Great Gambols with Public Money: The Stunnel, Part Deux

The sort of collective insanity that leads people to support incredibly asinine ideas like the Stunnel isn’t confined to any one political party.

Consider these musings from Liberal leader Yvonne Jones in the Wednesday Telegram.  The story isn’t available online.

Jones, it should be noted, just happens to represent the electoral district into which the Stunnel would go to connect the island of Newfoundland with the continent.

That is a mere coincidence, though.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Yvonne Jones said while fixing Marine Atlantic's service has to be done in short order, the long term solution could be reopening a 2004 report on a fixed link between the  Northern Peninsula and Labrador.

"It's pretty much common knowledge that if you're going to have a  strong economy, a functional economy, you need to be able to have good  transportation and communication links to the rest of the world," she said.

"The realty is we are losing business because of the level of service that's being provided. People are turning away at the docks."

Whether it's a tunnel, bridge or some other link, Jones said transportation to the mainland cannot depend on someone else's schedule.

It’s pretty much common knowledge that Newfoundland and Labrador has a strong, functioning economy complete with diverse and very good transportation and other communications links to the rest of the world.

There is a very particular problem with one service that is provided by an agency that seems chronically unable to sort out the difficulties.

The solution to this particular problem is to sort out this particular problem, not peddle some completely lunatic idea to spend untold billions digging a hole through which trains would run. 

The solution isn’t even to dig a hole through which people might drive their cars at a cost of billions which will never – realistically – be repaid or otherwise recovered.

All that Jones has offered up here is just more of the same old ideas that haven’t worked to solve the Marine Atlantic problem before. 

One very plausible solution would be to end Marine Atlantic’s monopoly and allow competition on the run.  A similar idea would be to dispose of the Crown corporation altogether and let a private sector company enter the picture. 

After all, if there is that much business being lost – as Jones claims – there’s likely room for another carrier.

Maybe that other carrier can run between Halifax and the Port of St. John’s.  Maybe that carrier would run between Montreal – for argument sake – and Stephenville or Corner Brook.

But wait.

Even in the absence of a competitive ferry service, there is an alternative already.  There are other cargo ships that ply the waters between the island of Newfoundland and the mainland of the continent.  Tourists can fly into airports located conveniently near the major attractions.

Any of these are viable options to digging a hole in the ground and pouring public money in behind it.

On some level, though, the longer Marine Atlantic continues to screw up, the more it is just useful political fodder for everyone from provincial opposition politicians, to federal ones like Gerry Byrne to St. John’s city councillors. If Marine Atlantic stooped being a problem, they’d have to find something else to talk about.

Now to be fair to Sandy Hickman, he is just following on the time honoured tradition of St. John’s city politicians talking about anything but stuff they can do anything about or should be worried about.

The current mayor – Doc O’Keefe – rose to prominence by advocating for the province-wide gasoline price fixing scheme taxpayers in the province now pay for.

Wannabe deputy mayor Keith Coombs is a teacher who liked to use public money to run a hockey rink and failed entertainment operation, better known as the Wells-Coombs Memorial Money Pit.

You’d hear both of them on radio or television talking about that stuff long before you’d hear them talking about capital works plans or garbage collection.

At least Hickman offered up a half-ways sensible idea that might just work and at no cost to the taxpayers.

On that ground alone, he should get re-elected to city council. 

Heck, on that ground alone, he should enter provincial or federal politics.

At least his head is screwed on straight.

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Poll goosing: Can you say fire truck?

There are two bits of humour in the same post.

The first is this video of a child having some interesting trouble saying the words fire and truck together. 

It’s a wee bit predictable but still funny and cute.

Also predictable, funny and cute is the fact that the provincial government likes to announce and deliver fire trucks in a particular season of the year that just coincidentally is also the time the official provincial government pollster is on the go collecting his latest data for a government-sponsored poll.

Since 2007, the provincial government has consistently started announcing fire trucks with the bulk of the announcements coming just before and during Government Polling period.

July 11, 2007:  $108,000 dropped on the association representing firefighters.  Don’t forget that was also part of the pre-election Summer of Love spending frenzy.

August 9, 2007:  Government pollster Corporate Research Associates starts collecting data.

