Dunderdale blunders again: did NALCOR lobbyists give wrong funding figures to fed’s watchdog?

Information provided on the federal lobbyist registry about lobbyists hired by the provincial energy corporation is wrong to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Plus it is also for something other than what the lobbyists are registered to lobby about.

That’s according to Kathy Dunderdale, the province’s natural resources minister.  Presumably, the information was supplied to the federal registry by the lobbyists when they registered.

The province’s natural resources minister claims that the figure $960,000 listed on a federal lobbyist registry entry as cash received by the client for government funds isn’t for fees paid to the lobbyists. 

Dunderdale issued a news release today to refute opposition claims that the provincial energy corporation was dropping almost a million bucks a year on lobbyists while at the same time the provincial government was dropping another bundle to pay for Our Man in a Blue Line Cab who is supposed to be the province’s point man for all things in Ottawa.

Dunderdale says the figure on the federal lobbyist registry was:

…funding received by Nalcor from the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for three specific projects related to the Northern Strategic Plan, a rate subsidy for isolated and remote communities powered by diesel, and energy-related studies for the Department of Natural Resources – all unrelated to Summa. The fact that this was not a payment to Summa was evident from the website of the Office of Commissioner of Lobbying, but was misreported by the Opposition.

Okay. 

So that’s exactly what your humble e-scribbler did.

Right off, here’s one entry for the lobbying firm and here’s a picture of the section of the website where the figures are presented.

The same information is the same as the entry for another lobbyist from the same firm currently working the same file.  Here’s the bottom of the second lobbyist entry which -  incidentally -  is identical to the first:

The information on that financial line is supposed to be government funding received by the client, in this case NALCOR Energy.  You can confirm that by checking the guide provided by the lobbyist registry:

• Source and amount of any government funding provided to the client, as well as information indicating if the client is expecting to receive public funding; and…

Now if Kathy Dunderdale is right, that figure of $960,000 is related to something other than the Lower Churchill and it also isn’t related to the lobbying firm, Summa Strategies.

So why is it there?

Really good question.

Unfortunately, Dunderdale didn’t answer it in her news release.

If that wasn’t bad enough,  the lobbyist entry is about the Lower Churchill and the client is identified as NALCOR Energy, the holding company that includes all the provincial government’s energy holdings.

Under those circumstances, the entry should include  - at the very least - the hundreds of millions paid in the past two years by the provincial government to purchase oil stakes and other money transferred from the provincial government to fatten NALCOR up financially.

Dunderdale didn’t offer any explanation of that in her news release either.

This wouldn’t be the first time Kathy Dunderdale blundered badly on a matter within her portfolio.

In 2006 Dunderdale  was embroiled in controversy over a patronage appointee who violated the province’s public tender act. Dunderdale made repeated statements about the issue some of which contradicted other statements.  in the end, the government was forced to close the legislature early to avoid further embarrassment.

In 2008, Dunderdale said the provincial government was considering a law suit against Quebec and Ottawa over the 1969 Churchill Falls contract.  She later claimed she “misspoke”, a line she maintains to this date despite evidence the government has been considering some form of legal ploy on the contract for some time.

In September, 2009, Dunderdale gave wrong information about the failure of talks with Rhode Island on a potential sale of Lower Churchill power. She said “that they did not have the capacity to negotiate a long-term power purchase agreement with Nalcor on behalf of the Province. Nor were they able, in their Legislature, to do the regulatory changes that were required in order to wheel electricity into the state.”

According to the Rhode Island governor’s office:

As far as we can determine, there is no legislative hold up here in Rhode Island, it is more of a question of cost.  While the power generation is inexpensive, the cost of transmission adds to the final price. The possibility of purchasing power is still alive….

The salvation for Dunderdale in this case is that she scored a minor victory on what the cash was really about.

Unfortunately Dunderdale put the government’s lobbyists in an even deeper spot over the amount they apparently did report to the federal lobbyist registry.

Ouch!

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No fluff from Dean

Newbie member of the House of Assembly Marshall Dean didn’t waste any time in putting his stamp on things.

While other politicians quickly learned the art of “on-a-go-forward-basis” bafflegab, Dean gave a short and highly accurate comment in reply to a statement by Shawn Skinner.  The innovation minister made a formal statement which restated  events since the seizure of hydro assets in central Newfoundland and then finished with this insightful comment:

I would like to thank the members for their contribution and I look forward to continuing our relationship and working together into the future. Together, we can identify and realize opportunities that lead to a stronger, more diversified central region.

Here’s Dean’s reply:

Thank you, Minister, for providing me with an advance copy of the statement. It is noteworthy that there is nothing new in this statement. It is commendable to acknowledge the people who are involved in this community, who are concerned about their future. The reality is there was a failure by government to secure the mill when it ran into trouble, and what people are clearly worried about now is the long-term security of the area, and this needs to be addressed in a long-term strategy.

