Some ‘splainin’ needed on firearms bust

Take a look at the array of firearms seized from a 25 year old man in St. John’s on Tuesday. There’s an excellent picture accompanying the Telegram story.

Certain types of weapons have been illegal to own in this country since 1995.  The only way someone can legally own them is if they had them prior to 1995 and have maintained the necessary licenses since then.

It’s unlikely that a 25 year old man collected these weapons before he was 10 years old.

We are talking about:

• Several AK-47s or variants from China or eastern Europe;
• Several SKS rifles from several possible sources. [The one on a bi-pod with a drum magazine appears to be an SKS]; and
• A STEN gun;

The guy has been charged with the appropriate offenses since he apparently didn’t have a license for them but in several interviews aired on Wednesday a police spokesperson made it sound like there was a possibility these weapons might not be illegal.  What’s worse, some of the rifles – like maybe the M1 Garand in the photo – have to be sent to a lab on the mainland to determine if they’ve been modified to fire as fully automatic.

Some further explanation seems to be in order:

1. Let’s make it abundantly clear that these weapons are illegal except for a handful of licensed firearms owners and – as a result – this arrest is extremely serious.
2. Let’s have someone explain how the heck the guy could accumulate the arsenal of patently illegal firearms in the first place.

Your humble e-scribbler has argued for years that the firearms laws in the country need to be changed dramatically from the motley collection of measures applied in the early to mid-1990s.

But…

There’s no reason to leave the impression what this guy had was legal to own. The next thing you know we’ll be back in the loopy days of the early 1990s when under two different governments – Liberal and Conservative – the country adopted entirely useless firearms laws and ignored the sorts of measures that would have worked much more effectively to ensure public safety.

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Nurses deal!

A tentative deal in the nurses labour dispute.

Achieved at 0528 hours Wednesday morning.

Who blinked?

More to follow.

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Count down to H Hour

Is it a strike, a lock-out or just a labour dispute?

Is it part of an agenda by nurses  - directed by the national nurses union - to see “Newfoundland and Labrador taken to court over its principles”?  That little bit of dog whistling was part of the Premier’s scrum today outside the legislature.

The “principles” the Premier is referring to are not principles as most people would understand them. They are actually just clauses in a contract that are, like all other clauses, subject to negotiation, clarification or other action to ensure that the parties come to agreement.

Whatever you want to call those two clauses there is no question that the provincial government is insisting on them unaltered and that the nurses are rejecting them with equal vigour.

One would almost believe that the provincial government had intended to push this to the wall all along, given that they’ve caved on everything else except those two clauses. 

Take the wage portion, for example. Not so very long ago newly minted finance minister Jerome Kennedy was insisting that the 21%-over-four-years template every other union had signed was the only thing there was.

Listen to the scrum and count the number of times the Premier and finance minister refer to 31%.  They didn’t miss-speak.  They’ve actually sweetened the financial portion in an effort to get nurses off the objection to the two clauses so important to government.

Incidentally, the government was not intent on a strike all along so they could legislate the settlement of their choice.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as the Premier assured us all in a very peculiar bit of self-praise/pre-emptive denial:

We’ve bargained in good faith.

That would be as opposed to bargaining bad faith.

Lots of people are going to pay a steep price for this dispute.  In all honesty, it would be difficult to imagine that anyone outside government or the union could give us the simple explanation of why government is insisting on the right to pay new employees more than old ones doing the same job. 

Aside from creating an incentive for new employees, as claimed in the scrum today, or union busting as the union has suggested, the idea of paying new employees coming through the door the same or more than long-service employees just smacks of the most backward-assed labour policies.  it tells long-serving employees their loyalty and experience and dedication are worth exactly nothing.

Consider how unappealing is the scenario the Premier painted today, that of a nurse being able to attend a child’s wedding because there would now be a nurse to replace her on the shift.  The price for that nurse – with more than two decades of service – is to have someone hired off the street be paid more than him or her.

And for all the finance minister’s efforts to dismiss hypothetical scenarios, it’s pretty easy to see the concern.  The finance minister confirmed that government is developing a policy that would see just that situation:  new employees paid off the grid set out in collective bargaining.  Kennedy basically admitted that what the nurses have claimed is true.

