Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 2

Another view of the Peckford Pickle Palace, this time with some questions which proved to be prophetic.

Don't forget that at the time, supporters of the regime du jour accused journalists and other who questioned the wisdom of such schemes as being pessimistic and too negative to be worthy of any consideration.

It seems everything is being recycled these days including the Fanboy arguments.

 

“Peckford pummelled over greenhouse funding plan”

The Financial Post,  November 2, 1987

by Philip Mathias

 

Newfoundlanders are puzzled by Premier Brian Peckford's decision to commit $11.4 million in government funds to a huge experimental greenhouse.

Greenhouse experts are equally mystified by Peckford's loyalty to what many feel is a far-fetched and overpriced scheme. Even in Newfoundland, one government specialist advised against the scheme.

The province's media and opposition parties are pounding Peckford, and cucumber jokes have multiplied. The $18.4-million Newfoundland Environponics Ltd. project is a 6.4-acre greenhouse being built outside St. John's. Plants will be grown hydroponically on racks - in other words, without soil, in a slow-moving nutrient solution.

The greenhouse, due to start up this month, is meant to make Newfoundland self-sufficient in cucumbers and tomatoes, which are now mostly imported.

The joint owners are the province and Philip Sprung, who also owns a Calgary company that manufactures marquees. Sprung is said to be putting $4 million of cash and loan guarantees into the St. John's project.

Sprung is a self-educated horticulturalist who says he has the key to revolutionary greenhouse technology. The big question is whether he is far ahead of conventional horticulture, or badly out of step with it.

Among Sprung's early ventures was a greenhouse in Calgary. It suffered, he says, from hydrocarbon vapours rising out of the soil, which had been underneath an old oil refinery.

Sprung offered to relocate the greenhouse in Quebec and then on Prince Edward Island. Both provinces declined his request for funds. The project was also given the thumbs down by the National Research Council and the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. '

Sprung's next stop was Newfoundland. The province's agriculture branch wrote a critical report on the project.  Nonetheless, Sprung was welcomed by Peckford and his cabinet.

The provincial government has agreed to provide $3.5 million in equity (land and cash); a $7-million loan guarantee; and a $900,000 provincial sales tax rebate. The unit now being built in St. John's is Sprung's Calgary greenhouse transported holus-bolus to Newfoundland.

Peckford may soon face some tough questions:

• How does the premier justify the $18.4-million cost of the greenhouse? 

The most advanced greenhouses being built elsewhere, experts say, cost half what's being paid by Newfoundland.  The province could probably buy two proven, conventional greenhouses for the price of Sprung's one.

• Can the greenhouse achieve the phenomenal yields projected by Philip Sprung?

He has told the government it will produce seven million pounds of vegetables on 6.4 acres. This yield is 2 1/2 times the best commercial yields in Canada.

Sprung's secret is to pack his greenhouse with three times as many plants as a regular hydroponic model. A hot, humid, jungle-like environment is maintained constantly. Simple arithmetic says three times the plants equals three times the yield.

Horticultural experts say it's not that simple: Yields fall off sharply at high plant densities. Professor Andre Gosselin of Laval University says, ''Sprung's yields are biologically possible, but I doubt if he can get them.''

Professor Herman Tiessen of the University of Guelph adds that Sprung's projected yields are ''unrealistic.''  Sprung recently severed connections with a British ex-partner Soil-Less Cultivation Systems Ltd., which claims to be the technical and managerial brains behind the system.

Sprung is reported to be looking for a new manager. If one cannot be found who is versed in his unusual technique, yields may be lower than promised.

• -Can the greenhouse be economic at lower yields?

The cost of growing tomatoes at the highest yields obtained at research stations would be about $1.75 per lb., using Sprung's capital and labour inputs. The price of tomatoes in Newfoundland (less retail and wholesale markups) is $1.05-$1.45 per lb. In other words, the cost of Sprung's process seems to be far above probable selling prices.

Sprung claims his yields will be much higher than those achieved at research stations.

• Can Sprung maintain projected levels of employment?

The province has been promised the greenhouse will provide jobs for 150 people - more than three times the industry average for hydroponic greenhouses.  If yields turn out to be anything other than phenomenal, the economics would be improved by reducing employment levels to the industry norm (about 40 people for 6.4 acres).

That might raise questions about the wisdom of the Peckford government advancing $11.4 million for the project. Unemployment in Newfoundland is officially 18%, unofficially about 28%.