Thirty-five million has been paid out to the workers; however, government will be claiming this back through AbitibiBowater. This would never have happened in the first place if government had not reacted into the relentless pressure from the Official Opposition. The question now, Mr. Speaker –

…

The question now, Mr. Speaker, is: what are they going to do for the people to gain some benefit from the resource, a resource that is earning government millions of dollars with nothing going back to the people?

Citizens of Central just want a fair share on their hydro power. Another question we have, Mr. Speaker, is what about pensioners who will be losing approximately 30 per cent of their pensions if the company is declared insolvent.

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is much of the statement is fluff, sorry. We need more of a real investment of money in Central and the people of that area need it and deserve it.

Read enough Hansard and you’ll realise how atypical that sort of blunt  - and accurate - talk is.

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The 1969 Churchill Falls Power Contract

For those who might be interested in these things, here’s the 1969 power contract between Hydro-Quebec and Churchill Falls(Labrador) Corporation in pdf format.

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Hydro Quebec has leverage on Danny Williams

If Premier Danny Williams listened to Opposition Leader Danny Williams he’d know what went wrong with efforts to develop Labrador hydroelectric power.

Here’s Danny Williams in November 2002 in full fury over a proposed deal on the Lower Churchill:

Mr. Speaker, could the Premier please tell the people why he did not use the Lower Churchill as a bargaining lever to address the inequities of the Upper Churchill contract? Would the Premier explain why he quit on the objective of every single Government of Newfoundland and Labrador since the deal was signed over thirty years ago?

Leverage.

Before he got elected, Danny Williams said there would be no deal on the Lower Churchill under his administration without redress for the 1969 Churchill Falls contract.

He rejected a joint Hydro Quebec/Ontario Hydro/SNC Lavalin proposal to develop the Lower Churchill in partnership with Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

Williams gave away what he himself described in 2002 as leverage.

That part was reported by the conventional media.

Then Williams went a step further.

After rejecting the proposal out of hand in order to “go-it-alone” and in complete contradiction to his own stated commitment on redress,  Williams then spent five years secretly trying to get Hydro Quebec to take an ownership stake in the plan to develop 3,000 megawatts on the Lower Churchill leaving the 1969 contract “to one side”.

According to the province’s natural resources minister:

“We know that if you come in here as an equity player that you have to have a good return on your investment. And we want you to have a good return on your investment.”

That part of the saga – Williams secret efforts, without redress - hasn’t been reported by the conventional media and likely never will.

At the same time as he was trying to court Hydro Quebec as a business partner, Williams lambasted Quebec as politically volatile:

Three weeks ago, in a bid to garner support for the massive Lower Churchill hydroelectric project in Labrador, Williams said Canada should reduce its reliance on energy from Quebec because the province is too politically unstable.

"The more we can spread out our energy supply means that we won't be totally dependent on Quebec for energy which, given the volatility of the politics in Quebec, could be a very, very sensitive situation in the years to come,'' Williams said Sept. 27.

He later apologised if anyone took offense but would not withdraw the remark.  Williams said he was only described the “reality.”

Not surprisingly, Hydro Quebec wasn’t interested in any Lower Churchill deal involving Danny Williams. 

With the Quebec market gone and the Ontario one looking less promising, Williams and his crew looked elsewhere.  

A potential deal with Rhode Island (not that far from New York city - died for an obvious reason:  Lower Churchill power was simply too expensive.  By the time the very expensive project got its power all the way to Rhode Island – along with all the American-side wheeling charges -  Rhode Islanders just wouldn’t/couldn’t afford the bill.  And let’s not even start talking about the depressed prices and forget the race to develop cheaper alternatives that are just as or even more green than Gull Island and Muskrat Falls.

Not content with the failures to date, the Williams’ administration then tried to undermine the 1969 contract with a clumsy legal ploy that would have given control of the entire Churchill River to the provincial energy corporation.

That failed too.

With no markets, no money could be raised.  And with no markets and no money, the very expensive project just wouldn’t fly. Even Danny Williams had to admit the obvious, recently.

And now, with that as prologue, Danny Williams and his energy corporation are turning back to an idea he rejected five years ago: redress for the 1969 Churchill Falls deal.

Theirs is nothing more than a dolled up version of an old whine:  “Aw come on, it’s just not fair.”

And it isn’t fair, really.

But that doesn’t matter, as Danny Williams, opposition leader, and Danny Williams, lawyer, know very well. Without some sort of leverage, there isn’t any way to get at the 1969 contract and amend its terms.  Whatever leverage he had, Danny Williams has managed to either fritter it away or take a giant axe to it.

About the only saving grace for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is that Hydro Quebec is unlikely to take the request to renegotiate the deal seriously; not likely that is, unless there is a chance of making it even sweeter for them in other ways.  There are always things that could get better for Hydro Quebec.

