Dry hump

Man-about-town and obvious hipster Premier Danny Williams attended the Black Eyed Peas concert in Mount Pearl back in September, accompanied by his daughters.

The hip-hop act was a big hit and Williams apparently loved the experience. He told The Telegram for its story on September 5:

Spotted among the crowd, Premier Danny Williams said he and his two daughters had a great time at the concert. He admitted that he was most excited to hear the Black Eyed Peas, adding that his favourite song by the pop group is My Humps, "I think it's because of my granddaughter, that's where I heard it for the first time," he said with a laugh. "She's disappointed because she starts school tomorrow and she couldn't make it."

Hmmm.

My humps?

Some of the lyrics of Williams' favourite peas song:

What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps...

What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What you gon' do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I'ma make, make, make, make you scream
Make you scream, make you scream.
What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off this hump.
What you gon' do wit all that breast?
All that breast inside that shirt?
I'ma make, make, make, make you work
Make you work, work, make you work.

It's a ... well... ummm... an interesting choice, given that, as Williams said, he picked up the song from one of his granddaughters.

Jerome, Lorraine and a player to be named later

CBC's provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane told Here and Now viewers this evening that prominent criminal defence lawyer Jerome Kennedy is considering seeking the Tory nod in the upcoming Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi by-election.

Oddly enough, Kennedy is the guy who got a settlement for Greg Parsons in his wrongful conviction case against government when the previous lead lawyer on the file - foreshadowing a seemingly endless string of similar negotiating failures - couldn't manage to close the deal.

Kennedy's name has been kicking around town for weeks as a possible contender. Also mentioned have been Valerie Marshall, daughter of former Tory cabinet minister and retired trials division judge Bill Marshall; Ian Carter, son of former Tory member of the House of Assembly John Carter; and, Karen Carroll who defeated Carter for the Tory nomination in 2003 and then lost to Jack Harris in the general election by what amounts to a handful of votes.

The New Democrats will be running their new leader, Lorraine Michael. She has been campaigning already alongside her predecessor and the current incumbent in the seat in the east end of St. John's. While Danny Williams likely has a lock on the seat, he still managed to whine and moan about Jack and Lorraine's stealing a page from Williams own playbook.

No one has come forward yet seeking the Liberal nomination. Simon Lono publicly declared today he isn't interested. The Liberals have also reportedly been courting George Murphy , a consumer gas prices activist.

The race will be interesting if only because Michael and Kennedy are newbies to the political realm. Michael hasn't shown any sign of a steel backbone and Kennedy, well, Kennedy is actually only thinking about running. He is being actively courted by Danny and company who seem a little desperate to secure a candidate. According to some versions of the story, Kennedy would be appointed to cabinet immediately on election; that's likely part of the price for getting a highly successful lawyer with no previously detectable political ambitions to abandon a successful practice and enter into Danny's confining world.

It doesn't really matter who gets their name on the Tory banner, though, since whoever it is will likely not be the campaign target for the other parties.

We'll discuss that in greater detail in the days and weeks ahead.

Shaggin' polls

Over the past couple of weeks, Bond Papers has been commenting on public opinion polls and especially on how those polls are described.

Last week, we specifically singled out some of the polls on the New Brunswick election, at least of which was touted as showing Bernard Lord's Progressive Conservatives in a significant lead over the Liberals. The polls were conducted in mid to late August.

Two polls taken in September - one by Corporate Research Associates and another by Bristol Group's Omnifacts - showed the racer as too close to call.

So what happened?

Absolutely nothing.

Both the August polls had margins of error of over four percentage points at the 95th confidence interval. What that means is that if you had conducted one hundred polls at the same time,using the same methodology, 95% of the results would have fallen either four points above or four points below the number shown in the poll actually reported.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that the total range of error in each instance is well above eight points. Therefore any gap between the respondents that is - say - eight points or less is functionally meaningless if you are trying to figure what is going on in the election.

Bristol/Omnifacts' poll in August showed the Liberals and the Conservatives seven points apart and a margin of error of 4.4%. Now think about that. The difference between the two parties was the better part of two full percentage points within the range of variation. (Range = 8.8%; difference = 7%)

Savvy readers - who are not rocket scientists - likely picked up on that and hopefully, some of the posts here on polling have helped people appreciate that simple thing.

Leaving aside the issues in conducting the polls themselves, we still have to wonder why the research company itself will report things as if this little issue with the margin of error didn't exist.

Like Corporate Research Associates.

In late August, CRA issued a news release saying that "[t]he ruling PCs lead the opposition Liberals in voter support at the beginning of the 2006 provincial election campaign...".

Simply put, that's a claim CRA couldn't make base don their own polling results. The question on Bernard Lord's personal popularity wouldn't really have given them an extra piece of information that helped interpret the party support number as they did. CRA showed a 10% difference between the Liberal and Conservative leaders, with Lord in the lead. But if you stop for a second, you realize that with an error range of 8.8%, a difference of 10% between two leaders isn't very much to go on. After all, drop Lord's figure by the margin of error and goose Liberal Shawn Graham by the same amount and you have the two of them respectively at 35.6% and 33.4%.

Now before the partisans start crawling out of the wood work, realize that the scenario just described is just as likely to describe the situation during the polling period as any other, within the margin of error range for the poll.

