“Accelerated” Labrador roads work actually happening next year – as planned

The provincial government is  “accelerating” its commitment to road work in Labrador  - whatever the heck that means - but that doesn’t mean the work will be done in 2009.

A government news release issued last week started with these glorious words:

The Williams Government is accelerating its commitment to revitalize the Trans Labrador Highway (TLH) by issuing a tender to lay asphalt on an additional 50 kilometre section of Phase I from Happy Valley-Goose Bay towards Churchill Falls. Rather than wait until next year to award the contract, the Provincial Government is getting ready now to award this further work.

That’s additional as in more than the 30 kilometres scheduled to be paved this year and the 80 kilometres to be widened.

There was even a quote from Labrador affairs minister John  Hickey saying that “[t]his accelerated work on the Trans Labrador Highway is an excellent example of this government’s effort to realize its long-term vision for Labrador.”

But just like Tom Rideout couldn’t tell time, John Hickey and his colleagues are apparently having some difficulty with the concept “accelerated”.

As Hickey told The Labradorian this week: “We’re not sure if we’ll be able to get  all of that paving done this year, but it’s our hope to have it started.”

Now in this case, “accelerated”  would normally mean faster  than anticipated or than originally plan.  What Hickey told The Labradorian this week is that – despite his claims last week – the paving on the Trans-Labrador Highway between Churchill Falls and Goose Bay will be finished in 2001-2011…as originally planned.

Last week’s news release was evidently part of some sort of poll-goosing spin campaign.  Heaven only knows what Hickey’s most recent comments were all about. Maybe it’s yet another hickey-up.

-srbp-

How old is your cell phone?

Try 1989 for customers of Central Telephone in the United States. 

That’s the date on this video from youtube and it looks to be about right.

There’s another video dated 1986 but the thing lacks any voice over or other identifying marks to suggest it is either an ad or something from about 1986.

The cell phone itself dates back way before that  - try 1973 - with the first commercial product entering service in the mid to late 1970s.  of course, with a handset going for about US$4,000, there weren’t a lot of them on the go.

As with home computers, consider the capabilities of cell phones back then and what they do today.

-srbp-

Wannabe candidates and nose-pulling

Ryan Cleary’s departure from voice of the cabinet minister came as a surprise to most.

There was speculation he’d been fired for campaigning with Jack Layton.  Cleary supporters came forward with other views including one version, reputedly straight from the horse’s mouth, that he left to spend more time with his family.

Here’s the way Cleary’s closest blogger-buddy put it:

However, he [Cleary] did say that the toll on his family was too high.  He was missing way too many sports matches, PTA meetings and was not home to put his kids to bed.  He told me that he could not make a long term commitment to Nightline.  He was having trouble reconciling his love of family with the hours of the job.  I think we can all understand that.

Tonight he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Well, that last one seemed like a real politician’s nose-puller.  How many times have you heard a politician quit a job of leave politics claiming it was to spend more time with the wee ones?  It’s used a lot but it’s seldom the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Turns out the bloggerated version from Cleary’s pal was a nose puller worthy of the love child of Karl Malden and  Jimmy Durante.

Cleary told a gathering of local New Democrats over the weekend that he will be looking for their nomination in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the upcoming federal election.  The Steele crowd wanted a long-term commitment, it seems, and Cleary couldn’t give such a commitment and run for the Dippers too.

Now if any of you know anything about politics, especially federal politics, you’ll know it’s not a venture for a guy who wants to spend more time with his life-partner and offspring.  To the contrary, federal politics can be brutal on home life. 

Missed birthday parties come with the territory.   Putting the kids to bed would be something from a fantasy world.  Getting to hockey games or school plays will also be dodgy and that’s even if the whole clan ups-stakes and moves to walking distance of Hy’s. 

Add in any considerations of more complex family situations and you can see that politics would not be the life for someone who found it problematic to spend a few hours at night sharing pearls of wisdom with the likes of the Moon Man rather than helping the wee ones snuggle down in their Spidey jammies.