Take, for example, the tax free status of the project until 2016.  In the early 1990s, HQ wanted to have that extended as part of a Lower Churchill deal.  The idea fell on the deaf ears of the Liberal administration of Clyde Wells.

Maybe Danny Williams would be more amenable given that he is quite obviously jammed up:  he needs a political score for the 2011 election much more than Hydro Quebec needs any talks or more money.

Then there is the issue of shares.  Right now Hydro Quebec holds about 35%. Danny Williams has already said that he was willing to see Hydro Quebec gain a good return on its investment.  Perhaps more shares in CFLCo and a new corporate structure could be worked out in exchange for cash.  That way, Hydro Quebec gains back some of the cash it would have to pay the corporation it already owns a significant chunk of:

[Claude Garcia] also noted that new benefits to the project operator, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp., would also provide some juice to Hydro-Quebec because it has a one-third interest in it. Nalcor Energy holds the remainder.

And after all, Williams is on record as saying that  - at some point – principle converts to cash.

Even without the prospect of a deal, Hydro Quebec can win big concessions just for talking.  They can get Williams to shut up about transmission on the Lower Churchill.  They can get him to withdraw NALCOR’s current procedural assault on Hydro Quebec Transenergie’s wheeling rates.

Maybe there’s something else no one has even thought of yet.  After all, re-opening the contract, as NALCOR has asked, means putting everything on the table.

Hydro Quebec actually has nothing to lose in entering talks quietly.  In fact, they have everything to gain.  On the other side, Danny Williams and NALCOR – like BRINCO 40 years ago – are in a tough spot.

Leverage.

It’s great when you have it.

Sucks when you don’t.

And right now Danny Williams and NALCOR have no leverage.

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CBC SAR story grossly misleading

A CBC story on search and rescue off Newfoundland and Labrador seriously misrepresents the conclusions of a study conducted by air operational research and analysis staff of the Canadian Forces.

CBC’s online story claims in its title that “St. John’s [is the] best SAR base for oil: DND”. 

The story also claimed that:

The 2000 report for DND, titled The Impact of Offshore Oil Operations on East Coast Search and Rescue, questioned whether Gander was the best location for DND to base its Cormorant SAR helicopters.

But the report itself -  linked on the same CBC web page  - tells a very different story. Incidentally, the report, really just the slides and notes for a presentation, is also erroneously dated 2003 in the pdf version title even though the document clearly comes from December 2000. 

A detailed version apparently released in 2001 is mentioned at the end of the slides but CBC makes no reference to it in either the on air or on line stories.

The DND report looked at the impact offshore oil-related flights might have on search and rescue services.  It did not question “whether Gander was the best location” for search and rescue service in Newfoundland and Labrador.   The goal of the research was to determine what impact – if any – offshore flights to oil rigs would have on search and rescue service

In order to conduct the study, the researchers reviewed information on search and rescue performance generally in eastern Canada.  They then projected the potential impact of offshore helicopter operations.  They used several scenarios to try and forecast the potential impact  because, as the study notes, there was only two to three years of data on which to base experience.

As it turned out the DND study, like offshore board projections, grossly over-estimated the number of crashes in the offshore.

The conclusions – listed clearly on Slide 37 of the presentation – show that Gander is clearly the optimal location of search and rescue service based on a number of factors including weather. 

While the modelling used in the report appeared to show St. John’s as a better location for what it terms “Cougar-related” incidents,  “since incident rates for Cougar will probably be quite small, the analysis performed on the historic data should prove greater utility in a direct comparison of Gander with St. John’s.” 

In other words, because Cougar was unlikely to have a high number of incidents, the overall experience operating from a permanent base in Gander would likely tip the scales in favour of the continued use of Gander as the operating base.

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The Twelve Days of Nothing

Unless Danny Williams plans to expropriate something or unilateral declare independence from Canada, this fall sitting of the House of Assembly will be one of the shortest and least productive in living memory.

That’s counting – it should be noted -  the short and very unproductive fall sittings of the legislature since Williams took power.

Overall, the House of Assembly now sits annually for fewer days than Tom Rideout was Premier.

That’s 43 for those who don’t recall.

That’s also about half the number of sitting days a decade and more ago.  There were plenty of days in the spring and the fall where members sat in the legislature and they had plenty of time to discuss and debate legislation.  Plus the legislation they debated was substantial stuff.

This fall sitting – delayed supposedly to allow for a couple of by-elections -promises to be even shorter and lighter than usual.

For starters, the House only sits for a few hours each afternoon from Monday to Thursday, anyway. It used to sit five days a week but under amendments brought in during Brian Tobin’s tenure, the house added enough hours so that members could shag off home or to sunnier climes for a long weekend.

Wednesday afternoons are still given over to debate opposition motions.  That leaves three debate days per week for government business.  And with about two hours per day, that adds up to a total of six hours a week in which the members of the legislature will discuss whatever happens to come forward from the government benches.