Pointing out the wide range of possible outcomes wouldn't support the main purpose of these media polls, though, and that's getting media attention to help market the research company itself. There's nothing unprofessional, unethical or anything else wrong with what's being reported by the companies. We just have to be slightly more sophisticated information consumers to avoid being misled on a simple point.

With all that behind us, it's more interesting to actually take a hard look at the Omnifacts poll results, released last Friday. Omnifacts tells us something that is both accurate - for their results - and also a good headline grabber, namely that going down to polling day, the election is neck and neck.

Omnifacts also tried to probe people who might be leaning in one direction or another. That helps trim down the self-described "undecideds".

Here are the questions, as asked:

1) If a provincial election were held today, which party would you most likely vote for?
2) If undecided or not sure, is there one party you are leaning toward?

Now let's take a look at some specific results. For the first question alone, Omnifacts got these answers (n=1,065):

PC 30%
Lib 29%
NDP 5%
Oth 1%
Und 27%
Ref 8%

It's a dead heat among decided voters. But look more closely. Undecideds are at 27% and another 8% flat-out refused to answer the question. Put another way, that means the single largest category the largest response category was among undecideds and "no answer."

The next table presented by Omnifacts just adds in those who were "undecided" but who claimed to be leaning one way or another. The PC's picked up another 16%, the Liberals 17% and the NDP 2%, although note in the news release, Omnifacts shows the margin of error on this data table (with "leaners" included) runs between 6% and 9%.

Holy gap, Code Man.

A week ago, someone trying to predict an election outcome based on reported poll results would have mistakenly assumed Bernard Lord would sweep back to power.

This week, the world seems to have changed dramatically.

Actually it hasn't. The poll results over the past four weeks or show have showed essentially the race is both very close and that a significant number of New Brunswickers were either genuinely unsure of how they would vote - if they would vote at all - or were unwilling to tip their hand.

Anyone who tried to predict seat counts based on goofy ideas like distributing the "undecideds" like the decideds or trying to blow them off as being people who wouldn't vote likely would have missed what is essentially the real story of the New Brunswick general election:

the voters will decide.

The consistency of inconsistency

In February, 2006 Bond Papers suggested that the Williams administration should refuse development of the province's mineral resources unless every possible refinement and processing is done in the province.

That followed a more light-hearted post in January in which we uttered the cry that "not one isotopic teaspoon" of uranium should leave this province without being turned into energy and nuclear weapons.

The basis for the post was the insistence by Premier Danny Williams that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians get the full benefit of their resources. He blew off a multi-billion dollar deal on offshore oil on those grounds and since that deal collapsed in April, Williams has been pounding the Tobin "not one teaspoon" on every available surface.

There's even a section on this in the much-vaunted Williams Blue Book:

A strong mineral industry for the Province will be built on progressive legislation that will:

Require that ore concentrate be processed to a finished metal product in the Province where it is feasible to do so.

Link royalties and taxes to market prices and the extent of value- added activity undertaken in the Province.

Now anyone reading this has to bear in mind that the phrase "where it is feasible to do so" means simply where Danny says so. The financial and other logic against his posturing with the oil companies has fallen on the most plugged-up of deaf ears any premier of this province has ever worn.

But the Williams logic is spelled out in plain English in the Blue Book:

Our goal is to increase the activities associated with the processing of minerals in the Province and related business activities in the service and supply industries, such as construction, energy, engineering and environmental services, research and development, equipment parts and supplies, and financial and legal services.

That, of course, is merely an echo of the shouting Williams did about the Voisey's Bay deal with Inco that would allow ore to be shipped from the province until a commercial smelter/refinery can be built.

With that as background, it was surprising to read comments by natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale on the need to allow prospectors and mine developers to do essentially what they need to do with ore once it is discovered.

Dunderdale told The Sunday Telegram:

Dunderdale says the province won'’t place processing restrictions on prospectors and mining companies because it would just drive them away. Dunderdale says new technologies — which allow prospectors to take additional small amounts of material out of mines previously thought to be stripped or to be economically unviable — have also attracted mining companies to the province in recent years. [Emphasis added]

That's right.

The provincial government will not be placing processing restrictions on mining companies since those restrictions will just drive prospectors to look somewhere else in the world. Incidentally, elsewhere in the story, the value of mineral shipments from the province was pegged at $2.8 billion annually.

This is a truly outstanding example of the ability of the Williams administration to apply one set of rules for one project or industry and an entirely different set of rules for another.

In Stephenville, Williams was willing to commit upwards of $180 million of taxpayers money to subsidize power for the now-defunct Abitibi mill in the west coast town. Only a short few months later, Williams has rejected the idea of an energy subsidy for the province's major fishing enterprise because if he did that, he would face similar requests from others.

Danny Williams seems to have a remarkable ability to shift positions to suit whatever particular whim strikes him. In the case of the mining industry, Dunderdale's comments are right but they are also equally applicable to a host of other economic developments which are currently in the slings as a direct result of her boss not following the same policy.

Williams' Animal Farm -like approach to government may make for good theatre, just as Orwell's book was a good read, but there may well be other layers of meaning and other layers of understanding that must be achieved before we fully appreciate the import of Dunderdale's comments to The Telegram.

All animals may be equal, but there may be some who are more equal than others.

Cat fight!