August 16, 2007:  A new fire truck for Conception Bay South,  “presented” by municipal affairs minister Jack Byrne with incumbents/candidates Terry French and Beth Marshall in tow.

August 16, 2007:  A news release listing off $1.7 million in emergency services spending, including a list of nine new fire trucks and other emergency vehicles for communities across the province.

August 17, 2007:  As if the announcement of the presentation on the 16th wasn’t enough, there’s a second news release on the fire truck in CBS. It includes three photos of people posing with the fire truck.

August 31, 2007:  CRA stops polling.

Other than one lone fire truck presentation in October, there’s no other fire truck activity in 2007.  By the way, that one in October was the presentation of a truck included in the August 16 release and it was presented in a town in the minister’s district.  He didn’t “present” any other trucks, at least with a news release going with it.

Skip ahead one year and you will find the next Fire Truck Season that – just by coincidence  - matches up to Government Polling Season.

July 15, 2008:  $130,000 in government cash for the firefighters association.

July 25, 2008:  New fire trucks for Badger and Whitbourne.

August 5, 2008:  New fire truck for St. Anthony

August 7, 2008:  New fire truck for Irishtown-Summerside.

Government pollster CRA polled from August 12 to 30, 2008.

There were three more vehicle presentations extending into October last year. Of course by the time the last one was done, the government pollster was getting ready to go back to the field in November for the last poll goosing foray of the year in November.  Lo and behold there was even the announcement of a new fire hall in that month, as well. 

Fire and polls really do go together.

The pattern has continued in 2009.

An announcement in January – covering a raft of new fire trucks -  in advance of the February poll goosing season and with plenty of time for the weekly newspapers to cover the stories.  Even more funding for the firefighters association in July 2009 and of course the August announcement. CRA’s been in the field since last week.

Now some of you might protest that these announcements don’t match up with polling time.

But if you think that you might be forgetting what no less an authority than the Premier himself said about the whole idea of poll-stacking when he was asked about it last year.   If he was going to poll goose, he’d be out there a week or two before polling started.

Oh, he knew exactly when CRA started polling, by the way.  Not exactly the sort of information you’d expect a busy Premier to have at his finger-tips.

Well, not unless he needed to be aware of it for some reason.

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The whole story sometimes hurts

Cleary. 

Ryan Cleary.

Wannabe (N)DP candidate Double Naught 1.5

License to shill.

Wasting no time in turning his attention to his latest dream job, former journalist Ryan Cleary is now writing letters to the editor of the local paper to poke as his political opponents, that is his opponents should he win the (New) Democratic Party nod in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

The subject: federal money for a new provincial penitentiary in Newfoundland and Labrador.

So, the federal Liberals are disappointed about the lack of action on Her Majesty's Penitentiary ("Lack of action on penitentiary disappointing: MP," Aug. 12 Telegram) and would do more to make a new prison a priority? That's surprising, considering the party totally ignored a direct question about their commitment to a new prison leading up to the October 2008 election.

Now for those who don’t know, this is an old chestnut from Tory campaigns past  that has become legendary in the local world of political efforts to buy votes with public money.

Originally, it was supposed to be a federal prison in the province built entirely with federal money and handling prisoners doing more than two years of a sentence. 

Since it was first tossed out in the early 1980s, the idea has morphed to its latest version in which the provincial government  - in the interim flush with oil cash - wants the federal government to pay 70% of the cost of building a new provincially-run prison.

Danny Williams included it in the most recent version of his now trade-mark schtick, the begging letter to Ottawa.  That’s the phrase that comes from the way  (N)DP member of parliament Jack Harris described this sort of stuff:

Some politicians think we gotta treat Ottawa like Santa Claus and write him begging or something...or when Joey was around it was "Uncle Ottawa" maybe he'll do us some favours.

Cleary apparently doesn’t agree.

It seems that the supposedly independently minded wannabe Dipper MP  endorses the approach of a provincial government going cap in hand to the federal government for money to do what the provincial government not only should do on its own but clearly has the cash to do on its own.

But if Liberal leader Stephane Dion didn’t talk about that particular issue in his response to the begging letter from Danny Williams, what  - pray tell  - did Jack Layton of the (N)DP offer?

