s a human characteristic. Change in any form is often intimidating. For politicians in a province that has experienced relatively little change throughout its history, more of the same seems like the answer to everything, especially if you want to get elected.
The fourth reason is that there is a certain expectation that everything in the province is government'’s responsibility. For most of our history, Newfoundland and Labrador has been a top-down place. Churches and politicians ran things. The churches handled schools, salvation and morality. The government ran everything else, from job creation to the dole. If voters expect you to walk on water, and you don'’t have a better idea, politicians found it easier to take a step or blame someone else for the supposed failure, if they wanted to get elected.
History seems to push politicians to more of the same, but ironically, history is about change. And as the Newfoundland and Labrador electorate changes, they are getting better able to spot the same carpet being sold to them time and again.
The choice for the new crop of politicians elected last month is whether to spin history for immediate, and ultimately short-lived, gains. Or use history - our experience, our culture - as one tool to guide substantive changes in and for Newfoundland and Labrador. In eight years time, they may find that many of the changes they hoped for like massive new industries will still be little more than the fodder for someone else'’s rhetoric.
The four factors just mentioned, though, are all within their power to change.
For a politician to change those in Newfoundland and Labrador would be something truly historic.
The e-mail took issue with my Jack Byrne post, noting specifically that I was remiss (and maybe partisan) in failing to note that the Job Creation Program ( form of make-work) was actually an invention of Beaton Tulk.
Ok. I didn't point it out, but partisan had nothing to do with it. Anyone who does follow my stuff will realise that I have been as critical of the Tobin/Tulk crowd over things as anyone else. In fact, I know I have made the point on many occasions that Tobin marked a return to Peckfordism on a whole bunch of levels.
The point of my Byrne post (in case I wasn't clear) was that in the absence of a policy, governments tend to default to either bureaucratic or partisan genetic memory. Hence, the blatant make-work program Byrne announced. I also drew the parallels between Byrne's talking points and those of Glenn Tobin nearly two decades earlier.
While I had thought about this old column before, it seems appropriate to resurrect it now since it speaks to the basic idea that political rhetoric in this province seems to come around again and again. There's no point in pretending the column is comprehensive and elegant; it isn't. I was grappling with finding possible explanations for what seems to be an obvious phenomenon.
Reviewing the column now about 18 months after I wrote it, the only thing I would disagree with is the conclusion: I was wrong. People here don't seem to tire of having the same carpet threads being pushed in front of them again and again. Actually, I'd have to admit that over the past 18 months we have seen old ideas and old threads being sold time and again at their original price, marked up to account for inflation.
Jack Byrne just wound up being the latest salesman. Whether the ideas were his, those of his colleagues or solely those of the Premier is irrelevant from where I sit.
I am just astonished that we keep doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result.
Anyway, here's the column as it was originally presented...
The politics of history
History is a powerful thing in Newfoundland and Labrador politics.
In his victory speech a few weeks ago, premier-elect Danny Williams pledged that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians had voted to seize control of their destiny using words eerily reminiscent of Smallwood, Peckford and Tobin. "There will be no more giveaways. The giveaways end right here and right now!"
Why are we stuck on this rhetorical merry-go-round?
One reason is that political leaders take a Calvinist approach to history. As Calvin told his stuffed tiger Hobbes many years ago, people reinvent history to suit modern prejudices and to fit modern needs. We spin our history, old and new, reweaving the threads of fact to suit the immediate need. Tories blame the Liberals for job cuts in the early 1990s, conveniently forgetting the world recession, and the abysmal state of the province'’s finances. New Liberals blame old Liberals for the Upper Churchill give-away. Nationalists blame foreigners for everything from the collapse of responsible government to current resource "giveaways", all the while forgetting that we have controlled our own destiny for most of the past 200 years.
The second reason is that spin seems to work. Politicians like to get elected. Brian Tobin and Brian Peckford won huge majority governments promising that one day the sun will shine, that we will be masters in our own house or that not one teaspoon of ore will leave the province. They hammered at the giveaways, vowing never again. At least in Peckford'’s case, he stuck around long enough to make a decision, yet, as good as his intentions were in signing the Atlantic Accord, newer politicians have found in that deal their latest scapegoat.
The third reason is that politicians are people and people like sameness; it'’s a human characteristic. Change in any form is often intimidating. For politicians in a province that has experienced relatively little change throughout its history, more of the same seems like the answer to everything, especially if you want to get elected.
The fourth reason is that there is a certain expectation that everything in the province is government'’s responsibility. For most of our history, Newfoundland and Labrador has been a top-down place. Churches and politicians ran things. The churches handled schools, salvation and morality. The government ran everything else, from job creation to the dole. If voters expect you to walk on water, and you don'’t have a better idea, politicians found it easier to take a step or blame someone else for the supposed failure, if they wanted to get elected.
History seems to push politicians to more of the same, but ironically, history is about change. And as the Newfoundland and Labrador electorate changes, they are getting better able to spot the same carpet being sold to them time and again.
The choice for the new crop of politicians elected last month is whether to spin history for immediate, and ultimately short-lived, gains. Or use history - our experience, our culture - as one tool to guide substantive changes in and for Newfoundland and Labrador. In eight years time, they may find that many of the changes they hoped for like massive new industries will still be little more than the fodder for someone else'’s rhetoric.
The four factors just mentioned, though, are all within their power to change.
For a politician to change those in Newfoundland and Labrador would be something truly historic.
More poll dancing - as promised
This is just a teaser.
After lunch, I'll throw up the post on the January offshore poll.
There are some interesting things in there and so far the assessments from the people I have bounced the poll off are almost word for word the same.
Stay tuned.
Same Bond Time.
Same Bond channel.
For an exploration of political decision-making a la Danny Williams.
After lunch, I'll throw up the post on the January offshore poll.
There are some interesting things in there and so far the assessments from the people I have bounced the poll off are almost word for word the same.
Stay tuned.
Same Bond Time.
Same Bond channel.
For an exploration of political decision-making a la Danny Williams.
07 July 2005
It could never happen here...
In the wake of the London terror attacks, it is very interesting watching the Ontario emergency measures boss Julian Fantino and Ontario public security minister giving a media briefing and taking questions about the possibility of such attacks in Canada.
Makes me ponder our local preparedness.
Makes me ponder our local preparedness.
Jack Byrne - Back to the Future!
For those not in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Fisheries Broadcast is a CBC Radio show that has been running for decades. It's the last show in the CBC radio line-up that is aimed solely at a particular sector of the economy, giving news and weather of interest to those in the fishery.