Former political paramours Andy Wells and federal fish minister Loyola Hearn are locked in a bitch-slapping affray over Wells' allegations that Hearn misled the snarly mayor of St. John's over the likelihood that Danny Williams' new best bud would get appointed to the federal-provincial regulatory board for the province's offshore oil and gas fields.

The Telegram covers the story in fair detail this Saturday, using information supplied by Wells about some - just a handful - of the telephone calls made by Wells to two Conservative members of parliament in an effort to bull his considerable ego ability temper political experience into the non-political job at the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

From February to July 2006, Wells made repeated phone calls to Norm Doyle and Loyola Hearn. On March 24, the week before Ruelokke was reportedly supposed to start work, Wells fired off a letter to Hearn asking what was going on.

Wells is accusing Hearn of misleading him about the prospects of Wells getting the job that pays considerably more than the $5,000 he will pocket in the part-time directors job Williams subsequently gave him on the offshore board.

Hearn insists he did no such thing.

Tory councilor Keith Coombs, a long-time supporter of Wells, is quoted by the Telly as supporting some of Wells' contentions.

The whole thing promises to sour relations between the St. John's city council and the province's federal cabinet representative. It should also make interesting the fight for Hearn's seat in the next federal election. Hearn's once-likely successor, Ed Byrne, is embroiled in a financial misappropriation scandal in the House of Assembly that could take two years or more to resolve.

Coombs, whose municipal seat falls partly Hearn's federal riding, may be looking at taking the leap to the political big leagues. By backing Wells, Coombs could count on support from Wells' election machinery and possibly from the Premier's personal posse.

The funny thing about the entire affair is that there never really was any chance Wells would ever get the job.

In July 2005, news leaked that Premier Danny Williams wanted to scuttle the search for a competition to fill the vacant position of president and chief executive officer at the board and stuff the acerbic municipal politician into the job instead. Paul Martin's Liberals made it clear Wells would not be their choice.

A subsequent three-person panel appointed jointly by the feds and Williams used criteria set by both parties and selected Max Ruelokke for the job over Wells.

Evidence presented in a subsequent court case brought by Ruelokke showed that Williams rejected an option that would have put Wells into the new job of full-time board chairman, opting instead for the process that eventually saw Ruelokke appointed and Williams fuming over his latest Homer Simpson moment.

In early 2006, the newly appointed Conservative government of Stephen Harper made it plain - and public - that they would be following the process set down by law and confirm Ruelokke's appointment.

Premier Danny Williams confirmed last week that he had tried to pressure the federal government into appointing Wells to the vice-chairman's job - reported by the telegram to be worth at least $157, 000 per year - but was turned down flat by the feds.

Friday Video: Canadian Forces TV spots

Government by Fernando

To call Shelagh Rogers interview [audio link] on Wednesday with Danny Williams frothy would be an insult to the intellectual capacity of foam, but the half hour gab with the Premier of what Danny Williams likes to call Canada's "youngest and coolest province" was typical of the genre.

You know it all too well.

Normally seen on such brain-numbing fair as Entertainment Tonight, the celebrity interview features some gushing host interviewing someone famous for being famous. The celebrity is invariably either plugging his or her latest movie or reminiscing about past triumphs.

The Danny interview fell decidedly in the latter category although it was billed as being a chat about "how oil and gas development is affecting his home province, the confident new provincial psyche, and his need to keep taking on big battles for the sake of his province."

The exchange started off with the usual celebrity banter: Shelagh saying she was delighted Williams could join her and he replying that he was "honoured quite frankly" to be on the show. There was an obviously inside joke by Williams about seeing Anderson Cooper outside and early on Shelagh making an issue of asking if she could call him Danny.

Like all celebrity interviews there was not much meat in this. Williams quickly introduced his regular sound bites on a renewed sense of pride in the province since he took office and it wasn't too long before he brought up the offshore talks with Ottawa.

The interview was basically a chance for Williams to say what he wanted with an obviously enamoured interviewer whose awareness of what is going on in Newfoundland and Labrador could charitably be described as limited.

What he said for the entire 30 minutes was basically a series of sound bites, though: short phrases and key words Danny likes to use aside from the multitudinous variations on "quite frankly". Nothing of substance, no specific objectives, no vision interrupted his references to emotions or vague ideas like a renaissance among young people.

In the middle of the interview, not long after the references to Williams personal popularity came a discussion of the seal hunt. Shelagh played a clip from Williams' appearance on Larry King Live some months, framing the whole thing as Williams not being afraid of anyone, even one of the musical idols of his youth.

Williams made the news on Thursday for his comments that he would like to ban the hakapik from the hunt because the hooked club - used for killing seals - looks bad in pictures.

Because it looks bad.

If anyone is looking for the one word that describes Danny Williams' overwhelming obsession, it is "image".

The hakapik is to be banned because it looks bad, because it allows anti-seal hunt protesters to get visuals for their campaign. The substance of the issue is irrelevant.

Image is everything.

Never mind even that in this instance, the issue of the seal hunt and anti-seal hunt protesters is far from being the most serious issue affecting the province and people of Newfoundland and Labrador. This was the bit that drew the most specific comments and Williams' one concrete suggest that generated news coverage.

Get rid of the clubs because it doesn't look good.

As Williams talked about working to help rural Newfoundland he said little beyond the tinny words generated from his publicity assistants. But bring up an annual event that has become - if nothing else - a way for B List has-been actors to get their names and pictures on the tube and Williams is right there with an idea.