Well, he sure didn’t jump at the chance to cost-share a provincial prison on a 70/30 basis with the feds picking up the larger bit.

Nope.

Layton committed to finding an “acceptable funding arrangement”.  That’s it.

An acceptable funding arrangement could be anything from having the province bear the whole load to having the federal government pay only enough to represent the handful of prisoners that are held in provincial custody awaiting transfer to federal custody.  That wouldn’t likely be 70%, incidentally.

No wonder Cleary didn’t make any reference to the letter Jack wrote. His party isn’t really any better than the crowd he’s trying to poke.  Well, at least when it comes to answering people that come begging to Uncle Ottawa.

Sometimes the whole story is just too painful to write, even in a brief letter to the editor.

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Great Gambols with Public Money: The Stunnel

Normally, governments in Newfoundland and Labrador don't turn to the freakishly large, insane, totally whacked out, over-the-top, no-evidence-to-support-it kind of ideas until, like the Peckford crew, they are at the end of their time and have run out of all the good ideas.

That's what happened with Sprung, basically.

Smallwood didn't get into them - including the Stunnel, incidentally - until he was at the end of what for most people would have been a normal political lifespan.

Some, like Wells, for example, never got into them. Tom Rideout, Roger Grimes, Beaton Tulk and Brian Tobin just weren't around long enough for the air to get a little thin in the New Ideas department.

Not so with the current crew.

They endorsed a tunnel across the Straits of Belle Isle from Day One. They even commissioned a feasibility study of the whole idea even though - on the face of it - the thing just didn't add up.

Well, the nutty ideas haven't gone away. The stunned tunnel - or Stunnel - is good enough to get ministerial junkets to Norway and prompt the odd letter to the local papers. No word, incidentally, from transportation minister Trevor Taylor on what he found out from his fact-finding mission to Norway.

Take a look at that letter to the Telly by the way and you'll see all the classic warning signs of megaproject proponents. You got your gross and unsubstantiated claims of benefits and pretty much no talk of costs, risks or alternatives.

Don't take Dave Rudofsky's letter in isolation, by the by. It comes hot on the heels of a mention for the project in an interview the Premier gave to yet another safari journalist. If the Big Guy is still talking about these things, others will take the cue.

Megaprojects are like the crack cocaine of ideas: all hype, buzz and spin and a great feeling on the way up.

Followed by a hideous crashing sensation when the high wears of and reality returns. They are highly addictive too, especially in places like Newfoundland where there has been so much of this crap going on that short-term memories have been affected. In Newfoundland (not so much Labrador) some people can't remember what they did politically yesterday so the peddlers of the nuttiest of schemes can find a willing buyer for their wares.

Way back in those early days, your humble e-scribbler took a look at the whole Stunnel idea and put some numbers on it. Since the nutty idea never went away, here's the link to that again for your mid-August reading enjoyment.

And if you want something even better, try Megaprojects and risk, a devastating study of megaprojects by three Scandanavian academics. One reviewer described it as "a warning against the betrayal of public trust when hubris and profit come together." The book could have been written in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 3 – ministerial statement version

Things got pretty bad when the Greenhouse was accused of dumping cukes on the Maritime market. The following is the ext of a statement by Premier Brian Peckford in the House of Assembly as part of an effort to address many of the criticisms and complaints which emerged by the spring of 1988.

Ministerial Statement by the Honorable A. Brian Peckford
Tuesday, May 24, 1988

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is urgently necessary to address this Honorable House on a matter of great importance. It has been suggested for several days now that this Government and Newfoundland Enviroponics Limited has been engaged i some sort of insidious plot to take over Maritime cucumber markets through a systematic dumping effort aimed at bankrupting the Maritime greenhouse industry.

Mr. Speaker, there is not now nor has there ever been any such plan. Such a plan would be totally inconsistent with the policy positions of this Government which have been to strengthen the free flow of goods and services between Provinces [sic] in a fair and open manner.
Newfoundland Enviroponics has absolutely no intention of unfairly competing in any market place. Indeed, the facts are just the opposite.

