labradore lays waste once more to the annual event called Right to Know Week.
At least this year the thing is pushed by the guy who actually cares about your right to know.
Last years’ release was from a guy more inclined to be concerned about frustrating your right to know.
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Guy Kawasaki is smart.
After years of working among some of the most creative companies on the planet he invented the concept of a “bozo explosion.” That’s what happens to great companies after a certain point, if the company isn’t carefully managed with an eye to continued success and innovation.
As Kawasaki rightly puts it, the whole process is depressing.
For your amusement, here’s his list of warning signs that a bozo explosion is underway. You can find this and whole lot more great ideas at his blog How to change the world.
1. The two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic.” In addition, “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense.
2. Management has two-day offsites at places like the Ritz Carlton to foster communication and to craft a company mission statement.
3. The aforementioned company mission statement contains more than twenty words--two of which are “partner” and “strategic.”
4. Your CEO's admin has an admin.
5. Your parking lot's “biorhythm” looks like this:
- 8:00 am - 10:00 am--Japanese cars exceed German cars
- 10:00 am - 5:00 pm--German cars exceed Japanese cars
- 5:00 pm - 10:00 pm--Japanese cars exceed German cars
6. Your HR department requires an MBA degree for any position; it also requires five to ten years work experience in an industry that is only four years old.
7. Time is now considered more important than money so you have a company cafeteria, health club, and pet grooming service. Moreover, the first thing that employees show visitors is the company cafeteria, health club, and pet grooming service.
8. Someone whose music sells in the iTunes music store performs at the company Christmas party.
9. An employee is paid to do nothing but write a blog.
10. The success of a competitor upsets you more than the loss of a customer.
Addendumbs (sic) to the list from readers:
11. You have a layer of middle management who worked at big-name companies (usually consumer goods) who like to call meetings and designate “project leads.” (I experienced this first hand.)
12. You hire a big name consulting firm who brings in MBAs with one year of experience to re-think your corporate strategies.
13. Your company likes some of these MBAs and hires them away from the big-name consulting firm.
14. Your CEO or CFO spends more time on CNBC than in the office
And then it got much worse Update: The short list quickly became the Guy Bozofication Aptitude Test (it pays to read more than what google turned up).
15. The front-desk staff gets better looking and less competent.
16. The only time you see your CEO is when you're watching CNBC.
17. You watch CNBC during the day and don't feel guilty.
18. The ratio of engineers to attorneys dips below 25 to 1.
19. The company has created a “company values” poster.
20. “Leveraging core competencies” and “maximizing shareholder value” show up in official documents, in the same paragraph.
21. New executives campaign to improve the product before they understand how to use it.
22. Your company outsources its mission statement.
23. Your CEO's chair is more expensive than your first car.
24. You have more than two execs with the word “chief” in their title.
25. The company becomes a schwag fountain: pens, bags, notepads, messenger bags.
Add two points for each
26. Your CEO writes a book.
27. Your CEO gets invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos where he gives advice to the presidents of Eastern European countries.
28. Your company has a corporate jet.
29. Your company hired a retired professional athlete as a motivational speaker.
30. Your company hired a retired politician as a motivational speaker
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The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) today announced a call for nominations from industry stakeholders for lands in the offshore area that would be considered for a possible call for bids in 2010.
A call for nominations is a preliminary step prior to a competitive call for bids. It provides interested parties with the opportunity to nominate areas of interest to be included. CNLOPB can also nominate lands on its own initiative for inclusion.
The offshore board is not bound to proceed with a call for bids in respect of any lands nominated, nor is a nominee obligated to bid on any lands nominated and included in a subsequent call for bids.
Interested parties will have until 4:00 p.m. on November 2, 2009 to submit sealed nominations to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. Further information is available from the board’s website.
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You may know them as slides.
Or powerpoint presentations.
Or overheads.
Or, if you are really old, view-foils.
You have all been subjected to death by slide. Here’s a simple rule to help you from slaughtering your audience next time you have to do a presentation:
Electronics giant Samsung is looking at building a 200 megawatt wind farm in Ontario.
The deal could include manufacturing of wind turbines or components as well as solar panels in Ontario.
