Three kick-ass Geoff Meeker posts to start the year

1.  Meeker's "best of", part one.

2.  Meeker's "best of", part two.  Some might be surprised at Meeker's praise for the Independent both in layout and for content, specifically columnist Ivan Morgan and photo editor Paul Daly.

Meeker is nothing if not fair.  In this case, he's also spot on about the photos and the layout.

3.  A blast from the past, in which Meeker's Dad, media icon Ken Meeker offers up an audio tape of Joe Smallwood and an unnamed CBC reporter as Smallwood craps on reporter randy Simms for some comments Simms made on a local radio talk show in Gander.

-srbp-

Authenticity

Public relations practitioners will be - or ought to be - familiar with this concept.

Authenticity.  Authentic.

As in real.

As in not fake, plastic or otherwise packaged.

As in someone or something individual voters can relate to, empathise with and thereby create some form of attachment to or relationship with, even if at a distance.

Interesting.

Authenticity is one word that cropped up in stories about the Iowa caucuses  both before and after the vote.

The winners - Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee - were perceived by voters as being authentic.

As the L.A. Times put it, the race for the presidency was not about policy and substance at this point but about proving that the candidate was a "regular guy":

In fact, Huckabee said, not only had he hunted varmints himself -- in addition to deer, ducks, antelopes and, now, pheasants -- but he also was an experienced varmint-eater, having downed his share of fried squirrel, biscuits and Coke as a college student.

"I figured out you could put grease in a popcorn popper and heat that thing up, and you could cook anything," he said in an interview. "So we fried squirrel."

But that's about the Republicans.

Allowing for the potential bias in some commentary, the situation in the Democrat camp is perceived slightly differently.  Chicago Trib columnist Steve Chapman put it this way:

A virtue in a capitalist—being willing to do whatever is needed to satisfy the target audience—becomes a vice in the political realm, where it looks like an acute lack of principle or character. Voters in Iowa seem to prefer a candidate who appears true with them, and true to himself.

Or herself, which raises a problem for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Like Romney, she executes programmed responses with the efficiency and warmth of a Dell Inspiron desktop. But while Romney gives the sense of having no inner core, Clinton gives the sense of having an inner core that she is stoutly determined never to let us see.

She has portrayed herself as misunderstood—"the most famous person you don't know." If Americans don't know her after 16 years in the spotlight, it's not our fault. But maybe we know her all too well.
Much has been made of Obama's complexion, with good reason. For an African-American to win the opening round of a presidential campaign is truly historic, even if it doesn't lead to ultimate victory. But his appeal has more to do with skin comfort than skin color. Obama is at ease in his epidermis in a way that Clinton and Romney are not.

He offers a reassuring grace and calm likewise absent in John Edwards, who pretended that finishing second in a state where he has concentrated his efforts is proof that Americans yearn for a pitchfork populist. From Edwards' speech Thursday night, you would never guess he did worse this time than when he ran in 2004, with a more genial approach.

 

Authenticity  - or lately even currency  - has become an issue for Clinton.  In mid-December, during a campaign stop in Donnellson, Iowa, Clinton was asked about her religious views.  Surprise!  Turns out her old Sunday school teacher was in the audience. There's an Associated Press video at this yahoo link.

It's likely no accident that in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, Clinton displayed emotion at a campaign event. Authenticity is perceived as an issue;  Clinton came in third among Democratic candidates in the Iowa caucuses.  If she doesn't do well in New Hampshire, her campaign is done.

Take notice of the fact this display of emotion actually made the news in the context of Hillary because thus far she hadn't shown it. The NBC newscast segments linked together in this vid also includes a comment about Clinton stating that she likes to watch "Dancing with the stars".

There's also a commentary that notes the Clinton campaign had eschewed emotion until now and that the campaign appears to have made a conscious effort to give voters an opportunity to connect with Hillary emotionally.

The Granite State primary will be interesting, at least on the Democratic side.  We might see if "authenticity" can be suddenly and successfully injected as part of a campaign strategy in a way that seems decidedly counterfeit.

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When you're in a hole...

the best way to get out is to stop digging.

Usually.

However, the province's Eastern Health authority seems intent on pushing through to see if they can reach China instead.

The issue - in this instance -  is an effort by the authority's lawyers to block access to two report on its lab facilities that are at the centre of both a lawsuit and public inquiry. The story broke before Christmas and, apparently, was poorly handled. 

The authority's position is given virtually no prominence and the reason they offered is a bit of a nose-puller.

The hole that was pretty wide and pretty deep got bigger.

Now that the holidays are over, someone at Eastern Health decided it's time to get back to the pick and shovel work by having the acting chief executive of the authority call a local open line show and repeat the same basic information, yet again.  As vocm.com reports,

Acting CEO Louise Jones told VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms the reports have already been provided to the Commission of Inquiry, but they have concerns that the results of a peer review would be made public. [Emphasis added]

Tactically this might seem like some sort of good idea.  heck, the lawyers might even feel this is necessary for some reason.

But in the big picture - the strategic picture - what it appears to be is what it will be taken as:  an effort to withhold information.  The key word in public inquiry is "public".  Even allowing the commissioners to see a report or two is pointless if they are not permitted to quote the report or, as the original CBC story indicated, even speak with anyone involved in the report about the report and its conclusions.  this is definitely not a smooth move in an inquiry that was created largely out of concerns about a lack of disclosure or inadequate disclosure of information to patients and the public.

And all of that  - obviously - further damages  both the legal case and the public relations case for the authority. The whole thing only gets worse when the comments are made on local talk radio where, among other things, the story gets parsed down to something essentially meaningless as in this case.  All the story says is that the authority has unspecified concerns so it wants to restrict who can see reports.