• If the greenhouse proves uneconomic, will the province pour even more cash into the project?

Peckford's critics and other commercial greenhouse operators in the Atlantic provinces fear it will.  Critics complain that Peckford has veered away in the Sprung case from regional development guidelines laid down by the 1986 Newfoundland Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment.

-srbp-

A mid-summer night’s gambol

“Love”, as Shakespeare put it, “looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

Of all the political pixie dust in the province, none has clouded the eyes more than the Lower Churchill.  And while many have played the part,  no Lysanders have been more besotted of this megaproject  than our current one.  

T the course of true love also never runs true and in this case, the course has run nowhere near as true as claimed. While Danny Williams had hoped to be rid of his current job and on to other things by now, he is now saying he will be around until the project is done.   But not a fourth term.

Williams said the project will likely be completed before the 2015 election, and he will be done with politics by that time.

"I can guarantee I won't be around for four terms," the premier said.

The new target date is before 2015, much as the old date, except that now the Premier  is proposing to finish two dams and a power line through the UNESCO World Heritage site and on to St. John’s in less than four years.

The power line, though doth wander everywhere.   According to the latest version it will go over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier, over park, over pale,  thorough flood, thorough fire, and through some other unnamed provinces to get to market.  Where those markets are remains a mystery.

One major problem with this power line tale is that the project – as laid down in the environmental review documents – is exactly the same one described by an earlier Lysander, namely Brian Tobin.   One line to get the power to Quebec and another down through Gros Morne park – the government’s clearly preferred option – and thence to the townies.

That’s it.

There is no line proposed to run from Newfoundland off to Nova Scotia or anywhere else.

But gentle readers, enough of these jests.

Let us walk through the Premier’s latest musings on the Lower Churchill, as contained in a Telegram story this August Saturday, and wash the pixie dust from your eyes.  One megaproject-love-struck player is enough.

1.  Show me the money or Follow the money:  The fact Williams didn’t talk about money should be a clue this whole thing is a crock.  Of course, the Telly reporter also didn’t ask about it, so Williams managed to skate around what likely could have been a very testy and difficult part of the interview.

Basically, there’s no talk at any point in the entire interview about power purchase agreements and those puppies are the key to raising the $10 billion to build both dams and the transmission lines.

It’s that simple:

No money?

No project.

2.  Timelines.  Done by 2015, which was the plan back when the project would have been sanctioned in 2009.  The timeline before that was first power in 2011 based on project sanction in 2007.

Early last year the whole thing was a dodgy proposition according to Williams.  At this point, the environmental reviews won’t be complete until 2010 or 2011, leaving, supposedly, a mere four years years to get all the work done.

Horse feathers.

The project cannot be sanctioned – that is approved for construction – until it clears the environmental process.  As such, the project that was supposed to be sanctioned in 2009 is effectively two to three years behind schedule.  Even if everything goes according to the current timeline – and there’s no guarantee that won’t change too – the whole thing will not be up and running until some time around 2019 at the very earliest.

Anyone who has followed this project consistently will recognise the timelines in this interview are simply a crock.

3.  And the departure date’s a crock too.  Danny Williams may run in the next election.  Then again he may not.  If Williams stuck to the original timeline, the project would be sanctioned this year and hence he could leave knowing it is on the way. 

The Lower Churchill isn’t the determinant of Danny Williams political career.  Something else is.  Figure that out and you can figure out whether he will go soon or run again in 2011.  You see, Williams has changed his commitment on departure so many times, it’s hard to take seriously his current version:  that he will leave, definitely, in 2015.

4.  NALCO – run from the Premier’s office.

Williams said he meets regularly with officials at Nalcor Energy - the provincial Crown corporation which is overseeing the project - to get updates on the outstanding issues which need to be addressed before the project is sanctioned.

Anyone who thinks Williams isn’t the de facto head of NALCO can take that quote as a slap upside the head.  There are a raft of implications that go with that but they should be fairly obvious for anyone with a clue.

5.  The sanctioning issues:

Some of those outstanding issues for the Lower Churchill include ratification of the New Dawn agreement with the Labrador Innu, an environmental assessment - expected to be complete next year - choosing a transmission route for the power, finding customers for the power and obtaining financing for the project, which could cost $10 billion.

But Williams is confident that all these matters can be resolved and said steady progress is being made towards the project.

