Big Oil’s New L’il Buddies and helicopter safety

While the offshore helicopter safety inquiry has given some people a platform for their false statements about search and rescue again, let’s try a scenario that is based on facts and reasonable suppositions. 

Let’s suppose, for example, that after the whole thing is over, former Supreme Court Judge Robert Wells makes some recommendations that – in the opinion of the offshore oil companies – would adversely affect the projects. 

Let’s take the Hebron project as a typical one.

Adverse affect might be cost in this case. 

For example, let’s suppose that Wells decides that – despite the very best and most intense lobbying by everyone from Jack Harris to lawyer Randall Earle – the cost burden for providing search and rescue for the offshore in St. John’s should still be borne by the oil companies.

Let’s suppose that Big Oil’s L’il Buddies fail miserably in their efforts to shift the cost to taxpayers.  Let’s imagine that – contrary to the campaign being waged -  Wells requires that the companies continue to provide SAR support for their own employees and their own helicopters. 

And let’s imagine Wells decides to up the ante arguing that they should do it 24/7.

All of that is either established fact (there is such a campaign underway, even if it is hodge-podge and disorganized) or is a likely outcome of the inquiry.

And further, let’s suppose the oil companies find that – for a whole bunch of arguable reasons – that cost is just too much to bear. 

Maybe oil prices have dropped down again to levels far below the current US$80 a barrel.  And hey, it’s not like oil prices will go up and up and up forever.

So there’s our scenario.

What does the provincial government do?

Well, the provincial cabinet would likely find themselves bound by section 5.1 of the Hebron financial agreements:

The Province shall, on the request of the Proponents…support the efforts of the Proponents in responding to any future legislative and regulatory changes that may be proposed by Canada or a municipal government in the Province that might adversely affect any Development Project, provided such action does not negatively impact the Province or require the Province to take any legislative or regulatory action respecting municipalities.

And before you start arguing that opposing the SAR regulation “negatively impact the Province”, you are really not reading carefully enough.  When the word “province” is written with a capital “P” it means the Government of the place.

So since the provincial government as such would not be negatively affected, they wouldn’t have the one and only ground that applies on which they could slip out from under their legally binding obligation to back Big Oil.

Of course, the provincial government is also really an oil company these days.  Therefore it would liable for the cost of providing those helicopters for SAR.  It  would be in the provincial government’s interest to work with the other oil companies against the Wells safety recommendation anyway. 

If money is really tight - after all  - and these extra costs threaten the Lower Churchill project too, there might be lots of reasons for the provincial government/oil company to fight such a recommendation.

This inquiry might turn out to be very interesting after all. 

Oh.

And we can expect the lobbying effort that benefits Big Oil – Jack Harris is a witness in the schedule, for example – to intensify over the next few weeks.

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When it comes to reckless speculation…

at least CBC commentator Brian Callahan is an expert on the subject.

Since the Cougar helicopter crash this past spring Callahan has been pushing an attack on 103 Rescue Squadron based on the speculation that somehow 103 Squadron could have materially changed the outcome had it not been training at Sydney Nova Scotia at the time of the incident.

Callahan continued his irresponsible attack during a CBC commentary on Wednesday.  Give it a listen, if you will. 

Notice that he actually doesn’t make a case on this.  He never has.   

Rather, Callahan makes false statements.  He claims, for example, that the Department of National Defence will be as absent from the helicopter safety inquiry “as they were on March 12th.”  Callahan knows of course that both coast guard and the Canadian Forces were far from absent on the day of the crash and subsequently during the recovery of the bodies.  Callahan clearly knows nothing about search and rescue as he claims that 103 Squadron left its task to others on that fateful day.

And he suggests – in his reference to 26 years ago – that the recommendations of the Ocean Ranger Royal Commission were ignored.  That too is an utterly false suggestion. 

Words from last spring remain appropriate:

This sort of misrepresentation amounts to an abuse. 

It tortures the families of the victims of the crash by suggesting a hope which is false. 

This attack – and that’s what it amounts to – tortures the men and women of the search and rescue services.  103 Search and Rescue Squadron flies twice the national average in SAR missions.  Hercules from 413 Squadron join them far out to sea.  They all train hard and fly hard and risk their lives in weather when the rest of us are huddled by a fire safe at home. They do it to save the souls whose lives are at risk in the harsh North Atlantic. When lives are lost, as in this case, they will inevitably search their souls to ensure that all that could be done was done.

