NL economy to shrink by 4.5% in 2009: RBC

From the latest RBC Economics provincial outlook:

After suffering a significant setback in its resource sector in 2009, Newfoundland & Labrador’s economy is set to jump back into growth mode in 2010. Major declines in mining and crude oil production during the past year are expected to be largely reversed. Stronger global demand for iron ore and the eventual settlement of a labour dispute at the Voisey’s Bay nickel operations are forecast to
boost metal mining output and the imminent entry into service of the North Amethyst satellite field — an expansion to White Rose — will provide a temporary lift to offshore oil production. This positive swing in a sector that represents approximately 30% of real GDP in the province will once more be the dominant factor in overall growth in 2010, contributing more than one percentage point to output. We forecast real GDP growth at 2.4%, revised up from 2% in September, and a 1.5% increase in 2011. In 2009, the slump in mining and oil
and gas extraction is likely to lop off more than six percentage points from real GDP growth, which has been revised lower to -4.5% to reflect longer-than anticipated mining operation shutdowns.

That forecast 2.4% growth in gross domestic product for 2010 puts the province in the middle of the pack among the other provinces.

Talk about a slender reed:  it is based entirely on production from the White Rose expansion.

Real growth in 2011 is positively anaemic at 1.5%.  That’s the lowest of any province.

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Delusion or Disconnect? Overtime

“The Williams Government has been unwavering in its commitment to managing provincial programs, services and financial resources in a responsible and prudent manner.”

and

“Sound governance and responsible management have been the cornerstones of how our government runs the affairs of the province and administers programs and services to meet the needs of our residents."

Sure.

That’s easy enough to write in a release, but it sure doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. 

Take, for example, the issue of overtime which led off pretty well every conventional news story on the Auditor General’s report released last week.

The coverage and commentary thus far took cues from the Auditor general and focused on some fairly simple and obvious points. Overtime both in its paid and time-off varieties has mushroomed  - up 55% - since 2001.

That’s despite the work of a committee struck in 2001 to come up with ways of controlling overtime. The climb has been steepest since 2004 when the current crowd of sound fiscal managers took over and started spending public cash in what Paul Oram and other cabinet ministers have described since as an unsustainable manner. 

The official response: these people are making way more money than before, there may be problems recruiting in some cases and the work demands for public safety all may make it necessary to run up the over-time bill.

That first one would matter if the amount was the concern. 

It really isn’t, though, if you look beyond the simplistic stuff the AG fixated on and look at the rates of change for specific departments.  It’s easy to focus on  Works and Transportation but the change in overtime paid out has actually been relatively modest.  It’s gone from $9.3 million to about $11.9 million in a little less than a decade.

But what about Executive Council and Finance?

The numbers there show stunning increases:  from $74,000 to $602,000 in Finance and comparable jumps – on the order of nine or 10 percent  - in Executive Council. The explanations offered for the transportation or Justice departments’ overtime expenses just don’t apply here.

They also don’t fit with the pattern for most of the departments listed on page 12 of that section of the AG report.  The changes, over time, just don’t match that rate of increase.  Even in Justice, the overtime paid out in 2008 is only slightly less than three times higher than that paid in 2000. That’s bigger than it should be but the amount is potentially justified – pardon the pun – if there are issues of staffing or public safety involved in some years.

The sort of comparison done here – as relatively unsophisticated as it is – just can’t be found in the AG report.  There is much talk of amounts and the shares of the total held by one department or another.  But at no point does the AG zero in on the departments which seem to have some fairly obvious problems and ones that have – on the face of it – much more significant implications for management or the manageability of the problem.

If a department has a fairly consistent amount of overtime, then that’s one thing.  But if the amount starts small and then grows exponentially?  Well, that suggests there are people problems or an organizational problem that needs to be addressed with something more substantial than the “keep an eye on things” advice coming from the AG report.

You might forgive the Auditor General for the simplistic approach to this issue taken in the report if the amount of overtime accumulated through the “time-off in lieu of” system  - called TOIL - wasn’t equally as dramatic as the paid overtime in a couple of cases as well.

That chart isn’t distorted.  Finance went from a TOIL of $68,000 in Fiscal Year 2000 to almost $1.1 million in FY 2008. Justice numbers are about the same.  TOIL is time off in lieu of overtime.

What makes these numbers stand out all the more is the comparison with departments where you might expect the overtime bill to be huge. 