Now on the other hand, Cleary may have nothing to worry about.  He might wind up with plenty of time on his hands.

The other New Democrat buzz from last weekend concerned an unnamed – but reputedly high profile  - candidate who is also eyeing the seat Cleary wants.  Unlike the relative walkover he faced last time in getting the nod, Cleary may have to organize to win the nomination in the first place.  He’ll have to start banking some cash, assembling the team and indentifying supporters.

And then he would have to win the election.

In the meantime though, that story about leaving Nightline to spend more time with the kids sounds like the kind of stuff  you get from certain kinds of politicians.

Bullshit isn’t an auspicious start to a political campaign.

-srbp-

Fantasy Island II: Churchill Falls and s.92(A)

Tom Careen of Placentia is apparently vying for the title of Chief Fantasist here on Fantasy island.  He’s become a regular letter writer to the Telegram usually on some topic out of the nationalist collection of fairy tales.

His latest one is an old nationalist chestnut, namely the Churchill Falls deal:

On page 191 of the Young Commission report, there is this paragraph: "In several meetings, we heard that Newfoundland and Labrador should pursue its constitutional rights under Section 92A of the Constitution Act, 1867, to access power and energy from Churchill Falls for industrial purposes in Labrador and on the island."

This is supposedly a magic solution to the 1969 contract that sees Hydro Quebec buy power from Churchill Falls at an extraordinarily low rate until 2016.  At that point, the contract automatically renews until 2041 at an even lower rate.

Now it would appear that these people  - careen included - actually bothered to read section 92(A), an addition to the Constitution Act in 1982.  That will become plain in a moment.

What they are talking about is actually the now famous Churchill Falls legend about a power corridor through Quebec which – if you believe this part of the fairy tale – the request for which the federal government rejected in the 1960s for fear of inflaming Quebec separatists.

This is where the problems start.

Firstly, it doesn’t appear such a request was ever made in the first place, in order for it to be rejected.

Second, there was little incentive for the Newfoundland government to make the request in the first place.  Churchill Falls may have been a deal between a private company – BRINCO – and Hydro Quebec but the project was one of Joe Smallwood’s great provincial projects.  Anyone recall his words at the sod-turning, the bit about “our river”?

Well, one of the reasons why Smallwood most likely never made the request in the first place is that it would have been made under the old section 92 (10).  In effect, had the request on the power corridor been made and accepted, the entire project would fall under federal jurisdiction and the entire Churchill Falls venture would have become a federal Crown corporation.

Not a provincial project any longer, but a federal one with no Joe Smallwood to take any of the credit for bringing it about.  He’d have had to take a back seat and watch as one of his favourite pet projects was ripped from his hands all in order to deal with the tough negotiating position Hydro Quebec was taking.

Despite there being virtually no evidence the power corridor was anything more than a weak-assed bargaining ploy by Smallwood on behalf of BRINCO, the legend persists.

And, it appears that the whole myth has morphed from 92 (10)(a and c) to s. 92(A).  on the face of it you can see how the whole thing changed simply in the retelling:  there’s a ‘92” and an “a” in both;  all you drop is the “10”.  Stranger things have happened.

Of course, you’ll notice that at no point does anyone who mentions 92(A) usually ever discuss what the clause actually says.  There is a summary on page 116 if the final report from the Young Royal Commission but that only highlights the shortcomings in Careen’s idea. All s.92 (1) does is ensure that the provincial governments can make laws governing non-renewable natural resources.   The Young commission makes several recommendations but they are really vague.  The wording is essentially that the provincial government should look after the best interests of the province including taking into consideration s.92(10).

But they don’t recommend anything specific and that is telling.

Simply put, there is nothing specific in s.92(10) that provides any solution to the Churchill Falls contract power rates.  The provincial government can tax power exports but it can tax in such a way as to discrimination against export power.  In other words, any tax applied to Churchill Falls  - virtually all of which is exported - would also apply to power from Holyrood or Baie d’Espoir, all of which is consumed inside the province.

Tom Careen would have known that if he’d bothered to read the Constitution Act or even notice what the Young commission report actually says when it summarises what s.92(10) says.