The House will likely sit for no more than three weeks so, all told, there will only be 12 days of the legislature this fall.

And that would be 18 hours of debate time.

Once that’s done, we won’t see them back until after Easter, most likely.

Meanwhile, don’t count on much happening.

Last fall,  the House debated 38 bills.  That included 15 amendment acts, mostly for minor changes to existing legislation.  Another 13 were one-clause wonders that repealed an obsolete statute or one that would be replaced in the spring sitting.  They could have been handled in a single bill or, more likely included as transitional clauses at the end of the new midwives act or whatever the new bill would be called when it came into effect.

The remainder were new statutes.

It’s pretty bad when 73% of the legislation in a sitting is either minor amendments or busy work.  That’s really all it was:  legislation to make it look like government was doing something when, in fact they had nothing at all.

But it’s not like there aren’t plenty of commitments – some dating back to 2003 – that still haven’t seen the light of day or are otherwise in some sort of political limbo.  Your humble e-scribbler has even gone so far as helping out by providing draft legislation on one of the government’s biggest commitments from 2007:  a whistleblower protection law. Still, they wind up resorting to busy work.

Now to be fair, a couple of the amendments last fall had serious implications.  Bills 63 and 64 created a new regime that further shields a whole new class of government records from scrutiny under the province’s open records laws.

For all the implications of the bill, though, it wound up getting only got cursory discussion.  New Democrat leader Lorraine Michael even breathlessly  endorsed the bill as if she was a Tory backbencher:

We have an excellent committee and this committee will be accountable to the minister. This committee will be the committee that will determine how the government records are managed. This committee will be the committee that will establish and revive schedules for the retention, disposal, destruction or transfer of records. They will make recommendations to the minister respecting government records to be forwarded to the Archives, will establish disposal and destruction standards and guidelines for the lawful disposal and destruction of government records and make recommendations to the minister regarding the removal, disposal and destruction of records.

The committee may well be excellent but Lorraine’s grasp of the legislation was evidently limited.

In any event both bills sped through the house over a few hours in December.

And that was it, except for the flurry on December 16 in which the government was able to ram a bill through the House seizing the hydro assets of at least three companies, quashing an active court case – find another such statute in the country – and generally creating as gigantic legal and financial battle which has not yet been settled.

We might only hope that something quite as entertaining come sup again.

But then again, maybe not.  The opposition parties went along with the seizure bill without so much as a question.

Let’s see if the 2009 fall sitting winds up being a productive time or, as past experience shows, winds up being a raft of busy work spread over 12 calendars days.

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88 and a wedgie!

There’s an old Newfoundland joke about a fellow jumping up and down on a manhole cover on a street in downtown Ottawa.

A crowd gathers to watch the guy.  They are amazed at his exuberance in jumping up and down and yelling “87!” at the top of every leap.

Finally one of the mainlanders strikes up the courage to ask what he’s doing.

“Jumping up and down,” sez the Newfoundlander.  “You should try it.  Lots of fun."

So after a couple of minutes the fellow puts down his briefcase and steps forward to take his spot. The Newfoundlander steps aside.

The mainlander jumps up and as he does, the Newfoundlander whips the manhole cover out.  The poor mainlander drops straight into the sewer.

The Newfoundlander pushes the cover back in place and starts jumping again, a big grin on his face.

“88!” he yells.

Danny Williams could be that Newfoundlander.

And Michael Ignatieff is the hapless fellow staring down at the open sewer beneath his feet.

The Ig-man, you see, deigned to visit Newfoundland and Labrador on Friday and pledged any government he leads will be a “good partner” and pay for the Lower Churchill.

According to a story in the Saturday Telegram  here’s what Ignatieff told reporters after the Board of Trade luncheon:

When it comes to the Lower Churchill, the federal leader said every Canadian wants the project to be developed and pledge the Liberal’s support [sic] for it, if his party takes office. [Telegram, Saturday Nov 28, 2009, p.A5, “Ignatieff says Harper lacks vision”,  not on line]

Now Ignatieff didn’t offer to foot the whole bill,  but the actual words and their meaning has always been no never mind in the world Danny Williams’ lives in.  If Williams wants to make the claim, he will.  Not a single politician or reporter in the province will take the time to find out what – if anything – the other party actually said.  They will do as they have always done:  accept Danny Williams’ version at face value, even if there is evidence readily available which contradicts his claim. 

At the very least, Williams will use Ignatieff ’s naive comments as a political poker to ram into whatever part of Ignatieff serves Williams’ purse.  He did it to Paul Martin.  He’s done it to Stephen Harper. 

