The greatest piece of nonsense in a generation

Memorial University political science professor Michael Temelini likes to refer to the 2005 Atlantic Accord as an example of what can happen in a minority parliament.

The greatest piece of public policy in a generation he calls it.

That's not hyperbole.

That's just nonsense.

The 2005 agreement simply transferred $2.0 billion in federal cash to provincial coffers.  It hasn't produced a penny of new money since then.  It won't produce any more since the provincial government ceases to qualify for Equalization this year and won't qualify to renew the deal.

What Temelini either forgets or doesn't know is that offshore oil sits - constitutionally  - in federal jurisdiction. 

Under the real Atlantic Accord - signed in 1985 - the provincial government basically gets de facto control of the offshore, and more importantly sets and collects 100% of revenues as if the resource was on land.  The federal government collects typical federal revenues like income taxes, GST and corporate taxes.

All the royalties go to the provincial government.

And that's where they stay until the provincial government spends them.

Not a penny goes to Ottawa.

Never has.

At least not since 1985.

The enabling legislation for the real Atlantic Accord passed through parliament in 1987.  The provincial enabling legislation passed around the same time.

The agreement was signed between two majority governments.

But here's the thing.

Legally, constitutionally, the federal government wasn't obliged to do anything at all, let alone sign the 1985 deal.

The 1985 Atlantic Accord was one of the greatest pieces of Canadian public policy in a generation.

It is the sole foundation on which the provincial government's oil revenues rest.

Take that away and the 2005 deal is nothing at all

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Incompetence or corruption?

Either way, you can call it a plague.

There's no other word that comes easily to mind to describe the insidious, weasel-politicking that goes on in far too many organizations across the province. 

The federation of agriculture is not the first group and it sadly won't be the last one to have a board whose members, at some point, think it more important to cave in to perceived political pressure rather than do the right thing.

The sorry truth is that boot-licking and arse-kissing are old political staples in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Politicians don't even need to ask to have their best wellies tongue-shined to perfection.

Take a look at the extracts from a letter from the agriculture federation board to Merv Wiseman, currently the Conservative candidate in St. John's South-Mount Pearl.

What we have in the case of the agriculture federation and Merv Wiseman is not something as simple as a poorly worded letter conveying a board decision about the dates of Wiseman's leave of absence.  That's what the federation tried to say when this issue erupted.

Rather we have clear evidence that the federation board wished to avoid causing any difficulty with the current administration by directing the president to stay away from the meeting.  This could have been handled more diplomatically.  This certainly might not have even been an issue, given that Wiseman will hardly be in any shape to go back to his usual job with the federation tomorrow.

From the context of the letter, the meaning is unmistakable.

And it is wrong.

This sort of situation is not something unique to the current administration;  the same sort of anti-democratic decisions have been taken by groups in the past.  It's just that with the current crowd,  in an environment where going against the government is called treason - and people actually stand up for their right to use such savage language -  the weak-minded and morally bankrupt out there take that as a sign that all those who are potentially not in the favour of the government must be silenced.

Some of them think they will get brownie points for attacking the regime's enemies. 

Take a look at two of the final paragraphs and you can see that the board understood full well the gravity of the decision it made and the reasons for it.

Notice that last bit:  it says - in effect - that if Wiseman wants to put the best interests of the industry first he will concur with the board's decision to stay away from the next meeting.

What sanctimonious tripe.

To her credit, the provincial minister responsible for agriculture has already distanced herself from the federation and this letter.  She couldn't do anything else and still retain a semblance of dignity.

But for the record, she ought to make it plain that it is never in the best interests of the province for any board of any organization anywhere to take the decision that the federation did.

We are all cheapened by such a fundamentally anti-democratic sentiment.

Wiseman ought not to attend the meeting because he is on a leave of absence.

The board told him not to attend because of the ongoing controversy between the current provincial administration and its federal counterpart.

The former is legitimate.

The latter is indefensible.  The board ought to resign immediately, en masse.  It has shown itself to be incompetent at best or political corrupt at worst.

 

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International roundup of financial crisis developments

1.  The United Kingdom will loan Iceland 100 million pounds sterling to assist its Landesbanki repay British creditors of the nationalised Icelandic bank.

This is not surprising given the number of local councils that did their banking through Icesave, the Landsbanki subsidiary:

But there was increasing concern about the amount of British public and charitable-sector money deposited in Iceland's stricken banks. As much as £1bn of local council money is thought to be at stake, with British charities estimating their exposure at around £60m. "There are more than 50 charities that have deposits there," said Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations.