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The date: September 29, 2003
The occasion: Danny Williams kicks off the Conservative election campaign that, as things turned out, would end with him as Premier.
How time flies and how things change in just six short years.
Back thing, all was roses just waiting on the horizon to be plucked. All the problems of the past would be gone.
Worried about health care?
Worry no more:
Our plan will provide quality health care to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians when they need it, ensuring that there are more doctors and nurses in areas that are presently under-serviced. Patients will have access to a primary health care provider twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And waiting times for diagnostic and treatment procedures will be reduced to times that physicians deem acceptable.
Six years later, all is well and the days of health care cuts are gone.
Concerned you might have trouble getting more care for a sick wife or husband in your retirement?
Worry no more:
Our seniors, those who have given so much to our province and asked for so little in return, want to be independent, and to live in their own homes. We will give them that independence by expanding home care services and increasing supportive housing alternatives.
Yes, not just the same old, but expanded home care and increased supportive housing alternatives.
And six years later, those problems with home care are long gone.
Dilapidated school buses:
And to ensure our children’s safety, we’re going to upgrade and improve our school buses.
It only took six years and the public embarrassment of a CBC news story to bringing the existing fleet up to code. No word yet on “upgrades” or improvements.
Some political parties enter election campaigns with a list of things they actually strive to do.
Others don’t.
The ones that try often succeed and the stuff that is left undone is usually there for a good and readily understood reason.
The ones that don’t,offer excuses.
Some of this speech is fascinating if only for the radical changes in six years, back then Danny Williams was ready to go to work in the thankless job of being Premier to inflict prosperity on Newfoundland and Labrador. he was ready because, in his words, “it’s now time for me to give something back to the province that has given me and my family so much, to initiate real change and make a meaningful difference.”
In the event, he started bitching about public scrutiny right after he got elected and by the end of three years he was already moaning and complaining because people asked questions and disagreed with him. By the end of year six, he was referring to politics as a “racket” and mused again how those who were out of it were smarter and better off.
That team spirit didn’t last long either.
Beth Marshall resigned from cabinet in 2004 complaining that Williams interfered in her department and ignored her in the process.
Ed Byrne quit in the midst of the worst political corruption scandal in Newfoundland and Labrador history since Sir Richard Squires and the Hollis Walker Inquiry.
Not only were members of the legislature bribing officials and bilking the taxpayer for millions, Byrne himself was funding the Progressive Conservative Party with illegally obtained cash. That included at least one of the Great Northern peninsula by-elections in 2001. The full story hasn’t been disclosed yet.
Former premier Tom Rideout, right, went off in a huff over road paving.
No word on exactly what Rideout has been doing since he left politics but it will likely prove to be entertaining once we all find out what it is.
Fabian Manning felt Danny Williams political boot on his throat or backside, depending on whose version you listen to. He landed nicely in Ottawa as a Conservative senator.
Only a few of the old hands are left now and none of those serve in cabinet.
Roger Fitzgerald is the Premier’s faithful lapdog as the supposedly impartial speaker.
Sheila Osborne is expected to leave before the next election.
Terry French soldiers on as a parliamentary secretary, announcing the odd fire truck.
Of the crowd elected between 2001 and 2003, only Wally Young sits mute on the back benches. Trevor Taylor, the fellow elected the same day, is out the door too.
Like John Hickey, right, for example who launched a defamation law suit against former Premier Roger Grimes for something Danny Williams said.
How long Williams lasts, given his own mercurial nature and his comments about the “racket” he’d sooner be rid of, one never knows.
But six years ago, so much looked so different:
Thank you, and good afternoon everyone.
Almost two years ago I started building upon the team Ed Byrne had already assembled to represent the interests of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
As I look at the people who are able to join me today, and think of the others who are working in their districts or have made a commitment to seek the nomination, I am extremely proud of who we are and what we have to offer.
This team, our team, represents a real alternative to the current government.
And a new government is needed, because after fifteen years, it’s time for a change in Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s time for real leadership. It’s time for the new approach.
For months now, the Roger Grimes government has been desperately searching for a single issue upon which they can fight this election when they should have been governing our province.