Take Health, for example.  Big department.  Plenty of demands.  However, both the TOIL and paid overtime costs in the study period remained about what they were before.  Now the paid overtime numbers for Health fluctuated wildly over time, but they did not experience the sort of dramatic sweep upward seen with the departments noted here.  And in the case of TOIL, the Health tally was about $27,000 for 2008 compared to $25,000 about a decade ago.

It would take way more information that the AG makes available to figure out why these three departments are experiencing the rather dramatic changes in overtime over time.  As a result, it would be hard to say what is causing the problems and therefore make some useful suggestions on how to fix things. 

One thing that is for certain, the AG report makes some pretty lame recommendations that don’t really amount to much.  Tracking the overtime and making sure it is warranted both count as penetrating insights into the managerially obvious and they are about as useless an exercise as faking your own recommendations.

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Skywatch 2010: The Marystown Video

Courtesy of Glen Carter at NTV News:  First Edition, here is a screen cap from the Marystown video taken on the same Monday evening people saw unidentified flying objects near Harbour Mille.

1.  The contrails are plainly visible and have both the reddish and the dark characteristics seen in the image from Harbour Mille.

2.  The aircraft making the contrails is plainly visible in one portion of the video.  It is a twin-engined commercial jet – similar to an Airbus A310/A320 or an Embraer 190 -of the type that routinely fly in that area on the way to and from St. John’s.

3.   The multi-coloured splotch on the right side of the picture is either sun glinting off the airframe or a strobe light on the aircraft.  Remember that this is essentially a single “frame” of the video.  There may well be things in the shot that wouldn’t be as prominent in the full video.

4.  The angle of this shot is somewhat unusual.  It appears the aircraft flew directly over the shooter and in this particular shot is proceeding away from the camera.  The camera also appears to be max’ed out on zoom.  In the video, the aircraft is seldom if ever steady in the centre of the frame.

5.  While it isn’t quite so clear in this shot, there is a gap between the back end of the engine and the start of the contrail.

Flightaware.com Update: 

flightaware.com is a great resource.  Here’s a screen cap taken – as the time stamp shows at about 1800 hrs local or 2130 Zulu.  That would be 6:00PM to normal people.

The red dot is about where Harbour Mille would be on this crude map.  The blue track is the official flight path for Air Canada’s flight 695, an Embraer 190 run from St. John’s (YYT) to Pearson (YYZ) with a stop at Halifax along the way.  The yellow line is the actual track as it showed up on flightaware.com.  Allow for inaccuracy given the crude nature of the map.

It was an airplane folks.

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Delusion or Disconnect? Managing public land

 

The news release issued from the provincial finance department in response to the latest report by the Auditor General.

“The Williams Government has been unwavering in its commitment to managing provincial programs, services and financial resources in a responsible and prudent manner.”

and

“Sound governance and responsible management have been the cornerstones of how our government runs the affairs of the province and administers programs and services to meet the needs of our residents."

The Auditor General’s latest report on how the provincial government is managing your money:

Part 2.4:  Managing Crown Land.  There are an estimated 9,000 squatters occupying Crown land illegally but there is no regular program of inspection and enforcement to deal with the problem.

There is no inspection of shoreline Crown land to deal with squatting or any other aspect of land management. 

There is also no inspection program for leased or licensed land to ensure the rules are being followed and taxpayer interest  is protected.

Best example of the impact of the failure:  Humber Valley Resort.  There was no inspection at all until the AG started poking around eight years after the Crown lased the first block of land to the now bankrupt resort.

The Branch did not obtain a purchase and sale agreement that was signed by the Corporation and the chalet lot purchaser indicating an agreed upon purchase price, and did not determine the fair market value of the chalet lots in relation to the purchase price as required under the lease. As a result, the Branch could not demonstrate whether the 6% market value premiums paid by the Corporation were appropriate. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the Crown just accepted whatever the resort sent in a cheque without knowing what the sale price of the chalet involved actually was.

The Branch received market value premiums totalling $2.2 million or an average of $31,460 per chalet lot. The Corporation, upon sale of the chalet lots, would have received a total of $37.2 million or an average of $524,390 per chalet lot. As of September 2008, when the Corporation sought bankruptcy protection, the Branch had received three of the five annual lease payments totalling $3.8 million of the total $6.4 million in payments due over the term of the lease.

And when it comes to strategies and plans, the story isn’t any better:

Branch officials could not demonstrate whether the Geomatics
Strategy Implementation Plan developed in 1999 was ever reviewed
and approved by the Steering Committee or presented to Government
for final approval. Furthermore, there has been no meeting of the
Steering Committee since approximately the year 2000 and the Lands
Branch makes no formal reference to the plan.