Driving home on Wednesday evening, I caught the introduction by host John Furlong to an interview with provincial cabinet minister Jack Byrne. Furlong said that the recent make-work package for fisheries workers announced by government had stirred some debate. To be sure some of the "debate" was from politicians clamouring to see the package extended to their districts or otherwise sweetened up.
But unless I have been missing a rollicking good time on the Fish Broadcast, I haven't heard so much as a peep from anyone about this policy from the Peckford years.
Jack Byrne did an admirable job of answering Furlong's questions; well, actually he did an admirable job of socking out the SOCKO-crap all that expensive mainland "media training" gave him. Jack had three messages and he stuck to them relentlessly, which is what many of these pre-packaged "training" sessions tell people to do.
It's Jane Stewart-in-a-can all for the low price of about $20, 000 bucks. Locals could do real training better and cheaper; but I digress.
Jack said:
1. The package was a one-time deal.
2. All the marvelous plans for economic development the government was working on would generate jobs to take care of fisheries workers in the future.
3. Whatever happened, he was sure the Premier would always use the best information to make the right decision in the best interests of the province.
So much for cabinet government.
To take the last point first, I am not sure if Byrne's point was that "Papa is in charge" (an excerpt from the Generic -Messages -for -the - Typical - Third -World -Dictatorship training module, no doubt) or that Jack himself wanted no responsibility for the make-work policy in the first place.
As for the middle point, this was a return to the "We gots Plans" theme that ran through the last Throne Speech. It was right after the Official (But Limited) List of Great Artists Known by the Speechwriter.
The only problem with Byrne's contention is that almost two years after taking office and another two and a half years in opposition before that, during which time we were assured they had plans ready to implement the day they took office, the current administration seems not to have a plan of any kind at all for anything.
The proof? We simply have yet to see one. Of any kind.
Even an outline would be nice.
In almost two farggin' years, as Roman Moroni would say.
The only plan they have is to keep sending SOCKOs out that they have plans in the works.
I felt a chill run down my spine as Byrne tossed out that "things will be better" SOCKO just because it sounded so much like a line from Glenn Tobin, Peckfordite social services minister (the guy in charge of Lotto 10-42) and more recently, known to be in charge of the liquor corporation.
In an interview with the fifth estate about Lotto 10-42 as it was then known, Tobin said two things:
1. There is no Lotto 10-42 in which the government deliberately stamps people up to get them on the EI rolls; and,
2. Even if there was such a program, and he wasn't admitting there was, but if for argument's sake we allow there was such a program, it wouldn't matter anyway because the Hibernia was about to start flowing and there'd be jobs for everyone and we'd all be rich, Praise Brian.
Or words to that effect.
All that leads us inevitably to SOCKO The First.
The problem with Jack Byrne's message that this was a one-off aid package is that history teaches us something starkly different.
Government works on the basis of an extreme version of Newton's First Law of Motion (inertia): - an object at rest will remain at rest (despite the best efforts to move it) or alternately, an object in motion will remain in motion (despite any evidence that it needs to stop quickly or Herculean efforts to stop it).
In the absence of a plan, governments everywhere tend to come up with these lash-up policies, sometimes, as in this case, digging back into their genetic political memory to find something that fits. This little make-work policy from government, for example, looks like it was dreamed up by Marty McFly, who took his Delorean for a little hop back to the glory days of 1985 to find out what Brian would have done.
Policy, as one wise former deputy minister once told me was about history, not logic and reason. When confronted with an issue, government bureaucrats invariably ask: 'What did we do before?"
I digress yet again.
More to the real point, though, in the continued and complete absence of a plan for either the fishery, or for economic development either in this case, there is a danger that as these work shortfalls inevitably occur, government will tend to go back to the make-work approach again and again until it becomes a policy.
As premiers wander about pledging that he won't let a single community "go down", they are spouting policy.
When a government gets focused exclusively on the tactical, as this one surely is, it starts doing everything as a "one-off". It only sees the specific issue and looks around for something to make the issue go away. Until the next time.
By the time of the third "one-off", you have a policy.
and a strategy.
by default.
In the meantime, in cases like this, no matter how many SOCKOs get spit out about having plans, being strategic and having a plan, the evidence almost inevitably shows that the SOCKO claims are actually a case of GIGO and that government is headed for being either SNAFU, TARFU or FUBAR.
Driving home on Wednesday evening, I caught the introduction by host John Furlong to an interview with provincial cabinet minister Jack Byrne. Furlong said that the recent make-work package for fisheries workers announced by government had stirred some debate. To be sure some of the "debate" was from politicians clamouring to see the package extended to their districts or otherwise sweetened up.
But unless I have been missing a rollicking good time on the Fish Broadcast, I haven't heard so much as a peep from anyone about this policy from the Peckford years.
Jack Byrne did an admirable job of answering Furlong's questions; well, actually he did an admirable job of socking out the SOCKO-crap all that expensive mainland "media training" gave him. Jack had three messages and he stuck to them relentlessly, which is what many of these pre-packaged "training" sessions tell people to do.
It's Jane Stewart-in-a-can all for the low price of about $20, 000 bucks. Locals could do real training better and cheaper; but I digress.
Jack said:
1. The package was a one-time deal.
2. All the marvelous plans for economic development the government was working on would generate jobs to take care of fisheries workers in the future.
3. Whatever happened, he was sure the Premier would always use the best information to make the right decision in the best interests of the province.
So much for cabinet government.
To take the last point first, I am not sure if Byrne's point was that "Papa is in charge" (an excerpt from the Generic -Messages -for -the - Typical - Third -World -Dictatorship training module, no doubt) or that Jack himself wanted no responsibility for the make-work policy in the first place.
As for the middle point, this was a return to the "We gots Plans" theme that ran through the last Throne Speech. It was right after the Official (But Limited) List of Great Artists Known by the Speechwriter.
The only problem with Byrne's contention is that almost two years after taking office and another two and a half years in opposition before that, during which time we were assured they had plans ready to implement the day they took office, the current administration seems not to have a plan of any kind at all for anything.
The proof? We simply have yet to see one. Of any kind.
Even an outline would be nice.
In almost two farggin' years, as Roman Moroni would say.
The only plan they have is to keep sending SOCKOs out that they have plans in the works.
I felt a chill run down my spine as Byrne tossed out that "things will be better" SOCKO just because it sounded so much like a line from Glenn Tobin, Peckfordite social services minister (the guy in charge of Lotto 10-42) and more recently, known to be in charge of the liquor corporation.
In an interview with the fifth estate about Lotto 10-42 as it was then known, Tobin said two things:
1. There is no Lotto 10-42 in which the government deliberately stamps people up to get them on the EI rolls; and,
2. Even if there was such a program, and he wasn't admitting there was, but if for argument's sake we allow there was such a program, it wouldn't matter anyway because the Hibernia was about to start flowing and there'd be jobs for everyone and we'd all be rich, Praise Brian.
