Pollyanna Dunderdale Part 2: The Labrador Land Plots

Michael Enachescu, an earth sciences professor at Memorial University in St. John's, said natural gas is the target for the current round of exploration, although oil reserves may also be located.

"[The] call for bids means that practically next year we'll have the return of oil and gas companies to Labrador for exploration, but drilling might not happen before the end of the decade," Enachescu said.

If natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale was being giddily optimistic about this year's offshore land offer, then Michael Enachescu (quoted by CBC in the paragraphs cited above) likely needs to be placed in restraints and heavily sedated.

At this point, land parcels have been offered for sale (opened for exploration bids) and at this point, four of those parcels are around or adjacent to two existing significant gas discoveries.

The first thing to bear in mind is that the Labrador gas is well offshore and sits in an environment subject to icebergs and other forms of sea ice that thus far deterred development. Technological issues coupled with natural gas prices haven't made these Labrador gas fields prime candidates for development

The second thing to bear in mind is that exploration activity anywhere offshore Newfoundland and Labrador is heavily dependent on the financial issues. The province has been struggling to issue a natural gas royalty regime since 1997 and even the current administration has repeatedly slipped back the release date of the final version of it.

If the regime looks like what has been reported - complete with a 10% equity position and other royalty add-ons - it may well be that Newfoundland and Labrador will price itself out of the international competition for exploration dollars.

And that's where people need to recall the third point: on more than a few occasions in the past, companies have expressed interest in offshore parcels only to leave them sitting on the table when bids close.

Had Enachescu conducted even the simple comparison illustrated at right, he'd have noticed the historic tendency for more parcels to be offered than are taken up.

Had he factored in the financials, he'd have been even less optimistic. (Of course if Enachescu had looked at the closing date for bids - August 1, 2008 - he'd know it would be impossible to meet his time lines for exploration, but that's really a side issue.)

And, with a fairly simple analysis, there's just no way based on that information that he'd credibly claim that we are about to see exploration for natural gas "practically next year" offshore Labrador.

Incidentally, the land parcels as well as the existing significant discoveries can be seen more easily in the map provided by the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

The most he could say is that there has been some interest expressed. By the time bids close, we may see some interest turn into exploration commitments. Even then, successful bidders have nine years to complete their exploration. Add it all up and you may well see very little if any activity on the Labrador shelf for upwards of a decade.

About the only way we might see something earlier is if one or both of two possibilities turns up.

First, we might see action on the Labrador parcels if the gas royalty regime turns out to be less scary that it might first appear. Companies may just gamble that even if it called for a Chavez-like equity stake, the odds of those rules still being in force over a decade from now are slim and none.

Second, and perhaps more likely, the province's Hydro Corporation might wind up being the successful bidder. There have been rumblings for some time that Hydro wants to develop what has been euphemistically called low-hanging development fruit. Hydro is fronting a study of development options for the Labrador fields, a study being funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). The cost of the exploration parcels would be well within Hydro's retained earnings and the company would have a decade to arrange exploration.

None of that means that exploration will return to the Labrador shelf "practically" next year. In fact, when the bids on the Labrador parcels close - almost 18 months from now - the parcels may wind up laying fallow simply because the financial situation doesn't support exploration.

If Hydro gets involved, that will be as much a political decision as a solid corporate one based on a thorough cost-benefit analysis. in fact, given the experience on the Lower Churchill it would easy to conclude the decision will be made entirely on a political basis, the financials be damned.

Now matter how you slice it, both energy minister Dunderdale and earth sciences prof Michael Enachescu are being wildly optimistic.

They are alone though. People in the oil and gas business in this province have simply slowed down. They are taking a wait-and-see attitude to everything.

After the Hebron fiasco and the Hibernia South, they've taken the practical approach of planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

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BP to ink exploration deal with Libya

British Petroleum will announce a US$900 million exploration deal with the Government of Libya, according to The Australian.

The OPEC member is the African continent's second largest oil producer, at 1.7 million barrels per day. It also has natural gas reserves estimated at 1314 billion cubic metres.

The Financial Times reported in January 2006 that BP had entered negotiations over a multi-billion dollar gas exploration and development agreement in Libya. It said discussions involved a liquefied natural gas project that could supply the North American or European markets.