"None of these are insurmountable, they all just take time," Williams said.

Well, let’s see.  There’s  money, something Williams didn’t talk about that much at all and that one isn’t insurmountable unless someone plans to stick taxpayers with the full bill.

As well, there’s:

6.   New Dawn or, as it is known around these parts, the Fart Man Accord.   The land claims deal with the Innu was supposed to be over and done with last January.  Right now the vote on the agreement is postponed until…well…never.  There is no date for a ratification vote.

There’s also no sign the federal government has accepted it and they have to be party to any land claims deal with the Innu

7. The environmental process.  Should be pretty much a mechanical exercise except for the Gros Morne bit.  That one is going to be sticky but only because the feds hold the trump card.  If the thing had included a line to the mainland outside the province, it would be subject to a federal environmental review.  As it is the provincial government will sanction its own power line project – what else would they do? -  but they’ll have to come up with something clever to deal with a backlash over Gros Morne.

Could that “something” be the jobs created by poking a few holes in the ground at Parson’s Pond which is just outside the park?

8.  The feds.  Danny Williams has a bunch of federal things that need fixing if his pet project goes anywhere.  At this point, all that is dead in the water, largely due to his own actions over the past couple of years.

He’s linked the project to federal funding but even as recently as this summer Williams ducked a chance to pitch the project directly to federal cabinet ministers.  Was it because Harper showed up?

The feds won’t just pony up cash for this.  Odds are good it would come – if it came at all – in the form of an equity stake.  That’s means the federal government would own shares in the Lower Churchill just as they do in Hibernia.  Is that something Danny Williams is prepared to accept since he is already so peeved that the Hibernia shares exist?

The feds are also not likely to be persuaded by a cheesy blackmail attempt: 

Williams said the Gros Morne route would probably be the cheaper and shorter route, but he said it could be taken off the table if Ottawa would commit to help fund the project.

9.  Not the preferred route…  Through Gros Morne and the park’s UNESCO World Heritage site designation, that is.  Not the “preferred route”.  Nope.  It’s the only route.

NALCO is pushing the line through Gros Morne it’s the only route they have looked at since all they’ve done is just updated plans that have been around since before the park existed.

Notice, of course, that in polling season Danny Williams is suddenly talking all sweet and purty.  The last time the park route came up he insisted he’d drive the line through the park based on numbers he pulled out of his ass on the spot and a totally shameless bit of nonsense about grandma and her heart surgery.

The time before that Williams was all for the route saying those who doubted the route would be persuaded once they saw the “trade-offs”.

10.  The only thing in the interview you can take to the bank. (Don’t buy the “green project” bullshit)

"This is going to happen, it's just a question of when."

The Lower Churchill has been a project in the works since the 1950s or 1960s.  It’s been going to happen for 50 years.  it’s always been a question of when. 

The only thing we can say for certain now besides saying the project will happen at some point is that the “some point’ will not be by 2015.

-srbp-

Missing in Action: the 2006 economic policy review

In 2006, Danny Williams decided he needed to take a second look at the economic development plans he was following.

"Over the past two years we have undertaken strategic initiatives that are significant planks in our economic development agenda," Premier Danny Williams said. "Now, halfway through our mandate, it is time to take stock of what has been initiated to date, and move to the next phase to ensure our development strategies are being carried out in an integrated, co-ordinated fashion, in line with our original goals."

He appointed Doug House to “lead the process”.

The process was supposed to lead to some called an “integrated provincial development plan”.

So where the heck is it?

Missing in action, apparently.

In April 2008, House quietly slipped back to his real job as a sociology professor at Memorial University. There’s absolutely no reference in his resume to what he did after the 2006 news release other than to mention he was a deputy minister.

There’s a mention in his biographical sketch of the work he did but no title for the final report or indeed any sign that there was a final plan produced after two years of work.  In fact the only thing House mentions in his bio is being a “key contributor” to the 2003 Tory party platform, although he doesn’t call it that.  Likely that was the chapter that paraphrased the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan.

Now maybe there’s a good reason for all that.  Maybe the plan doesn’t exist.  Maybe it doesn’t exist because of a fundamental difference of opinion between Doug House and some others  - or maybe just one big other - in the current administration. 

You see, going back to the 1986 report of the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment, House has been one of those who has rejected the megaproject model for local economic development.  You know megaprojects:  things like Hebron, Hibernia South and the Lower Churchill.