Newfoundland Enviroponics entered the Maritime marketplace on a fair and reasonable basis. It is probably the most cost-efficient producer in Canada today and we make no apologies for that. As well, it is producing product that is herbicide and pesticide free and is of the highest possible quality. We make no apologies for this either.

Newfoundland Enviroponics can and will compete on that basis. The fact, Mr. Speaker, is that Newfoundland Enviroponics has done nothing wrong. It is not a case of Government subsidy competing with private enterprise.

Newfoundland Enviroponics is financed on a business-like basis and will have to pay its own way. It is no more subsidized by Government then are greenhouse growers or for that matter any other agricultural producer in this country.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we must consider the facts. In an interview published in the May 21 edition of the Globe and Mail, the vice-president of Clover Produce in Halifax indicated that he would be making up the shortfall caused by cancelling orders with Newfoundland Enviroponics by purchasing from Ontario producers at lower prices.

Does this sound like a dumping situation or a situation in which local Maritime growers are being unfairly competed with?

The answer is clearly no.

Mr. Speaker, I feel it is important that the record be set straight on this issue. I would like to quote from Hansard of May 20 and the statement of the Honourable the Minister of Rural, Agricultural and Northern Development:

“Mr. Speaker, it is not the government's intention, or Newfoundland Enviroponic's intention to deliberately put anybody out of business. It is not our deliberate intention to dump so that we can up prices afterwards. It is our deliberate intention to be very, very aggressive in the marketplace and to make sure that we are there in a price competitive situation. We are not going to be competitive in a quality situation because nobody can compete with us on quality. There is nobody who produces a cucumber like we do, that is herbicide and pesticide free, packed fresh and gets to the market as quickly as ours can. On quality we have no concern at all because we are going to be the best by far in the marketplace. When it comes to price, we are going to compete in any marketplace we choose to be in and we are going to do very, very well in those marketplaces.''

Mr. Speaker, not withstanding what I have just said, if there has been any misunderstanding created through a misinterpretation of the Honorable Minister's comments, I feel compelled to apologize. My apologizes go to the local Maritime growers, to the Governments of our sister provinces, to the consuming public, and, perhaps most importantly, to the employees of Newfoundland Enviroponics. They are doing their best to create a successful enterprise. This Government will be making appropriate contacts over the next day or two with neighbouring governments and others to reassure them on these points and to hopefully repair some of the damage which has been done.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of other related misconceptions about this project and the occurrences of the past few days which need to be cleared up.

First of all, Newfoundland Enviroponics has not, as I stated earlier, been dumping produce on the Nova Scotia market. Any suggestion to the contrary is totally without foundation.

Newfoundland Enviroponics has not sold produce outside of this Province at any time at a price lower that it was then offering to its local customers.

Second, there has been discussion about smaller cucumbers being produced by Newfoundland Enviroponics. For the record, Newfoundland Enviroponics is currently producing a variety of grades of cucumbers to cater to the preferences of its customers. These different grades are characterized by different sizes and are packaged and designated as such. The different sizes of product command different prices.

To put it simply, Newfoundland Enviroponics sells the smaller cucumbers for less than the larger ones and of course this is reflected to a degree in the ultimate retail price. It must be reiterated, however, that the retailer controls the final price and therefore, it is difficult to make generalizations about pricing issues.

Third, it has been suggested that Newfoundland Enviroponics is marketing its produce at prices significantly less than its costs. This appears to stem from information released some time ago which suggested that at output levels in the order of seven million pounds annually, Newfoundland Enviroponics would require average prices in the order of $1.08 per pound to be viable. The suggestion seems to be that if Newfoundland Enviroponics sell at prices lower than $1.08 per pound it is dumping.

Again this is simply not the case. To begin with, the $1.08 was clearly an average price. We are entering the season of the year when prices in produce markets will be at their lowest. Clearly Newfoundland Enviroponics has to compete in these produce markets and price is certainly a primary criteria. It also has to be remembered that Newfoundland Enviroponics has to break into new markets. It is an accepted business practice to offer some price incentives to establish new products.