This is no accident, by the way. If Williams' publicist did not want him to talk of the seal hunt, she would have steered Rogers in another direction before booking the interview.

Williams wanted to talk about seals.

And as a result, we should think carefully on what this means. Only three years ago, we elected Williams with his promise of "jobs, jobs, jobs".

Now he has chosen to join the group of what Rex Murphy aptly described as "the endless file of soap-star intellects, preening starlets, sitcom revenants, small-screen action heroes and full-bore Hollywood poseurs who, over the years, have given an ounce of their time to drop by the ice-floes, park in front of a whitecoat, do the caring press conference and go back to whatever it was they were doing when they were not saving seals."

We might wonder the same thing.

What has Danny Williams been doing when he isn't saving sealers?

Perhaps lining up his next gig, a cable talk show called the Hide-away.

He'd be perfect for it.

Quite frankly, Danny certainly looks mahvelous.

- srbp -

A European war instead Jack?

While it is nice for Jack Layton to be talking of sending the navy out to deal with illegal fishing off our coasts, one can only wonder if he is actually saying he would prefer an armed confrontation with Spain and Portugal instead of helping people in Afghanistan.

Layton's comments ignore the fact we already have a sizeable and more than adequate force patrolling our coastlines and Canadian airspace.

Facts aren't really the point for Jack, nor is a policy that makes sense. Given the fiasco coming out of last weekend, Layton is merely trying to come up with something he can use to deflect attention from his advocacy of abandoning the people of Afghanistan to local warlords and armed thugs.

If Jack knew what he was talking about he would understand this is not a case of Afghanistan versus some other choice. Canada has the military force to do both.

The really funny thing here - the truly hypocritical thing here - is that New Democrats supposedly want to abandon Afghans because it is dangerous, but as an alternative, Layton is advocating armed confrontations on the high seas with Spanish, Portugese and other European countries in our own backyard.

That hardly sounds like the "peace" policy his Afghan ejection seat option was supposed to be.

Shag the polls

Despite all the excellent commentary out there that we should all be highly suspicious of public opinion polls, people still report ones coming out of New Brunswick as if they were reliable.

Take for example the Canadian Press story on canadaeast.com, a site that bills itself as Eastern Canada's information source. It deals with a poll conduct by Bristol Group's research arm, Omnifacts.

According to CP, the poll results found that the Lord Tories are in front with 45% of decided voters with the Liberals at 38%. 37% reportedly were undecided.

Further down the story, you'll see a quote from Don Mills, president of Corporate Research Associates, the research company in the CCL Group. He dismisses undecideds claiming that they usually split like the decideds.

The CP story reports the margin of error on this poll at 4.4% at the 95th confidence interval meaning the results would fall with plus or minus 4.4% of the reported figure 95 times if you did 100 polls using exactly the same methodology.

Here's a couple of quick points:

1. CP is wrong. The small sample size doesn't make the margin of error high, the overall survey design does. You can accurately poll national public opinion on a sample only slightly larger than the one used here. You can do New Brunswick with fewer people and get a smaller m of e.

Dig deeper and you'll likely find problems with response rates, sampling methodology, demographics and so forth that are all understandable but all of which can render the results functionally useless.

No sane person would rely on these numbers alone to predict seat counts, for example.

2. Given that both the Omnifacts and CRA polls have such horrendous margins of error (both pushing 5%), simply toss them in the bin. They are useless as a way of telling anything at all about the election.

The polls are only good for the firms releasing them. They get what they want: media coverage to market themselves. Nothing wrong with it but we shouldn't pay any more attention to the results than we would to yet another MacDonald's spot.

Their secondary value is to the party in the lead which can add to the impression - potentially false - that they are heading for a comfortable win or to a trailing party that it is in contention, possibly equally false.

3. As for Mills' ongoing belief that undecideds either break like the decideds or don't count 'cause they won't vote, we can only say "bullshit".

There's no way he can sustain the latter conclusion unless he specifically determined likelihood of voting and then screened those people out from the start. Given his comments, Mills doesn't exclude those people so he gets them in both the undecideds and in the decideds.

He also can't sustain his former conclusion - namely that they break like decideds. They don't. In 1999, undecideds polled after the lone leadership debate in the Newfoundland general election broke heavily Tory. There are countless other examples of the same thing happening.

In interpreting poll results, some people often distribute the undecideds around like the decideds simply as a convenient way of guessing what might happen. But that's a dodgy game unless one has conducted far more in-depth polling than the stuff done by research companies and released like this.

Publicly released polling results during campaigns are fine as long as you understand what they are and what they aren't.

All things considered, the polling in Atlantic Canada elections give a bit of news coverage but people following the elections shouldn't put much stock in them, one way or the other.

Worthwhile thoughts on senate reform

Offal news is hardly offal.

Monkey tossing for England

[Amended]

The English have a phrase that if someone is especially good at something, then they could do it "for England."

Like say the guy loves to down pints of his favourite lager; well, he could "Drink for England."

Or, as Janice once said of her ex-husband - for all your Corrie fans - Les could lie for England.

Then there's the thing Danny Williams is famous for: blaming others for something or, as the phrase goes "tossing the monkey" as in putting a monkey on someone's back.

Well, it isn't telling fibs and it isn't drinking but Danny Williams and his gang of followers could toss monkeys for England if the gaggle of Monday news releases from his administration is any indication.