You can find a good description of the report – titled Building on our strengths – in House’s memoir of his time at the Economic Recovery Commission in the 1990s.  House defined what he viewed as the attitude of the Old Guard within the bureaucracy.  They combined the industrialization policy of the Smallwood era with the resource-management focus of the Peckford years.  The result was a focus on big projects Hibernia, Voisey’s Bay and the Lower Churchill which were – and are – often described as the “last chance” for the province.  This same Old Guard view rejected or was suspicious of the potential for  small scale industrial development, agrifoods, and aquaculture.

The Old Guard  - the attitudes that House fought against from 1989 to 1996 - also believes in an expanded federal presence in the province comprising things like a federal penitentiary and defence bases.

Now it shouldn’t take too much energy for someone to realise that the economic development policies of the current administration heavily favour large scale industrial development projects.  Other stuff  like forestry and agriculture and the list House mentioned don’t get nearly as much attention.  There is a bit of cash thrown at them in the budget but when it comes to capturing the attention of the real decision maker(s) in the current administration, if it isn’t really big it just doesn’t exist.

With all that as background, it’s really no wonder House left government.  What’s really amazing is that he stayed as long as he did. 

-srbp-

Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes

Ah, how quickly they forget, these pleasant but heavily indebted, taxpaying people of Newfoundland and the sorry experience of governments that gamble (or is it gambol?) with public money on all manner of ventures.

How quickly they forget just how they got to be the most indebted people in the entire country.

More than anything else, they got into hock up to their eyeballs from cheering government after government as it poured thei tax dollars into this hole and that, each of which was supposed to gush barrels of cash so that God's Other Chosen (But Seemingly Forgotten) People could at last have their Eden here on Earth.

How quickly do they forget?

Apparently 20 years ago is too long for some of the poor darlings.
From the Memory Hole, the first newspaper cutting about that gloriously foolish venture known as the Sprung Greenhouse.

Bear in mind though that at the time there were a great many supporters of the regime du jour who cried that any amount (in this case upwards of $22 million) was fitting.

"Spend a buck to make a buck" they cried. 

"Brian can gamble with my money any day" they shouted. 

"How can anyone be so negative all the time and oppose this idea?"

"Sure they'll create a few jobs and get it all back in taxes."

"We will be the world leader in cucumber production."

At the end, all the pod-houses did was induce an epidemic of insomnia among the good residents of Mount Pearl and add another $22 million to the public debt.

"Skepticism rains over hydroponic greenhouse"
The Toronto Star
Friday, May 22 1987

by Alan Story

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - In a province with a mere 380 farms and the poorest soil, a raging agricultural debate has been at the centre of politics - and over-the-back-fence conversations - here for the past two weeks.

The subject: hydroponic cucumbers.

With the active encouragement and financial assistance of the Peckford government, an Alberta firm is dismantling its 3.2-hectare, high-tech greenhouse in Calgary and shipping it east to St. John's to begin growing hydroponically produced cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

The $18.5 million joint venture between the Sprung Group of Companies and the Newfoundland government is being touted as a solution to several of Newfoundland's problems.

Among them:

• The lack of cheap, high-quality produce available locally. Neither the price nor taste of a tomato or a cantaloupe you buy at a St. John's supermarket matches what you can find at Toronto's Kensington Market.
• The lack of jobs. According to company president Phil Sprung of Calgary and the government, which will put up to $11.5 million into the project, 330 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs will be created.

Even if all Newfoundlanders became vegetarians, the Sprung greenhouse would produce far more tomatoes and cukes than the local market could ever consume. Sprung's surplus would shipped to the mainland.

"For once, Newfoundland will be first in new technology and not just in unemployment rates," Peckford said on May 8 when he announced the deal. It's not only skeptical mainlanders who are questioning the wisdom of setting up a giant food factory based on technology that failed to perform properly in Calgary and on market studies the premier won't release.

Peckford's mad hunt for employment has brought him "full circle to the insanity that premier (Joey) Smallwood pursed when he tried to set up a chocolate factory, a rubber factory and orange juice factories in the middle '50s," declared Newfoundland New Democratic Party Leader Peter Fenwick.

Worried about the Sprung greenhouse's potential surplus entering markets in the Maritimes and even Ontario, James Keizer, president of the Greenhouse Growers' Association of Nova Scotia told Peckford that "if this greenhouse is built and operated as Sprung claims, it will fail within two years and take some Maritime growers who have built their business - one stick at a time over many years - with them." Letter-to-the-editor writers and editorial cartoonists have had a field day too.