Is this dumping? I think not. I would also add that the $1.08 figure was preliminary and premised on annual output of about seven million pounds. Newfoundland Enviroponics is currently producing at rates which are far in excess of our original projections. This allows Newfoundland Enviroponics as an extremely efficient, low-cost producer, to charge lower prices. The $1.08 figure has absolutely no relevance in this type of environment.

Mr. Speaker, I think all Honourable Members need to reflect on this situation. My administration believes that this venture can succeed but it has to be given a chance to succeed. It has to be given a chance to operate without its every business transaction being subjected to microscopic scrutiny by the media and in this Honourable House.

Newfoundland Enviroponics has to compete in the market place; it can and it will. However, we are subjecting this business to untenable pressures which severely hamper its ability to compete. Its suppliers, its customers and its potential customers are constantly being harassed. It makes it difficult to be a supplier or a customer of Newfoundland Enviroponics because of the attention one gets.

This is patently unfair.

Mr. Sprung himself has been called a crook, a liar and a cheat. I have found him to be an honourable, hard-working man, who has perfected a technology significantly ahead of anything else in the horticultural world today. Time will prove this to be correct.

My administration has taken a great deal of criticism over our decision to invest public funds in this project and over the so-called secrecy which surrounds it. During my nine years as Premier of this Province I can recall no other Government decision about which more information has been made available to the public.

Some, however, will not be satisfied until we totally destroy the ability of Newfoundland Enviroponics to compete in the market place.

Mr. Speaker, Government has therefore decided that we will make no further comment on day-to-day operational and marketing decisions of Newfoundland Enviroponics. A Board of Directors is in place and it has our confidence. We will of course continue to report to this Honourable House and to the people of the Province on a regular basis on factual occurrences such as production levels and financial performance, but we are going to give the management of Newfoundland Enviroponics the opportunity to run this business as any other and an opportunity to compete on a fair and even basis in the market place.

My administration takes full responsibility for the decision to invest public funds in this project, just as we have done in numerous other business enterprises in this Province. My administration will also answer criticism directed at this decision.

However, I implore this Honourable House and members of the media to focus their criticisms on the Government and to allow Newfoundland Enviroponics a fair chance to succeed. I would remind Honourable Members that there are 200 people employed in full time jobs at Newfoundland Enviroponics; people who would be unemployed were it not for this project; people who will be unemployed again if it fails.

Surely we owe them the opportunity to make this project a success.

They will take no political satisfaction from its failure.

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Great Moments in Political Philosophy

 

“…the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time.”

Homer J. Simpson

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Freedom from information: a symptom of ponocchiosis

That would be an inability to recognise realise that what one is saying is humourous because it contradicts the claim:

Oram said verbal briefings aren't an attempt to avoid putting anything in writing.

He said he can't remember if he was supplied with written briefing documents when he took over the business department in 2007.

But of course, not having any written briefing notes is exactly intended to avoid having anything in writing.  That way, there is nothing to contradict cabinet minister Paul Oram’s faulty memory.  In this instance, Oram cannot remember what he did less than two years ago in taking on the single most important job of his working life.  His mind is a complete blank slate.

Yet…

He would have us believe  - despite having an evidently sieve-like memory - he can successfully administer $2.6 billion in public money and account for his actions when needed.

Paul Oram is not alone.  Joan Burke and likely most of their cabinet colleagues  - update:  the Aural Majority - have adopted the paperless office approach.  The tendency to a paperless ministry is nothing new nor is it confined to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Donald Savoie, among others, has documented the trend and they have also firmly fixed the reason: avoiding accountability.

In itself, that’s a pretty dramatic development for a government that sought office in 2003 on a platform that included accountability and transparency as a cornerstone.   It would also pretty much make a mockery of former deputy minister Doug House’s claim in 2005 that the “Williams government is exceptional in the extent to which its electoral platform, Our Blueprint for the Future (commonly referred to as "the Blue Book") is actually being adhered to in implementing government policies.”

Now, one of the possibilities unexplored by either CBC or The Telegram – both have covered this same issue based on separate open records requests – is that the response from government is actually not completely in accord with the facts.  One of the other tendencies noted over the past couple of years is for government officials to respond to certain access to information requests in a way which is false.

For example, the now infamous case of the purple files, every knows that purple files exist.  The person requesting them saw them.  Both premier and an official of his office have confirmed they exist.  Yet, the official written response was that there were no such records. 