Or words to that effect.
All that leads us inevitably to SOCKO The First.
The problem with Jack Byrne's message that this was a one-off aid package is that history teaches us something starkly different.
Government works on the basis of an extreme version of Newton's First Law of Motion (inertia): - an object at rest will remain at rest (despite the best efforts to move it) or alternately, an object in motion will remain in motion (despite any evidence that it needs to stop quickly or Herculean efforts to stop it).
In the absence of a plan, governments everywhere tend to come up with these lash-up policies, sometimes, as in this case, digging back into their genetic political memory to find something that fits. This little make-work policy from government, for example, looks like it was dreamed up by Marty McFly, who took his Delorean for a little hop back to the glory days of 1985 to find out what Brian would have done.
Policy, as one wise former deputy minister once told me was about history, not logic and reason. When confronted with an issue, government bureaucrats invariably ask: 'What did we do before?"
I digress yet again.
More to the real point, though, in the continued and complete absence of a plan for either the fishery, or for economic development either in this case, there is a danger that as these work shortfalls inevitably occur, government will tend to go back to the make-work approach again and again until it becomes a policy.
As premiers wander about pledging that he won't let a single community "go down", they are spouting policy.
When a government gets focused exclusively on the tactical, as this one surely is, it starts doing everything as a "one-off". It only sees the specific issue and looks around for something to make the issue go away. Until the next time.
By the time of the third "one-off", you have a policy.
and a strategy.
by default.
In the meantime, in cases like this, no matter how many SOCKOs get spit out about having plans, being strategic and having a plan, the evidence almost inevitably shows that the SOCKO claims are actually a case of GIGO and that government is headed for being either SNAFU, TARFU or FUBAR.
It's the Lord's Table, Father. You're just the waiter.
This little story about a member of parliament and his wife being denied eucharist because of the MP's stand on social policy issues is yet another argument for the firm legal separation of church and the state in this country.
Throughout the equal marriage debate, several Christian denominations attempted to impose their individual doctrines on all Canadians, adherents or not by fighting against the equal marriage bill.
Well, my solution is simple.
If the churches, like say the Roman Catholic Church or even the English Catholic Church want the government to ban equal marriage, then... let them accept civil divorces as having an equal status as church-authorized annulments but... and this is a big but since money is involved... without forcing people to pony up any form of special surcharge to the church for the privilege of cleaning off the marriage slate. Indulge me on that one.
Better still, let's just wipe out tax-exempt status for churches.
Period.
In this province, we languished for too long with clerical control over secular education. Now it's time to break the ties between church and state across the board.
As a local aside, I find it amusing that an organization which tried to claim it didn't exist here in order to avoid ponying up compensation for past crimes like child molestation, now has no problem throwing its own very real theological weight around to try and crush individual parishoners.
Then people wonder why parishoners were afraid to speak up against the child molesters hiding beneath vestments.
As another local aside, Bruce Gregerson, who is quoted in the Citizen story linked above used to be the minister at Gower Street United Church here in St. John's.
I like his take on things.
It's the Lord's Table.
I'd go a step farther.
That makes the priest a waiter.
And the bishop becomes the maitre d'.
If I were the MP, I'd take my weekly offerings to another church, just like you'd do if some snooty wait staff made your trip to another table and humilating experience instead of an enriching one.
See how long the Church agents stick to their guns when the bills start adding up and the pews start emptying.
Money really does change everything.
Just ask the guys who wanted us to believe they are really just a figment of our imaginations.
Throughout the equal marriage debate, several Christian denominations attempted to impose their individual doctrines on all Canadians, adherents or not by fighting against the equal marriage bill.
Well, my solution is simple.
If the churches, like say the Roman Catholic Church or even the English Catholic Church want the government to ban equal marriage, then... let them accept civil divorces as having an equal status as church-authorized annulments but... and this is a big but since money is involved... without forcing people to pony up any form of special surcharge to the church for the privilege of cleaning off the marriage slate. Indulge me on that one.
Better still, let's just wipe out tax-exempt status for churches.
Period.
In this province, we languished for too long with clerical control over secular education. Now it's time to break the ties between church and state across the board.
As a local aside, I find it amusing that an organization which tried to claim it didn't exist here in order to avoid ponying up compensation for past crimes like child molestation, now has no problem throwing its own very real theological weight around to try and crush individual parishoners.
Then people wonder why parishoners were afraid to speak up against the child molesters hiding beneath vestments.
As another local aside, Bruce Gregerson, who is quoted in the Citizen story linked above used to be the minister at Gower Street United Church here in St. John's.
I like his take on things.
It's the Lord's Table.
I'd go a step farther.
That makes the priest a waiter.
And the bishop becomes the maitre d'.
If I were the MP, I'd take my weekly offerings to another church, just like you'd do if some snooty wait staff made your trip to another table and humilating experience instead of an enriching one.
See how long the Church agents stick to their guns when the bills start adding up and the pews start emptying.
Money really does change everything.
Just ask the guys who wanted us to believe they are really just a figment of our imaginations.
06 July 2005
The price of the premiership
The Premier took the time at the White Rose launch in Marystown and at the lame cheque stunt yesterday to do two things:
1. In Marystown, the Premier acknowledged publicly that the revenue and benefits deal on White Rose was damned good. The Premier likes to kick the crap out of any deal he didn't sign, but in this instance, he was giving due praise.
2. In St. John's, he threw out some tough words in order to posture publicly for the upcoming negotiations with the Hebron consortium.
Well, as noted here before, the Premier really needs to tell the public what he is thinking when he talks about refineries and pipelines and petrochemical plants. He needs to tell the people of the province plainly what he will be seeking in any discussions with oil companies and he has to tell us what price he is prepared to pay (with our cash) for these oil industry add-ons.
The single defining characteristic of Premier Williams thus far is that he is long on rhetoric and extremely short on details for anything he does. The big cheque from John Efford yesterday is a classic example of how the Premier can talk his way through things and ultimately deliver something that really was a heck of a lot less than what he promised.
He changes positions as fast as any politician we have seen locally with the exception of maybe Brian Tobin. Some are starting to think he is driven by polls; that remains to be seen. Friday's post will be an assessment of the January polls recently released by government, coupled with a timeline on the Premier's positions on the flag lowering and mnegotiations with the federal government.
All that can be said right now is that the Bond Papers were borne out of the Premier's penchant for saying things that were at odds with the facts. There is good reason for continuing to watch carefully what he says and does.
The offshore revenue deal, for example, is pretty good in that it adds $2.0 billion in free federal money to the provincial coffers. However, what the Premier started out to do was double our revenues, which he claimed were being taken away from us.