The government response, in the order presented in the report:

The Department will determine whether the Geomatics Strategy
Implementation Plan was approved by Government.

The Department will review the relevance of the Geomatics Strategy
Implementation Plan.

In every other point, the department acknowledge the AG had stated departmental policy correctly.  Implicitly that’s an admission the department was not following its own policy.

At all.

Period.

For over a decade.

And that’s despite the fact that since 2003  - in other words for the past seven years – “[s]ound governance and responsible management have been the cornerstones of how our government runs the affairs of the province…”.

Unfortunately, most people in the province probably heard about or read the government news release  - with its obvious falsehood – rather than the frank acknowledgement by the lands department that it was in the process of sorting out the mess.

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Pick a position, any position

Over at nottawa, Mark draws attention to the most recent provincial government position on the federal shares in Hibernia, namely that the provincial government would be willing to pay cash for them.

This, Mark notes, is in stark contrast to the government’s original position, which he cites in a letter dated in 2008.

And indeed it is.

Like Sands Through the Hour Glass…

But in 2005, the provincial government’s letter to Santa put it differently:

The paragraph preceding that specific question puts some other colour in it.  The provincial government recognizes that the federal government had recovered its initial investment.  The provincial government expected anything beyond that to accrue to the provincial government.

But that question refers to the whole silly business of being “kept whole”.  In effect, such a phrase commits the province to ensuring the federal government recovers not only its investment but what they anticipated getting back as well.  it’s a bit of a nebulous idea but there should be no doubt about it:  If the reserves have grown  - as expected - and the potential federal return on investment has grown – as expected – the the question actually lays claim to zilch.

And as a consequence there wouldn’t be any purchase of shares.  Indeed, there would be no claim to the shares in the first place.

… so shifts the Demand of the Day

Now the rather quaint convention of meaning what you say and saying what you mean has always been no never mind for the current provincial administration.  Take for example, the varying positions on Equalization. One day the provincial government wanted 100% inclusion of natural resources revenues.  The next day, it demanded 100% exclusion.  One November, it was great to province that was not getting any Equalization.  Two months later, not getting hundreds of millions in Equalization that year and the year after was a betrayal of historic proportions.

Or for that matter the political racket that wound up with the one-time transfer of federal cash to the provincial government.  The provincial government’s initial position would have produced that single amount in one year.  Ultimately they caved and said yes to way less than they originally demanded.

Whatever position the government took before or takes now actually doesn’t really mean very much of anything at all. 

So right now there’s talk of paying cash for the shares.

What comes out the other end of the process – if anything comes out at all – may wind up looking a lot different from whatever has been said or written until now.

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Russia tests next-gen fighter

Russian aircraft design bureau Sukhoi tested its next generation fighter on Friday.

The aircraft – designated T-50 – flew for 47 minutes at Sukhoi’s test facility at Komsomolsk on Amur.

The T-50 is a joint Russian-Indian project.  India currently operates the latest Russian designed fighter and ground-attack jets as well as Russian-built helicopters, tanks and other military equipment.

The T-50 is similar in design to the United States Air Force’s F-22 Raptor which combines supersonic speed and high performance with low-observable or “stealth” capability. Ria Novosti’s defence analyst gives the aircraft’s design history in a story posted online on January 29.  Ilya Kramnik claims the design efforts for the so-called fifth generation fighter began in the 1980s and ultimately led to the Su-47.

While highly capable, the Su-47 used a forward-swept wing design which may have caused some performance and maintenance concern among the fighter’s intended users.

According to Kramnik, the current fighter comes from a 1998 request from the Russian air force for a new fighter that took advantage of the design features of the prototypes in the American next-generation fighter competition that led ultimately to the Raptor.

The T-50 in the test photographs appears to be unpainted.  It also appears to be using conventional nozzles instead of the vectoring type deployed on both the F-22 and on some other Sukhoi and MiG fighter designs which flew successfully.

In the video at left, a MiG-29 test aircraft demonstrates thrust vectoring. 

The moveable engine nozzles pivot to aim the engine thrust at up to 15 degrees from straight backwards. 

On two-engined aircraft, the nozzles may also be moved independently of one another.

This allows the aircraft to turn more tightly than a conventional aircraft.  Such a capability gives fighter pilots great advantage in dog-fighting.

In this video, a pilot demonstrates the thrust vector nozzles on a Raptor.