In other instances, officials have invented a category of documents simply to avoid releasing them.

Now at this point, no reasonable person in the province should need convincing that a problem exists and that it needs a solution.  We don’t need to see another story of another cabinet who claims to have a decent memory but who mysteriously can’t recall anything when asked about it.

The only real question is what, if anything, the current administration will do to correct the situation.

They started out with a platform that would have put this province in the forefront of public accountability, openness and government accessibility.  Where they’ve wound up is significantly less accountable, less open and far less accessible to voters than the government they attacked in 2003 with their pledge of 23 positive actions.

The only question right now is:  will they do what they promised six years ago?

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Women in Arms

From New York Times two videos on the experience of women serving in the American military side by side with men.

The attitude toward fraternization has changed dramatically within the American military.  The army now issues oral contraception to female soldiers and condoms are regularly available.  In some instances husbands and wives are working together at the same post and share quarters.

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Route around park shorter

Contrary to claims by project supporters going around the province’s second UNESCO World Heritage site at Gros Morne would produce a shorter transmission line to bring  Lower Churchill power to St. John’s than going through it.

Since the Premier’s estimated cost of the jog around ($100 million) was pulled out of his ass – by his own admission – then perhaps there is good reason to believe it too is a gross exaggeration of the actual cost of running a power line from Labrador to the townies.

So if the line is both shorter and (as it turns out) cheaper around the park, why the instance on risking the park's UNESCO World Heritage site status?

Maybe it’s because the crowd at NALCO just dusted off their old plan – done before the park existed – and never bothered to think it through.

How encouraging that thought is.

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Towns left off branch lines, no plan from gov’t to help

Apparently, there are many towns in Newfoundland that will not be receiving high speed internet service.

This despite a $10 million plus investment dating back to 2005  - not 2008 as the Telly states – which was premised, in part, on bringing the marvels of modern technology to many parts of the province that otherwise wouldn’t receive them.

As for those left out of government’s scheme for Internet railway branch lines, the province’s innovation minister has an innovative solution:  maybe somebody else will invent something to fix their problem and then government can take another look at it.  But apparently government has no plans to deal with them now:

"In two or three years' time, there might be new communications or there might be a new initiative in government to try and help those people.”

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Dipper doodles: NL First meets the (N)DP

Scanning the list of resolution at this weekend’s (N)DP convention – the “New” is optional -  someone from Newfoundland and Labrador might find it all very curious.

There’s a resolution to reorganize the party’s national executive board.

The resolution provides for two seats representing all of Atlantic Canada.

Four provinces:  two seats.  Ontario gets two seats on its own as do Quebec and British Columbia.  But according to the (N)DP,  seven of the 10 provinces in the country have to be bundled together in clumps to equal the other three provinces on their own.

The very attitude so many Canadians have fought against for decades is enshrined as (N)DP national policy in how the party governs itself.  The Liberals and the Conservatives both have representation on their national executives by province. 

Good enough for Grits and Connies.

But not for Dippers.

This must not be sitting well with such long-standing and hard core (N)DP types as Ryan Cleary, he of the Newfoundland and Labrador uber alles wing of the party.

Cleary has set as his goal improving the “long-term status of Newfoundland and Labrador” so it must be tough having to start by trying to sort out the headspace of his fellow (New) Democrats on top of all his other challenges.

Now almost certainly some irked Dipper will point out that there is representation for each province on the national council.

But take a look at the revised structure of that council.  Each province gets one member.  But where party membership is over 5,000 in that province, there’s another member.  And there’s another for province’s with more than 10,000 (N)DP members, and so on.  That sort of structure obviously favours more populous province’s like  - interestingly enough – Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.

The run-up to the next election could turn out to be really fascinating for political watchers, but not because the (N)DP can’t figure out what to call itself. 

Nope.  There could be a little war brewing between the party and one of its wannabe candidates.

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Quagmire update:  At this writing (1015 AM Eastern) The convention wound up moving two separate motions to refer the resolution back to committee to reconsider the representation issue for both the Prairie’s and Atlantic Canada.

How did this get out of committee in this state in the first place?

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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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