At least two major things flowed out of the February deal. First, the Premier acknowledged in the very first clause that not a single nickel of provincial revenues was taken away. Second, and most importantly, he settled for a couple of billions in cash and a deal that may well cut out this year.
Before anyone jumps at me, take a look at the facts.
The offshore add-on from January applies only as long as the province is receiving Equalization. That was already forecast to happen next year, but high crude oil prices will likely put about $700 million into provincial coffers from offshore royalties alone. Equalization this year is only forecast to be slightly more than that; it's hard to figure exactly since the government fiddled around with the presentation of its figures in the last budget.
It really wouldn't take too much economic growth to push the province that final bit over the Equalization edge and into the realm of the so-called "have" provinces. Once that happens, there is no more extra money flowing to the province from the January deal, unless of course, the economy all but implodes.
Certainly we have the two billion dollars, as some will quickly point out. But that isn't what the premier was looking for. He started out seeking a doubling of revenues for at least a total of eight more years. As it stands right now, the $2.0 billion will be less than what the province will get directly from oil this year and next year, let alone the total over the next eight.
It's pretty easy to see the gap between the promise and the delivery. We have a bag of cash but we were promised a bag that was twice to three times the size of what was delivered.
When it comes to royalties and refineries, we need to look very carefully to make sure the Premier isn't talking about repeating Hibernia, even as he promises something else. The Hibernia deal was based on a trade-off between short-term construction jobs and long-term royalties. While Hibernia was the lead projected that started the local oil industry, there are at least two problems with the Hibernia model.
First, the construction jobs were short-term and admittedly so. If they can come, then fine. But when they are linked to royalties and other government revenues, then we have the second, bigger problem. Royalties are the money we collect as the original owners of a resource for our ownership. When we give up some of that economic rent, we are really giving away the core cash value of the resource. We undervalue our resource and actually beggar ourselves collectively while putting a few sheckels into the pockets of local builders like say the Dobbins.
Let's not do that again.
There is no need.
And as we know from looking around, there is no reason to try and force the Hebron consortium to build a refinery, petrochemical plant and/or pipeline here when they evidently did not factor it into their business plans. If there is an economic reason to build one of these things here, then let the industry decide.
The alternative, that is, building something which is not economically viable, is for the government to pay for it through royalty and tax concessions. It is easy for Premier Williams to talk tough when he is flush with my cash both from offshore oil and from Ottawa's taxes. However, it is my money he is now gambling with yet again.
It is again long past due for the Premier to explain to me and every other voter in the province what he is up to. If he were my slip-and-fall lawyer behaving as he does by not telling me relevant information, I'd cut him a cheque and send him on his merry way.
The thing is, he isn't a slip-and-fall lawyer; he's the Premier.
There's a big difference.
1. In Marystown, the Premier acknowledged publicly that the revenue and benefits deal on White Rose was damned good. The Premier likes to kick the crap out of any deal he didn't sign, but in this instance, he was giving due praise.
2. In St. John's, he threw out some tough words in order to posture publicly for the upcoming negotiations with the Hebron consortium.
Well, as noted here before, the Premier really needs to tell the public what he is thinking when he talks about refineries and pipelines and petrochemical plants. He needs to tell the people of the province plainly what he will be seeking in any discussions with oil companies and he has to tell us what price he is prepared to pay (with our cash) for these oil industry add-ons.
The single defining characteristic of Premier Williams thus far is that he is long on rhetoric and extremely short on details for anything he does. The big cheque from John Efford yesterday is a classic example of how the Premier can talk his way through things and ultimately deliver something that really was a heck of a lot less than what he promised.
He changes positions as fast as any politician we have seen locally with the exception of maybe Brian Tobin. Some are starting to think he is driven by polls; that remains to be seen. Friday's post will be an assessment of the January polls recently released by government, coupled with a timeline on the Premier's positions on the flag lowering and mnegotiations with the federal government.
All that can be said right now is that the Bond Papers were borne out of the Premier's penchant for saying things that were at odds with the facts. There is good reason for continuing to watch carefully what he says and does.
The offshore revenue deal, for example, is pretty good in that it adds $2.0 billion in free federal money to the provincial coffers. However, what the Premier started out to do was double our revenues, which he claimed were being taken away from us.
At least two major things flowed out of the February deal. First, the Premier acknowledged in the very first clause that not a single nickel of provincial revenues was taken away. Second, and most importantly, he settled for a couple of billions in cash and a deal that may well cut out this year.
Before anyone jumps at me, take a look at the facts.
The offshore add-on from January applies only as long as the province is receiving Equalization. That was already forecast to happen next year, but high crude oil prices will likely put about $700 million into provincial coffers from offshore royalties alone. Equalization this year is only forecast to be slightly more than that; it's hard to figure exactly since the government fiddled around with the presentation of its figures in the last budget.
It really wouldn't take too much economic growth to push the province that final bit over the Equalization edge and into the realm of the so-called "have" provinces. Once that happens, there is no more extra money flowing to the province from the January deal, unless of course, the economy all but implodes.
Certainly we have the two billion dollars, as some will quickly point out. But that isn't what the premier was looking for. He started out seeking a doubling of revenues for at least a total of eight more years. As it stands right now, the $2.0 billion will be less than what the province will get directly from oil this year and next year, let alone the total over the next eight.
It's pretty easy to see the gap between the promise and the delivery. We have a bag of cash but we were promised a bag that was twice to three times the size of what was delivered.
When it comes to royalties and refineries, we need to look very carefully to make sure the Premier isn't talking about repeating Hibernia, even as he promises something else. The Hibernia deal was based on a trade-off between short-term construction jobs and long-term royalties. While Hibernia was the lead projected that started the local oil industry, there are at least two problems with the Hibernia model.
First, the construction jobs were short-term and admittedly so. If they can come, then fine. But when they are linked to royalties and other government revenues, then we have the second, bigger problem. Royalties are the money we collect as the original owners of a resource for our ownership. When we give up some of that economic rent, we are really giving away the core cash value of the resource. We undervalue our resource and actually beggar ourselves collectively while putting a few sheckels into the pockets of local builders like say the Dobbins.
Let's not do that again.
There is no need.
And as we know from looking around, there is no reason to try and force the Hebron consortium to build a refinery, petrochemical plant and/or pipeline here when they evidently did not factor it into their business plans. If there is an economic reason to build one of these things here, then let the industry decide.
The alternative, that is, building something which is not economically viable, is for the government to pay for it through royalty and tax concessions. It is easy for Premier Williams to talk tough when he is flush with my cash both from offshore oil and from Ottawa's taxes. However, it is my money he is now gambling with yet again.