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Skywatch 2010: NTV has the proof

A viewer from Marystown sent NTV News some video footage shot on Monday evening that pretty much nails down the identification of the mysterious objects in the sky.

The mighty Ceeb can continue to ignore the obvious: there were no time-traveling missiles from France, there guys.

NTV has the truth:  a fairly good video of at least one twin-engined commercial jet – it might have been an Airbus A320  - cruising along and streaming out the contrails looking almost exactly the like the one in the photo displayed by CBC.

All that does is raise more questions about the CBC photo itself, but there can be no mistaking what was flying in the skies over Harbour Mille last Monday.  It was a flock of three aircraft – likely all commercial jets -  flying the usual route for aircraft coming from from Halifax and the eastern seaboard, potentially into St. John’s.

And for all those intrepid reporters busily scurrying around like this was a national security issue, here’s a simple and fairly obvious question.  Since even a missile would have turned up on radar, did anyone think to call those lovely folks at the Gander control tower to see what might have been flying along the south coast last Monday?

Beuhler?

Beuhler?

Didn’t think so.

Next time, though, people might go for the more obvious answer rather than leaping to all sorts of speculation and rumour for their answers.

After all, when you hear hoof-beats in this part of the world it is more sensible to think “horses” than an Eohippus that escaped from that mysterious experimental farm on the Bauline Line run by some fellow Hammond.

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By-election spec starts early

Beth Marshall’s elevation to the Antechamber to the Kingdom of Heaven started the inevitable by-election speculation almost immediately.

One will have to be called within 60 days of Marshall vacating the seat.  Under local election laws, that means that people can start looking for special ballots today.

Odds are it will be called immediately after the Olympics are over.  The provincial government has popped for too many tickets to make everyone – the Premier included – cancel their trip to wet coast in order to stay home and fight a by-election.

The thing will be knocked off as quick as you please so the new member can sit in the spring session of the legislature.

And who might that member be?

Well, on the Conservative side, the name of failed paradise mayoral candidate Kurtis Coombs has popped up right away.  Let’s just say he has a certain Kent-like cache to him right at the moment that might appeal to party leaders of a certain style.

Beth’s constituency assistant would be a logical choice as well since the provincial Conservatives seem to be in that phase where the most likely candidates come from political staff.  But maybe not since Beth is likely to be moving her crew to the federal payroll. 

That leads very quickly back to young Mr. Coombs.

Look for that name to come up more and more in the next few days.

On the Liberal side, people will likely cycle through some of the usual names.  There won’t be too many people from the metro area who are likely to come forward.

Peter Dawe is already being courted to sub for Paul Antle in St. John’s East federally next time so take them both off your list.

Jim Walsh has a previous engagement so he won’t be staging a political comeback soon.

Ralph Wiseman?

Way outside chance, but then again, your humble e-scribbler didn’t call Beth right for the senate seat.

Those are just the early names.  More are sure to turn up as the date for the by-election call gets closer.

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And the cliche gets it…

Senator Beth Marshall.

Here’s the view from January 19:

Beth Marshall would be too obvious just because all the spec puts her name up right next to the two Loyolas.  She’s at the point now where her name is on everyone’s list of nominees for everything. Watch out if the Pope drops dead tomorrow.  Local spec will have Beth in the running right behind the two Loyolas;  it’s gotten to be that much of a cliche.

An interesting choice if one that is remarkable for how cliche it really is.

Others have already pointed out that Marshall very publicly declined to join the ABC silliness. That obviously stood her in good stead for this plum.

Others, however, have also over-estimated her lack of connections to the local provincial Conservatives and how this might not help improve relations between the federal Connies and their provincial cousins.  Bear in mind she was handed the plum of over-seeing implementation of the Green report and has been a faithful party player on the House of Assembly management committee.

She’s tight enough with both the federal and provincial crews to serve as a bridge. And it’s not like she hasn’t got experience in changing her tune when it serves her partisan purpose as well.

Don’t be surprised if she goes to cabinet in short order or otherwise gets a neat job to facilitate the rapprochement. The anti-Ottawa hysteria that once was the local Connie stock-in-trade will quickly be a thing of the past.

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Skywatch 2010: The Truth is Out There

You just have to want to believe.

There are no little green men in flying saucers or for that matter a French ballistic missile  that miraculous appear over the south coast of Newfoundland two days before it is actually launched.

It isn’t even a toy rocket.

The thing seen over Harbour Mille and other parts of Newfoundland on Monday evening around dusk was nothing more exotic than a jet aircraft flying on a well-established route.