Then  again, as Chief Fantasist you wouldn’t be interested in anything except…well…fantasy.

-srbp-

Another Homer Simpson moment

So a couple of communities on the coast of Labrador are complaining of lack of action by the provincial government. One is a roads issues which falls under the responsibility of Trevor Taylor, the transportation minister.  The other concerns water and sewer work which is the responsibility of Diane Whelan, the municipal affairs minister.

To answer the media questions, the provincial government deploys John “The Shoveller” Hickey, the minister of Labrador Affairs.  His response sets him up for a big fall:

"I can't act on issues if people to raise them with me," Mr. Hickey said. "I got to say, these communities need leadership. Getting on an open line show is just not cutting it."

Now right off the bat, we have no idea which level of leadership Hickey is criticising:  Is it the mayor and town councils in the affected communities?  Is it the local member of the House of Assembly or is it his cabinet colleagues who are showing inadequate leadership by not bringing this issue to his attention?

But the real problem with Hickey’s comments is that he has set himself up for a huge political smack between the eyes.  All someone has to do is produce letters to his office concerning these issues and the old boy will look like a complete idiot.

Not a good spot.

And how likely, you may ask, is it that someone would be able to produce such correspondence?

Well consider that the issue of a road to connect Norman Bay to the rest of Labrador came up at the 2005 annual meeting of the Combined Councils of Labrador.  If a townie could find this on the Internet with a simple google search, surely John Hickey or someone from his staff could have noted this issue. And it’s not like Hickey wouldn’t have already been aware of these issues:  he attended a session with Labrador politicians. 

On top of that there’s the story in the Northern Pen - and reprinted  in the Western Star - from last February about a letter from one resident of Norman Bay to Barack Obama looking for help with roads.  This didn’t turn up in Hickey’s media clippings?

How about the letter the fellow says he wrote to …wait a minute…John Hickey:

Roberts said he's exhausted all possible avenues locally, having sent letters to Labrador MP Todd Russell and other federal politicians, as well as to Labrador Affairs Minister John Hickey.

Did John get the letter?

And if that wasn’t good enough, it’s not like the issue of roads in the area didn’t come up in the House of Assembly in 2007.  Again, a simple google search turned up a wonderful couple of answers from Hickey, none of which blamed others for the situation.  Rather Hickey just deployed the traditional bureaucratic response that he’d take the issues under advisement.

Then there’s the Northern Strategic Plan, which includes references to communities along the southeast coast of Labrador raising concerns about an inability to cost-share water and sewer work.  Hickey must have heard someone mention this stuff given that his picture and a message are included at the front end of the plan document.

So there it is:  Hickey says he’s never heard of the issues because no one has sent him letters.  There’s ample evidence he is aware of the issues in southern Labrador and that at least one person has actually written to him.

This is a classic Homer Simpson moment.  You can see the letters turning up all over the place and Hickey being embarrassed at his own stunnedness in making a comment that is only too easy to prove false.

All the rest of us can do is laugh and utter a “D’oh” in unison.

-srbp-

Fallow field?

nottawa raises an interesting point about NALCO’s bailout of the Parson’s Pond oil licenses.

-srbp-

Shocker of the century: soldiers, sex, speed and booze version

Some prudes at the Department of National Defence need to get a grip.

Apparently, they are  concerned because a recent study showed that the mostly male, young soldiers returning from Afghanistan are spending their bonus pay getting laid and going on the beer during a five day “decompression” stint on Cyprus after their operational tour is over.

According to the Toronto Star:

The problem reached such a state when the last contingent of Canadians stopped off in Cyprus this spring that military officials have recommended slapping a two-drink limit on soldiers for the first night of their decompression to "facilitate learning" in a Day 2 course on transitioning from life at war to life at home.

Soldiers are apparently also spending their cash renting dune buggies or fast jet skis they they then use to race about at high speed.

It’s hard to know which is more ludicrous:  the fact that someone at National Defence headquarters paid good money to study this or that the Toronto Star is reporting it as if it was shocking and somehow worthy of corrective action.