Better to have killed off the legal tactics early on in the management decision-making cycle. Failing that, the authority should have taken on a pre-emptive strategy by discussing the reasons for the legal action thoroughly and in detail with the media in the first place.

As it is, the commissioners have been handed a live-action example of how Eastern health's decision-making process works. They can dissect and should dissect it in detail.  They would see what public relations and media relations advice senior management has been getting and how they have been working through a major problem.  They can look at the internal relationships of the management team and, if they really want to look close take a gander at the staff structures and human resource issues. 

All of these play a role in how things get handled. The comms section could have a raft of highly qualified people giving expert advice.  It's useless if they get ignored by management.  They could have a bunch of good people with solid experience but who lack certain crisis management expertise.  The staff might be simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem they face coupled with .  Again, the road to hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Then again, they might have a bunch of people lacking the skills to manage the high profile cases like this one.  Nice website and brochures but not up to the heavy slogging. 

That's the range of possibilities and there are likely other combos.

But no matter what the reasons, the public inquiry into the breast cancer screening crisis has in front of it a text-book example of how not to handle a high profile, controversial case. 

It's provided by the very authority the inquiry is examining.

And for the authority?  Well, surely someone has figured out by now that the best way out of a hole is to stop digging and climb out, possibly using the shovel you came with.

China's a long way down and in between here and there, things get mighty hot. 

Melt careers and people kinda hot.

Get the picture?

[cross-posted from The Persuasion Business]

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The Caine Mutiny, the really off-Broadway version

News junkies in Newfoundland and Labrador have been treated these past couple of weeks to a truly odd series of exchanges between Premier Danny Williams and the federal regional minister, fish minister Loyola Hearn.

The two have traded barbs these past few years, despite the fact that in 1989 then-lawyer Danny Williams backed Loyola for the provincial Tory leadership. However this weeks exchange included references to some form of political espionage, at least according to some reports.

And that's only part of what makes the whole affair so strange.

In a year-end interview with CBC, Hearn said:

There are times I'm sure I know as much as what's going on in cabinet and caucus or on the eighth floor as the premier does.

The eighth floor, incidentally, is local political slang for the Premier's Office.  It occupies the entire suite on the eighth floor of the Confederation Building's east block.

Note the words exactly.  Hearn says that he knows - at times - as much about what is going on inside caucus or cabinet as Williams does.  Not "more than";  not "less than":  "as much as". This will become important later on.

More importantly, note the context in which the comments came. You'll find it in the ram audio file linked off the page quoted above at cbc.ca/nl.  You see, context gives a clue to meaning.  Get the context wrong and the meaning of the words can come out wrong.

Hearn is talking about - is obviously talking about - the federal Conservative prospects in the next election.  Hearn says that he has personal friends within the provincial Tory caucus and that we shouldn't be surprised if some of them opt to run for the federal Conservatives. Then he tosses in the line about knowing as much as Danny about what goes on inside caucus and cabinet.

So there's the start of the whole controversy.  For some reason, the CBC online story juxtaposes the context such that the "knows as much as line" comes before the bit about having candidates from friends in the local Tory caucus.

Take a look at the CBC television story and you get much the same idea as the radio story, though.  Hearn is clearly talking about the overall relationship between the two parties.  He couldn't be any more plain in stating that he has friends inside the local Tory caucus and while - at times - they've been forced to part company as a result of the Danny-Steve spat, overall Hearn has good and old political friends along the local Tories.

No where in any of this is there any hint that Hearn was talking about having spies inside Danny's den.

CBC didn't report it that way at all, and to be perfectly frank if there was the least bit of that kind of implication, CBC would be all over it.  They'd poke at it, dig it and then tell the story they found.

But Hearn never hinted at spies and that isn't what CBC reported.

It is, however, what Danny Williams decided to take issue with almost a week later. You'll find Williams' comments from the CBC Morning Show on January 2. he claims to have received phone calls from people who feel that a "shadow" has been cast over the local Tories.  Williams claims there has been some claim of infringement of cabinet and caucus confidentiality.

Williams goes so far as to say that "Mr. Hearn has made a pretty broad statement when he says he knows virtually everything that is going on inside caucus and cabinet and on the eighth floor."  Now there's a huge difference between saying one knows as much as someone else from time to time. and saying that one knows "virtually everything", presumably all the time.

There's also no suggestion anywhere in Hearn's comments that any confidences have been breached.  Hearn can know what is being discussed generally;  plenty of people do.  It wouldn't be strange at all for a federal cabinet minister to be aware of projects that are going to the provincial cabinet, especially where the project is a joint federal/provincial one.  It also wouldn't be unusual for politicians to chat informally about issues confronting both administrations.  All of that can take place - and does take place legitimately - without any suggestion that anyone is breaching confidences or is behaving improperly.

Now it should be fairly obvious at this point that this whole story took off when Danny Williams reacted with what are some of his vintage, hyperbolic misrepresentations.  Does anyone remember, for example, the pre-election 2003 claim that someone was trying to hack the Tory computers when in fact it was merely a case of someone innocently sending an incorrect printer command? The police got called and found nothing at all.

The thing gets even sillier though.

Kevin O'Brien, recently demoted to be minister of licenses and permits, pulled an oram of absolutely historic proportions on Thursday in a call to one of the VOCM talk shows.

First, there is the blatant misrepresentation, dutifully following his boss' lead:

O'Brien: So, in other words, what he’s saying there is that, you know, at any given time, any given Cabinet, any given caucus in the federation of Canada,and including the federal side, can be broken.

...

He says, [presumably reading from a transcript] Loyola Hearn says he is always fully briefed on what is happening inside the Danny Williams government. "I always do. That’s why we can always be one step ahead of him, Hearn said in a year-end review with CBC News. I have friends throughout Cabinet and caucus."