First it was the fishery, then it was our relationship with Ottawa, and most recently it was automobile insurance.
Well, we won’t play that game.
This election is too important to be about any one single issue. We will make it about all the issues that are important to the people of our province.
It will be about making a meaningful improvement to the every day lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians so that we can live with dignity and self-respect through self reliance.
It will be about having a good job and having access to health care when we need it. It will be about providing our children with an education that allows them to compete for jobs and stay home in this province where they belong.
Above all, this election will be about the real leadership this province needs to capture the opportunities that are before us so that we finally achieve our true potential.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are the issues of the real world.
These are the issues that have been ignored by the Roger Grimes administration.
And these are the issues we will fight for.
Our people deserve no less and should expect no less.
And under a Danny Williams led government, they will get no less.
I believe the time has now come to take control of our destiny, to chart our own course to economic prosperity. That is what I stand for, it’s what our team stands for, it’s what the Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador stands for.
Today, we are presenting you with a plan to move us in that direction, a plan to get real results. It took us months and months to develop this blue print for the future, and I am very proud of it.
I call our plan the new approach, because it means focusing on the important issues in new and different ways, and making decisions for the right reasons, not political reasons.
It starts with helping those who need help most. Seniors, students and many others will benefit from our plan to immediately reduce provincial income taxes for low income earners.
Our plan will provide quality health care to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians when they need it, ensuring that there are more doctors and nurses in areas that are presently under-serviced. Patients will have access to a primary health care provider twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And waiting times for diagnostic and treatment procedures will be reduced to times that physicians deem acceptable.
Our seniors, those who have given so much to our province and asked for so little in return, want to be independent, and to live in their own homes. We will give them that independence by expanding home care services and increasing supportive housing alternatives.
We will provide our children with a higher quality education by setting a maximum class size, beginning in our primary schools where they will not exceed 25 students per class.
We will also increase computer literacy and reduce disruptive behavior so that our children have a healthy learning environment.
We will also set performance standards to ensure our children’s education meets or exceeds what is being provided in schools in the province and the country.
And to ensure our children’s safety, we’re going to upgrade and improve our school buses.
We will freeze tuition for post-secondary students and make the remission process more efficient and accessible so that our young people have better opportunities to stay in the province that they so dearly love.
And I can assure you, we will grow our economy by creating an environment that allows businesses to set-up shop and expand, creating meaningful employment for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians as we go.
There will be a strong, vibrant and sustainable fishery.
There will be new opportunities in the Information Technology sector.
And we will open our doors to the world with an ever-growing tourism industry.
The one area where I believe I can most help Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is through job creation and economic development. That’s my background, and I now want to apply those experiences to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
I want to create new industries to slow down and eventually stop outmigration.
I want to give our rural communities a reason to believe that our way of life can not only survive but prosper. I want to give them hope and confidence that we can maintain and nurture our culture, our heritage and our pride.
Our plan for economic growth will provide a new approach to resource development that puts Newfoundlanders and Labradorians first. We will identify and capture opportunities for secondary processing whenever possible.
No more give-aways.
We will give Newfoundland and Labrador back to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Rather than using our resources to create jobs for Manitobans, Ontarians, and Quebecers, our resources will be used to create jobs for our own people.
We are no longer prepared to sit idly by while our resources benefit the rest of Canada and leave us with a mere pittance of their true value.
And ladies and gentlemen, our plan will provide a new approach to dealing with the federal government. While others have remained silent until it became politically opportune to be heard, we will be aggressive and provide a strong voice that says very clearly changes are needed. We will lay out a rational and reasonable plan that cannot be dismissed. I will fight to ensure that we are heard.
I say enough is enough.
It’s time for real leadership.
It’s time for the new approach.
It’s time for a change.
And that change begins right here, right now.
This is our opportunity to stand up and be counted, to seize control of our own destiny, to make a real difference.
On a personal note, I’ve enjoyed more success in the business world than I ever dreamed possible. And I did it entirely in Newfoundland and Labrador, creating thousands of jobs for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians along the way. I have proven that it can be done, and if it can be done in the private sector, it can be done in government.