And actually, as reported by Canwest News Service’s Ken Meaney, there were  three objects seen within minutes of each other on a similar path.

What you are seeing appears to be nothing more than the light of a setting sun reflecting off the aircraft contrail.  The sun, in this case, would have been down and to the right of the photograph creating an effect not unlike the one seen during a fine evening.  It’s the phenomenon that gave rise to the old saying “red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” 

In the photo at left, you can clearly see the contrails from a United States Air Force C-141 Starlifter.

This is an up-close shot, but from the right angle on the ground , this aircraft would appear to be leaving a flaming wake.

In the photo at right, the contrails – made by condensation that result from particles coming from the engine – appear orange even though they are actually white.

Some corroborating evidence comes from this e-mail from an observer south of Harbour Mille describing his own experience last Monday:

Monday afternoon, … I watched several flights follow the usual course. One was identical to that shown in the picture taken from Harbour Mille, and replicated on the CBC website.

While most jets flying overhead leave a mostly white vapor trail, this one appeared to be darker in colour.  I put the binoculars on it, and satisfied myself that it was in fact an aircraft. Keeping in mind the time of day (around 5 p.m.), and the fact that it gets dark just around then, the setting sun was low in the Western sky.

At the same time, the aircraft was moving from Southwest to Northeast. The sun was casting a shadow from the vapor trail onto the aircraft, making it, and the first part of the vapor trail, appear darker in colour, because it was in shade.

After the "dark" plane passed over us, there were a couple more flights, within a few minutes of each other, as is the routine here every day around five o'clock local time. I did not see anything strange or startling about them, either.

Whatever it was, there really isn’t much chance it was a missile.  There were no launches from Cape Canaveral. Some have speculated it might be a French missile test, specifically the fourth test flight of the new M51 mer-sol ballistique strategique (MSBS) or submarine-launched ballistic missile.

The only problem with this idea is that the test flight took place two days after the sighting over Newfoundland.  Incidentally, in an earlier post on this same issue, your humble e-scribbler lost a day in the translation. The M51 test took place about 36 hours after the sighting.

Along the same lines, someone made this observation on another thread:

If you did a little research yourself, you would learn that the French fired no fewer than four M151 rockets before attempting to fire one from a nuclear submarine.

Obviously the one fired on Wednesday could not have been the one seen over the Burn Peninsula, but what about the other tests? Did they fire anything on land on Monday? That is the question that needs to be addressed.

That question is – in fact – already addressed quite handily by a little but of googlizing.  There have been a total of four test flights of the M51.  The first took place in 2006.  The second in 2007 and the third in 2008. The launch last Wednesday was the first from a submerged submarine.  The third one in the series – as the video shows – was a land-based launch from under water.  It came from a tank.

For those curious about these things, the missiles are pushed above the water by compressed air.  The solid fuel rocket motor does not ignite until the missile is clear of the water.

The fourth M51 test finished up in the Atlantic Ocean well away from shore.  By some accounts it was 2,000 kilometres off the coast of South Carolina.

To get back to the contrail explanation, this wouldn’t be the first time aircraft vapour trails left an unusual image behind.

  The photo at right came from South Wales. 

While there is some disagreement over the cause of the cloud, one explanation is an unusual aircraft contrail.

If you look, you can see that this photograph was taken in the evening, around sunset.

Your humble e-scribbler did a spot in NTV First Edition this evening giving basically this same interpretation.  Undoubtedly, there will be other ideas than the ones here.  But after you discount all the ideas that have no supporting evidence – missiles, space debris, meteorites  – then what you are left with is the answer.

The truth is out there.

It isn’t always nasty plots and little green mean.

But you have to want to believe the truth.

-srbp-

The Ghouls are back

New Democrat member of parliament Jack Harris once again shows his willingness to offer a comment based on ignorance.

Perhaps he could have the good sense to refrain from further comment rather than try to score cheap political points – yet again  - using a tragedy as his prop.

Amazing Ambulance Chasing Crap Update:  Your humble e-scribbler unfortunately just heard Jack Harris on CBC radio continuing his relentless campaign to display his own ignorance.

Sadly, Jack has obtained standing at the offshore helicopter inquiry and so will have a platform from which to spout his innuendo and political agenda in the midst of an inquiry that ought to be directed to identifying fact.

He  doesn’t want to acknowledge what has already been stated publicly repeatedly, namely that Cougar provides search and rescue service for the offshore as required by the offshore regulator.  That’s why – as he well knows – the helicopter was “reconfigured” on the day of the crash.  It had nothing to do with DND.