Second comes the complete invention, the hysterical claim after some further misrepresentation: 

But he is saying clearly here to me that he's going to try to prevent and try to undermine any type of, of a process that Newfoundland and Labrador may enter into to better ourselves and be, and take a rightful place in the federation of, of Canada.

Huh?  Aside from questioning the transcript from which O'Brien was reading, one also has to wonder if the minister's ability to comprehend plain English has been removed.

But it gets worse as O'Brien becomes more fully engaged in his anti-Hearn diatribe.  According to the former business minister, there are apparently few who can grasp what is going on in this province (and cabinet):

Well, I'm going to tell you something now. What's happening in Newfoundland and Labrador in regards to the energy plan and everything else that's been negotiated to the benefit of all the, the residents of the province, I don't think Hearn, and a good many of us, actually has the grey matter to understand it all.

Okay.

It's all good for a laugh, but hopefully, we've been able to demonstrate a couple of things.

First, Hearn didn't say what Williams accused him of saying. Hearn's actually stuck to his wording consistently, including in this Canadian Press story filed on Thursday.

Second, the media  - at least CBC - got the story right the first time and continue to report Hearn accurately. The rest of the pack, CP and the Globe included, actually started riffing off Williams' misrepresentations.  It's a nice job of spinning by the Premier, but frankly the reporters involved should be ashamed of themselves for such a a rudimentary failure of fact checking.

They fell for a stale ploy. After all, it's not the first time Williams has made a claim which is completely, totally, factually incorrect, is it?

Third, Hearn likely knew when he made the comments in the first place that the control-freakish guy on the Eighth would react badly to any suggestion that there might be some alternate source of power in the province than Himself. he said it, in part to provoke a reaction and in getting it demonstrated that he can actually stay one step ahead of the Premier.

Hearn could back off when Danny went ballistic without any real political loss.  After all, what Hearn said was true.  He has friends in Danny's caucus and, more importantly, every federal nickel spent in Newfoundland and Labrador flows across the regional minister's desk.  That truth may cause the Premier to squeal, but it is still the truth even if Hearn appears to some to back off the remarks.

Fourth,  as for O'Brien, well, we can conclude that he was just a casualty in the completely made-up story of spies in the Tory caucus. You see, there are a couple of spots in the O'Brien comments to VOCM where he notes that he used to be good friends with Loyola, that they come from the same part of the shore and so forth.  Williams notes that Loyola used to have friends in caucus, obviously an oblique reference to Fabian Manning and Loyola Sullivan both of whom have the distinctive twang of the boys from the Southern Shore.

Aside from insulting and embarrassing himself simultaneously, the only thing poor Kevin gained was a perpetual could of suspicion.  After all, a paranoid would ask, why would he have needed to profess his loyalty if there was no reason for him to feel guilty in the first place?

That leads us to the fifth point, namely that for all Williams' own paranoia and his apparently manic obsession with control, the nervous nellies who called him to assure The Boss of their loyalty actually are actually not Hearn's agents. 

That is, if the agents ever existed in the first place, of course.

You see, the hallmark of a true double agent is that he or she appears more consistently and genuinely loyal to The Boss, all the while never drawing any attention to himself or herself. 

They blend in.

And the Captain of the local ship of state will never suspect that there is a duplicate key to the wardroom so they can eat the strawberries, either.

-srbp-

Yep. Lower the Lower expectations

From CBC news:

Indeed, Williams said the chances of the Lower Churchill project proceeding are about 50 per cent.

For a guy who, by his own description, is a perpetual optimist, that's as downbeat a forecast as you can get.

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No political parties a good way: NL Liberal leader

It's hard to figure out how the leader of a political party could be quoted as saying that the province would be better off without political parties.

But Liberal leader Yvonne Jones did just that in the Wednesday edition of the Telegram.  Sadly, it isn't online but we'll see if the hundred rhesus monkeys kept chained to the IBM Selectric IIs in the Bond basement can churn up a clipping shortly.

I always say that we're such a small province, when you've got three political parties, there's always a lot of energy and time and expertise spent in, I guess, staking out everybody's turf in the political arena...

I used to say to myself, "maybe we're expending it in the wrong direction? [sic]"...Maybe if a lot of that was just put into strengthening policy for people, we might end up with a lot better result at the end of the day.

Let's start by pointing out to Ms. Jones that our political system is already supposed to be about "strengthening policy for people."  That's what politicians are supposed to be doing.

If there is insufficient attention paid to policy in the political realm currently - and there isn't - the fault lies not with the system but with the politicians currently in the system.

After all, as we have noted here numerous times over the past three years, one cannot slide a sheet of paper between the political parties in this province on any major policy issue. 

Sheet of paper?  That's too thick.

Physics does not conceive of a sheet so thin as to describe the complete absence of policy difference between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives on major issues or, more startlingly between Danny and Lorraine on even more things.

After the general election, Ms. Jones stated publicly that she and her rump caucus could not do their jobs without cash from the legislature for "researchers."  This presumed that the researchers actually had any impact on the party policy, or even on the individual member's ideas.  Obviously, they did not. 

Take for example the energy bill, rammed through the House last spring with virtually no debate in the legislature.  Ms. Jones spoke in glowing terms of the bill and never once mentioned the policy issues involved in, except to indicate her support for the government position.  She took her notes, incidentally, not from whatever dozen staff the caucus employed, but almost entirely from the briefing provided by government officials at the request of opposition house leader Kelvin Parsons.

Did she question at all the notion of state-owned oil companies in Canada?  Did she question the government on its business plan, that is, did she ask if there was one she could examine to see if it made any sense?  Did she say boo about the borrowing attached to the bill of $600 million?  Did she ask why the bill was coming to the House only a year after the hydro corporation legislation was changed to allow it to be an energy company? Did she do her job?

You can easily guess the answer to every question.

And that is merely one example.