It hasn’t been easy. It takes a tireless work ethic, personal sacrifice and an unwavering commitment.
I’m prepared to offer that to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador because it’s now time for me to give something back to the province that has given me and my family so much, to initiate real change and make a meaningful difference.
But I can’t do that alone. That’s why I have spent more than two years assembling a first class team that has the energy, passion and commitment required to make real changes and meaningful improvements to the every day lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
We have a combination of proven legislators and new players that will bring innovative ideas to the table. This team presents a stark contrast and a strong alternative to a tired and weakened government that has been in office for almost 15 years.
We are ready to provide Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with the change that they so desperately want and deserve, and have the energy, passion and commitment required to work on your behalf.
But ladies and gentlemen, I want to be very clear. While we have developed a policy document that provides that new approach, there are no magic solutions or quick fixes to the problems facing this province.
These problems did not occur overnight and they cannot be fixed overnight. But with the team we have assembled, with real leadership and the new approach, these problems can be solved and will be solved. Together we have a vision of Newfoundland and Labrador, in control of our own destiny, united for the benefit of all.
That is my commitment to Newfoundland and Labrador, that is our commitment to Newfoundland and Labrador. By working with you, a Danny Williams led government will make a difference. A change of government will make a real difference to our province, our home, our families and our future.
On October twenty first, I respectfully ask for your support for a mandate to provide the people of Newfoundland and Labrador with real leadership and the new approach for a better future.
Thank you.
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It’s one thing to protest openly again a government, especially the current one.
It’s another thing entirely when people are willing to burn gasoline to do it.
Flower’s Cove, the early report via voice of the cabinet minister:
People arrived in cars and by the bus loads to protest proposed cuts to lab and x-ray services at a rally on the Northern Peninsula over the weekend. NDP Leader Lorraine Michael was at the rally in Flowers Cove yesterday. She says the overall attitude of the people there was one of anger and betrayal.
Anger and betrayal?
Might that have something to do with Danny Williams comments the night of the 2001 by-election when said he would never forget the people of the region for voting Tory?
Might that be one of the reasons why Williams and his office are tossing every obstacle possible to prevent the release of the text of his speeches?
or could it be lines like this one, recounting the lighter moments of politics in June 2001:
And another voter who wanted change in the Northern Peninsula told me that politicians and diapers have something in common: they both have to be changed regularly, for the same reason.
Yessirreee, the crowd protested and burned precious gasoline to do it.
That’s a sure sign people are unhappy with the government.
But if they brought huggies and pampers, then watch out.
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You remember that one from last year.
Around these parts, your humble e-scribbler called it the Matshishkapeu Accord since it seemed a bit like something cooked up by the Fart Man.
Then in the winter, the world learned the deal was completely off the rails.
By July, like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the deal was still dead but Innu leader Peter Penashue hoped to bring it back to life in the fall.
Now in the fall, Peter’s not returning Rob Antle’s phone calls and the Premier’s office is saying naught either.
Not good.
Not good at all, since this is one of the key deals that have to be closed in order give the Lower Churchill hydro megaproject any hope of flying.
At least there’s a consistent silence on this one where both parties don’t want to talk. On the Rhode Island memorandum of understanding, natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale said one thing. The Rhode Island governor’s office said something completely different.
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The annual homecoming weekend at Queen’s University in Kingston is turning out to be the annual reminder of why the university really isn’t the Harvard of the North, as some of its more pompous alumni like to claim.
Even eliminating homecoming weekend hasn’t stopped the Arseholes Gone Wild mentality that made homecoming weekend seem like a cross between Animal House’s Omegas and the idiocy of any spring break in Florida.
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One of the little stories that seemed to sail past most people was a report that three of the province’s four regional health authorities will finish the year with balanced budgets.
"The light bill goes up, the phone bill goes up, the oil bill goes up — that type thing," said Western Health finance committee member Tom O'Brien. "We submitted that to the government and [government] approved our budget with those inflationary numbers in it. So we'll have a balanced budget for 2009-2010.
The only one that wouldn’t is Eastern Health but given some of the issues involved, that’s understandable.
But Labrador-Grenfell, Western and Central expect to balance their books by year end.