This attack abuses the men and women of Cougar. The company has an exemplary safety record.  The company has such a record because every single employee is committed to safe service.  Over 48,000 accident free flying hours don’t happen without such a level of personal commitment. The company’s crews also fly search and rescue services every bit as good and every bit as dangerous as the work done by 103 and its sister squadrons.

These misrepresentations abuse the members of the public who are shocked by the tragedy and who share in the grief of those who have lost loved ones. They are misled into believing things which are not true.

In a time of tragedy, it is hard to imagine more monstrous abuses. The tortures will continue until someone decides to put an end to them. Maybe a wise editorial hand needs to rest on someone’s shoulder.

In the meantime,  all that the rest of us can do is hope that somewhere in the midst of their self-absorption, the perpetrators of the abuse can realize the harm they are doing.

Sadly, Brian is not alone.  Some politicians have also taken to building platforms for themselves out of corpses and grief.

Sadder still, Callahan continues to get a paid platform from which to spread his misinformation;  the wise editorial hand is still missing.

Since the perpetrators of the abuse have clearly not realized what they doing, perhaps it remains a hope that Judge Robert Wells’ inquiry will provide enough fact to silence the reckless speculation once and for all.

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Job Vacancy – no experience required

Joan Cook retired from the senate on October 6. 

The Chretien-era appointee hit the magic age to retire from what used to be known as the Antechamber to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Used to be the only way most senators left the job and its lovely salary was to die.

That means there is a vacancy from Newfoundland and Labrador just waiting to be filled by Stephen Harper.

Who will get it?

There’s a good question.

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Oram and Williams tell radically different versions of departure story

Even in Paul Oram’s political death, he and Danny Williams can’t get on the same page.

Asked about Oram’s resignation, Danny Williams told reporters that when it comes to an individual’s health and family, he doesn’t even try and convince someone to stay. “I just accept it,” said Williams.

But that’s not what Paul says.  As the Gander Beacon put it:

Mr. Oram said the premier asked whether he would consider staying on as an MHA, but he said he felt if he was going to walk away from one aspect of his work, he would prefer to fully remove himself from politics.

"I just felt that if I needed to regain control of my life, I had to walk away from politics altogether."

That’s not the first time that Oram and Williams have been at odds.

On the same day in early September – before Oram’s surprise resignation - Williams said the decision on  cutting lab and x-ray services was made months earlier, long before Oram became minister. 

Williams told a scrum that Lewisporte MHA Wade Verge knew of the cuts some time before July 9, 2009. Williams indicated Verge had the information from both Williams’ chief of staff and from Ross Wiseman when the latter was still health minister. 

Oram told the House of Assembly  - at almost the same time Williams was talking to reporters at another location - that he made the decision after meeting with concerned citizens in Lewisporte in mid-August. 

None of the dates match up since letters released by Oram in early September were part of the pre-budget process.  They were dated in February 2009.

But now even Danny Williams can’t get it straight.

According to the Northern Pen, the Beacon’s sister newspaper, a campaigning Danny Williams said something completely different from his earlier versions:

"Paul Oram had proceeded on the basis of recommendations made to him by the health authority," stated Premier Williams.

Not only did Oram now supposedly make a decisions Williams earlier attributed to someone else but the health authorities actually didn’t make the recommendations.  They were simply asked for options to save money, money that – as it turned out – they actually never had to save anyway.

No wonder some people don’t trust some politicians.

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Oil and the budget

The provincial government seems to be in one of those strange places it goes every now and then.

It’s a world where the messages are decidedly mixed, if one picks a generous way to describe it.

Totally confused would be another way of saying there are two completely contradictory messages rolling at the same time.

Both of them are coming from the current finance minister who is also a former finance minister and notorious for running an open cheque-book department.

In the latest incarnation, Tom Marshall is seen supporting a CBC news story that rising oil prices are wiping out the projected government deficit.

Just yesterday it was a tale of looming financial woes. Tom Marshall even repeated the message that government spending  - i.e. the spending he oversaw in the job before - is unsustainable. 