It is again long past due for the Premier to explain to me and every other voter in the province what he is up to. If he were my slip-and-fall lawyer behaving as he does by not telling me relevant information, I'd cut him a cheque and send him on his merry way.
The thing is, he isn't a slip-and-fall lawyer; he's the Premier.
There's a big difference.
05 July 2005
There's no pleasing some people
As I sit here working away, there has been a non-stop bitch-fest on Crap talk with Bill Rowe with caller after caller and Sightless Bill himself slagging the offshore deal from any angle they can think of.
Too bad the gripers have no idea what they are talking about.
Like Jim Halley.
As I listen to him now, his presentation of the law related to the offshore is exceeded in its complete inaccuracy only by his presentation on our history.
Too bad the gripers have no idea what they are talking about.
Like Jim Halley.
As I listen to him now, his presentation of the law related to the offshore is exceeded in its complete inaccuracy only by his presentation on our history.
An announcement a week and a good poll
Reputedly that was Brian Tobin's formula for political success.
Danny Williams is determined to go him one better what with eight good polls he is trying to keep secret and then the string of announcements.
More of everything from Danny Williams: it's actually more like an announcement and a poll a day!
Hot behind announcement of new health care money for the Burin Peninsula comes this one in which John Efford will hand over a fake cheque representing the $2.0 billion for the new offshore revenue deal.
The money was actually transferred by the Government of Canada on Monday. The cheque is so "da byes" can add to their respective "I love me" walls. [Note to self: check the federal proactive disclosure releases and see if First Contact is making any more cash from John Efford for this little piece of nonsense. Note to readers: I still haven't figured out what they did for the $22 and a half large they pocketed from earlier this year.]
Of course, the offshore deal is really only worth $2.0 billion and not the double revenues that the Premier boasted about all along. You see, provincial oil revenues are so good the province will likely go off the Equalization rolls this year.
That means there is no Equalization offset under the new deal; we just get the declining one under the original deal. Since the province is likely to stay off Equalization for a while, the odds of ever collecting more than the $2.0 billion would be pretty slim. And what does the new deal actually become worth at that point? Something around $320 million over two years.
That's okay, though. Over the next two years we'll pocket more than $2.0 billion in direct oil revenues and we'll keep every penny of it. I know that isn't what you were told and it sure as heck isn't what you'll be told tomorrow.
But hey, you used to believe in the tooth fairy once too because someone told you she was real.
Speaking of good polls, tomorrow's major post will be some comment on the poll commissioned by the Premier's office in January on attitudes toward the provincial position on the offshore deal. The story was originally covered in the Telegram a while ago, but now that I have had a chance to go through the research report, there are a few interesting things in it that are worth bringing to wider attention.
It might help explain why the Premier is so reluctant to let us all have a look at the eight good polls he is keeping stashed in his desk drawers.
Danny Williams is determined to go him one better what with eight good polls he is trying to keep secret and then the string of announcements.
More of everything from Danny Williams: it's actually more like an announcement and a poll a day!
Hot behind announcement of new health care money for the Burin Peninsula comes this one in which John Efford will hand over a fake cheque representing the $2.0 billion for the new offshore revenue deal.
The money was actually transferred by the Government of Canada on Monday. The cheque is so "da byes" can add to their respective "I love me" walls. [Note to self: check the federal proactive disclosure releases and see if First Contact is making any more cash from John Efford for this little piece of nonsense. Note to readers: I still haven't figured out what they did for the $22 and a half large they pocketed from earlier this year.]
Of course, the offshore deal is really only worth $2.0 billion and not the double revenues that the Premier boasted about all along. You see, provincial oil revenues are so good the province will likely go off the Equalization rolls this year.
That means there is no Equalization offset under the new deal; we just get the declining one under the original deal. Since the province is likely to stay off Equalization for a while, the odds of ever collecting more than the $2.0 billion would be pretty slim. And what does the new deal actually become worth at that point? Something around $320 million over two years.
That's okay, though. Over the next two years we'll pocket more than $2.0 billion in direct oil revenues and we'll keep every penny of it. I know that isn't what you were told and it sure as heck isn't what you'll be told tomorrow.
But hey, you used to believe in the tooth fairy once too because someone told you she was real.
Speaking of good polls, tomorrow's major post will be some comment on the poll commissioned by the Premier's office in January on attitudes toward the provincial position on the offshore deal. The story was originally covered in the Telegram a while ago, but now that I have had a chance to go through the research report, there are a few interesting things in it that are worth bringing to wider attention.
It might help explain why the Premier is so reluctant to let us all have a look at the eight good polls he is keeping stashed in his desk drawers.
04 July 2005
Bob Benson - ink stained, maybe but unsullied by facts
Yesterday's Telegram had yet another column by retired journalist Bob Benson on the plight of Newfoundland and Labrador. You can find the column here, but I'll also append it to the end of this post so it won't disappear in the bowels of the Telly's abysmal website. Look under columns, then Sunday and then Bob Benson.
Ray Guy, who used to write for the Telly when Bob first put fingers to typewriter, likes to call reporters ink-stained wretches; I always took that as an affectionate reference and personally, I look on all reporters as being a gaggle of oft-misunderstood people.
Benson has been pumping out this stuff for years but since he retired, the Telly has given him a ready platform for his pseudo-nationalist rants.
The one yesterday made me wonder why he is writing in the Telly and not for the newspaper where he'd feel much more comfortable: the fact-challenged weekly known as the Independent.
Here's the first chunk of the column with my comments in square brackets:
"Losing our future
Two days after the celebrations of Canada'’s 138th birthday on July 1, this province has yet to find its place in Confederation.
To be brutal about it, union with Canada has failed to produce the new Jerusalem that was promised in 1949.
To be sure, Newfoundland and Labrador has benefited immensely from the largess and handouts of federal transfer payments in areas like Canada Pension, Old Age Security, health care as well as employment insurance and social assistance payments. Then there are the industrial bailouts like the $3 billion which went to support rural Newfoundland after the 1990s northern cod fisheries collapse which was mainly due to federal mismanagement in the first place.
Lost resources
Federal mismanagement, and Ottawa'’s failure to control offshore overfishing by foreign, as well as Canadian, fishing fleets is one of the factors, but not all, that have resulted in the decline of rural Newfoundland."
[Rural Newfoundland is changing. It is only declining if one accepts that the notion that what existed before 1992 was the peak or was preferable. Bob needs to go back and have a hard look at the hard life of people in the fishery before he suggests that the current situation is a decline. Benson also doesn't dare suggest anything bold, like following the Icelandic model of fish management. Nope. That might force him to stop being yet another promoter of the "victim" school of local history.]