And if Danny Williams wants to impress Stephen Harper as a way of mending broken fences between the federal and provincial Conservatives, Ignatieff has given Williams the perfect weapon with which to beat Liberal candidates about the head.  Some will undoubtedly sheer off, as they have sheered off in the past desperate for any sign of Williams’ favour.  Others will feel the pain as their leader’s words are pounded at them from every corner.

If that were not bad enough, Ignatieff also waded into the transmission corridor issue, talking about getting Newfoundland and Labrador power to market.   Ignatieff ’s advisors should have warned him off such an issue since it is entirely fictional.   They didn’t or he ignored them.  Either way, Ignatieff ’s comments on transmission corridors will do do nothing but give Williams a wedge for himself or for Stephen Harper to use between Ignatieff and provincial Liberals in New Brunswick and Quebec. 

Maybe none of that will occur.

But if recent history is any guide, Michael Ignatieff just set himself as the next federal political leader to jump up off the manhole cover in the modern-day incarnation of a very old joke.

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Bucking the NB Power Hysteria

Tom Adams and Brian Lee Crowley take a look at the NB power sale in this weeks Globe.  it’s worth the read if only since it ignores the hysteria being fomented by opponents of the deal including New Brunswick’s version of Talk Show Sue, none other than Danny Williams.

Not quite so useful a contribution to any understanding of the issue comes from Canada’s Ersatz George Will ©.

Jeff Simpson displays as appalling a level of ignorance about energy issues in Newfoundland and Labrador as his column on Friday showed about the province’s demographic issues.

Viewed from St. John's, the Hydro-Québec offer is part of a decades-long effort to prevent Newfoundland from being the principal beneficiary of Labrador's huge hydro potential. If N.B. Power falls into Hydro-Québec's hands, then the massive Quebec utility will geographically encircle Newfoundland.

Viewing the world from St. John’s but understanding the issues, your humble e-scribbler has a completely different view.  And so do plenty more. 

But Safari Jeff wouldn’t know that because he likely flew in, did the hob-nob stuff a columnist of his august stature does and then frigged off back to Toronto.

For those who missed it, you can find his demographic nonsense dissected at labradore.

In a nutshell, it goes like this.  Safari Jeff states in his lede that:

For the first time in almost four decades, the population of Newfoundland and Labrador has actually grown.

The reality is that Newfoundland and Labrador’s population has grown many times in the past four decades.

The "first time in almost four decades" claim is true... if you start counting your four decades in 1993.

Yep and that “viewed from” line should have included the words “by Danny Williams” right after “St. John’s”.

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The Curious Drop Two: site design and content?

Some people left interesting comments on why some local news websites have experienced apparent traffic drops over the past 12 months or so.

Another comment came on Friday as an aside in a conversation.  Maybe it was tied – as the suggestion went – to the change at the vocm.com website.

Nope.

The start of the drop predates the change-over, although the drop seems to accelerate somewhat after July 2009.  The website changed some time in June.

And that wouldn’t explain the corresponding – although less severe  - drop at the Telegram.  The Telegram has also changed its website content over time, adding some blog space and bumping up its “breaking” news space to the point where you can sometimes get one line virtually all of what will eventually appear in the next day’s print edition.

That should have produced an uptick in traffic, especially from news junkies who will click the three local sites to see what is going on right now.  That’s likely what the Telly editors thought when they went down the road.  More eyeballs can and should produce an upward trend in readership and that helps sell more hard copies.  It should also help boost revenue from advertising online.

Now the other part of the VO conversation was a comment that the site is appalling.  Yes it is, agreed your humble e-scribbler.  It is an assault on the eyeballs, for the most part. 

The news content is also curiously presented, as labradore noted on Friday.  A story on the by-election in Terra Nova features a giant odd-angled shot of Hisself.  it’s got the “WTF-I-never-knew-you-were-behind-me” look to it. Good on Linda or whoever it was for carrying on the fine Scott Chafe tradition of getting the flag in the shot, too.

If the site change didn’t cause the drop, it sure as hell didn’t arrest the development.

The whole thing is rather curious.

And the cogitation on it continues here and  - very likely – at the newsrooms involved as well.

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Constant motion = more delays and nothing new

In the perpetual shuffle process that is the provincial cabinet and senior public service under Danny Williams, three more changes took place on Friday.

Terry French, a parliamentary secretary and by-election organizer finally got his reward of a the extra salary that comes for sitting at the cabinet table.  He’s the last of the crowd elected before 2003 to get the extra.

Tom Hedderson evidently did such a miserable job in fisheries that he has been relieved of that purgatory and given the patronage portfolio.  Meanwhile, Clyde Jackman must be wondering who he pissed off to get fisheries from Tom Hedderson.

All in all, this turned out to be a set of appointments of such monumental nothingness that it makes one wonder why it took the Premier two whole months to figure out what to do.