First, there was the scrum in which Williams announced he was giving up the ludicrous fight to put Andy Wells in charge of the offshore regulatory board. It was ludicrous since Williams kept arguing against positions he himself had previously endorsed. The whole sordid mess ended with a Supreme Court justice explaining that Williams' legal theories were nonsense.

[* see explanatory note below* Left: a decidedly unhappy-looking Danny Williams announces defeat in L'affaire Ruelokke. In making the announcement, Williams set a new indoor record for a politician clearing his throat during a scrum as a sign of his discomfort. The previous record was held by former prime minister John Turner.

Williams is also likely soon to break the record for a Newfoundland and Labrador premier saying variations on "quite frankly" during a media interview. The current record is held by Brian Tobin who told a reporter after the 1999 general election: "Quite frankly, I'll be frankly quite frank in answering your quite frank question on a subject which is, frankly, of quite some frank concern among those people who would be both frank and concerned if quite frankly people had been frankly quite frank with them previously."]

But according to Danny the whole thing was Stephen Harper's fault and the fault of "Big Oil", his latest name for the major oil companies. Seems Harper is in love with Big Oil and Big Oil's lobbyists have sway in Ottawa against poor little Danny. Of course, Williams entire argument is bullshit, but it is an example of trying to hang the blame for his own failing on someone else.

On top of that was the release from his natural resources shadow-minister - Kathy Dunderdale - complaining that the feds have not indemnified Inco about environmental pollution to enable the company to build a smelter/refinery complex for Voisey's Bay nickel at their original site at Argentia.

Notice that the headline on the release is about seeking an indemnity for future contamination at the Argentia site. Yet, the body of the release talks about an liability accruing to Inco for environmental damage at the site caused by about 50 years of American military occupation.

Hmmm.

A little later in the release, there is reference to Inco wanting to build the refinery somewhere other than Argentia.

Inco notified government on November 30, 2005 of its decision to locate the planned processing plant at a site in the province other than Argentia, as per Section 4.6.4 of the Development Agreement. Based on its own assessment of environmental, legal and business risks, Inco has concluded that it is not economically feasible to use Argentia as the site for a commercial nickel processing facility. The company has since registered a proposed site in Long Harbour for environmental assessment.

That's perfectly true. Inco did propose moving to another site, a little farther up the coast from Argentia at a place called Long Harbour. There used to be a phosphorous plant there operated by a company called Erco.

But it isn't correct to suggest - as the release does - that the company would stay at Argentia if the federal government provided any sort of indemnity.

See, Inco has been operating a demonstration plant at Argentia since 2005. One of the big problems with a full-scale operation is that waste would have to be piped around sensitive habitats with the associated risk of contamination, clean-up costs and legal action. At Long Harbour, the company would have access to an already contaminated site with a readily available tailings pond a few feet away. There is also some question that Argentia has some areas that are too contaminated and would take too long to clean up.

Naturally, having looked at the issues involved, Inco announced last January that it would like to locate the full-size plant to Long Harbour for a lot of good reasons.

If all goes according to Inco plans, construction on the new smelter will begin in 2009 and be finished by 2011.

So if Inco isn't interested in Argentia any more, what's Williams doing telling his minister to complain about a lack of response from the federal government on an issue that actually isn't really an issue?

Well, it's just a big monkey being tossed. At Argentia, the federal government is conducting a huge environmental clean-up. At Long Harbour, clean-up and an indemnity would be a provincial responsibility.

Even though it makes a whole pile of sense to build the smelter at Long Harbour instead of Argentia - with nearby Placentia still benefiting from the development - Danny Williams is trying to toss a monkey on the federal government so that he doesn't have to take responsibility.

To make it even funnier, while Dunderdale is looking to keep the smelter at Argentia, her colleague in the environment department is busily processing Inco's application to build at Long Harbour. Left hand? Meet right.

Does anyone see a pattern developing here of blaming everything - and we mean everything - on the feds while the provincial government does little beyond hold meetings and issue monkey tossing news releases?

Funny that Danny Williams seems to some to be laying the groundwork for a separatist agenda. If we took Danny Williams' monkey-tossing at face value, there's likely a good argument he is laying the ground work for his own redundancy.

After all, if it is all Ottawa's fault, then why do we need Danny in the first place? To be at fault you have to be responsible for doing something and so far, Williams has been trying to show everyone how much he isn't responsible for.

That's what happens when you monkey toss for England.

___________________________________

*Note: An e-mail from cbc.ca/nl webmaster John Gushue pointed out that I incorrectly identified the CBC picture in this piece as having been taken at Williams scrum discussing Ruelokke. It wasn't; apparently the shot is a file photo from April. While the photo is indeed of Danny Williams and he is looking somewhat piqued, the shot was not from the Ruelokke-related scrum.

Danny on L'affaire Ruelokke

Following are some observations on Danny Williams' scrum announcing he would be confirming the appointment of Max Ruelokke as chairman and chief executive officer of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB). CBC Radio's On the Go played excerpts of the scrum this afternoon:

1. It's history. While it took an inordinately long amount of time, the Premier has finally done the right thing. There are good words coming from both Ruelokke and the Premier. Ruelokke is a professional and so this matter should be in the past, as Ruelokke described it.