"In addition, two rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1980s denied us control over our natural resources. One ruling said we did not have the right to change the one-sided Upper Churchill hydroelectric contract which made Hydro Quebec the main beneficiary. The other ruled the province doesn'’t own offshore oil and gas on the Grand Banks even though they were brought into Canada because of Confederation. True, Ottawa has permitted us to keep 100 per cent of the royalties but that is only crumbs compared to what it would be if the province had outright ownership."
[Ok. These are favourite bits of nonsense that are not made suddenly true by the constant repetition.
Bob conveniently forgets a few things. First, the Upper Churchill case was basically a ruling against the government attempting to change a contract unilaterally by its own legislative powers. It was a contract law case and the ruling essentially reinforced the notion that one party can't change a contract using its own extraordinary powers without the consent of the other party.
He also doesn't point out that the provincial government bought out the local end of the contract from a private company. The wisdom or folly of that decision has yet to be chewed over by anyone.
Second, on the offshore, there were two rulings. The first upheld a decision by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland that the provincial government didn't have legislative jurisdiction over the offshore. People like Benson like to ignore the decision by the local court. The second decision was on another reference and concluded the same thing.
Of course if Bob relied on facts to back up his opinions he'd never be able to go on an bitch about the fact that noone from this province has ever sat on the Supreme Court of Canada. It actually wouldn't make a difference, Bob, since people usually make decisions based on facts.
Third, and this is really the big point, Benson is simply full of crap when he claims we are getting a pittance from the offshore and that amount would be greater if we had "ownership".
The provincial government claims 100% of direct revenues from the offshore which is exactly what would occur if the province actually "owned" the fields; not "sort of" or "approximately" but EXACTLY.
Bob's pittance is actually enough this fiscal year to push the province off the Equalization rolls. This year - 2005 - the province will become a have province for the first time in its history and we will hold that position for the foreseeable future.
That fact alone makes Bob's lede complete foolishness.]
Here's the rest of the column and again, my comments are inside square brackets.
"Passed over for high court
By the way, why is it that not one Newfoundland and Labrador judge has been nominated to a position on the Supreme Court of Canada? With the exception of Arthur May who served briefly as federal deputy minister of Fisheries and Oceans in the mid 1980s, why hasn'’t a person from this province been appointed to a senior civilian public policy-making and administrative position in the federal government? The answers to these questions would be interesting indeed.
[They'd be interesting solely because Bob would have to stop writing drivel.]
"But after 56 years of Confederation, we still have the nation'’s highest unemployment rate which is stuck at 16 per cent. The average annual income in rural Newfoundland of $20,000, well below the national average except for Prince Edward Island.
Above all, the province'’s youth is leaving in droves to find employment in other parts of Canada.
An alarming statistic
In the past decade or so, more than 30,000 people have moved away because they couldnÂ’t find employment. Even more worrisome is the fact, according to information from the recent symposium on rural Newfoundland held in Carbonear, that 28 per cent of young people in rural areas live on some form of income support.
Our youth is our most precious resource and once they are gone, we lose everything.
Just last week, I received this e-mail from a young reader: '“As a 23-year-old recent graduate of Memorial University, I am finding myself, like many others of my age, being drawn to the mainland for bigger opportunities. However, it is only recently I began to realize the plight of Newfoundland and its impact on me.'”
But he is proud of his identity as a Newfoundlander and this bodes well for the future.
'“I know from visiting many people across Canada that we are a rich and recognizable people,'” he wrote.
Mainland commentators and critics fall into the trap of thinking this province is a haven for whiners and, to use a good old Newfoundland expression, '“slingers'” or idlers and loafers."
[When all the mainlanders see is stuff like yours Bob, then you can understand why they come to their conclusions. When they see stuff like Hard Rock and Water, how can anyone think anything else?]
"But all we want is control over our own destiny and to make this province a decent place for all of its citizens to live in. If we have to rant and roar to achieve this, so be it."
[We already control our own destiny, Bob. If we'd stop ranting and roaring, i.e. shooting off our mouths while uttering idiocies, and start addressing the issues on a factual basis, we'd be much better off.]
"Bob Benson is a St. John'’s journalist. He can be reached by e-mail at
bjbenson@allstream.net"
Ray Guy, who used to write for the Telly when Bob first put fingers to typewriter, likes to call reporters ink-stained wretches; I always took that as an affectionate reference and personally, I look on all reporters as being a gaggle of oft-misunderstood people.
Benson has been pumping out this stuff for years but since he retired, the Telly has given him a ready platform for his pseudo-nationalist rants.
The one yesterday made me wonder why he is writing in the Telly and not for the newspaper where he'd feel much more comfortable: the fact-challenged weekly known as the Independent.
Here's the first chunk of the column with my comments in square brackets:
"Losing our future
Two days after the celebrations of Canada'’s 138th birthday on July 1, this province has yet to find its place in Confederation.
To be brutal about it, union with Canada has failed to produce the new Jerusalem that was promised in 1949.
To be sure, Newfoundland and Labrador has benefited immensely from the largess and handouts of federal transfer payments in areas like Canada Pension, Old Age Security, health care as well as employment insurance and social assistance payments. Then there are the industrial bailouts like the $3 billion which went to support rural Newfoundland after the 1990s northern cod fisheries collapse which was mainly due to federal mismanagement in the first place.
Lost resources
Federal mismanagement, and Ottawa'’s failure to control offshore overfishing by foreign, as well as Canadian, fishing fleets is one of the factors, but not all, that have resulted in the decline of rural Newfoundland."
[Rural Newfoundland is changing. It is only declining if one accepts that the notion that what existed before 1992 was the peak or was preferable. Bob needs to go back and have a hard look at the hard life of people in the fishery before he suggests that the current situation is a decline. Benson also doesn't dare suggest anything bold, like following the Icelandic model of fish management. Nope. That might force him to stop being yet another promoter of the "victim" school of local history.]
"In addition, two rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1980s denied us control over our natural resources. One ruling said we did not have the right to change the one-sided Upper Churchill hydroelectric contract which made Hydro Quebec the main beneficiary. The other ruled the province doesn'’t own offshore oil and gas on the Grand Banks even though they were brought into Canada because of Confederation. True, Ottawa has permitted us to keep 100 per cent of the royalties but that is only crumbs compared to what it would be if the province had outright ownership."
[Ok. These are favourite bits of nonsense that are not made suddenly true by the constant repetition.
Bob conveniently forgets a few things. First, the Upper Churchill case was basically a ruling against the government attempting to change a contract unilaterally by its own legislative powers. It was a contract law case and the ruling essentially reinforced the notion that one party can't change a contract using its own extraordinary powers without the consent of the other party.
He also doesn't point out that the provincial government bought out the local end of the contract from a private company. The wisdom or folly of that decision has yet to be chewed over by anyone.