You see, our political system, divided into parties and generally adversarial in style is designed to place ideas in conflict.  It is designed to create or to foster a conflict or a contrast in positions.  In the process, flaws may be exposed in either point of view and, if possible, fixed. New ideas may come to the fore.  Bad ideas may be discarded.  Out of the clash of ideas, truth - or something approximating it - may emerge.

Our system is based on the premise that there is a fundamental value in examining policies openly and publicly before implementing them.  What we have seen over the past four years, and what Ms. Jones obviously supports, has been a fundamental erosion of that value.  When we noted here the decrease in sitting days of the legislature and the pathetic excuse for debate in the House over the past four years it was to point out that - fundamentally - politicians in this province have become increasingly elitist and decreasingly democratic in their actions. 

When they meet in secret and agreed to ram a bill through the House - as Ms. Jones did last spring with the Green bill on behalf of her caucus - she and her colleagues robbed every single resident of the province of his or her fundamental democratic right to know what is being decided on his or her behalf.  That was just one bill.  There were literally dozens of others, all of which will have lasting impacts on the province and its people.  Yet not one single voice was raised in opposition.  Not one contrary idea was given voice.

At least, in the legislature there was silence, but that is because for the past decade, the province has been without a properly functioning political system built on parties. We already have the system Ms. Jones wishes for and it has been a dismal failure.

What Ms. Jones is now endorsing, though, is an even greater effort to dismantle democracy in the province than what she and her colleagues in the legislature - irrespective of party - have been working at since at least 2003. At least in the current state, the party system may be revived for the greater good.  What Ms. Jones now proposes is to kill it off entirely.

Political parties are not merely teams built around ideas.  They also serve as a means of funding campaigns for individual candidates in districts who might otherwise be unable to raise the money needed to fight an election. They provide a body of knowledge and groups of workers who understand how the political process - the electoral process - actually works. In that way, political parties can serve as a way of encouraging increased participation in the political process. Eliminate parties and this province will take yet another step backward to the days when it was nothing more than the playground of the local merchants and their vassals.

There's no small irony that Ms. Jones makes this suggestion in the 60th anniversary of the single greatest exercise in democracy ever undertaken in this place. After two referenda based on universal adult suffrage, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador restored to themselves responsible government.  They clearly rejected rule by appointed elites in the first referendum and in the second chose the form of responsible government they wished for themselves and future generations.

But make no mistake:  in 1948 the people of Newfoundland and Labrador opted for a form of government for which they individually held ultimate responsibility.  Arguably, by opting for Confederation, they chose a form of government that would ensure the old elites could not control the country as thoroughly and as dismally as they had before 1934.

Ms. Jones proposes an idea that may well suit her colleagues.  After all, the government party is led by a fellow who has some problems with free speech. But the idea ms. Jones floats is as fundamentally bad as the idea of removing free speech from the legislature or replacing our democracy itself  - as suggested by one newspaper publisher recently - with rule by some form of triumvirate.

In the long ago days of 1948, as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians headed to the polls, might any of them have thought that 60 years on, the economy of the place would be as rich as it is and yet the politics would be so demonstrably bankrupt?

If only electricity could come from the generations of our ancestors turning in their graves...

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Williams starts to Lower expectations

Admittedly its vocm.com and therefore subject to error, but it looks like the Premier is trying to lower expectations on the Lower Churchill project.

Lots of hurdles to overcome on that one, apparently.  In the meanwhile, the Premier is pointing to other projects as signs of economic prosperity.

Projects that don't depend on the provincial government to deliver,  interestingly enough.

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Consistently inconsistent finance minister

The man who only eight months pooh-poohed the idea of balanced budget legislation has now decided that  balanced budget legislation is a good thing.

In April, 2007, provincial finance minister Tom Marshall said:

"I don't know if I agree with balanced budget legislation," Marshall said.

"I certainly would agree with fiscal responsibility legislation … but I'm not prepared to be locked in automatically to a balanced budget every year," he said. [Emphasis added]

In December 2007, Marshall told his hometown newspaper:

“I would like to see us come forward with some fiscal responsibility legislation that would make it a commitment of every government to ensure that, as a principle, we budget for a balanced budget, recognizing it won’t be possible to always have a balanced budget,” said Marshall. “And, if we can’t balance the budget, there would be an obligation on the government to explain and disclose to the people of the province why it didn’t happen and to disclose a strategy to ensure we get back to a balanced budget over a certain period of time.” [Emphasis added]

Of course, this is the same fellow who in the spring budget felt that $55 million was a fine amount by which to reduce the provincial debt but who, by the fall, had decided it was a paltry sum.

One wonders what's next on the finance minister's agenda of policy flip flops.

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The ghost of Ned Morris

There's something about the provincial government's grandiose plan to extend broadband Internet access to every nook and cranny of the island - Labrador will get it if there's federal funding to cover the cost - that sounds unsettlingly familiar.

The whole thing is being spear-headed publicly by industry minister Trevor Taylor.

The project is not based on private sector investment.

The public will foot the bill.

Nor is it based on a sound strategic plan; there is no plan.

Since the idea was first floated that taxpayers should underwrite the private sector, government officials have struggled to figure out how to make the whole thing work. They've also struggled to hide what has been going on, but that is another sad part of the tale.

Their latest iteration of the idea is to have the provincial government continue to underwrite an expanded project. The costs are, essentially, unknown. What was originally a five million dollar investment quickly mushroomed to a total of $20 million and now will cost a figure the provincial government has yet to release.

Might it be the total to date but on an annual basis? Might it be higher? There's good reason to believe that the costs, like the supposed benefits are too phantasmagorical to even begin to contemplate them.

All of this sounds oddly like the railway of a century ago. Specifically, the so-called government broadband initiative looks like Ned Morris' branch lines.