Last week's Sunday Express, a new and brightly written St. John's weekly newspaper, featured a cartoon of a moronic-looking Peckford, clenching a stem of grass between his teeth and overseeing a Rube Goldberg-like operation known as "Peckford's Pickle Farm."

The main serious questions being raised are whether a major hydroponic greenhouse is technically feasible in Newfoundland - hardly Canada's banana belt - and whether it makes economic sense. Hydroponics - growth with water, instead of soil, as a medium - is recognized as a viable method of producing vegetables which is just starting to come into its own across the North America..

Sprung's somewhat secret hydroponic process involves planting seedlings in trays of water containing various nutrients, but no pesticides, and rapidly raising them to maturity under natural or artificial light in greehouses. Sprung makes big claims about the level of productivity. At his former Calgary greenhouses, he says 28,000 tomatoes and 22,000 cucumbers were produced daily. The cukes matured in less than a week.

But can his process work in often foggy and cloudy Newfoundland? Agricultural scientists have pointed that in St. John's, the number of degree days (a measure of natural heat available) is 1,600 while southern Alberta has 3,100 days. The extra heating required and the extensive use of artificial lights proposed for the St. John's greenhouse may significantly boost the costs of production, they warn.

Others following the great greenhouse debate aren't sure what to make of Sprung's claim that gas leaks from the soil at his Calgary site were the only reason why he had a major crop failure last year and why his tomato plants turned grey.

 The economics of the project are also in doubt. Some here are surprised that Peckford, who has tended to avoid getting sucked in by the industrial dream-peddlers who regularily come calling in Atlantic Canada, has become the project's biggest promoter.

Will all of the tomatoes and cucumber grown - more than twice Newfoundland's entire current level of consumption - actually be sold?

Why is the project so large after a recent provincial royal commission specifically warned against the dangers of getting tied into mega-projects?

What will be gained if other Maritime greenhouse producers are put out of business by the government-financed Sprung operation?

Before the Sprung story is over, Peckford may realize that tomatoes can be thrown as well as grown.

-srbp-

Invent a weasel word…

The New York Times’ Ben Schott challenges readers to have some fun and invent new words or phrases that have an obscured or no meaning to replace words and phrases that already work perfectly well.

Here is one to get you started:

Democratic Party (of Canada)

-srbp-

The reality of government polls

Governments look on polls and the associated poll goosing as a means of shaping public opinion, not measuring it.

Pee in the shower

See?

Told it was a good idea.

From Brazil,  a cute 45 second spot that shows peeing in the shower saves water in the long run.

The Leprechaun Play

Oil is there on the island’s west coast but why is it that the provincial government has to exploit the potential for oil instead of a local private company either alone or in partnership with others?

In a province where the private sector is so notoriously underdeveloped, the single biggest argument against NALCO’s recent bailout of Leprechaun Resources is that it stunts the local private sector.

It’s not like there isn’t considerable private sector activity on the west coast already, much of it undertaken at great risk by small local companies.  They’ve  soldiered on, risked much and raised plenty of capital from many sources all in search of a commercially viable play.  Some of those local companies have far better plays on the go than Parson’s Pond.

It’s the epitome of what the provincial government should be encouraging in the province and it’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit one would expect would get the unquestioned support from a Premier who told reporters recently that his heart is in the private sector.

The whole thing is even more incongruous when one considers that, in speaking with reporters yesterday, the Premier used Leduc (1947) as a point of comparison.  Leduc was the first major oil discovery and it was made by the private sector. 

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the first oil discoveries have already been made and they were made by the private sector.  The commercial finds on the west coast will come, and it should be the private sector doing the work.

Danny Williams may like to tell reporters he as “private sector guy” but his actions say something else.

This is a guy who has never really competed in the private sector in his life, outside of his law practice

But that’s not the private sector he likes to point to when he talks about being a private sector kinda guy. Nope, Williams likes to talk about running a cable company.  But that is nowhere near like running an oil company.  At Cable Atlantic, Williams had others doing the work in what was effectively a highly regulated monopoly.  That’s essentially the situation he’s been trying to recreate for NALCO.