Second, on the offshore, there were two rulings. The first upheld a decision by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland that the provincial government didn't have legislative jurisdiction over the offshore. People like Benson like to ignore the decision by the local court. The second decision was on another reference and concluded the same thing.
Of course if Bob relied on facts to back up his opinions he'd never be able to go on an bitch about the fact that noone from this province has ever sat on the Supreme Court of Canada. It actually wouldn't make a difference, Bob, since people usually make decisions based on facts.
Third, and this is really the big point, Benson is simply full of crap when he claims we are getting a pittance from the offshore and that amount would be greater if we had "ownership".
The provincial government claims 100% of direct revenues from the offshore which is exactly what would occur if the province actually "owned" the fields; not "sort of" or "approximately" but EXACTLY.
Bob's pittance is actually enough this fiscal year to push the province off the Equalization rolls. This year - 2005 - the province will become a have province for the first time in its history and we will hold that position for the foreseeable future.
That fact alone makes Bob's lede complete foolishness.]
Here's the rest of the column and again, my comments are inside square brackets.
"Passed over for high court
By the way, why is it that not one Newfoundland and Labrador judge has been nominated to a position on the Supreme Court of Canada? With the exception of Arthur May who served briefly as federal deputy minister of Fisheries and Oceans in the mid 1980s, why hasn'’t a person from this province been appointed to a senior civilian public policy-making and administrative position in the federal government? The answers to these questions would be interesting indeed.
[They'd be interesting solely because Bob would have to stop writing drivel.]
"But after 56 years of Confederation, we still have the nation'’s highest unemployment rate which is stuck at 16 per cent. The average annual income in rural Newfoundland of $20,000, well below the national average except for Prince Edward Island.
Above all, the province'’s youth is leaving in droves to find employment in other parts of Canada.
An alarming statistic
In the past decade or so, more than 30,000 people have moved away because they couldnÂ’t find employment. Even more worrisome is the fact, according to information from the recent symposium on rural Newfoundland held in Carbonear, that 28 per cent of young people in rural areas live on some form of income support.
Our youth is our most precious resource and once they are gone, we lose everything.
Just last week, I received this e-mail from a young reader: '“As a 23-year-old recent graduate of Memorial University, I am finding myself, like many others of my age, being drawn to the mainland for bigger opportunities. However, it is only recently I began to realize the plight of Newfoundland and its impact on me.'”
But he is proud of his identity as a Newfoundlander and this bodes well for the future.
'“I know from visiting many people across Canada that we are a rich and recognizable people,'” he wrote.
Mainland commentators and critics fall into the trap of thinking this province is a haven for whiners and, to use a good old Newfoundland expression, '“slingers'” or idlers and loafers."
[When all the mainlanders see is stuff like yours Bob, then you can understand why they come to their conclusions. When they see stuff like Hard Rock and Water, how can anyone think anything else?]
"But all we want is control over our own destiny and to make this province a decent place for all of its citizens to live in. If we have to rant and roar to achieve this, so be it."
[We already control our own destiny, Bob. If we'd stop ranting and roaring, i.e. shooting off our mouths while uttering idiocies, and start addressing the issues on a factual basis, we'd be much better off.]
"Bob Benson is a St. John'’s journalist. He can be reached by e-mail at
bjbenson@allstream.net"
Poll dancing - some little thoughts
When pondering why government won't release a series of eight polls done by Ryan Research for Executive Council, ask yourself the same questions I have been mulling over:
1. Since Ryan Research is the Premier's personal favourite polling firm, is it possible most of the information in the eight polls really about attitudes to the Premier and his performance and how the public is viewing his opponents? That information isn't Earth-shattering or secret; it might be a tad embarrassing for the Premier himself, though.
2. Are these polls actually ones that should have been paid for directly out of the Premier's Office budget but which were, a la Tobin, foisted on someone else?
One thing I would bet my house on: the resistance to releasing them has nothing to do with the need to keep cabinet discussions secret.
1. Since Ryan Research is the Premier's personal favourite polling firm, is it possible most of the information in the eight polls really about attitudes to the Premier and his performance and how the public is viewing his opponents? That information isn't Earth-shattering or secret; it might be a tad embarrassing for the Premier himself, though.
2. Are these polls actually ones that should have been paid for directly out of the Premier's Office budget but which were, a la Tobin, foisted on someone else?
One thing I would bet my house on: the resistance to releasing them has nothing to do with the need to keep cabinet discussions secret.
Byrne backs Bond
Natural Resources minister Ed Byrne called Open Line today to say what Bond readers have known for some time:
There is nothing in the Real Atlantic Accord that prevents a refinery from being built here.
Byrne noted that government is assessing the possibility of building secondary and tertiary oil refining capacity here. Not only is that good news, it is something people have known for a while.
There is nothing in the Real Atlantic Accord that prevents a refinery from being built here.
Byrne noted that government is assessing the possibility of building secondary and tertiary oil refining capacity here. Not only is that good news, it is something people have known for a while.
Reduction to absurdity III
The provincial government's Access to Information act is a pretty simple document.
It establishes the right of the public to obtain a wide range of information in government's possession, with only few exceptions. In fact, clause 3.(1)(c) states simply that one purpose of the act is to make public bodies more accountable by "specifying limited exceptions to the right of access".
Section III establishes those limited exceptions. Clause 18 provides that "[t]he head of a public body shall refuse to disclose to an applicant information that would reveal the substance of deliberations of Cabinet, including advice, recommendations, policy considerations or draft legislation or regulations submitted or prepared for submission to the Cabinet."
That section is the section Premier Danny Williams and his acting justice minister Tom Rideout are pointing to when they claim that releasing certain public opinions polls would "preserve that underpinning of British parliamentary democracy, that cabinet discussions are secret." The complete text of the original Telegram story on the poll controversy can be found here.
This claim is merely an attempt to argue an absurdity. No one is seeking any records of cabinet deliberations,advice given to cabinet by officials or outside consultants or anything else which would reveal cabinet deliberations. The small cloak of invisibility granted by the legislature to those extremely sensitive deliberations remains intact. What has been sought by the Telegram is nothing more than data - a set of questions put to several hundred residents of the province and their anonymous responses.
A few sentences later in the legislation, however, the intention of the House of Assembly is clear when it comes to releasing public opinion polls. Clause 20.(1) states that "[t]he head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant information that would reveal...(a) advice or recommendations developed by or for a public body or a minister; or (b) draft legislation or regulations."
Clause 20.(2)(b) is unequivocal: "The head of a public body shall not refuse to disclose under subsection (1)...(b) a public opinion poll."