DND is apparently considering adding some lectures to the post-deployment curriculum to address the “problem”.

Now the Star is not known for the high standards of its reporting, especially when it comes to matters military.

But still.

A bunch of young men want to release some tension after six months of hard  work - need we remind the dorks at the Star life threatening at that – and so they blow some cash getting drunk and enjoying the company of other willing young people. those that break the law get arrested and dealt with in the courts.

Where exactly is the problem in all this?

Well, where other than among or with the crowd who write this crap for the Star’s readers?

-srbp-

Another safari reporter bags small game

When you drop in, do a couple of quickie interviews and then head off again, you tend to miss the details.  The Globe is the latest vehicle for the safari reporter’s guide to something called Newfoundland.

There are some nuggets of gold in the story but they are inundated with the same old crap that’s been written a dozen times.  Gee, no one has ever called the province “The Rock” before or noted that economic diversification is a major goal.

There’s even the obligatory interview with  Danny who does his part to spread a few complete falsehoods (like the bit about “ a St. John's-heavy boom” being because half the population lives in or around the capital) and resurrect some foolishness  from the early days of his administration (the Stunnel is apparently one of his dreams).   BTW, note the curious – and continuing -  tendency to refer to the psychological state of the entire province and the psychological state of a single person as if they were interchangeable or the same thing.

Count on the locals who normally judge their own self-worth by what appears in the Globe to be feeling a bit buoyant initially. 

-srbp-

PUB pork snacks: the editorial view

The Saturday Telegram editorial makes good points about the recent pork appointment at the board of commissioners of public utilities, but it misses one key fact:

The provincial government actually started a hiring process for the public utilities board that should have resulted in merit-based appointments.

They decided to cancel the competition and revert to the old method of appointment.

The current administration actually started down the right road and then turned around and went back.

-srbp-

Takogo kak…

So what is it about northern strongmen, physical activity and their supposed political power?

Ya got yer Putin, the pecs and a swim in a Siberian lake…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or Hickey and…

the…

umm…

err…

shovel.

 

 

 

 

 

-srbp-

NALCO buys pot from Leprechaun, has one year to find black gold

The provincial government’s energy corporation will spend at least $20 million over the next year to drill exploration wells on three licenses near Parsons Pond.  The wells must be drilled within the next 12 months or so or the licenses will revert to the Crown.

NALCOR Energy acquired a 67% interest in the venture for slightly more than CDN$500,000; that represents about 85% of the interest previously held by Calgary-based Leprechaun Resources. The remainder is split among a group of small private sector companies:  Leprechaun Resources, Deer Lake Oil and Gas, InvestCan and Vulcan Minerals.  The only changes in the interests held by each company appears to be with the Leprechaun portion.

Leprechaun tried to raise capital for the venture last year through a public share offering.  Evidently that offering didn’t attract as much attention as expected. It appears that the provincial government’s energy corporation stepped in to salvage the project. 

Vulcan and InvestCan are also partnered on a separate venture in the Bay St. George region.  The drilling program on the Robinsons No. 1 is planned to finish this year at at depth of 3600 metres.  Earlier this year, Vulcan drilled two wells in the shallow Flat Bay deposit, both of which showed oil.

In mid July 2009, the provincial environment department notified Leprechaun that its application for an access road at Parsons Pond would require an Environmental Preview Report.

-srbp-

Devil in the details Update: From Moira Baird’s excellent Telegram story:

1. Expiry date on the existing licenses:  February 1, 2010. That’s two tight a time frame to get three holes spudded and assessed.

2.  Drilling as early as September:  Using what rig?  If NALCO doesn’t have one already lined up and on site, they will have to bring one in from as far away as Alberta or the Gulf Of Mexico.  Good luck with that.  The best prospect would be to use the rig Vulcasn currently is using on Robinsons No. 1.  Availability late fall or early winter.

3.  Friends in high places:  NALCO’s Jim Keating on the possibility of getting an extension on the licenses:  “I believe, if required, we'll be able to seek an extension for the licences to make sure that ... we optimize the best results for the people of the province and our partners.”