2.  Meanwhile in Scotland, Scottish nationalists are putting a brave face on the financial crisis. According to some reports, the first minister has been ducking questions about whether an independent Scotland could have funded a 32 billion pound bailout of Scottish banks.  He's also been faced with questions about the so-called Arc of Prosperity which Scottish nationalists have used as proof that an independent Scotland could do well on its own.  Of the four countries in the arc,  Iceland is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, Denmark and Ireland are in recession and Norway is experiencing its own difficulties.

As Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling stepped in to save Scotland's two biggest banks, the Scottish Government tried to avoid questions over how an independent Scotland would have coped with the international crisis. A spokesman for Alex Salmond, the First Minister, said he would "not speculate on a theoretical future event" and refused to say whether he believed an independent Scotland could have bailed out its banks to the tune of £32 billion.

However, he insisted the SNP would still try to push through a referendum bill in 2010, even though if people voted Yes to independence, Scotland's two main banks would be owned by a "foreign" UK government.

At the same time, the Scottish local government is looking at ways of avoiding a recession in Scotland.

3.  Dutch local governments are also affected by the Landsbanki problems.  Twelve local councils have a total of 59 million euros with Landsbanki while the province of Zeeland has five million euros in the bankrupt American firm Lehman Brothers.

4.  France, Germany and Russia have announced separate bailout plans worth almost $1.3 trillion.

5.  Ireland and Australia are guaranteeing bank deposits.  The Irish government guarantee applies only to Irish banks, not subsidiaries of foreign banks.

6.  Ireland is about to introduce a tough national budget that will raise hospital charges and cut tax relief.

All hospital charges are to increase significantly - by 10 per cent in many cases, including charges to be treated in accident and emergency, or to have a private bed in a public hospital.

Despite the fee rises, the Health Service Executive will be forced to make serious cuts in existing services to stay within budget - which will be €400 million more than last year, but still not enough to meet extra wage bills and other costs.

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The old Connies make a come back

Hiding candidates from the media and shoving reporters who try and ask a question.

Yeah, not like we haven't seen that before.

Will CTV look for assault charges to be laid?

"The non-consensual application of force by one person to another is an assault."

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Aussie Dippers

It may be the website for The Australian, but a Canadian IP address will turn up a Canadian ad.

There's a CIBC one.

And one for the New Democratic Party and Jack Layton.

There's a pretty creative use of the Internet and it would be interesting to know how many Canadian voters actually saw the Dipper's Aussie ad.

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At the last minute, Harris ducks

In the last hours of the campaign, New Democrat candidate Jack Harris was hit with a simple, straightforward question.

Rather than answer it just as straightforwardly, he ducked it with a comment that his Conservative opponent was raising it at the last minute.

Maybe Jack needs to trying answering the question about what he plans to do with his considerable provincial pension.

After all, it can't be a good thing when Walter Noel is backing you with some comment about why people shouldn't worry about a politician's other sources of income.

Hmmm.

Makes you wonder on a subject no one should wonder about.

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The Fruitloop Factory

There's no allowing for the myriad reason why people feel the need to make stuff up, nor that they would use this false stuff for their own political ends.

Nope.

All we can wonder about is how people actually wind up believe sheer crap and run around repeating it like it was...

true.

Stuff that can be easily shown to be...wait for it...completely false.

Like say the stuff about Barak Obama.

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Iceland eyes IMF

As they prepared to head to Moscow to negotiation a four billion euro bailout, Icelandic officials gave signs on Sunday the country was looking at the International Monetary Fund as a potential source of help during the country's economic collapse. [Reuters-Iceland]

"My conclusion is that if we appeal to the IMF, other central banks and other nations would follow that track," Industry Minister Ossur Skarphedinsson told the Morgunbladid newspaper in a report published on its website on Sunday.

In related news, the Norwegian bank regulator moved on Sunday to take control of the Iceland bank Kaupthing's Norwegian arm. [Reuters - Norway]

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Vote Dipper to stop the seal hunt

Why else would IFAW care about an election race in Canada?

 

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Fishing for votes

Outgoing Connie fish minister Loyola Hearn is extending the damn fool fishery - an annual cod plunder disguised as tradition - just in time to try and snag a few more votes.

The only way for cod stocks to recover to commercial level is to keep these kinds of people off the water.

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Harper hides

Okay, so the guy who will only speak to reporters in highly controlled conditions, is now canceling all media availabilities for the remainder of the campaign.