In making his case for withholding something clearly intended to be released, the Premier claims that it is not the content of the polls; after all, anyone can conduct the same public opinion polls. Rather, argues the Premier, it is the precedent.
At this point, the Premier's contention reduces his own argument to the point of absurdity.
The Williams administration has already released a series of public opinion polls conducted by Corporate Research Associates. If the administration was concerned about precedent, then it would have stood its ground when the first request to release the first poll was received. In each case, the only thing released were the questions and the tally of answers. They made the same argument about cabinet confidentiality then, as in the latest case and in each case, access commissioner Phil Wall dismissed the feeble government objections. Here is decision 002 for 2005. Here's the most recent decision; note the similarity both in the vague arguments presented by government and the detailed and sophisticated reasoning of the access commissioner.
In another set of two polls conducted in January 2005, information commissioner Phil Wall recommended that the polls be released but that advice from the consultant be deleted. His recommendation is consistent with the spirit and intent of the access legislation and, curiously government complied.
The polls they are now withholding were conducted by a single firm - Ryan Research and Communications - over the period between December 2003 and August 2004. Three separate polls were conducted in April 2004, during the height of the budget controversy last year and two of those polls were sent to government within a working week of each other.
Why have these polls suddenly become matters of high state secrecy?
The simple answer is that they are actually not polls that would reveal cabinet deliberations. Ryan Research is the Premier's personal favourite opinion firm. The polls in question were likely requested by his office and may well contain questions which reveal exactly the extent to which this Premier is keen to know exactly how the winds of opinion are blowing when he makes a decision.
There is no coincidence that his January polling, for example, showed that tearing down the Canadian flag was extremely unpopular with Canadians across the country and especially those at home. Fully 60% of those polled opposed the flag fiasco, selecting the strongest opposition choice in the questionnaire. When you couple that with the fact that the same disproportionately surveyed Atlantic Canadians it is no surprise how quickly the Premier put the flags back less than a day after the poll was concluded.
All of that is actually irrelevant.
The provincial government should release the Ryan research polls without delay.
The black letter of the access legislation requires it to do so, obviously without any recommendations or analysis as conducted by the consultant.
The provincial government has already released a series of polls conducted for Executive Council, as were the Ryan polls, without making much fuss of the matter.
As the Premier has argued, the polls themselves contain nothing which could not be released. In effect, he argues against himself, making absurd both his own position and the arguments he presents to back it up.
More importantly, the government's refusal to release these polls makes absurd the entire concept of access to information. No one - not a private citizen, not a newspaper reporter - should have to go to court to seek what government is obliged to release by the black letter of the law and by its own precedent.
It establishes the right of the public to obtain a wide range of information in government's possession, with only few exceptions. In fact, clause 3.(1)(c) states simply that one purpose of the act is to make public bodies more accountable by "specifying limited exceptions to the right of access".
Section III establishes those limited exceptions. Clause 18 provides that "[t]he head of a public body shall refuse to disclose to an applicant information that would reveal the substance of deliberations of Cabinet, including advice, recommendations, policy considerations or draft legislation or regulations submitted or prepared for submission to the Cabinet."
That section is the section Premier Danny Williams and his acting justice minister Tom Rideout are pointing to when they claim that releasing certain public opinions polls would "preserve that underpinning of British parliamentary democracy, that cabinet discussions are secret." The complete text of the original Telegram story on the poll controversy can be found here.
This claim is merely an attempt to argue an absurdity. No one is seeking any records of cabinet deliberations,advice given to cabinet by officials or outside consultants or anything else which would reveal cabinet deliberations. The small cloak of invisibility granted by the legislature to those extremely sensitive deliberations remains intact. What has been sought by the Telegram is nothing more than data - a set of questions put to several hundred residents of the province and their anonymous responses.
A few sentences later in the legislation, however, the intention of the House of Assembly is clear when it comes to releasing public opinion polls. Clause 20.(1) states that "[t]he head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant information that would reveal...(a) advice or recommendations developed by or for a public body or a minister; or (b) draft legislation or regulations."
Clause 20.(2)(b) is unequivocal: "The head of a public body shall not refuse to disclose under subsection (1)...(b) a public opinion poll."
In making his case for withholding something clearly intended to be released, the Premier claims that it is not the content of the polls; after all, anyone can conduct the same public opinion polls. Rather, argues the Premier, it is the precedent.
At this point, the Premier's contention reduces his own argument to the point of absurdity.
The Williams administration has already released a series of public opinion polls conducted by Corporate Research Associates. If the administration was concerned about precedent, then it would have stood its ground when the first request to release the first poll was received. In each case, the only thing released were the questions and the tally of answers. They made the same argument about cabinet confidentiality then, as in the latest case and in each case, access commissioner Phil Wall dismissed the feeble government objections. Here is decision 002 for 2005. Here's the most recent decision; note the similarity both in the vague arguments presented by government and the detailed and sophisticated reasoning of the access commissioner.
In another set of two polls conducted in January 2005, information commissioner Phil Wall recommended that the polls be released but that advice from the consultant be deleted. His recommendation is consistent with the spirit and intent of the access legislation and, curiously government complied.
The polls they are now withholding were conducted by a single firm - Ryan Research and Communications - over the period between December 2003 and August 2004. Three separate polls were conducted in April 2004, during the height of the budget controversy last year and two of those polls were sent to government within a working week of each other.
Why have these polls suddenly become matters of high state secrecy?
The simple answer is that they are actually not polls that would reveal cabinet deliberations. Ryan Research is the Premier's personal favourite opinion firm. The polls in question were likely requested by his office and may well contain questions which reveal exactly the extent to which this Premier is keen to know exactly how the winds of opinion are blowing when he makes a decision.
There is no coincidence that his January polling, for example, showed that tearing down the Canadian flag was extremely unpopular with Canadians across the country and especially those at home. Fully 60% of those polled opposed the flag fiasco, selecting the strongest opposition choice in the questionnaire. When you couple that with the fact that the same disproportionately surveyed Atlantic Canadians it is no surprise how quickly the Premier put the flags back less than a day after the poll was concluded.
All of that is actually irrelevant.
The provincial government should release the Ryan research polls without delay.
The black letter of the access legislation requires it to do so, obviously without any recommendations or analysis as conducted by the consultant.
The provincial government has already released a series of polls conducted for Executive Council, as were the Ryan polls, without making much fuss of the matter.
As the Premier has argued, the polls themselves contain nothing which could not be released. In effect, he argues against himself, making absurd both his own position and the arguments he presents to back it up.
More importantly, the government's refusal to release these polls makes absurd the entire concept of access to information. No one - not a private citizen, not a newspaper reporter - should have to go to court to seek what government is obliged to release by the black letter of the law and by its own precedent.
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