Last spring, Labrador-Grenfell Health estimated it would end its fiscal year with a $2-million deficit, but officials said Wednesday that's no longer the case.
"We have had a greater success in recruiting staff, with a greater number of nurses on staff that actually cuts down on our cost of providing services," CEO Boyd Rowe said. "When we don't have adequate numbers of staff, we end up paying a considerable amount of overtime."
How odd then that earlier this month health minister Paul Oram announced that government had decided to cut laboratory and x-ray service in Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte. he claimed the government needed to save money and that the cuts had been recommended by the health authorities involved.
Sure those two ideas were among dozens tossed out by all four regional health authorities back in February as possible cuts when they were asked - hypothetically – what they could do to balance their budgets if they got funding frozen at 2008 levels.
But if the books are balanced the cuts weren’t necessary.
And if there was a problem with the government health budget generally, then surely it would have made more sense to do some serious thinking and announce a wide range of options with the new budget in the spring. There was no rush to chop in September if things were okay and certainly there’d be no reason to cut only two.
That’s what one would expect from a government that generally practices sound financial management based on a genuinely strategic approach. That was the logical implication when Oram acknowledged what many have known for some time, namely that the current administration has been spending wildly, spending public money in a way that – in Oram’s word was “unsustainable.”
Such a government would not engage in seemingly capricious, apparently ill-considered and curious, bizarre cuts that seem to bear no connection to anything. Heck they aren’t even connected to a review of laboratory and x-ray service which isn’t even completed yet.
Such decisions would seem driven by something other than sound reasoning, logic, and a firm grasp of the whole picture. They’d seem panicky. They’d seem irrational, perchance even stupid given the political fall-out that’s resulted across the northern coast of Newfoundland.
And it would seem even more irrational, capricious, certainly foolishly stubborn and – yes maybe even stupid – to persist in the irrational and apparently unnecessary cuts on those two communities once the backlash started and the overall financial picture was shown to be something other than dire.
Events of the past couple of weeks make you wonder what is really going on inside the provincial government. What is the real story behind the Flower’s Cove and Lewisporte cuts.
Was there more to Trevor’s departure than meets the eye? Was there something to be found in his comment to Randy Simms the other morning that we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Taylor was known to speak bluntly and he certainly never spouted the “we are living in a bubble” rhetoric.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the good people of Newfoundland and Labrador would look on another administration and wonder what was going on. Things sometimes didn’t make sense.
The good people would stare in bewilderment since the leader was known to be a political mastermind. Surely there had to be some Mensa answer they would rationalize, an idea incomprehensible to mere mortals as to why such bizarre things were occurring.
Even went things looked insane they figured there had to be a plan behind it all. No one had to tell them that at a board of trade speech; they knew it already.
Yet, despite their faith, they remained perplexed.
Uneasy.
Unsettled.
Disquieted.
Your humble e-scribbler would suggest to these people that they think about the issue again, and about their conclusion, with one tiny difference:
Merely look on events without the assumption that there was some inscrutable genius at work.
Then look again at the conclusion they reached.
Invariably, inevitably, predictably, at the point they reached a conclusion once again – devoid of the assumed secret and unknown brilliance – their faces turned ashen.
And they would go very quiet.
Quiet isn’t a word you’d use these days in some parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, is it? Places where the Great Tory Revolution supposedly started.
That must be a very uncomfortable thought for some people.
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In honour of Trevor Taylor’s departure from politics, here’s a link to a post on what he said is his proudest accomplishment in politics.
The fibre-optic deal may well prove to be the railway branch lines of the information superhighway. It was also one of the finest examples of a government that can’t seem to figure out what it is doing or why it is doing it but it does know the public shouldn’t get any concrete information.
Just remember: Trevor picked this as his own political monument.
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Kruger announced Friday that Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited - the only paper mill left in the province - will idle the entire Corner Brook facility for two weeks starting October 12.
The company cites the high dollar and weak newsprint prices as the reason for the shut-down.
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The provincial government didn't "invest" money in Rolls-Royce at all.
It just handed over a half million in cash, no strings attached.
It wasn't a loan.