In the CBC story, though, Marshall tries desperately to avoid giving any firm indication of the province’s current financial state:

If the price averages $70 a barrel for the entire year, it could wipe out the provincial deficit, but Marshall cautions against such predictions yet.

"It's not just the price," he said. "It's the volume. It's the exchange rate and of course we don't know what's going to happen in the future in terms of production numbers."

There are a couple of things to note here.

First of all, Marshall knows exactly where things are at this, the midpoint in the fiscal year.  he also knows where things are likely to wind up within a relatively narrow range of possibilities.  Marshall just didn’t want to share, even if CBC actually asked, and he likely won’t share until December if recent practice holds firm.

Of course, there’s a reason why the government holds on to information.  They clam up so that people who ought to have accurate information can’t get it, but that’s another issue. 

Second of all, we can fill in some numbers but not others. 

The stuff we are missing includes revenue figures like sales tax, mineral royalties and personal income tax.   If those are lower than expected, then it would take more than high oil prices to deliver a balanced budget. It’s unlikely those figures will turn out lower than estimated since the finance department routinely low-ball revenues these days.  But still, we don’t know because they aren’t saying.

We also don’t know what government spending is actually like. Operational spending may be up or it may be down.  Ditto the capital budget, or the “stimulus” as it is known currently.  If projects are behind schedule or delayed – as many are – then the cash budgeted for those projects will reduce the overall spending part of the budget.  A healthy chunk of the massive surplus in the last couples of years has been coming from forecast spending that just never happened and wound up not happening for two or three budgets.

As for oil, we can get a fairly good idea of what that looks like. 

Price is one element.  The 2009 budget used a figure of US$50 a barrel and an exchange rate that put oil at the equivalent of around Cdn$60.  Oil is currently almost $20 a barrel higher than that, even allowing for the lower exchange rate with the American dollar.

Production is another element.  Last year, oil production exceeded 125 million barrels.  This year, the provincial budget used a figure of  98.5 million barrels or a decline of  21%.  As it stands right now production in the first five months of the fiscal year is down about 27% compared to last year.  A 27% drop in production would mean a total production of about 93.75 million barrels.

But that’s not the whole oil picture.

The other bit is the percentage of each barrel the treasury gets and neither the budget documents last March nor Tom Marshall these days will talk about that publicly either. 

Thanks to the 19 year old Hibernia royalty regime, the provincial government take at Hibernia jumped to between 30% and 42.5% this year when the project hit pay-out.  Terra Nova and White Rose are already in pay-out and are pumping 30% royalty rates based on the original royalty regimes from before 2003.

And that’s where it gets interesting.

The budget figures don’t appear to include the higher royalty rates. factor those in and even the lower production total of 93 million barrels would produce provincial royalties of at least $1.9 billion. When your humble e-scribbler ran the numbers in August - estimating the revenues from each project -  the figure came out about the same as last year’s oil royalty. 

What all this means is that even allowing for some variation in other revenues and in overall spending, the books will likely be balanced this year on an accrual basis even at the low-end estimate.  On a cash basis there would a shortfall;  the budget forecast $1.3 billion. 

On the upper end, the forecast accrual deficit would turn into a surplus of something on the order of $500 million.  On a cash basis, the books would be balanced.

All in all, though, one must wonder why there is some much confusion coming from the current and former finance minister(s).  They could be letting the rest of is on their own projections since, the only negotiations going on right now are with voters.

Voters have a right to know how their own finances are looking, don’t they?

Oh yes.

And let’s not forget in all this that the budget last year included $1.8 billion in temporary investments that no one wanted to draw any attention to.

Makes you wonder why Tom and Jerome and Danny have been putting on the poor mouth again, even if just for a minute now and then.

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The Secret of Success

In any major business venture, it is important to ensure that the product will meet demand in the marketplace including consumer preferences.

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A new - if idiotic - tourism idea

Check out Lee Hopkins’ blog post on his latest podcast with fellow communications consultant Allen Jenkins.

This is worth checking out for two videos, both of which turn out ultimately to be really cheesy marketing stunts.

One is from Denmark and involves a young woman who is supposedly looking for the father of her child.  The child is supposedly the result of a drunken one-nighter with some unknown tourist.