For all the insistence on patterns and policy, it’s interesting, too,  that the provincial government didn’t apply the same rule to other employees - working close to ministers every day –recently, especially when those employees  who received across the board upward reclassification weren’t unionized.  Same problem – difficulty recruiting – produced an entirely different solution.

In another sense, though none of this matters.  The claims and counterclaims are irrelevant.  It doesn’t even matter if what starts tomorrow is a strike of a lock-out.

The only things we know for certain are that this could have been avoided and that a whole bunch of people across the province are going to pay a price for it.

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NL exports down 50% in ‘09 according to EDC

Export Development Canada is predicting Newfoundland and Labrador exports will drop by half in 2009 and rebound only 7% in 2010.

“Newfoundland and Labrador will have a tough go in 2009 as massive commodity price declines and production cutbacks lead to high double digit drops for energy, industrial goods, and forestry exports,” said Peter Hall, Chief Economist of EDC.

“In 2010, gains in prices for key commodities like crude oil and iron ore will lift the value of the province’s exports, but volumes will likely weaken again as crude production continues to fall. Ongoing mega construction projects mean the long-term outlook is bright, but the export benefits of these projects lie largely beyond 2010.”

While oil prices started the year well above the EDC forecast of USD 47 per barrel, they may be right about production declines over the course of the year. Other economic forecasts have shown a forecasted 15% drop largely due to downtime at the three production platforms for regular maintenance. 

No one appears to have forecast the effect a drop in demand would also have on production levels.  According to figures from the offshore regulatory board, cumulative production in the first three months of calendar 2009 is down about 5% from the same period in 2007 and 2008.

The fishery is also expected to take a hit:

The agrifood sector accounts for 6 per cent of the province’s total export picture. While commercial fishermen have seen the combined pressures of high oil prices and a high CAD disappear since last year, faltering demand in the wake of the global recession has now set in. This will drive agrifood exports down 4 per cent in 2009 before a modest price increase adds to the underlying strength in the emerging aquaculture sector.

Exports of farmed salmon and steelhead trout could see tremendous upside as a result of the province’s significant coastline and ongoing investments. EDC does not anticipate any major quota adjustments for key species such as crab or shrimp through 2010, but there is some upside for landings of lesser valued ground fish.

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Government follows through on promised AbitibiBowater corporate subsidy

Premier Danny Williams and a gaggle of cabinet ministers took the trip to central Newfoundland on Tuesday to announce that the provincial government will pay former AbitibiBowater workers money owed to them by the company.

That’s pretty much the logical result of government’s announced intention in late April to subsidize AbitibiBowater:

2.  If that’s the case, why doesn’t the government just cough up the cash and then sort it out with AB later on, rather than leave the workers hanging?

The announcement comes as discontent grows in central Newfoundland.

Meanwhile in totally, completely unrelated news, the provincial government’s pollster is currently in the field collecting the quarterly poll goose and the nurses are about to go on strike. 

In other totally, unrelated and completely coincidental events, the provincial government is threatening to legislate the nurses back to work in the event they take strike action.  Government has committed to paying the nurses according to the template agreement which would be considerably less than had been negotiated. Government is also insisting on two clauses which the union has said are deal-breakers.  The nurses have suggested sending the two disputed clauses to binding arbitration.  The provincial government has refused.

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Two degrees of separation: nurses strike version

Anyone care to go back and look at the last nurses strike? 

Check the issues.  Check the government behaviour. Look familiar?  But then take a look at the premiers involved and play the old two degrees of separation game.

1.  Who connects Brian and Danny, besides Debbie Forward? This person isn’t directly involved in the labour issues.  It’s just curious to see the same people popping up.

(Hint:  it’s hard to differentiate two political parties when they are the same.)

2.  What was the political impact of government shafting the nurses and legislating them back to work?

3.  How long did Brian Tobin last in provincial politics after he legislated nurses back to work?

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It’s war!