They didn't buy shares.
They just gifted the company with public money.
- The Telegram - St. John's, NL: Business | Investment more than just money: premier (view on Google Sidewiki)
h/t to the anonymous comment suggesting sidewiki.
Don’t be surprised if you start hearing more of Danny Dumaresque in the weeks ahead as the former Liberal politician tries to raise his profile in anticipation of a by-election in The Straits-White Bay North.
The Other Danny is reputedly planning to turn up in Flower’s Cove for the Big Protest. That’s Step Two. Step One was calling local radio shows.
The Liberal Party’s answer to Jim Morgan last tried for a seat in the 2007 general election. He was defeated in Torngat Mountains by Patty Pottle and a gazillion personal phone calls from The Danny Hisself.
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Could be, at least if David Rosenberg is right.
Rosenberg, chief analyst at Glusken Sheff and Associates, thinks the current pricing in the markets is based on the false assumption that corporate profits and gross domestic product have already rebounded.
He basis his opinion, in part, on an analysis of the price to earnings ratio for stocks.
Furthermore, the stock rally is pricing in an employment rebound of 2.1 million and a rise in bank lending of 16.5% on average. But both employment and bank lending continue to decline.
At its current valuation, Mr. Rosenberg said the S&P 500 is priced for US$83 in operating earnings per share, which is nearly double from the most recent fourth quarter trend.
Meanwhile, consensus bottom-up estimates are predicting US$73 in operating earnings per share in 2010, with US$83 not likely until 2012.
Rosenberg’s analysis puts stocks overvalued by 20%.
In a similar way, oil has been over-valued considering the huge drop in American demand and corresponding high inventories. Prices have been dropping both for crude and refined products. NYMEX gasoline fell six cents per gallon and ICE Brent crude fell three dollars a barrel in the past 24 hours.
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Okay, so like all the Toronto media are worried about sodium in food.
The Grope has a story on it.
Ditto the national midnight Star.
And the mighty Ceeb! can’t be left out.
Lowering the sodium level in your diet is a good idea.
But if you really want a funny sodium story you have to look at anti-salt crusader Michael Bloomberg and his love affair with the shaker in NYC:
But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.
Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.
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Forget protest in the streets.
Protest where it hurts: the ballot box.
Danny Williams campaigned in your district in 2001 and held out the Tory victory there and across the road for Wally Young as proof times were changing in the Tory favour.
Well, times have really changed.
If you want to send a message to the government it will never, ever forget, then there is a simple way to send a message.
Vote today.
It’s called a special ballot.
Every person can request a special ballot including:
- an elector who has reason to believe that he/she will have difficulty voting on polling day perhaps due to work or personal commitments;
- a student who is in attendance at a recognized educational institution either inside or outside the Province;
- an elector temporarily residing outside the Province for a continuous period of less than 6 months who is unable to attend at either the advance or regular poll;
- an elector who is incarcerated in a correctional institution or in detention at the Waterford Hospital;
- a patient in hospital who will be unable to attend either the advance or regular poll.
All you have to do is contact the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, otherwise known as Elections Newfoundland and Labrador.
There’s a form to complete and send in. You can find it in pdf format here.
They’ll send you back a voter kit which you can use to cast your vote right now.
But there’s no election yet, you may be thinking.
Doesn’t matter.
Under section 86(4) of the Elections Act, voters who meet those criteria above can ask for a special ballot no more than four weeks before an election or by-election is called. Well, you and the rest of the world don’t know when the thing will be called but we know when the earliest date is that it could be called.
That would be October 2, the day Trevor said he is quitting the House of Assembly. Any of you who knew Trevor was going could have already voted. But since the rest of us found out today, you should be able to get a ballot and vote right now.
There is no legal reason for Paul Reynolds to refuse you the opportunity to vote under section 86(4).
And don’t worry about the fact there are no declared candidates.
Under section 86.4, you can write in the name of the political party you want to vote for instead of the name of a particular person. Once a candidate is declared for that party, the candidate will get your vote.
Voting is your right.
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In other instalments in the Kremlinology series, we introduced you to Trevor Taylor. There were a couple of signs that things were not right with Trevor Taylor and his relationship with the current administration.