While it looks a bit pathetic, the video is apparently a tourism board idea.  Allan and Lee discuss the cost and the target market, one of which is outrageous while the other is imponderable. They also discuss the complete failure of the campaign. At least two senior officials – one with the tourism board, the other with the agency – wound up leaving their employment over the fiasco.  According to the lads, there were more in the sequence which have since been shelved.

The inspiration for this bit of tomfoolery was a stunt in Australia involving a jacket and a supposed chance encounter in a bar.  The subsequent controversy  - based on alleged misrepresentation of the video - saw one of the creative geniuses behind the thing leaving his company to pursue other opportunities.

Oh yes, the Danish one also generated another version of the  Hitler meme.

Great podcast on a great topic from two guys who know their stuff.    lee and Allen discuss viral videos and ethics at some length.  it’s all good stuff.

And when you are done with that, enjoy once again a fine example of the viral art featuring none other than NTV’s own Glenn Carter.

 

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Inconvenient questions, H1N1 update version

Okay.

The latest H1N1 update from the provincial medical officer of health says there have been seven confirmed cases of H1N1 in the province over the past week.  This is the second wave.

So how does she know it is seven confirmed cases of H1N1?

You see the official advice from the health department is that if you get sick you don’t go to the doctor or to a hospital emergency room:

If you get influenza-like symptoms, but are otherwise healthy, stay home to avoid infecting others and treat the symptoms.

So how exactly do they know that there have been seven confirmed H1N1 cases in the province in the last week?

Just wondering.

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Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry - links

The offshore board’s inquiry into offshore helicopter safety started in St. John’s on October 19.

You can find the inquiry website via the offshore board website or here: www.oshsi.nl.ca.

For the record, you can also find:

• A schedule of witnesses;
• transcripts and exhibits; and,
• live video streaming.

Transcribing is fast.  You can find the testimony from this morning already posted.

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Politics and Language in Newfoundland, Corner Brook version

Someone writes a letter to the Western Star commenting on Danny  Williams’ use of language.

Some members of The Fan Club take issue in predictable ways.

More comments follow, pro and con.

Fascinating.

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Great Moments in Sound Financial Management

Tom Marshall in 2008 on the need for balanced budget legislation:

“I would like to see us come forward with some fiscal responsibility legislation that would make it a commitment of every government to ensure that, as a principle, we budget for a balanced budget, recognizing it won’t be possible to always have a balanced budget,” said Marshall. “And, if we can’t balance the budget, there would be an obligation on the government to explain and disclose to the people of the province why it didn’t happen and to disclose a strategy to ensure we get back to a balanced budget over a certain period of time.”

Marshall prefers to have balanced budget legislation that doesn’t require balanced budgets.

At least Tom is consistent.  From 2007:

"I don't know if I agree with balanced budget legislation," Marshall said.

"I certainly would agree with fiscal responsibility legislation … but I'm not prepared to be locked in automatically to a balanced budget every year," he said.

Not surprising then that government spending up to know has been unsustainable and  - dare one say it? – not very sound or responsible.

We know because the current finance minister told us.

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When politicians become ghouls

My grandmother used to tell the story of going to a funeral in a small community where one her distant relatives had passed away. 

The story happened so long ago that neither the place nor the time was important.  What is worth recollecting is her account of the people who attended at the cemetery for the committal of the body to the ground.

They didn’t stand around, a lot of them.  The onlookers  arranged themselves sitting along the top-most rail of the little white fence with the heels of their shoes hooked in the bottom rail.  My grandmother described them as being very creepy and ghoulish.

That image has come to mind several times over the last few months.  Too many politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador have tried to make a political platform out of the tragic deaths of 17 people on Cougar 491.

They were quick to rush forward with a bunch of ideas that all turned out to be completely false and they have persisted, especially in attacking the federal government generally and the brave men and women of the Canadian Forces search and rescue service.

These politicians want to have search and rescue service in St. John’s.

But here’s the thing:  their entire argument is based on the case of Cougar 491.  In that incident – as the events themselves showed – the passengers and crew died pretty much on impact. 

There is virtually no way – even in the highly unlikely situation that a rescue helicopter had been flying alongside the ill-fated Cougar helicopter – that a single additional life could have been saved.