Can you say “unfair advantage”, boys and girls?

4. Which other companies:  “[NALCO boss Ed] Martin said Nalcor has been assessing the west coast for the past two years and had also been approached by some of the exploration companies.”

Okay.  Which ones and for what properties?

We know about Leprechaun, which has former cabinet minister Paul Shelley in key positions.  How about Deer Lake Oil and Gas with former Peckford aide Cabot Martin at the helm?

Those would be the most likely choices and they might also explain why Leprechaun effectively got what looks more like a government bailout than a farm-in. 

After all, if Leprechaun had the cash to do the drilling program, it wouldn’t have sold out to NALCO or anyone else.  And if all Leprechaun had needed was an easy extension of the license to get the job done, they also wouldn’t have sold out such a large stake to NALCO.

Nope, license extensions are only easy if you’ve got connections and NALCO is connected all the way to the top.

5.  Pull the other one:  $14 million out of a total of $20 million?  The drilling program was estimated to cost $26 million, not 14.  Where’d the rest of the cost go?

Counterpointing

Of course pumping out a raft of good news, even if it is recycled for the most part, does help to offset the latest employment figures.

There are over 6,000 not working in July 2009 in Newfoundland and Labrador who were working full-time in the same month last year.  There are actually 7200 fewer full-time workers year over year but a slight gain in part-time employment shaved a bit off the net employment picture.

You won’t see much reporting of the jobs stats in Newfoundland and Labrador, but you will see plenty of space given to the “joy, joy” stuff.

-srbp-

You know its polling season

1.  An announcement about fibre-optic something or other.

2.  An announcement about energy something or other.

3.  Money for road paving, announced again and again.

There must be some really intense concern on the 8th that the public mood needs a lot of extra help to be happy for the pollsters this summer.

-srbp-

The longest, slowest good-bye in political history

For those who don’t know, the Council of the Federation isn’t another Star Trek convention.  It’s the new name for the meetings where all Canadian premiers get together and talk about stuff.

Only a few years ago it was one of the most important thing on the go, at least for one premier.

Now, suddenly, things like protecting the environment, fixing employment insurance and rebuilding the economy are not so important. Some unspecified office business is.

Maybe this is another step in the long, slow, good-bye announced in 2006.

-srbp-

Pork appointment at PUB

Another one of the Tory faithful has gone to his reward as a full-time commissioner of public utilities.

Jim Oxford will start work on September 9th.

Regular readers will note that just before the last provincial election the governing Conservatives announced a public competition for both the chair and commissioners jobs.  They collected a few resumes but then scrapped the whole idea shortly afterward.

The Public Service Commission, the crowd that supposedly ran the competition, refused to provide any substantive information to your humble e-scribbler when he inquired about the whole mess last year. They would confirm a competition had started but beyond that, there was nothing but stony silence.

The absence of a genuinely impartial process for selecting commissioners might be the reason why the minister making Oxford’s appointment had to go to the lengths of pointing out that the public utilities board is an independent body.

Either that or Tom Marshall was sensitive to the fact that Oxford was not only a career public servant in Mount Pearl but the guy who managed the Tory party finances since the year A.D. Naught. 

Oxford joins Andy Wells, the chairman appointed last year.

-srbp-

Real Leaders Shovel It, apparently

There’s been a silly exchange of letters to the editor the past couple of weeks between a fellow named Matthew Pike and the John Hickey.  Hickey took time out from shovelling pavement to shovelling something else in response to a letter from Pike.

The whole thing is silly because Pike started out by kicking Hickey over the foolish government position on the Goose Bay airbase.  It’s pretty silly for Pike to try and hold Hickey to account for a position which  is based on holding John Hickey’s federal political buddies to a promise anyone with half a clue knew was total bullshit when it was uttered.  Hickey campaigned for the federal Connies a couple of times  while the federal Connies were running hard on the bullshit promise of a battalion of soldiers for Goose Bay. Now he is slagging them off for not delivering.  Pike was poking Hickey for supposedly not doing more to push for bullshit.