You may recall that these shuffles were the cascading effect of Trevor Taylor’s departure  - which the Premier knew of before it happened and could therefore plan to handle – and the resignation of Paul Oram.  he lashed a few people into temporary jobs to get over the immediate hump, then lashed up a few more to cope with Diane Whelan’s illness.

Well, after all that time, the Premier didn’t do very much for all the cogitating he supposedly wanted to do. Perhaps he was too busy trying to figure out how many of his personal political staff could crowd into the backrooms of Sandy Collins’ campaign headquarters to make sure Sandy won the by-election in Terra Nova. The answer:  all of ‘em. 

All this comes on the eve of what will be a shortened fall session of  a provincial legislature with the ignominious distinction of sitting annually for fewer days than Tom Rideout was Premier back in 1989.

Very little legislation is likely to come forward.  There is plenty that is missing in action:  Grenfell autonomy, whistleblower protection, midwives.

As noted here before, the seemingly perpetual micro shuffles coupled with a few other things seem to produce a government which cannot actually do very much. 

They talk a lot about doing stuff but produce very little of substance.

And when they do produce something worthwhile, like say an act to provide for sustainable economic development, they don’t proclaim the thing.  Two years and not a peep on it.

Even a strategy on how to keep young people from,leaving the province to find work took 18 months, cost untold thousands and ended up with some really obvious ideas.

The first one was:  “create jobs”.

No wonder people sometimes wonder if your humble e-scribbler makes this stuff up.

Would but that were true.

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The curious drop

Take a break from all the kerfuffle in the universe and take a look at some interesting statistics on two local media websites that anyone can find using Google trends.

These are 2008 daily unique visitor figures for vocm.com and thetelegram.com.

 

These are the 2009 figures for the same sites.

Now if you can’t quite pick out those numbers, be assured that they have dropped. The Telly website has dropped from an average of over 3,000 unique visitors per day to something around 2,000 by rough estimate while at VOCM, the daily traffic has dropped by about half.  It’s gone from over 6,000 unique visitors per day to as few as 3,000 in early October.

For those who don’t know, the Telly is the province’s major daily newspaper.  VOCM is the flagship of Steele Communications.  The company is the province-wide commercial radio entity, operating both AM and FM outlets across the province.

Now without access to listener data for VOCM or more current daily subscription data for the Telegram, it’s hard to know if this is unique or part of an overall pattern of decline in audience. 

In 2008, the Telly was showing about 22,000 paid subscribers each the weekday and 41,000 for the Saturday edition. The company axed its Sunday edition in 2008 and at the time of its demise, the Sunday paper was pulling no more readers than the weekday editions.  That may have boosted the Saturday numbers somewhat subsequently but it would still be a far cry from the 60-odd thousand and more the Telly used to print a decade and more ago.

Things are not any better at the Mother Corp.  The figures below are for the main cbc.ca site, not the local version, but the numbers are not encouraging either.

At the national level, the mighty Ceeb is having a bit of a problem of its own.  It’s online audience has fallen from somewhere around 150, 000 uniques a day down half that much or less in 2009 (below.  

Now there’s no big analysis here.  This is just one of those things your humble e-scribbler noticed in passing and then filed away to think about. That’s the way online writing actually happens:  it’s a work in progress and many times thinking evolves over time.  If it really works people can bring ideas to the table, and in the mix of discussion new ideas emerge.

That’s really one of the big strengths that online writing on current affairs has over all traditional media.  It really can become much more of a collaborative experience or a shared experience of discovery and understanding. 

Maybe that’s where this will lead, to an examination of the local media websites and the impact online writing has had on some aspects of local news media.  Maybe it will lead somewhere else.

In any event,  this is some of the curious information that sometimes pops up.  What it means will be something for another day.

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The Terra Nova by-election result

Just to drive home the point on just how inaccurate CRA polls really are here are some comparisons using the Terra Nova by-election.

	1. Actual Turnout	2. Actual, Percent, Turnout	3. Actual, Percent, All	4. CRA Nov Turnout	5. CRA, Corrected All	6. CRA, Corrected, Turnout
LIB	1663	38	20	16/697	12/991	12/522
NDP	297	07	04	07/305	05/413	05/217
PC	2398	55	29	77/3356	58.5/4833	58.5/2549
DNV	3904	-	47		24/1982
Total Eligible	8262	100	100

The first column shows the actual turnout vote along with the number that didn’t show up.

The second column shows the turnout divvied up among the three parties, with the people who didn’t vote discounted. That’s basically the way CRA does its numbers as a percentage of “decideds”. Everything that didn’t make a vote choice is lumped in a big pile and tossed to one side.

The third column shows the actual percentages for each category, including those who didn’t vote.

The fourth column is where it gets funny. If we take the actual turnout of 4358 eligible voters and divide them according to the shares that CRA projected, this is the percent and the number you get. As you can see, these numbers aren’t even close to the actual result in any way shape or form.