In 1909 the People's Party of Sir Edward Morris was elected, having promised a program of branch line construction. The new branches, although popular in the older areas of settlement which they were to serve, did not open new areas or encourage new industries of note. The first new branch was an 88-mile line to Bonavista, which opened November 1911. The longest, at 104 miles, the Trepassey branch was constructed 1911-13, providing a rail connection to St. John's from the Southern Shore. Along the south side of Trinity Bay, the Heart's Content branch (42 miles, but incorporating parts of the original Harbour Grace line) was completed in 1915. Finally, the Carbonear branch was extended by a 48-mile line to Grates Cove-Bay de Verde in 1915. This extension was closed in 1930, however, the branch continued to operate to Carbonear until 1983.

With the onset of the Great War, the branch line program was halted before the last two lines were complete. The Fortune Bay line, intended to be a 57-mile link to the coastal steamer at Terrenceville, was abandoned in 1915, although 43 miles had been railed. The Bonne Bay branch, projected to run 35 miles north from Deer Lake, was abandoned with the line partly graded.

The new branches proved expensive to operate, carrying only passengers and occasional freight. After the government took over the railway in 1923 an effort was made to serve the less-travelled lines using trolley-like "day coaches" on the Bay de Verde, Trepassey and Heart's Content lines. The Bay de Verde and Trepassey lines were closed in winter, and in 1931 were closed altogether. As Heart's Content was a winter port for the A.N.D. Company that line continued sporadically until 1938. The Bonavista branch remained in operation through the summer of 1983.

Politically-motivated project, lacking a sound economic basis for which the public ultimately pays.

Yes, it sounds suspiciously familiar, but unlike the railway, the public costs of the fibreoptic deal have yet to be calculated, let alone seen by the people who are footing the bill.

Update: This CBC story does two things. First it makes plain that any fibreoptic project for labrador will likely have to be funded by the federal government, at least according to common provincial government thinking. After all, the project will cost an estimated $80 million.

Second, the figures for the current fibreoptic project were wrong at the time the story was printed and are even more wrong now. $52 million, as the story quotes was light by about $30 million based on the estimate given by the project proponents when the idea burst into public view in a calculated bit of spin-meistering.

Yes, that's $82 million, of which $20 million was provincial and another $5 million came from Uncle Ottawa. [You can find the links back to that bit of math in the original post.]

The fribreoptic project for Labrador will basically become like the Trans-Labrador highway: something the provincial government promises repeatedly - and in writing more than a few times - yet fails to deliver.

The only thing more predictable than flip flops on the finance minister is the treatment of Labradorians by the provincial government.

After all, if the Premier is still all fired up about a broken promise made by the current Prime Minister to this province, how should Labradorians feel about what his administration has been doing since 2003?

Perhaps they are already wishing for Carol Kane to pay a visit to a few cabinet ministers next Christmas Eve. [Hint: read the sign.]

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There's no better satire than self-satire

"We’re really the centre of the universe..."

Premier Danny Williams, in a year-end interview with The Telegram

Good evening, Newfoundlanders. Here is tonight's interesting fact, sent to us by a Miss Fielding, whose fascinating letter I will read in full: "Dear Mr. Barrelman: It has come to my attention that there are in the world a number of books – I am endeavouring to find out how many and will let you know when my research if complete – in which no mention whatsoever is made of Newfoundland."

... Miss Fielding further writes, "I am myself in possession of several such books, including 'A Guide Book to Chilean Songbirds,' the absence in which of the word Newfoundland is so inexplicable that I have written its publisher demanding an explanation."

From Wayne Johnson's Colony of unrequited dreams, described by a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as being, in part, a satire on regionalism.

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Prosperity and principle

For some time, observers of the local political scene have noted that the current administration is governed by one law:  the rules apply to everyone else but they don't apply to us.

The Telegram editorialist drives it home in the Saturday edition with a commentary titled "Ethics vs. the law".

So does that mean [Premier Danny] Williams was being disingenuous when he emphasized “the need for openness, honesty and integrity” for members [before 2003]? Perhaps it does — but that’s not illegal either.

Here's an online definition of 'disingenuous': "not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness...".

Well, here's the thing:  he wasn't failing to be candid or giving a false appearance of frankness.  he meant exactly what he said.  The thing is, in the world he inhabits, it's a given that any actions he takes are virtuous, moral and...well,...perfect.  or perfectly justifiable.

It's the incarnation of the old joke about rule number one:  the boss is always right. Rule number two?  "If the boss is wrong, refer to rule number one."

The thing is in this case The Boss doesn't get the joke.

By his definition, the very instant he took the Premier's chair the need for "openness, honesty and integrity in government" had been met.  The other guys - onto whom all his smears and innuendo (remember the computer hacking fairy tale?) and vicious, personal attacks  ('You are pathetic...") had been heaped prior to 2003 - were gone.

Job done, supposedly.

Except that the job isn't done.

The job isn't being done.

The job - the job of building a fundamentally fair, open and democratic society in Newfoundland and Labrador - won't be done until the rules apply fairly and equitably to all.

That job - the most important job in our society - won't be done until our society functions on the basis of principles like fairness, openness, democracy, honesty and integrity.

That job can't be done when our politics functions on the basis of invented victimization, flatulent rhetoric, or self-serving rationalizations of the type described so adroitly by the Telegram editorialist.

The latter may be the principal methods of a particular group, of a particular administration, but that does not make these methods principles.

A truly prosperous society can only be built on principle.

The Telegram editorial reminds us of how truly far we are from even starting the job of prosperity.

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The joy of editing

Take a close listen to this audio clip included with a short news story at vocm.com about the Premier looking for a missing $10 billion.

Forget, for a second, the whole cash trumps principle thing and listen to the clip itself.

The heavily edited clip.