Anyway, the exchange got sillier considering that the best come-back Hickey could toss at Pike is that Pike is a staffer at the provincial Liberal Party office.  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn’t.  It’s really irrelevant given the inherent foolishness of Hickey’s position on Goose Bay.  That’s also really not much of a point coming from a cabinet minister in a party which relies so heavily on plants in the media. 

Enter Shannon Tobin. 

Tobin decided to dip his oar into the exchange this week in a letter the editor thankfully decided to leave off the newspapers website.  He didn’t point out the obvious.  Instead he decided to back Hickey.  After starting out with a couple of paragraphs based entirely on Pike’s employment status, Tobin drops this wet kiss:

Now I am proud to state that I support the Progressive Conservative party of Newfoundland and Labrador mainly because I know that the PC party has and continues to show a lot more respect towards Labrador than the Liberals ever did.

After accusing someone else of partisanship, Tobin tosses his own partisan affiliation on the table in such glowing – and entirely irrelevant - terms.  The rest of the letter continues the unqualified partisan praise for Hickey  - nothing on the Goose Bay base issue itself, by the by  - before finishing with the assurance from Tobin that  “the view from Lake Melville with John Hickey as our MHA is a bright and magnificent one.”

Takogo kak Hickey:  There’s something about a man in hard hat and safety vest, apparently.  In a letter to The Labradorian, Shannon Tobin credits Hickey with bringing benefits to central Labrador: “… including the fact that we finally will have some  much needed pavement placed on the TLH…it is quite clear that John Hickey is a real leader and there isn’t any need for a change.”

Tobin’s letter is such an over-the-top love letter to John Hickey’s political backside one can easily conclude one of two things:  either Tobin is applying for a job in Hickey’s office via The Labradorian.  Or he’s been applying already but has had no luck in the hunt for Hickey-related work thus far. 

Now of course, there’s no reason to doubt Tobin’s sincerity. He likely believes every partisan word of what he wrote  but, in the ordinary course, one does not usually see even the most blind of congenitally blind partisans weighing in to an essentially trivial bun fight between two other partisans unless there is something else going on.

About the only thing Tobin wrote which likely reflected the views of the majority came in his second sentence:  “I am a little displeased that some would take advantage of this option [writing a letter to the editor] for seemingly political motives.” 

They likely find letters like Tobin’s more than a little displeasing.

-srbp-

Only NL GM dealer affected by cuts closes doors

Clarenville’s Decker Motors is the only General Motors dealership in Newfoundland and Labrador affected by the company’s cuts to dealerships.

The company closed its doors last week after 47 years in business.

-srbp-

What we pay him the big bucks for…

Labrador affairs minister John Hickey vows to pave roads in Labrador s’posin’ he’s got to do it himself, one shovel full at a time.

Many people wonder what Hickey does in his portfolio.

Now they know.

Nit-picky Update:  Okay.  So he writes letters to the editor of the local weekly too.

And issues inadvertently funny “news” releases.

Oh yeah…and he once sued former Premier Roger Grimes for defamation for something Danny Williams actually said.

Whatever happened to that law suit anyway?

 

-srbp-

How Irish we aren’t: airline version

So how come, with news of a new airline serving St. John’s, none of the locals have suggested trying to bring Ryanair to Newfoundland?

Stranded passengers.

Shagged-up check-in that causes some serious security issues.

An airline boss who muses about cutting the number of lavatories per aircraft to one AND charging to use it, or about imposing a fat tax on passengers and then basically tells disgruntled passengers to feck off.

For a crowd that spend most of their time bitching about travel to and from the island, Ryanair and Michael O’Leary would seem the perfect match.

 

-srbp-

Dear Krista…

It’s pronounced “aitch”.

Not “hay-tch”.

Once is fine, but hearing it every time the term “H1N1” turns up in a newscast the mispronunciation grates on the nerves.

Just thought we’d sort that out before someone slips minestrone into a script.

-srbp-