After lengthy talks on the weekend aimed at averting a nurses strike, the provincial government refused to change it's position at all.

A strike is now guaranteed, in apparent fulfillment of government’s agenda. The provincial government appeared to change positions on other language and provisions but consistently refused to change its position on two controversial clauses. 

One would enable government to set different wage scales for nurses based on recruiting issues.  The other would allow government to fire nurses injured on the job who hadn’t returned to work after two years and been deemed to have a permanent injury. These two provisions were aimed from outset, it would appear, at the nurses.  Other public sector unions accepted the government’s position whole, without change.  These provisions did not affect their workers.

The premier has promised that if the nurses strike (as opposed to buckle to government’s diktat), the government will introduce legislation imposing a settlement that includes all the provisions nurses have rejected. As well, the government has committed to eliminating all the pay raises and incentives that were negotiated.

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Two degrees of separation

Around these parts, we’ve always joked that you can play six degrees of separation everywhere else but in Newfoundland and Labrador you can likely only get to two, at best.

Here’s a case in point:

1.   Engineering firm SNC-Lavalin just bought Spectrol Energy Services for an undisclosed sum.

2.   SNC-Lavalin is a contractor on the Lower Churchill project according to the project’s website.  Its boss is a strong proponent of the project.

If you google “SNC-Lavalin + lower churchill” or look in the upper right hand corner of your browser, the website still reads Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, incidentally, just to emphasise the interconnected nature of these ventures. The Lower Churchill project used to be run by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, but is now another subsidiary of NALCOR Energy, the provincial government’s umbrella energy corporation.

3.  In February, 2009, SNC Lavalin was one of six firms invited to express interest in a piece of work on the project.

4.  Danny Williams used to be a director  - some report it as president - of Spectrol Energy Services;  his interest in the company was placed in a blind trust after he became premier.  In his 2008 filing with the legislature’s members’ interest commissioner, Williams listed a loan guarantee to Spectrol as one of his liabilities.

5.  Spectrol is an oil and gas industry service company that has done work for, among others,  ExxonMobil and the Hibernia project as well as Husky and the White Rose project (starting in 2005). 

6.  The provincial government owns a 4.9% interest in White Rose, which it manages through a subsidiary of NALCOR.  It acquired the interest last year.

7.  Bill Fanning, Spectrol’s chief executive was appointed to the Bull Arm Corporation by the Williams cabinet in 2006.  Questions were raised about the appointment at the time but the government brushed them aside.

8.  Last year, the Bull Arm Corporation was made a subsidiary of NALCOR Energy.

9.  Fanning still sits on the Bull Arm board right alongside directors who also sit on the boards of the other NALCOR subsidiaries in the true fashion of interlocking directorates.

10.  SNC-Lavalin subsidiary BAE Newplan is suing the proponents of a refinery project in Placentia Bay.  In a trip to the Middle East in 2008, Danny Williams reportedly promoted the project unsuccessfully to overseas investors.

How many degrees of separation does all that add up to?

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A mere pittance

Just a few other observations come to mind at the end of the week on the province’s newest old research and development agency.

The original post – that highlighted the sooper sekrit powers the R & D agency has – can be found here.

1.  Glenn Janes,  The chief executive officer of the thing, was appointed in December 2007. 

2.  The legislation to reinvent the agency was passed through the legislature in December 2008, isn’t in force yet and is already being amended in a bill currently being rushed through the legislature before the nurses’ strike hits.  It’s a council or agency or thingy since one of the changes being made will give cabinet the power to change the name whenever it feels like it.

3.  On the one hand, support for research and development is good.  On the other hand, $25 million is a paltry sum.  Well, paltry compared to what will be flowing from the oil and gas sector – for example – under offshore board regulations. 

The first three projects will pump considerably more than that annually.  As The Telegram described it in February:

The new rules require companies to spend a percentage of their annual offshore revenue on research, development, education and training activities in the province.

The rate will vary from year to year. This year, for instance, it is 0.36 per cent.

Basically, one project offshore will pump more cash into research and development than the provincial government alone.  We are talking hundreds of millions from Big Oil thanks to the offshore board.