Sad. Tragic, even. 

But true.

Now that the consensus among politicians of all stripes has taken hold, it is apparently spreading to some of the lawyers at the Wells helicopter inquiry.  To wit, we have the bizarre case of the lawyer representing offshore workers at the inquiry.    The lawyer claims that “if DND does not have the resources or the federal government is not willing to alter the distribution of  search and rescue resources,” then the oil companies will have to do the job.

That’s an “if” that is based on the false premise that additional Canadian Forces equipment would have made a difference in this case or others like it and that the only solution worth talking is that the federal government  - correction – the taxpayers like you and me - must pay instead of perhaps requiring that the offshore operating companies bear a heftier burden for life safety, including a SAR service that doesn’t take an hour to get ready and that can fly when the weather is bad or it’s dark.

That’s actually one of the rather interesting things about the position taken by politicians, Liberal Conservative and New Democrat, who have taken up the position on the fence-top calling out advice from the sidelines:  they’ve all leaped to a conclusion that doesn’t involve the offshore operators and instead fingers the feds.
And now their argument has reached one of the lawyers involved.

Maybe people should hear the evidence before they come to conclusions.

And maybe, just maybe, politicians should stop trying to make political platforms out of corpses.

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Dumb and Dumber, the fin min version

Reborn finance minister Tom “Marshall's challenge now is balancing declining revenues against increasing needs” to quote the Telegram story from today’s from page.

He said the key is "spending wiser, and spending smarter."

Okay, sez your humble e-scribbler, so does that means Marshall’s previous tenure as finance minister involved spending dumb and dumber?

Interesting line to take during a by-election, incidentally.  Cuts to spending by Marshall’s predecessor are what got the governing party into this by-election in the first place.  Jerome! Kennedy the high-pitched predecessor – now the higher pitched health minister – has been busily backtracking on the cuts Marshall, Kennedy and their boss approved in cabinet.

Curious.

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“Feeling queasy”: Is quieter better?

People in Newfoundland and Labrador must surely be looking with some puzzlement on the flap over federal Conservatives handing out government money as if it was their own.

In this province, their provincial Conservative cousins have the thing down to a science. The use of public money for partisan benefit is an old one in Newfoundland and Labrador but this current crowd have raised it to a fine  art. 

The House of Assembly spending scandal was – for the most part – a scam worked up to push free and untraceable cash that politicians could hand out to all and sundry in their district for any purpose the politician could think of approving.

So pervasive was the practice that a review by the auditor general found scarcely a single politician from any political party who sat in the House after the scam started in 1998 who did not use it to some extent. 

The review also revealed that the politicians elected after 2003 used it with an enthusiasm their federal cousins could only envy.  Of the top ten spenders as a percentage of their constituency operations allowance, six were elected after 2003 and all but one was a Tory.

As it turned out, one of the biggest supporters of the public cash for partisan benefit scheme was a former auditor general.  Ironically, she was the one the House management commission blocked from looking at some aspects of the scam while it was first organizing.  Beth Marshall also felt no qualms about handing out cash in small and larger amounts, nor did she feel any difficulty that there was a skimpy audit trail for the cash or that money was going to duplicate  existing government programs in some cases.

The use of public money for partisan purposes was not confined to individual members of the legislature and that’s where the parallel with the federal Conservatives really becomes apparent.  Since 2003, the Provincial Conservatives have worked to make sure that local partisan benefit came from any available pot of public cash:

-  As we found out when Tom Rideout packed it in, road paving and construction is over-seen by a political staffer in the Premier’s office.

Since 2003, it has been consistently managed in a way to maximise the benefit to Conservative districts and to punish those that voted for another party.

-  Fire trucks are a recent favourite for the spending announcement with the local MHA. With the recent by-elections and political upheaval, the fire truck announcements are coming about one a week.

The one they’ve consistently used is the small time cash being handed out by one department or another.  The money is from a legitimate departmental program but when the cash is handed out someone from the government caucus gets the credit.  It is inevitably called a “donation” or a “contribution” to make the free cash sound like anything but what it is.

There’s nothing new about it.  Back in 2007, Bond Papers linked to an old CBC news story that dates from the early 1970s that mentions the same practice dating back three or four decades and more.