By muscling into the local onshore oil sector, NALCO has set itself up as the biggest player in the room with all sorts of grossly unfair advantages.  It has the unlimited pockets of the taxpayer and therefore no problem pissing cash down hole after hole even if there is no sign and no possibility of a sign of oil.  There are no shareholders to answer to and, unlike all the private sector companies, NALCO is effectively unregulated.

NALCO’s minister and the minister who makes regulatory decisions about the oil industry are one and the same.   The department’s deputy minister sits on the board of NALCO Oil and Gas’s parent.  NALCO just bought into licenses that expire in six months.  Ordinarily an investor would have to struggle to justify an extension under the circumstances.  NALCO knows they’ll get an exemption, extension or anything else it needs because it has connections no private sector company can match.

Whatever is behind NALCO’s sudden interest in onshore oil plays, it isn’t about repeating the glorious success of Leduc. It’s not about strengthening the province’s oil and gas sector or just the local private sector, the people who really make jobs and exploit opportunities.

Nope.

NALCO’s bailout  isn’t even the giant make-work scheme many of its supporters seem to think it is.  Government doesn’t create sustainable jobs and contrary to the baloney that comes from some mouths, economics shows that government doesn’t get the bulk of its spending back in taxes.

Whatever the motivation for sinking $20 million of public cash in this one venture, someone will have to dig deeper and ask more probing questions of the Premier to find out what’s really on the go.

In the meantime, let’s hope that the real private sector guys – the ones who’ve been looking for oil for years – hit oil before NALCO. 

There’d be another sweet irony in such a development as well.   You see if Danny Williams really was a private sector guy, he’d have never gotten into politics in the first place.  If he really wanted to create jobs, jobs, jobs – as he claimed in 200o3 -  he’d have taken his cable cash and invested in the private sector. 

He’d have taken risks,  been buoyed by a few successes, endured a few failures and then invested in new enterprises here and elsewhere.  He’d be pushing for government policies that support entrepreneurs and encourage the growth of a sustainable, diverse private sector built on daring and imagination.

Instead, the supposed “private sector guy” got into politics and built the existing government bureaucracy into an even larger behemoth backed by policies that discourage innovation and investment and hook private sector companies in the province on government cash.

There hasn’t been a new approach since 2003.  We’ve actually seen the same old approach in Newfoundland and Labrador that has consistently failed to deliver decade, after decade, after decade in a province led by saviour after genius after business success.

And, as we learned in Mount Pearl, Holyrood and elsewhere, there is no pot of gold at the end of that old rainbow of green cukes and red-soled rubbers, at least not for the people  - the taxpayers of the province – whose money goes out the door.

-srbp-

Company behind Fermeuse wind power project seeks bankruptcy protection

Skypower Corp, the company behind a wind power demonstration project at Fermeuse, Newfoundland filed for bankruptcy protection on August 12.

Skypower is owned 50% by Lehman Brothers which filed for bankruptcy last year in what was the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

The Canadian renewable energy company is now seeking to sell all its assets.  It reportedly has sufficient funds  - $15 million – to see it through the asset sale process.

The Fermeuse project involves nine turbines with a combined capacity of 22 megawatts.

There’s no word on what will happen to the Fermeuse project.

Update:  The Fermeuse project was certified operational on June 30, 2009. Power from the project is sold to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro under a 20 year power purchase agreement signed in 2007. 

The project, originally proposed by Vector Wind Energy was later taken over Canadian Hydro Developers on December 14,  2006.  CDH turned the project over to Skypower two weeks later.

-srbp-

Wolfe Island Wind Farm Project

Canadian Hydro Developers Inc operates a 197.8 megawatt wind farm project on Wolfe Island, near Kingston Ontario.

CHD installed the 86 turbines on farmland on the island in early 2009 and the project achieved operational status in early July.  The power is sold directly into the Ontario grid.  Each windmill cost $5.5 million. The overall project cost approximately $500 million.

The project hasn’t been without its share of critics, environmental watchdogs and complaints about noise are already appearing. A group opposed to wind turbines has started in prince Edward County. 

There are also supporters, as well.

The new masthead picture is of a portion of the Wolfe Island wind farm, taken from the ferry running between Kingston and Wolfe Island.

-srbp-

Oh yeah… it’s polling season

The Premier might have been otherwise engaged for the Council of the Federation meeting last week discussing trivial things like the recession and international trade.

But set up an event in the first few days after the government’s pollster starts collecting data and Danny’s there with bells on.

Thursday, alongside his old buddy Ken Marshall to unveil the logo for the 2010 Junos.