4.  Had the government been really serious about R & D, they could have worked a deal with the oil companies to channel the Big Oil R & D payouts through the revamped agency/council/ thingy.  Since they appointed Janes way back in 2007, it’s not like they didn’t have time to work that into the Hebron talks or something.

5.  Speaking of Hebron talks, getting excited about $25 million in funding for R & D seems a bit odd given that the provincial government settled for a flat amount from Hebron.  That flat amount  - $120 million over the entire 25 year lifespan of the project - is way below what the project would have had to put into the provincial economy if the offshore board regs were applied. 

Put another way:  Big Oil involved in Hebron will shell out about less than $5.0 million a year.

Put another way still, Hibernia alone has put on average almost $20 million a year into local research and development since first oil in 1997.

6.  A couple of years ago there was plenty of tough talk, but the reality is that both the royalty deal and especially the R & D aspects of the Hebron project are actually a lot less than they should have been.

That’s pretty ironic, considering the Premier was quoted by the Financial Post two years ago talking about the need – supposedly – to get more out of Big Oil, not the less he settled for:

"In these times of extremely high oil prices where consumers are bearing the burden and companies are taking in exorbitant profits, the time has come for new arrangements for projects on a go-forward basis."

It was a new arrangement, of course, just one that ensures the companies keep more of their cash from Hebron.

7.  When it comes to the independence needed to run a successful research and development operation, the new agency won’t have it.  The chief executive officer is appointed by cabinet – not the agency’s board – and all staff hiring must be approved by the minister. 

With any R & D agency like this, autonomy should be the watchword.  Think of the research successes at Memorial University and its associated agencies.  Instead what we are getting is like a think tank where the thinking is watched over by Joan Burke and her colleagues. 

That never works well, especially if this new agency is going to be funding social science and policy research. 

All of this is a big shame really, since the guy in charge is evidently a sharp fellow.  Too bad he is working under such obvious hindrances.  It would be hard to imagine Janes came up with these himself working from what he described as a clean sheet of paper.

Maybe in a few years time, some other administration of whatever political stripe can  fix the fairly obvious problems with what started out as a really good idea.

40 years ago.

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Whadidwetellya?

On Wednesday we warned the government was putting on the push to slam the House closed.

It’s twoo, It’s twoo, as Lily von Schtup would say. Even voice of the cabinet minister is covering it.

The reason:  nurses strike.

If the House is open on Wednesday, nurses will be filling the galleries and the opposition will be hammering away at the provincial government asking all sorts of difficult questions.

Hardly likely the provincial government would want that when their pollster is in the field collecting the quarterly harvest of poll goosing results.

Very embarrassing would it be to have nurses doing even one tenth what the crab crowd did to government in the spring of 2005. 

Not only that but with cracks opening within the government caucus there could be a sorry-assed repeat of the whole Fabian Manning fiasco.  Seriously, people.  If Ray Hunter has to get up from his uncomfortable new pew to refute an accusation he’s been muzzled – and thereby confirm the accusation – then you know there are others who are feeling a tad unsettled trapped between the wishes of their constituents and the diktats that come via blackberry from the Tower.

Ray’s on edge.  Who else? Sullivan maybe and the pressure she must be under from people in central Newfoundland pissed off about Abitibi.

Jim Baker and the crowd in Labrador west?  More bad news coming on Friday, if rumours pan out.

Anyone feeling heat from Corner Brook and the failed Grenfell autonomy thing? Increasing uncertainty about the Kruger mill and one of its machines?

How about townie MHAs?  Or those from the Third City?  Must be hard having all those former mayors in one spot and the guy who goes in to cabinet is the one who can’t speak in whole sentences.

Close the House and let the pollster do his part in poll goosing saga free from all that “counter-spinning negativity”.  The line still brings a chuckle since it starts from the premise that there is “spinning” in the first place that is being countered.  Think of it as a round about confession, like telling Randy Simms that if one wanted to goose polls one would start the week before the pollster goes to the field.  Which of course is exactly what they do.

Anyway, it’s not like someone didn’t tell you what was going on.