That fifth column uses the corrected CRA results and plots out the projected returns in comparison to all eligible voters. Frankly, this is the one that CRA results should most closely model.

Well, it should but it doesn’t. You can see the undecided, will not vote is way off. The Tory vote is inflated, the Liberal vote is pushed down and the NDP number is pretty close to right, relatively speaking.

Then in that last column and just for even more fun, there’s a comparison of the CRA figures – corrected as a percentage of all – and then reapportioned as the turnout vote.

Well that one is a wee bit closer to what actually happened but for some bizarre reason CRA just can’t seem to get that Liberal vote even close to right.

Now to anyone who really wants to think hard about the results consider column three as your food for sustain you over the long cold winter. A higher percentage of people stayed home in Terra Nova than turned out to exercise their democratic right.

Almost half the voters in Terra Nova district opted to sit out rather than get involved.

Someone needs to probe the reasons why but your humble e-scribbler would venture there is a something that would motivate those people to get out and vote. There is something that none of the parties has currently figured out.

But if someone could energise those people, you could actually defeat any one of the existing parties – including Hisself – and do so handily. What would motivate those voters might even peel voters away from one or more of the other piles.

Now there’s an interesting idea to give some people the cold sweats at night.

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Spending scandal widens

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary laid charges today against a man identified as owning one of three companies involved in the House of Assembly spending scandal.

John William Hand, aged 68, is facing charges of fraud, fraud against the government and breach of probation.  According to CBC Here and Now, the breach of probation charge stems from a previous conviction related to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The Telegram has details online.

Hand had not been previously identified as connected to the three companies:  Zodiac Agencies, JAS Enterprises and Cedar Scents International. 

The companies supplied souvenirs, pins, fridge magnets and other similar items to members of the legislature. Auditor General John Noseworthy alleged the companies received $2.65 million improperly in the period from 1998 to 2005.

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How the Tories get 28% more votes thanks to CRA

Support for the ruling Conservatives went down in the last quarter compared to three months earlier. But you’d never know that if you read the news release from Corporate Research Associates.

That’s because CRA torques its news releases. Here’s how CRA presents its information in a misleading way.

1. Release early, for no apparent reason. CRA normally polls in one month and releases results early the next month. For the November polls, CRA has sometimes released results as late as December 12.

For some unknown reason, CRA released the November 2009 report a week earlier than usual.

Coincidentally it was right before a crucial by-election.

2. Release out of sequence. CRA usually releases the Newfoundland and Labrador results last, cycling through its other provincial quarterly results before getting to Newfoundland and Labrador. For some unknown reason, CRA released the NL results first AND posted them online before the end of business the day they were released.

3. Reporting as share of decideds boosts apparent results for Tories by 28%.

The chart at right shows the CRA number in red and the correct number in blue.

There’s a huge difference between the two. It shows the Tory support as being 17 and 18 percentage points higher than it actual is in CRA’s polling.

Put another way, CRA’s way of showing the numbers inflates Tory support by 28%. You get that number by taking 17 percentage points as a share of 60 percentage points. In the last result, the Tory number is artificially inflated by 24% because of the dubious reporting method.

And not everyone does it. In fact, researchers shy away from this sort of reporting because it distorts results.

Just check the other pollsters and see what they do. You’ll be surprised.

4. Hide the trends. Reporting results as a share of decideds masks the real trends, or, as in the past three quarter gives the wrong trends. Tory support isn’t up and stable, as suggested by the CRA torqued version. CRA’s own numbers - presented more accurately - show support for the Tories going down.

And what’s more it has been declining steadily since November 2007.

So what would the ordinary Newfoundlander or Labradorian think if they heard that from news media instead of the torqued version? The partisans won’t care: they’ll be leaping forward to note the Tories are still miles ahead of the opposition. Anyone using that line is likely a Tory partisan or one being spun by them.

But if ordinary people had heard the whole story presented accurately over time, would their opinion change over that same time?

Bet on it.

Now there’s also a suspicious pattern of results through 2009 – varying over nine months by less than one half of one percent - but that’s a whole other issue.

5. Don’t tell what you know and can tell.

As we know from polls released through access to information in September, CRA knows a lot more about public opinion in the province than they tell.

Opinion results vary by region of the province. Opinions sometimes run differently in one region compared to the overall picture. They also vary by age, sex, education and income.

If ordinary people knew all that, perception of continued high satisfaction across the province or increasing voter support would change and odds are it would change radically.

But people can’t know since CRA hides information from the public.

6. Don’t tell all you know. The people at CRA know they ask questions on behalf of the provincial government - yes, they pay for questions every quarter - but ethically it can’t report those results. However, the people at CRA also know that information they can’t say tells a very different story from what they do say.

Did you know last August that people were actually dissatisfied with government performance on something like health care?

Well, that story in the Telegram didn’t get as wide coverage as the original torqued news release which was carried by most media, including VOCM.