But just because something is old is not a reason to think it is okay.  Not all traditions are fine or honorable.

Nor is it any better that it is done quietly in these parts as opposed to brazenly at the federal level.  The quiet nature of the local practice makes it all the more insidious.

Done loudly or quietly, though the practice is enough to make anyone concerned for the state of our democracy feel very queasy indeed.

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Paul Oram: busted

We knew Paul Oram’s comments the day he left politics were complete hogwash.

labradore refutes him, point by point.  And he adds the picture of Oram and his wife from 2006 that puts paid to the whole pack of nonsense Oram spouted about not wanting his family in the media.

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The positives of negativity

The much-feared inflation demon continues to shrink away.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, inflation hit  -0.9% in September 2009 compared to a year earlier, down from –0.7% in August.

The figures come from the latest Statistics Canada release.

Back just before the collapse last year, some people were speculating that it might be time to take action to fight the largely imaginary inflation demon. Subsequent events seem to have taken care of that little problem nicely.

Then again, there are other issues which some people seem hell bent on ignoring.

Kinda funny when the guy responsible for both the largest spending increases and one of the largest budgeted deficits in Newfoundland history accuses others of going on a wild spending spree.

And then re-appoints to run finance the guy who oversaw the real open cheque-book government in the first place.

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The Marine Atlantic Disconnect

Consider if you will, the number of times a provincial government official – usually the tourism minister du jour – has bitched about the ferry service between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

The fares.

The schedule.

The ships.

Doesn’t matter:  Marine Atlantic supposedly sucks.

Now for the poor folks running Marine Atlantic, they just can’t win.  One minister refers to the ferries as constitutional cattle-cars.  People clog the open line shows to chime in their agreement.

So the company invests in a new boat with plenty of modern, trendy conveniences.

The same people bitch that it is too grand when all they need is the marine equivalent of a cattle-car.

Anyways, the latest round of bleating is about a fare increase to offset rising fuel costs.

Clyde Jackman issued a news release on October 6 predicting possible dire consequences resulting from the latest fare changes.

Diane Whelan did the bitching in June 2008.

In 2007, there was a bevy:

• December
• September, and
• February.

Okay.

Still following?

But, just a few weeks ago, Clyde was out there trumpeting the fact that “[n]on-resident traffic on Marine Atlantic is up 4.4 per cent over 2008, while resident traffic exiting the province is down almost one per cent…”.

So despite all the supposed problems, there are actually more people using the service this year compared last year.

That wasn’t good enough: by October 16 Jackman had decided that traffic on the ferries was actually up 5.2% from last year  And, said Jackman, “…we cannot continue to grow this industry without a reliable, affordable Gulf ferry service.”

But hang on a moment.

There is a problem here with the minister’s logic:

If the current ferry service is not reliable and is not affordable – according to the bitching to date – how can it be that the ferry traffic is growing?

Tut. Tut.

It’s really terrible to see this sort of pessimism coming from a provincial cabinet minister.

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Python at 40

The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired 40 years ago this month on the BBC.

Taped first but according to some sources aired third was the original premiere episode titled “Whither Canada?”

It seems appropriate.

Curiously enough, this was also the title of the final major assignment at the National Defence College.  Maybe there was some thus far undiscovered connection.

The first episode aired October 5, 1969.

Graham Chapman died one day shy of 20 years later, on October 4, 1989.  

John Cleese delivered what has become a legendary eulogy for his old writing partner at a memorial service held in December that year.

He very quickly manages to change the tone of the event, as can be seen by the crowd shots as he begins speaking and then hits the jokes.

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The shrimp industry explained

Derek Butler in the Telegram.

As usual there’s way more to the issue than meets the eye.

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The search for a university president: compare and contrast

At McMaster, they started hunted in January and 10 months later came up with a winner.

At Memorial,  it has already taken almost 10 months just to go through the bullshit at the front end designed solely to get people to forget the sheer sh*t-wreck made of your humble e-scribbler’s alma mater in the first go- ‘round.

The only way the Memorial University search committee will find a president before the end of this year is if John Fitzgerald  - Our Man in a Blue Line Cab, seen left, hard at it on the diplomatic circuit - tells Danny he wants out of Ottawa pronto.

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