There are at least five or six really noticeable jumps in the clip that suggest someone at vocm.com did a lot of editing to fit the Premier's remarks into a small space.  The only thing is, you have to wonder if - in the process - the meaning of the comments were changed.

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Tourism numbers don't add up

It doesn't happen very often, but vocm.com seems to revealed a provincial tourism strategy that draws more from the locals than it does from boosting visitors to the province. 

The revelation came in two stages, separated by a couple of days so unless you were paying close attention you may have missed it.

On Boxing Day, we learned that the tourism industry contributed about $840 million to the local economy in 2007. The province's tourism minister is quoted as saying that the tourism budget has doubled since 2003 and that, as a result, we are seeing more tourism into the province.

But then later this week, we find out something else:

Tourism Minister Clyde Jackman is encouraging people in the province to take a vacation at home next year.  Jackman says between the icebergs, the whales and the some 9000 plus kilometres of roadway in the province, there is lots to explore. Jackman says this year local tourists comprised nearly 90 percent of the tourism business.

Take a second look at that last sentence and read it again.

Even though the tourism budget has doubled since 2003, fully 90% of the tourism business in Newfoundland and Labrador last year came from people traveling within the province.  That's according to the province's newly appointed tourism minister.

Go back to the Boxing Day story and do the simple math to find that the province's "tourism" industry apparently took  $756 million out of local pockets.

That's astonishing, and while the numbers are somewhat startling, the whole focus on local cash versus visitors fits the tourism department's marketing strategy since 2006. While the  marketing plan that year continued the main focus on visitors, there was a section devoted to a new  "in-province" project. By 2007, the program even had a title, albeit one lifted from a well-known fantasy movie.

Some of the changes in departmental emphasis were subtle.  For example, in April 2005, tourism minister Tom Hedderson announced that the provincial government as extending the operating season for visitor information centres into the spring and fall. These are not times when one might expect visitors to come to the province but they do represent the so-called "shoulders" of the season where the local tourist operators went looking for cash.

Then there was the cheesy series of television ads featuring Tom Hedderson that aired in 2006.  They appeared only on Rogers within Newfoundland and Labrador and were remarkable only for their generally miserable quality. In hindsight, though, they represented a major emphasis in tourism advertising on keeping locals in the province.

The local retention project is not something one would really pick up by casual observation.  After all, the new minister trumpeted the overall success of the tourism industry in 2007, apparently without breaking down the numbers. Likewise, a departmental "flash sheet" of facts and statistics gives only data on people coming from outside the province.

The flash sheet, incidentally, includes cruise passengers, even though the Love Boat passengers typically come into port, run around for a day and then head off off to their next location.  They are all good people and we welcome their cash, but they don't represent the economic impact of say a family of four from Teaneck spending a week traveling the province in a rented car, resting at the various bed and breakfast establishments and visiting a wide variety of cultural, natural and historical sites. Cruise passengers dropped $1.9 million in the economy last year (2006) out of a total of $364 million contributed to the local economic by visitors.

Before we leave that document, notice that overall, the number of visitors to the province dropped 1.5% over 2006.

The reality of the tourism figures Jackman and his predecessors have been using becomes clear when one looks at the tourism department's backgrounder on overall tourism performance for 2006 with a forecast for 2007.  You won't find that document on the tourism department's website.  You have to go to the finance department's statistics agency to get the facts on tourism.

According to the 2006 analysis, visitors to the province accounted for an estimated $364 million in economic activity in the province out of a total of some $820 million overall, as described in the 2007 budget.

That's right.  Visitors accounted for 44% of tourism dollars in 2006.  The rest of the spending  - 56% - must have come from locals staying in the province.

vocm.com may well have misquoted the tourism minister and the 90% figure. There's no denying the provincial government's own figures though. The majority of what it classifies as "tourism" is actually generated by residents of the province.

The relative proportion of overall spending by locals has actually grown in the four years of the New Approach to tourism much faster than visitor spending.  In a May 2004 statement to the legislature,  former tourism minister and current Humber Valley resort general manager noted that visitors generated approximately $300 million in spending in 2003 out of total tourism spending in the province of $620 million.

In other words, over the four years from 2003 to 2006, overall "tourism" spending increased by $200 million but only $64 million  - 32% - of that new spending was related to visitors.  In the meantime, the tourism advertising budget  - supposedly aimed at bring new dollars into the economy through increased visitation- has increased from $6.0 million to $11.0 million.

No matter how you look at it though, the tourism department's media comments on its "tourism" strategy don't add up. Nor does the advertising strategy seem to be working, no matter how much additional cash has been added to the pile.

It's time for a genuine new approach, so it seems, rather than just creative presentation of information.

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The 12 days of Christmas - Straight No Chaser style

Straight No Chaser's version of the 12 Days of Christmas.  h/t to Flipper.

 

Christmas Greetings from the men and women of the Canadian Forces

The views on these videos seem appallingly low. Let's see if we can boost them just a bit. If you happen to know some of the people in these short video greetings, or if you know someone who knows them, pass along the links. This holiday season let's all remember the men and women of the Canadian Forces as they do their duty far from the snows of home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Switched on sovereign

The Royal family has a Royal Channel on youtube.com.

No embedding but you can find among the posts the first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957 as well as other historical footage and more recent ceremonial occasions.

Take this as a sterling example of how the latest technology can be used to communicate simply and effectively with an audience. It's controlled and careful, reflecting the image to be projected of the monarchy, while at the same time being considerably more open than many organizations and institutions in Newfoundland and Labrador.

An example to be studied and, one would hope, emulated by others in the months ahead.

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Dobbin resigns from Newfound NV

Newfound NV announced today that Brian Dobbin is leaving the company effective December 31, 2007.

He will also be resigning his Newfound directorships in order to pursue unspecified
personal interests, according to a company news release.