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Promise made? Promise knee-capped

From Saskatchewan comes a simple statement of the case against the federal Conservatives and their verbal dancing over language, promises and caps on offshore offsets:

During the House of Commons finance committee session Monday, here's what the Calgary backbench MP said to Calvert: "There was no mention of an (equalization) cap when this was discussed in (Conservative) election rhetoric, but there was no mention that there would not be a cap, either." This isn't quite the case. In fact, the Conservatives were absolutely clear -- at least with one part of the country -- that there would be no equalization caps.

"The Conservative Party of Canada believes that offshore oil and gas revenue are the key to real economic growth in Atlantic Canada," then-federal opposition leader Stephen Harper said in a mailout directly to Atlantic voters, ironically headlined with the Gaelic proverb "There is no greater fraud than a promise not kept." "That's why we would leave you with 100 per cent of your oil and gas revenues.

"No small print. No excuses. No caps." The problem with Ablonczy's remark is you simply can't promise voters in one part of the country "no small print, no excuses, no caps" and then tell the Saskatchewan premier "there was no mention that there would not be a cap, either." That would be a lie.

That last sentence just about says it all.

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Connies dump another election commitment

The Harper administration will be locating 6200 federal jobs in Quebec, a move that will involve relocating about 4000 existing employees and adding another 2200, according to CBC Ottawa.

Infrastructure Minister Lawrence Cannon noted that the cost of office space in Gatineau is 20 to 30 per cent lower than in downtown Ottawa.

"So we're doing this for the Canadian taxpayer as well as, of course … respecting the long-standing policy that's been in place [since] back in 1994," he said.

That policy sets as a goal a ratio of 75:25 between federal office space in Ottawa and Gatineau. Right now, the ratio is 77:23, the government says.

Of course that policy on how to distribute workers within the National Capital Region doesn't square very well with the Conservative campaign commitment, as contained in Stephen Harper's letter to Danny Williams during the last federal election campaign:

There is an over-concentration of certain federal government services in some areas of the country and an effort must be made to ensure that there is a fair distribution of the federal government presence across the country.

It will be interesting to see how local Conservatives react to this news. Federal presence was a major issue for the Conservative team, including provincial Progressive Conservatives. An incomplete assessment by the Harris Centre at Memorial University was used by both candidates, the provincial government and Conservative supporters at the time, like members of St. John's city council as a political issue during and after the election.

Now the whole issue of federal presence was a partisan crock wrapped up with all the nonsense of looking at public spending as a matter of pure pork. That's been the Bond position, whether it's been about federal jobs or provincial government jobs. It's just laughable to see all the posturing that went on during the last election from federal Conservative politicians, backed by their provincial friends only to see the issue all but vanish from their collective minds. Sure it gets a mention once in a while but it hardly gets the shrill attention it used to get, that is before the federal administration changed hands.

Face it. There was as much commitment to the federal jobs thing as there was to custodial management or Loyola Hearn's call in 2004 for the federal government to hand over its Hibernia shares to the provincial government. Nothing stopped Hearn from pushing that and then running twice for a party that specifically rejected the idea.

Newfoundland and Labrador's federal cabinet representative Loyola Hearn made quite an issue of saving a single position originally to be relocated from St. John's to Montreal. In a news release issued at the time, Hearn was obviously proud of 14 new positions shifted to Newfoundland and Labrador and about the relocation of public weather forecasting to Gander from Dartmouth. Hearn, of course, did not note that marine and aviation forecasting remained in Montreal. Weather forecasting was moved from Gander to the two other locations in a move widely criticised in Newfoundland and Labrador.

"Despite commentary in the media last week, this position will continue to reside in St.John's. I would encourage everyone to gather the facts first, before jumping to conclusions."

"People who know me know that federal presence in our province has always been a key issue for me. Whenever it makes sense to have federal jobs in different parts of the country, I will push for that."

"Since we've taken power, we've put 14 new Fishery Officers on Newfoundland and Labrador waters, we've reinstated the Gander weather office, and we've protected this position."

"Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should be encouraged by this trend during our first eight months in office."

Hearn subsequently announced the relocation of Coast Guard jobs from Dartmouth to Newfoundland, but thus far promises to locate hundreds of military personnel remain unfulfilled.