How big a deal is this logo unveiling?

Even the presence of Senator Fabian Manning can’t get Danny’s skin crawling enough to keep him from from showing up to goose a poll.

-srbp-

A municipal tax grab

The draft paratransit report for the City of St. John’s proposes a series of new tax grabs to pay for the system.

And deputy mayor Ron Ellsworth – also running for mayor in this fall’s municipal election – wants the whole thing in place before voting takes places:

Deputy Mayor Ron Ellsworth said that, in some way, the report would be revised to incorporate the concerns, but acknowledged that everything needs to be done by mid-September, before the municipal elections.

The report proposes:

-   a new 2.5 cent per litre tax on gasoline sold within the City of St. John’s which would produce an estimated $10 million annually,

-  a new surcharge of motor vehicle registrations for residents of St. John’s that would bring in an estimated $500,000 annually,

-  a new surcharge on both parking fees and parking fines that would bring in an additional $150,000 annually,

-  a new surcharge on taxi licenses that would generate an estimated $180,000 annually.

Having the provincial government pay the full cost of health-related transfers – something Ellsworth was talking up last January  - would bring in about $300,000 annually.  There was no public talk back then about more “creative” ways of sucking cash from taxpayer’s pockets.

Now all this might be a set of good ideas but really, there’s something fishy about the unseemly haste being display by the current council.

After all, this is the same crew that last time around busily assured everyone before the election that the Wells-Coombs Memorial Money Pit was in the black – at last – and then let us all know after the voting was done and counted that the whole thing was drowning in red ink.  The thing continues to flounder.

The paratransit system may need more money but there’s no reason to quickly and quietly grant the crowd running Tammany at Gower the right to suck an additional $10 million out the pockets of taxpayers in the city.

Let’s have way more information and discussion before this little idea gets anywhere near implemented.

Incidentally, there’s nothing about this issue on Ellsworth campaign website.

 

-srbp-

Exit strategy

What do Sarah Palin and Ryan Cleary have in common?

Poor exit strategies that prompted rumours and a host of questions based on the way they left their jobs.

Admittedly, Sarah Palin was much funnier that Ryan ever was but the basic point remains the same:  leaving a job requires a coherent exit strategy to quash rumours and avoid problems for both the person leaving and the soon-to-be-ex-employee.

The Globe has an interesting take on how to leave a job successfully.

-srbp-

Making council races partisan affairs

An effort ostensibly aimed at encouraging women to get involved in municipal politics – where there are no political parties – turned into a partisan affair.  A meeting in St. John’s organised by the status of women’s council included only Tory speakers.

And not surprisingly, as cbc.ca/nl put it, “[w]omen who spoke at the sessions Tuesday brushed off criticism that the meetings have favoured Progressive Conservatives.”  They then quoted Tory cabinet minister Diane Whelan.

No invitations to speak were extend to any women with NDP or Liberal affiliations apparently.

Equal Voice – a non-partisan, national group dedicated to increasing the number of women candidates in politics at all levels – wasn’t involved.

There’s a good reason for that:  this event is tied to a campaign launched by Whelan last spring.

If anyone had been serious about a non-partisan campaign, they’d have organized it through an established non-partisan group like Equal Voice.

As it is, the whole thing starts to smell a little funky and a really good cause – getting more women in politics as candidates – gets twisted into something else.  It’s hard to believe that this event could wind up having only three speakers  - Flora MacDonald, Shannie Duff and Diane Whelan - and all of them have Tory ties.

-srbp-

More crap from the Globe

As usual, Christie Blatchford gets it right.

A front page story in the Tuesday Globe excoriates an Ottawa judge for remarks he didn’t make in the decision on the O’Brien influence peddling case. There’s another column that carries on with the same nonsense.

In his decision, Justice Douglas Cunningham assessed testimony from one Crown witness and found that the portion of her testimony on which the Crown was relying was not really central to the conversation she was having at the time. 

Even during the portion of the witness’ evidence led by the Crown, there were sufficient variations in the statement to raise questions about her recollections.  On top of that, the defence was able to demonstrate that, having had many significant events in her life at the time of her statement to police, the judge concluded that the witness’  “recollection of a brief, casual portion of her conversation is so imprecise that, through no fault of her own, I must assign it little weight”.

There is no reference by the judge to the sex of the witness or anything of the sort.  There is nothing but a straight-up factual synopsis of the evidence, which is what you’d expect from a judge.