And this surprises who, exactly?

Meanwhile, in other news, reporters are burning their notebooks and any electronic record of their gushing over Harper's sudden appearance at breakfast early in the campaign. [Link to a National Self-Lampoon version.  Yes, it's the Lampoon but for some reason other media outlets fell for the bullshit even though they are genetically predisposed to ingest pre-digest pap and regurgitate it on command.]

Like that wasn't contrived either.

Sheesh.

During this campaign we have seen once again the ability of news media types to completely ignore the fact they are being manipulated despite ample evidence of the intention to manipulate.

Does anyone  - you'd have to be old enough - recall the whole roll of the dice piece from the Globe right before the whole Meech end game?  Same idea.

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"Confederation is in danger": Cleary

Ryan Cleary, New Democratic Party, St. John's South-Mount Pearl, on his election blog:

“Confederation is in danger,” I said.

“Jack Layton, Jack Harris and myself can bring it back to safe ground.”

Ryan Cleary, editor of The Independent, May 2008:

I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but now that we’re rolling in the cash it may be time to consider breaking away from the country of Canada. If we’re teetering on the edge of economic independence anyway, why not go all the way and raise the Pink, White and Green outside Confederation Building?

Ummmm.

Which one are we supposed to believe is how Ryan really feels?

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"Worse than first thought": Aussie foreign minister

From The Australian:

THE government's cabinet budget committee will meet later today to take any action deemed necessary from key meetings of the International Monetary Fund and Group of 20 finance ministers in New York today.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said there was a growing realisation that the international financial crisis was worse than originally thought.

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CTV/ATV hatchet job

ATV and CTV are getting ripped for their hatchet job of Stephane Dion, and rightly so.

Geoff Meeker's media blog at the Telegram is a case in point.

May we expect a retraction any time soon from ATV and CTV?

Don't bet on it.

CTV's Craig Oliver is not only unfazed by the whole business, he trumpets it as a supposed example of how the country supposedly won't tolerate a leader who is not comfortable in both official languages.

The veteran journalists who commented at Geoff's post would disagree with Oliver's contention that the question would be "indelibly clear" "[t]o anyone with any comfort zone in English...".

The one point from Oliver's excuse pile that most would agree with is that the episode damaged Dion, even if only for a short while.

The next question top raise is why the whole episode occurred in the first place.  A network that features a dubious piece of analysis by Conrad Winn on its website in to different areas - the election and "world" space - should not be surprised if people started questioning its partisan affiliation. 

 

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Dear Conrad...

Get a grip.

Obama was leading McCain before the meltdown.

McCain's miserable performance in the wake of the economic crisis has only worsened his position.

Some recent polls have Obama as much as 11 points in front of McCain nationally. Even Fox News analysts would have to reach to claim Obama is "fighting" to hold on to a "slim" lead.

That's nothing to shake a stick at.

It starts to get worse for McCain when one notices the shifts occurring in key demographic segments to Obama and away from McCain/Palin.

As for the Bill Ayers thing, the most spectacular point is that the McCain/Palin attack on that point has had almost no discernable impact on the latest Obama surge.

Perhaps your analysis is -  in a word -  simplistic.

Ditto the Canadian stuff.

In the past week or so we have seen the Conservative support in Quebec tumble as a direct response to Conservative messaging gaffes. No minor issues;  major gaffes.  The Conservatives who were poised to increase the Quebec riding count will now struggle to hold on to what they have.  Some numbers suggest their riding count will be halved.

Numbers have shifted dramatically in key Ontario ridings and even in British Columbia there has been a noticeable shift in voter intentions.

This hardly favours the Conservatives "one way or the other".

Far from being a case where voter intentions were solidly formed long ago in an election that may see "a "watershed" that changes fundamental voting patterns and party dominance for years to come", the current Canadian federal election is an example of how even front-runners can prove unpalatable to the majority of electors based on elector experienced with them.

Evidently there's something sitting close to Conrad's compass that is skewing his perspective.

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Crude futures settle below US$78

Bloomberg.com is reporting that West Texas Intermediate for November delivery finished trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange at US$77.70 a barrel, the lowest price for front-month crude futures since last year.

Brent crude - closest in price to Grand Banks light, sweet - closed the day at US$74.09, a drop of almost eight and a half dollars from the day before. That puts crude oil $13 below the average price assumed by the provincial government at budget time last April.