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TJ the Latte Boy

The Kristin Chenoweth version that started a bit of a craze:

Another version which is actually much funnier in some respects:

And of course there had to be a counterpart from Taylor’s/TJ’s perspective:

Now the rest of you can be infected with a song that will get stuck in your head, too.

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Turn off the damn phone

From a couple of months ago, admittedly, but still worth watching again.

Sexist and inaccurate coverage at macleans.ca

Apparently, macleans.ca couldn’t find a story worth writing about from Newfoundland and Labrador so they had to showcase provincial environment minister Charlene Johnson as the poster child for provincial legislatures and their lack of maternity policies.

The thing is called “Why MPPs aren’t having more babies.”

There are more than a few factual problems with this piece so let’s start running through them.

1.  If you look at the demographics of the legislatures across the country you’ll like find that very few of the elected members are women and fewer still of those are in their child-bearing years.

2.  If you look at the men elected, you’ll also likely find most of them are at the point in their lives where their families are already started. A lack of clear maternity policies isn’t keeping women – let alone younger women – out of politics;  other issues are.

3.  It is incorrect to state that there is no maternity leave policy in the House of Assembly.  Johnson had to apply for leave, the same as anyone else would in any other situation.  Why the management commission or the Speaker hasn’t addressed her request yet is the problem. Johnson has obtained leave previously for medical issues.  This one would be no different, at the very least.  if Johnson wanted to take maternity leave, she’d have no trouble getting it.

4.  Therefore, the suggestion she’d have to pay a couple of hundred bucks is crap since it is highly unlikely the Tory cabinet minister would be denied maternity leave from a legislature dominated by the Tories and presided over by a Tory Speaker (even if by some remote chance her application might be denied.)

5.   There is an entirely different angle on this story, of course, which macleans.ca ignored in favour of the sexist one they took.  Like any, modern, progressive couple, Johnson and her husband didn’t see it as automatic that the woman had to take time off to care for the child.  After a month or so, Johnson is returning to work and her husband is taking parental leave .

6.  macleans.ca also didn’t note that Johnson is eligible for $1,000 for her child as part of the government’s bounty on live births announced during the last provincial general election.

7.  Referring to members of provincial legislatures as MPPs suggests that someone at macleans.ca needs to check the old style guide.  That particular appellation – short for member of the provincial parliament – is strictly found in Ontari-ari-ario.  They are members of the National Assembly in Quebec and Members of  the House of Assembly in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Canadian Press warns against using the abbreviations for provincial legislature members since the titles vary.  Good advice, but even in a pinch MLA – member of the legislative assembly – is generic enough to pass.

8.  Stories macleans.ca ignored in favour of this one:

-  Public funds diverted to partisan purposes (rather timely given goings-on in the U.K.

- The related story of a partisan appointed as chief electoral officer

And that’s just two of the juicier ones with some national relevance.

9.  As a last note, though, it was nice to see Judy Tyabji back in the news again.

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Quality matters

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians got a huge reminder today of a piece of red tape the provincial government deliberately ignored in its recent three year crusade to rid the province of unnecessary and burdensome government regulation.

Gas prices leaped six and a half cents.

The provincial government’s petroleum products price fixing agency has cost taxpayers in the province more than $65 million above what would have occurred if the regulatory system wasn’t in place. 

Some taxpayers, like those on the coast of Labrador, get an extra shaft from the province’s price fixing scheme.  Early price freezes mean the price per gallon stayed well above what the island portion of the province paid through the fall and early winter as prices everywhere else dropped.

Supposedly the provincial government eliminated 27% of the red tape that used to be there.  How they measured it is beyond anyone other than the people who issued the news releases over the past three years that contained little more than numbers:  government has cut another 3,652 pieces of red tape on its goal of cutting some other bigger meaningless number.

Rather than quantity, they should have gone for quality.  if they really wanted to wipe out useless government bureaucracy they’d have closed the gas pricing fixing office.

That’s something every consumer in the province – businesses included – would have seen every single day.