Dobbin's shareholdings in the company are unaffected and existing restrictions on the disposal of shares remain in effect.

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Musical Merry Christmas from bondpapers

1.  The Boston Pops under John Williams with Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride.

2. Christmas Festival, another favourite by Leroy Anderson, made famous by the Pops but this time performed by the University of Iowa Philharmonia.

3. For aficionados of band music, Christmas Festival by the Rainbow City Band.

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The secret of their success: Roger Grimes

Polls is fun, as Pogo's official opinion survey guy used to say, and there are no polls with more fun in them than those available in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Professor Alex Marland, latterly at Memorial University and formerly a communications director with the Williams administration, uses Corporate Research Associates quarterly omnibus poll results as part of a paper published recently in the spanking-new journal, the Canadian Political Science Review. [Almost immediate update/clarification:  Marland was looking at the 2007 general election and used the poll results for context. What follows is purely the analysis from the Pogo Poll People.]

The figures are presently straightforwardly, except that Marland or his editors incorrectly state that the margin of error for the data is plus or minus 3.5% at the 95th confidence interval.  They aren't.  In the period since 2005, for example, all but two of the quarterly results have margins of error of plus or minus 4.9%.  CRA doesn't archive their new releases anymore back beyond early 2006 so there is no way of double-checking these sorts of details.

In any event, while we may dispute the accuracy of the CRA polls, for the moment let's accept them as readily as they have been accepted publicly to date.
The results for polling conducted from the last quarter of 2003 to the first quarter of 2006 show one thing:  volatility.

Take a look at the table: up and down dramatically in very short spans of time.

The drop from the first post-election poll to the second is only a couple of months and already, the support for the progressive Conservatives dropped 16 points.  It fell another 11 in the next quarter, giving a cumulative drop of 27 points in basically less than six months.

No surprise, though given that Danny Williams first speech as Premier was the January 5 2004 debacle, followed immediately by the delivery of the budget to implement the speech's promise.

Once the budget was delivered and the world didn't end, there's a slight rebound.  The big jump in the last quarter coincides, not surprisingly with the October theatrics in which the Premier stormed out of a first ministers' meeting.  The trend is still upward, mind you, but notice that the climb out of the pit is not nearly as dramatic as the fall. 

Then in early 2005, there is the famous $2.0 billion transfer payment from Ottawa.  That's the one that has been hyped to death by any supporter of the current administration. Not surprisingly, the poll taken shortly afterward shows what was then a record level of party support.

Then look at what happens.

There's a drop of 20 percentage points in a single quarter. Quarterly increases of six percentage points, then 12 and 13 are followed by a single drop of 20. Not surprisingly, support for the other parties rises and falls in the same time, most noticeably for the Liberals. 

Notice though, that over the next three quarters, right up to early 2006 there is a steady climb in Progressive Conservative support and a corresponding decline in expressed Liberal support. The climb/decline is nowhere near as dramatic as the tumble in early 2005.  One year later, the Tories had not managed to climb back as high as they had been in that first quarter of 2005.

But go back and wonder what happened in early 2005?

In the absence of any major event, the sudden drop in early 2005 looks like a simple correction back to a norm.  The average PC party support over the previous quarters is 56.8%.  For the Liberals, the number is 28%.  In the second quarter of 2005, CRA polled 55% for the Tories and 31% for the Grits.

At the same time, though Roger Grimes resigned.  After that the support for the two major parties diverges. 

There are no dramatic increases or decreases, even allowing for the poll margin of error.  There's just a steady climb for the Tories until the numbers stabilise in the low to mid 70s. If you accept CRA numbers, that's basically where things stand today.

For all the effort, nothing has been able to secure the Progressive Conservative Party lead like Roger Grimes.  Take him out of the picture - and by extension generate the Liberal leadership issue - and voters make a clear choice.

Before that, while Grimes was still around, there was an evident willingness of respondents to support the Liberals and, perhaps more interestingly, to take their support away from the Progressive Conservatives quite dramatically.  They didn't give it back quite so enthusiastically.

So as you sip your hot beverage on a cold winter's evening, ponder this thought:  Roger Grimes is the secret to the Progressive Conservative electoral success.

The polls can't be wrong, can they?

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Telegram story,editorial miss important changes in accountability law

A story and editorial in the Saturday Telegram both miss important aspects of the House of Assembly accountability legislation.
From the story:

But a law passed by his government this summer sets out special treatment for MHAs and House staff who may have improperly retained public money, and gags the auditor general from talking about such situations.
...
The new law passed this summer exempts MHAs and key House staffers from Section 15.
“Section 15 of the Auditor General Act does not apply to a member, the clerk, clerk assistant or staff of the House of Assembly service,” the law notes.

And from the editorial:

What does that mean? Well, for starters, that there’s clearly one law for MHAs, and a different law for everyone else in the provincial civil service.

It also means that we will probably never see another scandal like the one uncovered by the AG. 

Why? Because, among other reasons, if an AG finds such a scandal, he or she is now specifically forbidden to tell us about it.

That isn't correct. 

While the Green bill does include the provision cited by the Telegram, section 45 sets out a much wider disclosure requirement for the Auditor General in any instance where he or she "becomes aware of an improper retention or misappropriation of public money by a member, the clerk, the clerk assistant or staff of the House of Assembly service or the statutory offices or another activity that may constitute an offence under the Criminal Code or another Act of the province or of Canada...".

Section 15 of the Auditor General Act requires only that a report be made to the finance minister on behalf of the executive council.

Section 45 of the House accountability, integrity and administration legislation mandates that a report on such information be provided to the Speaker, the chair of the House audit committee, the Premier, the leader of the political party to which the member or members belong, the attorney general and the finance minister. In addition, the auditor general must disclose the report, in general terms, to the public through his or her annual report.