What’s more, the 103 Squadron aircraft were not “off station” or “away” as Jack continually stated.

There is no embarrassment within the SAR community over this, again as jack keeps trying to suggest.  There should only be embarrassment  - and huge dollop of shame shame – for people like Jack who continue to spread malicious nonsense despite having evidence that directly contradicts what he is still getting on about.

If  Jack’s appalling performance on the Cougar 491 case wasn’t bad enough, the federal Dipper defence critic then switched topics – in response to a question from the host -  critic is now chasing down the French missile bullshit and the UFO story.

The M51 flew a day AFTER the strange thing in the sky over Newfoundland.

This guy is absolutely, astoundingly ignorant.

Who does his research, ex-staffers from the Spindy?

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Skywatch 2010: Not French M51

Get out the tinfoil hats.

Stories are circulating – including at voice of the cabinet minister – that the object sighted in the sky over Newfoundland on the evening of January 27th may have been related to a test launch of France’s new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the M51.

Highly unlikely.

The French test concluded at 0825 hours Greenwich Mean Time on January 27.

That would be Tuesday.

But as CBC reported, the object seen over Harbour Mille was in the sky at dusk on Monday evening.  That would be roughly 12 hours before the French missile flew.

In any event, the French test attracted considerable international attention for reasons other than the insane idea the missile reappeared magically the day after it was fired, on a different trajectory and apparently originating from an area of the world  pretty much the opposite of where it was actually fired from.

-srbp-

Skywatch 2010: UFO over Newfoundland

Seems like it is time for the quinquennial skywatch panic.

In 2005, it was a load of seemingly unending silliness about debris from a NASA booster rocket. That’s just one of a bunch of posts from April and May 2005, incidentally.

Now it’s this thing seen over portions of the south coast and the northeast coast.



Okay.

It isn’t a French missile launched from St. Pierre, apparently.

And it isn’t the maiden flight of a locally produced nuclear missile.

Odds are it is a bit of space junk or a meteorite burning up as it enters the atmosphere.

But why should that get in the way of a good yarn?

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Spending Scandal: when “facts” aren’t true

The agreed statements entered in some of the trials resulting from the House of Assembly spending scandal are remarkable, if for no other reason than by the incorrect information contained in them.

Take this one from the statement entered on Tuesday in the Bill Murray trial:

In simplest terms, that statement is not true.

The finance department’s Comptroller General continued invariably over the whole scandal period to maintain accurate records of the total amounts paid under the allowances budget item each year.  

The Comptroller General’s figures were reported in the provincial government’s financial statements which were – it should be noted – audited each year in the scandal period by first Elizabeth Marshall and then her successor John Noseworthy.

Even a cursory examination of the Public Accounts shows overspending well in excess of what was subsequently reported by John Noseworthy once the scandal story broke.

In fact, as documented at Bond Papers and in Chief Justice Derek Green’s inquiry report, the overspending was obvious.  The BP post from December 2006 indicated that the total overspending amounted to more than twice as much as anything Noseworthy ever indicated.

In the chart from that post (above), red indicates the overspending as reported in the public accounts.  Yellow is the figure reported by Noseworthy for a given fiscal year. It only includes money identified by Noseworthy as being made to four members of the House of Assembly.

No one – least of all Noseworthy – has explained the massive discrepancy between the available evidence and what Noseworthy reported or the consistent failure of any audit officials to make public reference to the evident overspending.

-srbp-

Related:

• “AG reports leave serious unanswered questions” (July 2006) – discusses problems with Auditor General’s reports on four politicians, including inconsistencies in the way travel expenses were allocated by the AG’s office for the four MHAs.
• “Legislature financial scandal bigger than previously revealed” (August 2006)
• “The little things” (September 2007) – Among other things, the Ag did not offer any comment on the diversion of constituency funds for partisan purposes, something which was improper at the least and potentially illegal at most.
• “NL AG hoist by petard of own misleading statements” (February 2008)
• “AG report makes up old recommendation…” (November 2009) – Notes that an auditor general’s update on previous reports included a fake recommendation which he claimed had been acted on instead of the five on which no information was proved.

Nailed it! or Seal Hunt Silliness Starts Sooner

March madness Ray Guy once called it.

In a normal year, March is the time when the animals rights crowd, a raft of C and D list celebrities and Newfoundland politicians chew up precious oxygen arguing the merits of smashing in seal skulls with clubs.