Of course, none of that addresses Hearn's comments just before he was appointed to cabinet. CTV quotes Hearn as saying something about the need for increased federal presence in the province to promote growth of the local oil and gas industry:

"Newfoundland and Labrador requires a federal presence capable of promoting the province as a fantastic place to do business and to address the industry's requests to streamline regulations," Hearn says in a written statement on his website.

"We need someone in the province, not a faceless bureaucrat thousands of kilometres away, that industry can approach to deal with the day-to-day issues stemming from all the significant oil patch business being generated."

While there's no indication about the departments receiving the 2200 new employees, if any of them are employed by Natural Resources, it looks like the Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will be dealing with thousands of what Hearn once thought of as "faceless bureaucrats" thousands of kilometres from where the work gets done.

The whole move to abandon the federal presence issue just fulfils the point noted in this Bond Papers post from February 2006. Then treasury board president John Baird vowed at the time to stop any plans to relocate federal jobs outside the National Capital Region. Bond wasn't alone.

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Separated at birth: the reader input version

There's Normand Lester and Robin Philpott.

Ya got yer Leandre Bergeron, your Pierre Bourgeault, and the other sovereignists.

Who would be the Newfoundland and Labrador equivalents?

Any suggestions, serious or otherwise are welcome.

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Anti-federalist witch hunt comes up short

The results of a detailed investigation into alleged irregularities has turned up about $500, 000 in spending that was not reported by the "No" campaign during the 1995 referendum in Quebec.

The official news releases from the Quebec chief electoral officer can be found here and here, and the entire report can be found here.

The secrets of Option Canada "alleged that Option Canada received $5.2 million from Heritage Canada to promote linguistic duality, but the money was used to pad the No committee finances instead." The book was authored by Normand Lester and Robin Philpot. Philpot, a Parti Quebecois candidate in the 2007 is the author of a controversial book on Rwanda.

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Risley blames gov't; Williams worries about flips

To each his own.

John Risley is blaming two successive provincial administrations for actions that led to the breakup of Fishery Products International.

From cbc.ca/nl:

"We're in this situation essentially because of the FPI Act," Risley told CBC News on Monday, after the Newfoundland and Labrador government gave its blessing to FPI's plans to sell most of its plants, vessels and quotas to two competitors: St. John's-based Ocean Choice International and Nova Scotia's High Liner Foods.

Risley said his original plan — to merge FPI with his own, Nova Scotia-based company, Clearwater Fine Foods — would have turned FPI into a powerhouse.

The plan was blocked by the then-Liberal government and the Risley-led board has had strained relations with the governing Progressive Conservatives since they took office in 2003.

"FPI would have become one of the premier seafood companies in the world instead of now effectively ceasing to exist," Risley said.

Meanwhile, Premier Danny Williams apparently spent a chunk of time worrying that the whole arrangement might allow Risley to come in through the back door:

"What we've tried to do is make sure that there wasn't a quick flip on this, and that this wasn't perceived or was a sham for some takeover by John Risley or anybody else, at the end of the day," Williams said.

Maybe this worry about flipping was the reason the provincial government rejected the first buyer, the Barry Group.

It all seems rather convoluted though, given that the provincial government could have just as easily continued the FPI Act and held onto control over all the company assets.

Instead, the provincial government facilitated breaking up the company, changed the FPI Act to make breaking the company up even easier and will now become even more directly involved in operating part of the company through its control over fish quotas. it makes you wonder if the provincial government got itself into the position of smashing up a vertically integrated company by accident or if someone thought that this was a good idea.

The only real mystery around Bond Papers is why there's been all this concern about conniving and secret deals and vague possibilities of something happening in the future that wouldn't be happening had government not interfered in the whole process in the first place?

It's the same sort of concern, incidentally - the appearance of something as opposed to the fact of it - that seems to have hung up the fibre optic deal for an extra-ordinary period of time.

Maybe the Premier is a bit sensitive to the whole issue since he was accused of being party to such a flip, at least once. He says he wasn't; take him at his word.

But other than paranoia, was there ever any evidence that anyone wanted to break up FPI, that is, other than the people who have been currently involved in breaking it up?

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Saving stamp factories aim of government policy

A majority of Fishery Products International headquarters staff will likely be on the streets looking for new jobs employment after the smash-up of the once-proud fisheries company.

The provincial government announced on Monday that it had accepted a deal that would see the company broken up and sold to smaller local companies and with the lucrative marketing arm and FPI's only secondary processing facility sold off to a Nova Scotia fishing company.