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Reinventing the wheel and keeping it secret

According to a provincial government news release, the Premier announced something new today: the “Research & Development Corporation (RDC), a new Crown entity for improving the province’s research and development capacity.”

Problem One:  it isn’t new.

At some point in the distant past, the legislature passed the Research Council Act which created an agency to fund research and development.  The thing is old enough to be included in not only the 1990 consolidation of provincial statutes but in the 1970 one as well.

The purposes of the council, as established long ago, are to research into just about anything anyone can think of with respect to the local economy and society and to take whatever steps are necessary to support both the research and potentially the fruits of research.

Last December, the legislature passed a new bill to create a research and development council.  The new legislation isn’t in force by the way, so the announcement today was completely bogus on that front as well. 

But aside from those extra two words in the title, the new bill doesn’t do much that the old one didn’t.

Problem Two:   the research and development council act, passed in December, copies almost word for word the sections of the energy corporation bill and thereby that makes pretty well everything connected to the council exempt from the province’s open records laws based solely on the decision of the cabinet-appointed Rhodes scholar who runs the thing.

That isn’t sarcasm, incidentally.  The guy is yet another Rhodent appointed by the province’s chief Rhodes beneficiary.  

Public money – to the tune of $25 million is going in – but what happens to will remain a state secret.  Not only are the fruits of research to be hidden from the people who paid for it but the new corporation can hide just about everything related to its own operations.

The information and privacy commissioner and anyone else who would normally examine a secrecy decision by a government body are directed by this bill to uphold the corporation’s decision on keeping secrets.

The old corporation had a mandate to publish research results, incidentally, which is pretty much consistent with the idea of making ideas available so the private sector can develop them and make something out of them.  Academics publish the results of their research so their peers can either profit from it for their work or tear into it and find the flaws. 

Not so in the brave new world of the research and development council.

Everything will  be secret except for whatever trivial bits of information the people controlling this enterprise – cabinet appointees all – deign to tell the nasty little proles who are footing the bill.

The cabinet gets to appoint the chief executive officer and the staff hiring must all be approved by the minister.

But even though this new version of the research council legislation was just created last December – and the bill isn’t in force yet -  the government is already making amendments.  The government bill exempts the new entity entirely from the Corporations Act and gives cabinet the power to pick a name for the council (it went from being the Research and Development Council to a name to be chosen later). 

The tenure of board members has changed as well for some inexplicable reason. Here’s the December version of section 7(1):

7. (1) Members of the board shall be appointed for a term of 3 years but may be removed by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council for cause.

Here’s the May version:

7. (1) Members of the board, whether appointed before or after this Act comes into force, shall be appointed for a term of up to 3 years but may be removed by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council for cause.

Anyone want to venture what difference the change makes?

To help you out, here’s the provision of the bill under which the current members of the council were appointed (remember that the new bill isn’t in force yet):

4. (1) Members hold office for a period of 3 years from the date of their appointment.

What we have here is yet another example of policy recycling by an administration that has been surprisingly bereft of any original ideas since 2003.

On top of that we have a government which can’t seem to sort out its own legislation.  We had three versions of the energy corporation bill in each of three years and here again we have a piece of legislation that hasn’t even been proclaimed and yet is being altered already.  Both of those things suggest serious problems in the policy-making processes of government.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, we have yet another example of a government that talks a great deal about openness, transparency and accountability but seems to do exactly the opposite.

Where is the novelty, where is the innovation in any of that?

What a way to start out what is supposedly a bold, new venture to come with some original ideas.

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Government pollster in the field

You can tell Corporate research Associates – the provincial government pollster – is doing the quarterly omnibus.

1.  Yet another federal-provincial funding announcement.  (The second in three days)

2.  More public cash for a ski club in Labrador.

3.  Federal and provincial cash for aquaculture.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Legislature to close early?

Don’t be surprised if the House of  Assembly shuts down suddenly later this week or early next week before the nurses’ job action starts.

After weeks of no activity, there’s been a sudden flurry of night sittings and extended hours that seem designed to clear off a few pieces of legislation so the House can close well before the original planned closure in mid-June.