This year promises to be an abnormal year.

First, someone tosses a shaving cream pie into the mug of the Canadian fisheries minister.

Then a local politician gives a local radio audience this idea:

"I am calling on the Government of Canada to actually investigate whether or not this organization, PETA, is acting as a terrorist organization under the test that exists under Canadian law."

The Canadian Press story from which those words were taken includes this bit:

In an interview with radio station VOCM in St. John's, N.L., on Tuesday, [Gerry] Byrne said he thinks what happened should be reviewed under the legal definition of terrorism.

"When someone actually coaches or conducts criminal behaviour to impose a political agenda on each and every other citizen of Canada, that does seem to me to meet the test of a terrorist organization," said the MP from Newfoundland and Labrador.

The story wound up in Aaron Wherry’s blog at macleans.ca without much comment from Wherry.  One of his readers nailed the whole thing in two separate comments.  They are reproduced here for posterity:

There are about a million ways to respond to a pie in the face that do not require stretching our terrorism laws until they lose all meaning. Gail Shea could sue. She could seek charges under the criminal code for assault. She could ridicule PETA. She could admit they have a case and argue, sternly, that this is not the way to press that case. The reason it "might sound ridiculous" to seek to designate PETA as a terrorist organization because one of its members tossed a pie is because it is ridiculous.

…

The pertinent phrase here is "in an interview...with VOCM." You don't go on VOCM if you're planning to be thoughtful about NL's household gods: the fishery, the weather, resource revenues, equalization or Danny Williams. You go on VOCM to compete with every other NL politician to demagogue these issues around the block. It's a bit like the op-ed page of Le Devoir or the speaker's podium at the Petroleum Club. Local orthodoxies are there to be paid obeisance, not questioned.

That pretty much says it all.

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Related:  “Who’d waste the ammo?” (2005) Warning:  not all links in that old post might still be working, much like the celebs who do the anti-fur thing each spring.

Incidentally:  For those so inclined to ponder these things, here is a succinct statement of the law in Canada:  “The non-consensual application of force by one person to another is an assault…”. The PETA stunter applied force to fish minister Gail Shea in the form of a shaving cream pie.  Shea did not consent to the application of force.

Ergo…

For those Connie supporters out there who are screaming blue murder over the incident and looking for charges to be laid, they are on the right track.  But then again, that would also have been the right track for Connie party lout who assaulted a reporter during the 2006 campaign.

How bad is it?

You just know things are pretty tense in Corner Brook.

You can tell because the provincial government has been pouring on the happy-talk while over at the city’s major employer, the company operating the paper mill is looking for a 10% wage roll-back from employees.

The latest happy-talk is a hope-drenched a study on the oil and gas potential for the west coast.

According to the official news release, the study was commissioned based on an election commitment from 2003. 

That’s okay. 

We can wait while you go and check your calendars again.

Yes, it was indeed seven years ago.

The work on this particular report, though, was only done in 2008.  Check the dates on some of the consultation sessions;  that’s the only way to figure out the timelines for sure since most of the document has been scrubbed of dates. You can hunt around and eventually find the news release that kicked it off, from December 2007. 

That would make it a bit more than two years for this study to see the light of day.

After all that time and all that work, the recommendations are stunning: 

Ensure a regulatory and administrative environment to maximize investment in onshore and offshore exploration and attract industry operators and businesses to the region;

Ensure the protection of key natural resource areas, including Gros Morne National Park, the Humber Valley and the Bay of Islands;

Establish a clear environmental regime between the provincial and federal governments;

Continue to improve infrastructure in the region through investments in education, health-care facilities, transportation and commercial land availability;

Encourage the planning, regeneration and use of existing infrastructure, including that in Port aux Basques, Stephenville, Corner Brook, Deer Lake, Port Saunders and St. Anthony, to ensure it continues to support existing economic sectors;

Maintain and upgrade infrastructure specific to the needs of potential hydrocarbon projects, including wharves and air facilities at Corner Brook and Stephenville;

Facilitate the training of local residents to help them meet the demand for skills in this emerging sector;

Continue to invest in public education, health care, cultural and recreational opportunities to serves the needs of the region; and,

Continue to promote the western region as a place of opportunity for business investment and families.

In a nutshell:  fix the roads, spend money on things like education and health care, protect the ecologically sensitive and important bits (like Gros Morne)  and “promote” the potential in the area.

They are about as surprising as the recommendations made by the task force that spent 18 months trying to figure out how to keep more young people from leaving the province.  Its major conclusion:  create work for them so they can find jobs and stay here.