Under the deal, the plant operators in Newfoundland and Labrador are required to keep employment levels - much of it heavily dependent of employment insurance benefits to keep people going for much of the year - at current levels for a minimum of five years.

Meanwhile, a majority of FPI's headquarters staff will likely get lay-off notices according to Henry Demone. The High Liner official told CBC Radio he expected a majority of the professional staff in St. John's will be looking for new jobs.

It won't be a good time for those professionals to be looking for work, at least in Newfoundland and Labrador. They'll be handing out resumes in a regionalready hit by a major slowdown in the oil and gas industry. The failure of a Hebron agreement last year cost the province about 3000 jobs and more than $10 billion in provincial government revenue. A squabble with oil companies over a 300 million barrel extension is also forecast to slow growth in the provincial economy and the impacts are being felt in the local job market.

In a news conference on Monday, though, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams heralded the new deal.

Williams told reporters that the agreement announced Monday actually worked out to be better for the province than its original demand.

"We in fact feel that we actually strengthened it," Williams said."I'm not just saying that, you know, to try and basically accommodate for the fact that we didn't get the quotas at the end of the day, but the federal government wasn't prepared to pass the quotas over [so] we got into a negotiation with them and [we] feel that we ended up better off, quite frankly."

The provincial government has been engaged in an ongoing war with the former FPI board of directors. It took over 18 months to review a capitalization plan and only approved after the plan - to turn an asset into an income trust - had become functionally useless. The war has been marked by frequent - and apparently unfounded - accusations that the former board members were looking to break up FPI and acquire the assets for their own fishing companies.

In the end, the only people talking about breaking up the company were the provincial government and the head of the fishermen and fish plant workers' union.

Effectively, the deal ensures that FPI, which likely would have swallowed up smaller operators like Ocean Choice in the highly competitive local processing industry, has been smashed up.

Key assets, which reportedly also marketed fish for smaller local companies, have been sold off to interests outside the provinces.

The only thing guaranteed in the deal announced Monday seems to be the survival of fish processing plants in a sector of the economy already well-past glutted with capacity that cannot be met with supplies of local fish. Increasingly fish plants in Newfoundland and Labrador have come to be regarded as stamp plants, in which employees work for only enough weeks to qualify for federal income support programs.

Survival of the so-called stamp factories seems to have been one of the major objectives of fisheries minister Tom Rideout.

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Islanders bin Binns

Discounted a month ago, Joe Ghiz's son leads Prince Edward Island Liberals to a majority government.

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Harper and Prems' meeting off

Prime Minister Stephen Harper won't be meeting with provincial premiers before heading off to a G8 summit.

The official excuse is that they couldn't agree on a date for the session.

The real reason is anyone's guess at this point. Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert says that relations with the prime minister have been reduced to "megaphone diplomacy".

Around these parts, some would suggest it is actually "smoke signal" politics, with the smoke coming out of Premier Danny Williams' ears.

No matter what one calls it, there's no way it qualifies as diplomacy.

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FPI sold

The official announcement came on Monday, even though the deal has been in the works for a couple of weeks.

The Honourable Danny Williams, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Honourable Tom Rideout, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, today announced that the Provincial Government has reached two separate Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with Ocean Choice International (OCI) Incorporated and High Liner Foods Incorporated for the sale of various FPI assets. The MOUs also outline the terms and conditions that will accompany the successful completion of those transactions and provide the necessary protections for the province’s interests. The sale remains conditional upon the signing of final binding legal agreements between both companies and FPI, which is expected in the coming weeks. The Provincial Government will also approve the sale of The Seafood Company, a primarily independent business unit located in the United Kingdom, which will be sold to interests in Europe.

One of the consequences of this deal is that the lucrative marketing arm of Fishery Products International will be sold to a Nova Scotia-based company. Another marketing asset based in the United Kingdom - which would have been a useful way to market local shellfish in the European Union will be sold to European interests.

"Since 2001, it is clear that FPI has pursued a business strategy that has been incompatible with the public policy objectives of the Provincial Government [sic] and communities that depend on the company," said Minister Rideout. "The agreements we are announcing today hold the promise of finally rectifying that situation, and our approval of this sale is reflective of this government’s confidence in the industry to move forward in a productive way that will serve the best interests of all stakeholders."