The reason for closing early is simple:  there’s no way government could afford to have the House open with a nurses strike on the go at the same time the government’s pollster is in the field.  That’s right folks:  Corporate Research Associates is making its quarterly calls as we speak.

They can adjourn the sitting and then call it back later, if need be to send the nurses back to work suitably punished, as the Premier threatened today.  Rest assured though, the House wouldn’t be called back to vote on the bill to end a nurses strike until Don Mills’ people have stopped making their calls or have all but finished.

Never forget the extent to which provincial government pronouncements are driven at certain times of the year by the poll-goosing imperative. 

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One thing you can count on…

If the nurses take any strike action, the provincial government will legislate them back to work with a vengeance.

Sure the Premier and finance minister have drawn a dozen lines in the sand and made countless threats all of which came to naught.

But when it comes to the point where the labour struggle is, this provincial government will use the power of the legislature to smash whatever it needs to smash in order to get its way.

Just ask the Abitibi workers who thought the expropriation bill was about helping them out and not about skimming off the cream of Abitibi’s assets for the Premier’s pet crown corporation.

Plus, they’ll change the current legislation to make sure that there is as little chance of a court challenge as possible.

But…

It’s hard to imagine that the provincial government would follow on one aspect of the Premier’s latest threats simply because it would only have the result of making an already tough labour environment even tougher:

"So, there'll be no standby increase, there'll be no shift differential increase, there'll be no educational leave. There will be no additional steps for nurses coming into the system, and there'll be no additional steps for nurses that are already in the system."

No educational leave?

No additional steps?  That would have the effect of making recruitment and retention even tougher even allowing for the union busting provisions government will take for themselves so they can cut one-off deals with individual nurses.

Then again, in the Great Game of Chicken that is government’s negotiations with the nurses, logic and sense just don’t apply.

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Nose-puller alert: Frank and Brian never spoke after 1987

Via the National Post,  a description of a bit of Brian Mulroney’s testimony at the inquiry into the whole Airbus mess:

His relationship with Frank Moores, at one time a great friend, was “nonexistent” after 1987, when Moores trashed Mulroney’s government. “I simply severed communications with him completely.”

Does anyone else find it hard to believe that Brian Mulroney and Frank Moores didn’t speak – even once – during the period after 1987?

Like say, maybe around the time of Meech Lake?

Maybe September 1990?  Frank was here for the Hibernia signing but the poor old e-scribbler brain can’t recall if the Prime Minister at the time made the trip as well.

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S-92 Q and A

While it is stamped for internal use only, CBC has posted an internal questions and answers document prepared for use by the oil company officials and Cougar for use at some meetings being organized with offshore workers prior to the resumption of helicopter flights to the three platforms.

The answers are straightforward and leave out information that is still subject to the Transportation Safety Board investigation of the S-92 crash two months ago.

Some answers stand out, though, like this one about gear box warning indications:

Q79. Has there ever been a Gear Box alarm incident before? How was it handled? Was anything different from this incident? Did it happen with the S-92A? (Questions 112, 45, 277)

A. In the entire global fleet of Sikorsky S-92A helicopters, there have been a
total of five incidences related to three types of gear box issues.  Two (including Cougar’s helicopter) related to filter bowl studs, two related to lube oil pump Vespel spline couplings, and one related to overfilling of lube oil. The change from titanium to steel studs as mandated by FAA directive has been completed. The Vespel spline couplings underwent a design improvement that was previously implemented.

or another on the 30 minute run dry issue:

Q81. There has been comments that the gear box should be able to
run dry for thirty minutes, if this is the case why did this not happen?  (Question 240)

A. Sikorsky states that there is no “30-minute run dry” regulatory requirement for civilian certified helicopters. The S-92AA main gearbox is fully certified, without waiver or exception, to the latest Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), including Part 29 through Amendment 47. Sikorsky states that total loss of oil is considered an extremely remote event based on system design. Further,that for all gearbox failure modes that are not deemed as extremely remote, continued safe operation of the S-92A helicopter main gearbox has been demonstrated in excess of three hours running time. In the circumstance of total loss of lubrication, a “Land Immediately” instruction is directed.

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