Until today he was a cabinet minister in the Danny Williams crew. He’ll be resigning his seat in the legislature next week.
Taylor pulled pin unexpectedly Thursday, announcing he was off to a new gig with a not-for-profit interested in Arctic ecology. According to Taylor, he is going for personal reasons. He said he made the decision a month ago, told the Premier a week and a bit ago and dropped it on cabinet today.
There’s a new job waiting for him that will involve working with a not-for-profit on fisheries management in places like the Beaufort Sea.
The real reasons are likely contained in all the pre-emptive denials Trevor tossed out in his scrum:
- He still loves Danny
- No dissention or tension
- Not running federally
- Nothing to do with Flowers Cove
Politics is hard on the personal life and when things get tough on issues like Flowers Cove, forestry and the fishery – all big issues in Taylor’s neck of the woods - family members often bear the brunt. The fact that Taylor hasn’t been able to make any headway with his cabinet colleagues on those issues doesn’t help.
His tone during the scrum seems stressed. This is a guy who doesn’t appear to want to leave politics. If he has issues within his family, a job that will take him over North America and involve work at the opposite end of the country doesn’t sound like a recipe for spending more time with the kids, as the phrase goes.
For his part, the Premier praised Taylor and said it might take until next month to sort out a new cabinet arrangement. A permanent replacement for Taylor would take longer. Taylor has carried a few stinky parcels for the current administration, including the fibre optic scheme.
Maybe Taylor’s departure speaks to frustration at his inability to change certain minds in the Confederation Building. He spoke about getting into politics to make decisions on certain things. One of them was likely the fishery, interestingly a portfolio from which Taylor was ripped in favour of some old-fashioned thinking.
Trevor Taylor is a relatively young man who – until today – seemed to have a bright political future ahead of him, especially in a post-Danny Williams Tory party. The fact that he decided to pack it in, rather than stick it any longer, might be a sign that kremlinology sometimes works.
Any other cabinet ministers or back-benchers feeling political heat these days?
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Last time your humble e-scribbler checked, education was an exclusively provincial responsibility under the constitution.
Yes, the feds drop money into post-secondary education, but how it gets spent is a thing for provincial government authorities.
So if any order of government has to prepare young people for the future and a global, competitive economy, it would be the provincial government.
Research and development?
Both orders of government should be spending money on that. The provincial should not be giving gigantic breaks to its buddies in the oil business.
So what exactly is Siobhan Coady doing calling on the federal government to deal with issues where the provincial government is apparently dropping the ball?
Apparently following the time honoured local political tradition of talking about things other than what your elected position deals with.
If you are running for school board, complain about the roads. If you are running for municipal government, complain about the hospitals, schools, and the provincial government in general. If you are running for provincial office - blame Ottawa.
Or is it the other local tradition of talking about the need for more federal hand-outs to cover the bills for being more “independent”? If that’s the case she has good company from at least one current politician and one wannabe.
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Forget all the talk about Newfoundland and Labrador being a have not province. Figures from the federal finance department tell a different tale.
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | |
| NL | 7792 | 8572 | 8994 | 9936 |
| PE | 7489 | 7671 | 7874 | 8594 |
| NS | 5966 | 6422 | 7014 | 7701 |
| NB | 6895 | 7349 | 7849 | 8476 |
| QC | 6324 | 6493 | 6787 | 7108 |
| ON | 5652 | 5979 | 6261 | 6848 |
| MB | 7510 | 8080 | 8154 | 9235 |
| SK | 6465 | 7179 | 7768 | 8058 |
| AB | 7363 | 8050 | 8562 | 9461 |
| BC | 6828 | 7316 | 7578 | 8054 |
Leaving out debt servicing , Newfoundland and Labrador topped every province in the country in spending per person in 12 of the 21 years from 1986 to 2007. The province has been in the top three in per person spending in all but three years in that period.
And the gap isn’t a small one.
In 2007, Newfoundland and Labrador outspent Alberta by $500 per person.
In 2003, the last year of the Grimes administration, Newfoundland and Labrador spent about $1300 per person more than oil-soaked Alberta.
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