And out that, the legion of professional Irks has launched into an incredible pile of nonsense.

Shame on Toronto’s national newspaper for giving such crap such prominence.

But, as usual, Christie got it right.

-srbp-

And then, things went horribly wrong…

Ryan Cleary tells CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates his version of why he wants to get into politics.

Rather than settle questions, Cleary just makes his situation worse.

Note that Cleary brings up and then ducks the question of spending more time with his family.  Then he admits the decision for him to leave VOCM’s employ was entirely VOCM’s business decision:  he wanted to stay;  they ended the relationship.

That doesn’t sound like:

Tonight [Cleary] 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.

Unfortunately, the cbc clip seems to cut out abruptly in the middle of things.  Let’s hope they can fix it and get the rest of it posted.

In the meantime, it’s interesting to hear Cleary handling yet more controversy over his candidacy.

-srbp-

Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response.

Doesn’t anyone think?

Well, apparently Goose Bay mayor Leo Abbass thought enough of the negative connotations of a story in The Labradorian that he had to issue a news release to suck up to Labrador affairs minister John Hickey.

Apparently Leo thinks people are interested in his emotional state:

Mayor Leo Abbass is pleased with the work done so far. “Having thirty kilometers already completed, the widening and upgrading of eighty kilometers ongoing, and an additional fifty to be paved, will not only make the road safer for the travelling public, but also improve conditions for the transportation of goods into our region. We look forward to the completion of a hard-topped surface along the entire length of Phase I and the continued work on Phase II and III of the TLH.”

Of course,  they won’t finished the work until next year – as originally planned - even though a recent government news release may have misled some people into believe there was some sort of “fast-tracking” or “acceleration” to the paving.

Leo didn’t say anything about that, of course.  The sensitive folk of his town can just rest easy because Leo is “pleased.”

-srbp-

How can you tell the government pollster is in the field?

1.  Announcing the announcement of announcements previously announced:  11 August 2009, a news conference to announce the first cheque from a small government program pumped up to sound huge.  The program was announced on June 5, 2009.   That’s just bad planning.  if they’d pushed that forwarded government could have had the announcement in one polling period and then the announcement of the announcement in the next one.

Someone should be shot.

2.  Get three ministers and announce the blindingly obvious:  it took Trevor Taylor, Paul Oram and the guy in charge of the cops to release a “social housing plan” for the province.  Their “vision” is “of a province where Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have access to secure and affordable housing.”

Seems fairly obvious that a plan for providing affordable housing should have as its vision the provision of affordable housing.

That’s just the stuff that doesn’t involve spending bags of money but they are two good clues that polling season is on us once again.

-srbp-

Twittering…

From a cbc.ca/nl discussion thread on oil exploration by the provincial government’s oil and gas corporation, a comment that gives new meaning to twittering:

It was a Liberal Government in Ottawa that sent Liberal John Efford to the Conservative Government of Newfoundland with a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer on the annual royalties from the offshore resources. It was the Conservative Government in Newfoundland under the leadership of Premier Williams who removed the Maple Leaf flag in protest of this insulting offer by the Liberals. It was the Conservative Government who finally reached a royalty agreement that is today bringing billions in to the treasury of this Province.

Was all this negotiate "prior to 2003"? It think not! The Liberals in Ottawa at that time were not interested in negotiating, but in ram-rodding an inferior royalty plan that would have kept Newfoundland a "have-not" Province. Instead we had a Premier and Government who had the intestinal fortitude to challenge their "keep them poor" attitude, and today we are a "have" Province.

Not a single thing in those two paragraphs is true.

-srbp-

It’s official…

As Bond Papers reported yesterday, Ryan Cleary is looking for the New Democratic Party [name under review] nod in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

We can say it’s official because Cleary’s blogger buddy carried the story a day after Bond reported it.  The story is also filled with a raft of jabs and barbs. 

Guess the other parts of the Bond Paper’s post  - about the “spending time with family” thing being a nose-puller of a media line  - must have been right too.

Now it’s only a matter of time before the rumoured other candidate – a “name” – comes forward.  you can tell that part of the story is accurate since Cleary’s blogger buddy denies there’s a contender and wants the Dipper executive to get the nomination over with most ricky tick. 

The only candidate wannabes who look to get nominations over right away are ones worried about challengers who could guarantee their plans to spend more time with the family.

-srbp-