It's over. let's get on with the business of properly regulating the province's offshore resources.

2. Take the hint. In response to a question from the Telegram's Craig Jackson, Williams acknowledged he had been trying to get Andy appointed as vice-chairman. The federal government rejected the proposal, according to the Premier.

Two completely different federal governments have rejected Wells; it's time for the Premier to take the hint.

3. Bond Papers likely won't get credit... for Wells' appointment. We noted last July, when the whole matter first blew up, that while Wells didn't meet the job specs agreed to by the province, the Premier had a seat on the offshore board he could use any time he wanted. If Danny had appointed Andy last year, Andy would have had over a year of practical experience to offset whatever shortcomings his background had in consideration for the top job at the board.

4. So where was our lobbyist? Danny Williams accused the federal government of being swayed by Big Oil and its paid lobbyists.

That begs the question of what Williams was doing himself on a file he considered so vital.

But if Danny didn't have time to fly to Ottawa and work the rooms, one wonders what his new personal envoy to the National Archives has been doing. Now John Fitzgerald has only been in the job since May, but surely he has been doing something to lobby the federal government on this supposedly crucial issue.

At the same time, Danny could have replaced Bill Rowe much more quickly than he did, thereby ensuring his voice was being heard upalong.

5. Compare apples to apples, Dan-o. In the scrum, Danny mentioned the United States Senate upping royalties on its offshore lands, claiming its ironic the Canadian federal government is supposedly giving Big Oil a break.

Well, right off the bat, Danny knows full well that Danny Williams sets royalties in the local offshore. The feds have nothing - nada, zilch, zip and zero - to do with it.

More to the point though, the Premier knows - or ought to know - that our royalty regimes for the offshore are lower at the outset, but as with Terra Nova, once the start-up costs are paid, the province starts collecting royalties on the order of 30%.

Compare that to the United States where a rider on a US$460 billion defense appropriation will remove the policy of waiving royalties altogether on difficult offshore fields and restore them to the usual 12% to 16%. That's what Danny was referring to, but he just wouldn't admit that our royalty regime never waives royalties altogether and can deliver to the province more than double the American federal royalty. There is no state royalty on the affected fields.

Our royalty regime - set solely by the provincial government, i.e. Danny Williams - is actually better than the American regime in that respect. The big difference between us and them is that they actually create incentives for companies to invest in field development.

Fallow Fields: enhancing competitiveness and fostering activity

[Reprinted, with permission, from NOIA News, August/September 2006]

In the early months of 2006, the phrase "use it or lose it" received a great deal of attention in Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore oil and gas industry. The idea that offshore licences should be relinquished if the holders have not worked them for a given period has been debated, off and on, over the past three decades. More recently, "fallow acreage" or "fallow field" regulations were raised during the consultation on Newfoundland and Labrador’s soon-to-be-finalized energy plan: stakeholders on all sides of the equation weighed in on the potential impacts of changing land tenure regulations. However, the concept shifted rapidly from theoretical to practical when it emerged in the public arena after Hebron negotiations were suspended.

From the word-smithy: The word fallow was originally a farming term, applied to land that was left unseeded for a season or more to allow it to build up nutrients and regain productivity. It is now applied to a variety of resources or markets that are inactive or undeveloped but potentially useful.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador stated in its energy plan discussion paper Paper (released November 2005) that the consultation process would address, among other things, land tenure issues - including the apparent use of the Significant Discovery Licence to "warehouse" acreage with at least a show of hydrocarbons in virtual perpetuity. This discussion was intended to explore alternatives to the current system, with the ultimate objective of encouraging more timely petroleum development.

In the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore jurisdiction, once a significant discovery licence has been issued, it continues to be in force as long as the associated declaration is in force. The Canada Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) can, under defined circumstances predominantly related to the need for national security of supply, order that a well be drilled on a portion of a significant discovery area [SDA] (Section 75 of the Canada-Newfoundland Atlantic Accord Implementation Act). Additionally, under Section 148 of the same legislation the CNLOPB can order commencement of production, when the chief conservation officer is of the opinion that the capability exists to do so and that not doing so will in some way allow the asset to waste. However, this instrument has been criticized as difficult to apply under an argument of commercial wastage, unnecessarily blunt and potentially counterproductive. Most importantly, an attempt to encourage activity in this way would in all probability heighten this jurisdiction’s current reputation as excessively proscriptive.

The good news is that some of the issues inherent in the current licensing system are being addressed, and more responsive regulatory instruments are being developed.

The 2006 Newfoundland and Labrador call for bids, for example, contained provisions for rentals during the term of an exploration licence [EL] awarded in that bid process and during the term of any resulting significant discovery licence [SDL]. The rates escalate, depending on how long the licence is held, however, rental paid can be credited to allowable expenditure.

During the province’s energy plan consultation, another SDL-related issue was raised by several stakeholders, including NOIA. Phonse Fagan, a St. John’s-based petroleum consultant, stated the case succinctly: “Ultimately the oil company should be required to prove that oil/gas can flow to the surface at rates that have some potential to be economic before a significant discovery licence is issued.” Under the current system, non-commercial discoveries can be held in perpetuity without a requirement for further testing to fully explore their potential. As a result, Newfoundland and Labrador is home to twelve significant discoveries containing fewer than 40 million barrels of oil and eight containing fewer than 0.5 trillion cubic feet of gas – well below the commercial threshold for this environment today, much less two decades ago when they were awarded.