CRA could find a way to tell all they know, ethically, if they wanted to.


7. Report questions you didn’t ask. CRA routinely tells you that people in the province are completely satisfied or mostly satisfied with the ruling Conservatives.

They only problem is that is an answer they never got.

CRA regularly asks about satisfaction but they use a standard break-down that gives respondents a moderate option - “somewhat” - and a high option: “mostly”.

They report two high options that CRA never asked. You can see this in Table 3b in the link above. The question is described one way at the top and another way at the bottom.

And before you try it, remember that it is very unusual for people to respond outside the range they are given.

But if they got ones outside the range, ethically CRA would have to report the full range of responses including the information on the scale as they set it up themselves. If there were no “somewhat” they’d have to say that.

But since they don’t report that way, you can be pretty much guaranteed, CRA is torquing the meaning but changing respondent answers. The moderate category “somewhat” becomes the high end category “mostly” and “mostly” becomes “completely”.

Couple that with the data they withhold – variation by region, age sex and so on - and you can get a very different picture of the province’s people and their opinions than the one offered up by CRA every quarter.

No matter what way you slice it though, CRA results are presented in a way that is misleading and in some cases it is grossly misleading.

And when will conventional news media start questioning what they are getting when the evidence of torquing is overwhelming?

Good question.

But as you can see, there are lots of ways to goose a poll.

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Humber Valley Resort sold

The troubled Humber Valley Resort, which last year went into bankruptcy last year, has a new buyer according to the trustees Ernst and Young.

No details have been released but the deal may close as early as December 18.

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Now that’s really suspicious

Corporate Research Associates polls like clockwork every November.

The provincial government knows that because because they buy the quarterly omnibus.

Since 2006, CRA has released it’s November results as follows:

2006:  December 12.

2007:  December 6.

2008:  December 9.

That’s the data available on line. 

Go back before that and you will likely find the results released typically in the first week of December or later, depending on how the calendar falls in a given year.

Here’s a little challenge for you:  find the last time CRA released a quarterly omnibus poll on or about November 25, that is a week before the end of November.

Odd coincidence that there is a by-election in this province on the 26th, isn’t it?

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Rutter to gain from US defence contract

Local manufacturer Rutter technologies will likely profit from a US Army contract worth $2.2 billion for General Dynamics’s London operations to deliver 724 LAV II light armoured vehicles by 2011.

The order is through the Army’s Security Assistance Command, meaning the vehicles are likely destined for delivery to another country, potentially Saudi Arabia under a request from 2006.

The LAV II was first produced in 1996.   The photo at right – by Sergeant Frank Hudec, Canadian Forces Combat Camera – shows a Canadian Forces LAV II (Bison) recovery vehicle.

According to the official news release the order is for 10 variants.  Although the release doesn’t give a destination that is consistent with the Saudi request for its national guard. The original order was valued at US$5.8 billion including all the associated weapons, equipment ,  spares etc.

For the past 15 years, Rutter has been producing electronics and electromechanical subassemblies for General Dynamics’ light armoured vehicle family.

This includes the LAV II vehicles as well as the more recent LAV III/Stryker vehicles (left) for the Canadian Forces and the US Army Stryker divisions.  

In 2007, Rutter landed a $1.25 million contract to build components for the RG-31 mine resistant armoured vehicle. 

The RG-31 is derived from South African Nyala, right.

 

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Ready, Aim, Fire Truck!

Seems the use of fire trucks as polling season props just never gets old.

This one even made CBC supper hour news.

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How many cabinet ministers…

does it take to fight a by-election?

Most of ‘em if reports from the wilds of  Terra Nova are any sign.

The politicos from all sides have piled into every available space in the last few hours leading up to polling day this Thursday. Things are so thick with volunteers that there is a danger some of them might wind up sharing a lunch table at Sheila’s.  Imagine how bad things would get for space if Tom Hedderson and Roland Butler wound up grabbing a few winks at opposite ends of a couch. 

Even Hisself has been campaigning heavily in the district, as one might expect.  Well, his truck has been sighted.

One major difference from The Straits:  only Hisself is allowed to take to the fine airwaves of voice of the cabinet minister’s talk shows to discuss the wondrous glory they are discovering in rural Newfoundland.  

At least that lesson has been learned. 

By the way, has anyone asked Kevin O’Brien what district he is in this time?

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Danny Williams, Hydro Quebec and Churchill Falls: that was then, Part 2

From  the Telegram December 4, 2002, and a story of a rally in St. John’s:

Williams added, “Two million dollars (a day) — $60 million a month, that’s what we’re losing on the Upper Churchill and (the government is) telling us we’re living in the past. Well, there’s 39 more years of that that we got to live with. Our position here tonight … is that there should be no deal on the Lower Churchill until there’s redress on the Upper Churchill.”

No deal without redress?

What an idea.

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