Time will tell if the second part of that statement is true. Certainly, the first bit - about the business strategy - is bordering on the completely nonsensical. Rideout has never indicated what the provincial government's public policy objectives are.

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Venezuelan strong-man silences opposition television

Like this is a surprise.

There are those around here who think people should be thrown in jail - literally - for daring to question what the government says.

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Norsk Hydro ponders ALCAN bid

Norwegian energy company Norsk Hydro is considering a bid to take over ALCAN, according to the Globe and Mail.

Norsk Hydro is in the process of restructuring, following a merger last year with Statoil. The latter will absorb all of Norsk Hydro's oil and gas projects, with Hydro to focus on its traditional strengths of hydroelectricity generation and aluminum production.

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Rio Tinto sizing up ALCAN

Mining giant Rio Tinto, which operates an iron ore plant in western Labrador has hired Deutsche Bank to advise on a possible bid for ALCAN, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported in its Monday edition.

Alcan last week rejected a $US27 billion ($33 billion) hostile offer from its US rival, Alcoa, which would create the world's largest aluminium company, and indicated it was in talks with unnamed "third parties".

The Herald understands that several potential suitors, including Rio and BHP, have expressed interest in opening discussions with Alcan's board. Some, including Rio, have already hired investment banks to provide advice on a possible bid.

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Alaska gas pipeline inches forward

From the Alaska Journal, an update on plans to develop a new gas pipeline in Alaska. The article compares the proposals from the former governor and his successor on a number of issues including local hiring and taxes and royalties.

On the latter issue, there's this observation:

One major difference between Murkowski and Palin plans is that while both approaches offer tax and royalty incentives for the producers, those proposed by Murkowski were more far-reaching and more controversial with the public and the Legislature.

Murkowski would have had a 45-year freeze on natural gas production taxes and a 30-year freeze on oil production taxes. Palin proposes a 10-year freeze on gas taxes only. The producing companies say this isn't enough, and it is a key obstacle for them in participating with a pipeline licensed under AGIA.

Murkowski would have solved a big problem producers have regarding uncertainties in state royalty administration, and particularly the state's ability under the current leases to switch between in-value and in-kind royalty-taking at six- to nine-month intervals. Murkowski's plan would have had the state take its gas in-kind for the duration of the 45-year contract.

In-kind would mean the state government would actually receive quantities of natural gas which it could then dispose of as it wanted.

One other difference between the Murkowski and Palin plans is that the former governor would have had the state invest in the pipeline and own as much as 20 percent. The idea behind this is that if the state takes its gas in-kind for a long period, it would, as a pipeline owner, be shipping its own gas and earning profits from that rather than paying another pipeline owner to ship state gas. Murkowski proposed investing about $4 billion in the project for a one-fifth share.

Palin would have no such equity ownership, but instead proposes a $500 million state grant to the pipeline license holder to subsidize early planning and engineering work. The state would get no equity or other repayment from the grant.

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This didn't take long...

Steve Kent, member of the federal Liberal party and now a Dan-didate wannabe.

Nothing like ridicule.

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Update: Did the old ears deceive or did Steve Kent dismiss his Liberal party connections a something confined to trying to get a Liberal nomination a decade ago?

Is that what Kent told a VOCM call-in show audience?

Well, if it is, people will have to wonder about Kent.

Offal News dissected the whole question of Kent's political opportunism when Kent finally announced his intention to be a Dan-didate - six months after he'd made the decisions and six months after Bond Papers outed Kent's switch from federal Liberal to provincial Dan-didate.

You'd be amazed at how many Liberals were amazed at the Bond piece and how many dismissed it entirely. Many of those same people likely believed Brian Tobin was staying for the full second term - right up until he bailed and ran back to the mainland - even though it was an open secret the guy's campaign team was raising cash months before he made the announcement.

But anyway...

At some point, Kent needs to explain his presence at the federal Liberal convention last November.

Was he a delegate?

If so, didn't he have to sign membership papers last summer?

Oh and for those who love the silly pretensions of certain locally-owned newspapers, check this week's Scrunchions over at The Independent. Therein readers will find a lovely precis of the Offal News stuff - printed a week or so later.