The core licensing objectives - driving development without hindering competitiveness, identifying the full potential of a discovery and encouraging commitment to development - must all be addressed in order to establish a regime that is both competitive and sustainable. To a large degree, these issues have been addressed by the United Kingdom’s Fallow Initiative, which has received international attention for its positive affect on exploration rates on the United Kingdom continental shelf.

The UK’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) initiated the fallow acreage process in 2002 as a way to drive activity in inactive older licences. The oldest inactive licences had an initial term of 6 years with a second term lasting as long as 40 years and often covering multiple blocks. Under these terms, licences issued in the UK’s first offshore call for bids do not expire until 2010.

It is important to understand that although retroactive, the application of fallow field legislation in the United Kingdom is a cooperative process. As part of Promote UK, a joint initiative of DTI and the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA) designed to attract new entrants, the Fallow Initiative is supported by a range of tools enabling market awareness and access to information.

Initially, fallow blocks and discoveries are identified in discussion with the operator and other licensees. The process then classifies these areas as either Class A (blocks with a recent change of ownership or technical barrier) or Class B (blocks with an identified misalignment of interests). For Class B blocks, a formal invitation is issued to the licence holder for an activity report to take the block out of fallow. If there is no progress, the block is placed on the LIFT (Licence Information for Trading) Fallow Register. The Fallow Register has been set up to encourage companies already working in the North Sea, as well as new entrants, to approach these lands with fresh eyes and come forward with new ideas for exploration and appraisal.

Once the block has been on the Fallow Register for nine months, DTI will request a firm strategy for activity from the licence holder or from those with interest in the block. Fallow Discoveries follow a similar process. However, discoveries remain on the Fallow Register for a period of 18 months prior to a request for activity. After the requisite period on the Register, the block/discovery is relinquished and offered for sale in a subsequent licensing round. Operators must also release land information to potential buyers through the Digital Energy Atlas and Library (DEAL), which catalogues geological data related to the UK continental shelf.

As of January 2006, the Department of Trade and Industry and its partners in the PILOT initiative published a new list of fallow blocks and discoveries. This release has added 40 new fallow blocks and 23 new fallow discoveries to the list. Hannon Westwood, a UK upstream oil and gas consultancy, maintains that the direct pressure of the Fallow Initiative and a parallel marketing drive to attract new investment have together changed the ownership landscape of the UK continental shelf.

Hannon Westwood also found that the Fallow and Promote initiatives generate deals and spur drilling activity. More significantly, the consultant determined that Fallow Acreage wells traditionally outperform traditional farm-in wells, adding the highest level of reserves per well to the existing resource base.

It is generally accepted that land tenure regulations are an important factor in a jurisdiction’s overall competitiveness. However, these regulations must also serve the goals of the jurisdiction. Clearly, therefore, a balance must be struck between attracting investment and requiring timely action toward exploration and development. The UK may well serve as a useful model for cooperation between regulators and industry in the development and implementation of regulations that achieve both.

On the fifth anniversary

It is well with my soul

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Words: Horatio Spafford, 1873
Music: Philip Bliss, 1876

Hitting a nerve

Some New Democrat supporters took offence at an earlier post, "Dipocrits".

One sent an e-mail, under a pseudonym and attacking me personally. Nice to see substance in a discussion.

Another posted to his own blog and started out by calling me a right-wing dweeb.

Again an argument of substance.

Let's make it clear: Canada's mission in Afghanistan includes suppressing the armed elements - Taliban, drug lords and anyone else - in order to create an environment where Afghans can peacefully determine their own future, for themselves. It always has.

Canada's mission includes reconstruction. It is an essential component of the NATO force approach and has been since Canadian troops first arrived in Afghanistan.

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of those who would have our country withdraw from Afghanistan now is best displayed by arguments such as those put forward by La revue gauche among others. But beyond the ad hominem swipes and inaccurate information, there is simply nothing else in the post you will find by following that link.

If New Democrats can possibly offer something of substance as an alternative to Canada's current policy in Afghanistan, then let's engage in a discussion.

But if the best the New Democrats and others on the political left can come up with is a withdrawal of our soldiers who are there to establish the peaceful basis on which reconstruction and reconciliation can take place, then they are offering nothing - absolutely nothing - that deserves serious consideration. It would appear their philosophy is that when the going gets tough, Canada should go home and hector everyone else from the sidelines.

The accuracy of the earlier assessment is only confirmed by the personal attacks that resulted from it.

Dipocrits

Newly-minted provincial New Democrat leader Lorraine Michael thinks Canadian soldiers should withdraw from Afghanistan.

She joined the overwhelming majority of her Dipper colleagues on the weekend in voting for an unceremonious retreat by Canadians from Afghanistan as soon as the flights can be booked.

Just not on Canjet.

And what of the people of Afghanistan?

Shag the wogs, the Dippers say implicitly.

And what of Canadian interests and values?

We are expressing Canadian Dipper values which always place anti-American tirades above everything else likely comes the reply. I mean God forbid we should do something in the world besides talk about the need for other people to do something.

And when the Taliban come back to power and make it a crime to teach girls and young women anything, including how to read?

or when women are beheaded or shot in a public spectacle for the alleged crime of adultery?

That sound you hear will be the wind whistling through the canyon of Dipper moral posturing.