One minister or the entire executive council could bury a report under the Auditor General Act alone and the provisions of that Act already constrain the AG.  The Green bill specifically expands the offices that must be notified in order to preclude a report being buried and the requirement to include a report in the annual, public AG report makes it difficult to imagine how such a report into alleged impropriety could escape public detection.

Section 15 of the AG Act may not apply to the House, but section 45 of the House Integrity Act does and that's far better.

There is an extensive discussion of this section of the bill in the Green report at chapters five and eight.  In his report, Chief Justice Derek Green sets out the purposes of the new, more detailed disclosure rules that are intended, in part, to ensure that any such report cannot be hidden from public view.

It's worth reproducing an entire section of the Green report in which the Chief Justice notes the basis for his recommendations on the new disclosure requirements:

The [existing AG] legislation does not contemplate that a written report be issued to the public or the media, or that a news conference be held, or that interviews be given to the media amplifying what is in the report. This is as it should be. Undue publication of the information in a report at such an early stage - before decisions are taken to lay charges, or prosecute or seek reimbursement - risks interfering with important constitutional and other values. Given the relatively low threshold justifying the making of a report, even though its issuance may cause considerable damage to an individual’s reputation that may be difficult to repair if it is ultimately shown that there is an innocent explanation, one ought to be careful about bandying details about in the public domain. Furthermore, undue publication of the information with its implicit suggestion of impropriety or criminality may have an effect on a person’s constitutional right to a fair trial if charges are ultimately laid. 

As a general rule, therefore, the reporting function of the Auditor General should be limited to making the official reports to the Lieutenant-Governor in Council and the House as contemplated by section 15. I note that, as a general rule, even at the stage of the decision
to prosecute, where the threshold for acting is higher, the police do not make a habit of
making public announcements that charges have been laid. 

While I recognize that there is a possibility that the Lieutenant-Governor in Council might not do its duty on receipt of a report and disregard it, that risk is minimized by the fact that ultimately there has to be public disclosure - at least with respect to a “general description” - of the incident in the Auditor General’s annual report to the House. 

These observations, I believe, are all the more important when one comes to dealing with situations involving public figures such as MHAs. They are particularly vulnerable to attacks on their reputations. Allegations of impropriety - even if ultimately shown to be unfounded - may have the effect, given the tendency of the public to ascribe low motives to politicians, of making the MHA’s continuing job untenable, and may irrevocably affect reelection chances. Caution in the manner of dealing with such situations is called for. 

It is outside my mandate to make recommendations with respect to the continuing operation of section 15 generally. However, I believe it to be appropriate to address the matter with respect to matters involving MHAs. After all, it was the issuance of section 15 reports that became the catalyst for the current inquiry. 

In the first place, I believe it important - indeed a fundamental aspect of fairness - that in undertaking the analysis of whether the Auditor General should exercise his or her  discretion to issue a section 15 report, the Auditor General should make full disclosure to the Member concerned, give him or her an adequate opportunity to provide any additional information as well as an explanation for what has been found, and consider those responses as part of his or her discretionary decision making. 

Additionally, I believe the role of the Auditor General, at least when dealing with identified discrepancies involving Members, to be one of preparing and delivering to the appropriate officials a comprehensive report detailing the transactions being questioned, why he or she believes that a report is warranted, and containing any recommendations he or she considers appropriate to make. I do not believe it appropriate, however, to make the report to the Lieutenant-Governor in Council as section 15 now contemplates. The Auditor General is an officer of the House and provides his or her audit services to the House. The report should therefore be to the Speaker. In addition, however, the report should be given to other persons who have a vital stake in the information disclosed.

Green then lists the specific offices to which information should be released.

There are other sections of the report the deal with some problems with the release of information by the current Auditor General and the way he conducted his reviews.  For example, the new accountability bill requires the Auditor General to give the member or members involved complete information and the opportunity to respond to the Auditor General's accusations before the report is filed.  Sadly, that was seldom the case with Auditor General John Noseworthy's series of reports. 

There are two standards for the Auditor General to follow when making a report of alleged impropriety.  In the case of the Green bill, the standards are higher in relation to the House of Assembly and that's a good thing.  Many of the problems Chief Justice Green identified have already been seen and his revised procedures are designed to restore both transparency and integrity to a process that showed little of either.

If the public does not see another scandal in the House of Assembly it won't be because the Auditor General is gagged. He isn't and in fact the situation that exists today is as far from the one described by the Telegram as possible.

The only two things to lament here are these:

1.  That the Auditor General did not conduct his reviews with more thoroughness in the first place after the scandal broke  and did not exercise sufficient care in his public comments thereafter.  The public has seen enough of the unsubstantiated allegations, inconsistent information and insufficient information coming from AG reports.  We've seen the names of individuals dragged through the mud based on flimsy evidence and half-baked conclusions. 

We've also seen some allegations that have led to charges being laid but, there remains a question as to whether or not the problems with the AG's work will undermine the process in one way or another. The public should not be left to face the prospect that after all the revelations of inappropriate spending, little if anything will come of it save for the new Green bill. 

2.  That the Telegram managed to miss such a key part of the Green bill. The Telegram perhaps moreso than most local newsrooms has done yeoman public service in digging into this scandal and exposing details of it that otherwise may never have come to light. Such is not the case with this story.  Let's not dismiss the Telly's work for one gaffe.

It's become accepted wisdom that the Auditor General has done a great public service in unveiling the scandal. His work is marred by deficiencies and some of the issues arising from the AG reports and how they were handled have been corrected by the Green bill.

At the same time, it might be tempting to imagine that things haven't changed at the House of Assembly among the politicians. That's as maybe; Chief Justice Green left the members of the legislature little alternative but to change.  Try as they might, they haven't been able to escape public scrutiny thus far.

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