At close of trading on Friday, crude futures up to April were below US$80 a barrel.

In other energy news, Harvest Energy - owners of the Come by Chance refinery - have delayed a planned $2.0 billion expansion of the 115K barrel per day refinery until 2010. Current economic turmoil is also forcing other energy companies to rethink plans in western Canada.

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Jack channels Al Gore, in a bad way

New Democrat candidate Jack Harris seemed to be channeling Al Gore at the all candidates debate on CBC Radio Thursday.

No, not Enviro-Champ Al Gore, but the "I invented the Internet" version.

Morning Show host Jeff Gilhooley asked Harris what he would be able to accomplish for the riding if he were elected as an opposition bencher.

Harris replied he could do lots.

Like say when he was here in Newfoundland and Labrador, on the opposition benches:

"We've got school bussing in St. John's, which we didn't have, thanks to me."

Huh?

Thanks to Jack?

Jack may have advocated for school bussing but the service was extended to include metropolitan St. John's by Lloyd Matthews, the Liberal cabinet minister filling in for Judy Foote who was on sick leave at the time.

The candidates took turns whacking Jack largely because the polls have him way out in front of the rest.  They brought up all manner of points.  The video  - available at cbc.ca/nl/features/debate - makes for some entertaining viewing, even if the audio sucks.

Conservative Craig Westcott got in some of the sharpest licks, including one over Jack and what he plans to do with his provincial pension if he is elected to Ottawa. He kept it up on Friday with a statement aimed squarely at the issue of potential double-dipping by the former member of the provincial legislature:

"Yesterday during our all-candidate debate I posed a very simple question to NDP candidate Jack Harris: if he is elected to serve in Ottawa, will he follow in Norm Doyle's footsteps and donate his provincial pension to charity?

"Mr. Harris avoided answering this question during our debate. So I pose the question again: what will Jack do?"

"I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong to do it, but voters in St. John's East should know Jack Harris' position before election day."

Westcott also scored the most memorable jab during the all-candidates session:

"The only reason he's running this time is because the party couldn't come up with another candidate, so his arm was twisted by Jack Layton and Danny Williams [Harris' former law partner] so what I'd like to know is, when he goes to Ottawa and both of them tell him to jump, which one is he going to listen to?"

They may well have whacked at jack because he's the front runner.  Then again, when you claim credit for things you demonstrably didn't do, you pretty much invite a pile on.

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The dark side of ABC

In "Enough traitor talk", Geoff Meeker at the Telegram takes issue with the extreme language being used by the ABC campaign in some instances:

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador are heated and vitriolic, but this is something different. Something despicable. It turns my stomach.

One group, comfortably ensconced within the majority, has taken to condemning those they oppose as ‘traitors’, a crime that was punishable by death up until 1961. It’s pretty much the nastiest thing you can say about someone.

How far are we from smashing the windows of these traitors, burning crosses on their lawns and cutting them down with machetes?

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Only Avalon up in the air

As of October 8, democraticSPACE is showing predicted winners in six of seven seats in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Only Avalon is left uncalled. The top picture shows the party that held the riding prior to the election call.  The bottom picture and the name show the candidate and party predicted to win.

NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR

AVALON

BONAVISTA-GANDER-GRAND FALLS


SCOTT SIMMS

HUMBER-ST. BARBE-BAIE VERTE


GERRY BYRNE

LABRADOR


TODD RUSSELL

RANDOM-BURIN-ST. GEORGE’S


JUDY FOOTE

ST. JOHN’S EAST


JACK HARRIS

ST. JOHN’S SOUTH-MOUNT PEARL


SIOBHAN COADY

The website uses an elaborate mathematical model to project election results based on a combination of available poll results and past voting patterns.  That's a short-hand version.  Check the democraticspace.com site for a more detaile description of their methodology.

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The politics of strange bedfellows, Merv and Craig version

Merv Wiseman, Conservative candidate in St. John's South-Mount Pearl.

Craig Westcott, Conservative candidate in St. John's East.

But not always such bosom buddies.

In April 2007, Merv Wiseman then president of the agriculture federation, found himself feeling nauseous at a Craig Westcott commentary on rural Newfoundland.

Wiseman accused Westcott of displaying the culture of defeat attitude toward rural Newfoundland that Stephen Harper displayed.

Ouchies.

Wiseman puts Westcott's comments down to an "urban" mind-set that doesn't understand the contribution made by the "rural."

Check out "The future of rural Newfoundland".  The ram audio file links still work.

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