Some of us remember the old hypocrisy very well as it rears its head once more.

If I had a rocket launcher, indeed.

Bloody Dipocrits.

More Euphonium madness

A news report on a concert by English professional euphonium player Steven Mead.

A piece of the action...

Leave it to Danny Williams [left, meeting with reporters] to link a dispute with the federal government to the anniversary of one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history.

In the same week Star Trek fans marked the 40th anniversary of the first episode Danny Williams said:

"Now I find that disgusting, disgraceful and shameful, quite honestly, when a federal government will not stand behind a member of the federation, a province," Williams fumed. [Emphasis added]

That explains it all.

Newfoundland and Labrador is a member of the Federation. It all starts to make sense now.

Williams - or should we say The Boss - is just looking to get "A piece of the action."

My question is: If we are members of the Federation now, what planet is this guy from?

Danny's dementia and Rowe's rants

From the Canadian Press version of a scrum yesterday comes little more than another occasion for Premier Danny Williams to repeat his cute little sound bite about the Prime Minister being a big buddy of Big Oil.

That's really the only substance in the set of comments.

A pre-planned little quip that someone in the Premier's publicity department likely spent a bit of timing inventing.

Communications Lite.

More cuteness, less filling.

It's the kind of stuff you'd expect from Paris Hilton, say or the publicist for some other vacuous tabloid tarnisher who is famous for, well, being famous. It's the kind of mental flatulence politicians - even most Newfoundland politicians - aren't known for.

Nope, lonely turbot fingernails are decidedly rare in the political rhetoric of a place where verbal ability is a keen indicator of intellectual capacity. The real joke in the Nissan Bonavista spot is that they had to put in subtitles so the mainlanders could keep track of the fast talk and obvious mental dexterity of the salesman. Consider him a modern day version of the guy jumping up and down on the manhole cover on Yonge Street and yelling "87!".

but I digress.

Toward the end of the CP piece is this quote from the Premier on how things might have been better back in April had Stephen Harper been involved:

The reality is that if he [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] could actually reach
a deal with these companies himself and deal with a lot of these things,
(Hebron) would be back on the rails.

Every Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador since Confederation has feverishly worked to keep the federal government's hands off what areas of provincial jurisdiction. Brian Peckford waged political war on Ottawa for almost a decade over just such an issue and offshore oil and gas before he lost in court and then secured the historic Atlantic Accord (1985).

Heck, Danny Williams only a short while ago was strutting around talking about being masters of our domain destiny and boasting of going it alone.

So, under the powers wrestled from Ottawa by Peckford, Danny Williams was locked into a mano-a-mano set of negotiations with Big Oil. He was doing what he claims to do best: negotiate toughly with Big Oil and others like it.

But now, Danny Williams claims that, what? He isn't a Great Negotiator? He is incapable of going it alone? He needs his Big Brother to back him up?

The thing about the line quoted above is that it is true. But it is true if the "he" is Danny Williams and not Steve Harper.

More importantly, though, what we see here is yet another example of Danny Williams trying to divert attention from the main issue - how he will get Hebron back on track using his own super powers - by picking a fight with Ottawa that really isn't a fight at all. What's worse, if Harper were to act on Williams' supposed desires, we would see Danny Williams with less revenue from the offshore than he gets or wants to get and considerably less control over development than he currently enjoys but denigrates and squanders.

Every provincial government - irrespective of political stripe - since 1985 has used the power flowing from the real Atlantic Accord to our collective benefit. If we took Williams at face value, we'd believe he was planning to toss it all aside.

But if we've learned anything, we've learned that the Premier's publicity department is good at the quips but not much else.

in the meantime, Williams is aided in his superficial political communications by a bevy of supporters, some organized, some apparently not. Like Bill Rowe, Williams' former personal envoy to Hy's and currently the host of an afternoon call-in show on the province's largest commercial radio broadcaster.

Rowe took exception to one caller yesterday and launched into an unwarranted personal attack on the caller who dared note - as we have noted - the shortcomings of the premier's position. Rowe's own biases, which are both personal and partisan, are becoming increasingly more obvious as we get closer to election time.

But like his former boss, Rowe tosses aside facts in favour of invention. For example, Rowe should know full-well that Clyde Wells' remarks were about the Hibernia deal, not the Atlantic Accord. But facts - including things Rowe himself participated in - are irrelevant. Rowe seems to model himself after television talk-show host Stephen Colbert , without grasping that Colbert is a parody .

So between a Premier who talks in hollow sound bites, renders observations about himself but attributes them to others and a radio call-in host who thinks wikiality is a viable basis for intelligent society, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are left wondering one thing:

When will Danny be hopping on couches?

Whips and chains and gags? Oh my!

We are far from done with the virals.

Oooooh. No.

Now we come to a spot released on the Internet in January to support a campaign by Friends of the Earth in the United Kingdom. While it has never appeared on television, the spot is hardly very racy by European standards. In North America, we'd likely have a hard time getting this on cable.

Many of you will have seen it already but for those that haven't, it features humour, sex, titillation and the tension from an anticipated conflict. It's the sort of top notch production you expect from an agency like CHI. Incidentally, if you are interested in seeing other samples of their work, check them out at chiadvertising.com.

While this spot plays on sex scandals among British politicians, the spot has an appeal that is universal, at least in the English-speaking world.