Likely Indy editor Ryan Cleary took time from tireless and fearless pursuit of his agenda to read through some old notes for a story he filed for The Telegram almost a decade ago on Kent and his flirtations with the Reform Party.

Beware of junk merchants

A story originally in The Telegram has turned up on the CanWest news service across the country.

It is a short piece that only discusses some of the more outdated and, consequently humorous, sections of the City of St. John's Act that are still on the books.

There's even a quote from St. John's Mayor Andy Wells, who is shown at right in the illustration, along with the Telegram's headline on the story:

The act is the bane of Mayor Andy Wells. "A lot of the content of the act is junk," Mr. Wells said.

[Telegram Photo: Joe Gibbons]

One of the sections Wells thinks to be junk?

The section of the act empowering the province's auditor general to review the City's books and operations.

You have to go to the Telegram version for that:

The auditor general (currently John Noseworthy) - whose reports annually shed an embarrassing light on the provincial government - could turn his attention to city hall if he wanted.

But Wells said there is no need, because the city already has an external audit process which produces reports annually.

No need because an outside auditor - hired by city council - can do the job.

Like we haven't heard that one offered up by politicians before.

That was exactly the same excuse used by politicians who blocked the auditor general from reviewing the House of Assembly accounts during years when millions were allegedly misspent.

Maybe the residents of St. John's should be suspicious of a politician who considers independent review of public spending by an appointed, impartial official to be a problem.

In the meantime, they can give Wells a shovel and have him repair the city's crumbling infrastructure of roads, sidewalks and water and sewer works.

Like this little gem that erupted in the middle of the last municipal election:

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Andy Wells: Not in the public interest

Anyone familiar with St. John's Mayor and likely Dan-didate wannabe Andy Wells, left, [Photo cbc.ca]understands that one result of his presence anywhere is that a functional entity like a board or a municipal council quickly becomes dysfunctional.

It quickly becomes distracted by the Wellsian bluster, sheer bullsh** and his trademark: vicious personal attacks against those who resist his boorish ways.

Premier Danny Williams is more than passing familiar both with Andy Wells and his ways.

The Telegram rightly notes the current situation at the offshore regulatory board, although the editorial seems to suggest dysfunction is merely a coincidence rather than a direct consequence of Wells' presence.

Ok.

Maybe it is.

But it isn't like there isn't a bit more than a coincidence.

Andy Wells shows up.

Positive stuff tends not to happen, except in spite of Wells' efforts.

Tons of histrionics.

Not much else.

Public Utilities Board.

St. John's City Council.

Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Regulatory Board.

So the questions that we should consider are these:

1. Given the obvious pattern, why would anyone - especially Premier Danny Williams - appoint Andy Wells to a board whose proper functioning has such a profound influence on the province's future well being?

The answer to that one might actually be easier if you consider first:

2. Whose interest is served by turning the offshore board from a functioning one (without Andy Wells) into the dysfunctional one described by the Telegram?

Frankly, your humble e-scribbler wouldn't suggest the offshore board is dysfunctional yet.

The board itself is perfectly capable of carrying out its crucial role. It has highly competent, board members with knowledge of the oil industry, with the obvious exception of Andy Wells.

Just how little Andy Wells knows must be painfully obvious at every board meeting with the likes of Hal Stanley at the table. It must be personally mortifying for Wells - a crushing blow to the considerable and distended ego - to be so painfully, so obviously out of his depth.

Maybe that's why he has resorted to the public grandstanding seen in recent days. He doesn't have anything of substance to offer.

Of course, the board's professional staff is second to none when it comes to the job of regulating offshore oil and gas development.

But given all that anyone knows about Wells' behaviour, whose interest is served by having him be the monkey-wrench in the offshore board works?

It certainly isn't in the interest of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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True Life

Father to nine year old daughter: "So how was school today?"

Daughter: "Pretty good."

Father: "So what did you learn?"

Daughter: "Nothing."

Father: "So remind me again why I send you to school."

Daughter: "No clue."

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How times change, Part 4

From 2003, a CBC Radio report from the provincial general election on the need for better relations with the federal government.

Among the choice quotes, Danny Williams saying this: "There's a tremendous split in the Liberal Party, federally and provincially and there seems to be a lot of internal bickering going on, you there's disputes going on between provincial members of the House of Assembly ..."

The whole thing is surreal - a word normally overused but all too accurate in this case.

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