All standard. 

All patently obvious.

Nothing concrete and measurable.

Like explaining what is meant by “[e]nsure a regulatory and administrative environment to maximize investment in onshore and offshore exploration and attract industry operators and businesses to the region.” 

Maybe there is a tax issue here or problems with issuing permits. You won’t find anything in the report to explain what this means.

And the stuff that appears to be specific  - like the suggestion to “twin” selected portions of the Trans-Canada between Port aux Basques and St. John’s as needed – is actually just a confirmation of what has been government policy since 1988.  Under the roads for rails agreement, the provincial government used federal cash to do exactly that.  And yes, for those who need reminding that would be from the last time the Conservatives formed the provincial government.

So what are these study guys talking about 20 years later?

Not a heckuva lot, apparently, given that any administration at any time can claim:

• to have either already done that or,
• to be doing exactly what was recommended as it carries out the existing maintenance of the existing road.

Look in vain and you will not find a single thing in this 71 pages of pure bumpf is tied to  drilling more holes, finding oil and getting it into production.

Things seem to be pretty tense in Corner Brook these days.  That’s just as they have been in other towns in this province since 2003 when the major employer found itself in hard financial straits.

What’s most interesting since 2003, though, has not been the problems themselves but how the provincial government has reacted to each development.

The oil and gas study released on Monday seems to be very much par for the course, very much a sign of the times.

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CAPP St. John’s Rally

From the local group’s Facebook space, a few shots by organizer Lindsay Harding of the crowd of more than 200 who braved the cold.

Left:

Right:

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Hydro: the wet weekend round-up

1.  A foundation of purest sandstone:  For those who are still following these things, the Telegram’s Rob Antle has a tidy little summary of the case which is the bedrock on which the provincial government’s legal challenge of the 1969 Churchill Falls power contract rests.

Self-Check:  How many paragraphs down did you get before you realised that – in and of itself - the case has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 1969 ruckus?

2. More money for Quebec, yet more billable hours edition: The papers in la pas-si-belle-pour-Danny province have been filled with stories about the hearings over transmission and the promise to sue over good faith or lack thereof.

3.  Rien could possibly be further from the verite. In a scrum the other day, Hisself could recall the pages on which appeared stories in La Presse about the whole Labrador hydro thing from one angle or another.  Helene Baril’s summary of the issue in her January 12 story is tidy and accurate.  Ditto one on the 19th of January.

Not so another one on the 19th in which she writes:

Quatre ans plus tard, le premier ministre Danny Williams est toujours aussi déterminé à développer le Bas-Churchill sans l'aide de personne, et surtout sans celle d'Hydro-Québec.

Still prepared to develop the Lower Churchill without Hydro-Quebec?

Hardly.

Malheureusement en anglais seulement, 

Perhaps it’s time someone worked up:

a.  a French translation of the Dunderdale comments and,

b.  a French version of “Nothing could be further from the truth”.  ‘Pfft”  - another DW staple likely to be heard many times in the next few months -  already translates itself.

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Stack takes regional army command

Brigadier-General Anthony Stack took command of the Canadian army’s regular and reserve units in Atlantic Canada in a ceremony at the Halifax Armoury on Thursday, January 21, 2010.

Stack succeeded Brigadier-General David Neasmith.

Chief of Land Staff Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie oversaw the ceremony. Invited guests in attendance included Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, regional navy commander rear Admiral Paul Maddison, LFAA soldiers, and family and friends of the incoming and outgoing commanders.

Incoming LFAA commander Brigadier-General Anthony Stack, left, shakes hands with outgoing commander Brigadier-general David Neasmith during a change of command ceremony at the Halifax Armoury, January 21, 2010. 

In the centre is Chief of Land Staff Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie.

 

“The role as Commander of Land Force Atlantic Area is a tremendously rewarding and difficult position,” said Lieutenant-General Leslie.  “As Land Force Atlantic Area’s new Commander, Brigadier-General Stack has accepted this responsibility and I know that will continue to serve his country and Atlantic Canada well in this role.”

“It is an honour to serve and I would like to thank Brigadier-General Neasmith for his outstanding efforts as Commander. Land Force Atlantic Area is engaged in a multitude of operations around the world, and our successes speak to the immense training and readiness of our soldiers. It has been a pleasure to work with you as Deputy Commander and I look forward to serving Atlantic Canada in my new role as Commander.”

In civilian life, Brigadier-General Stack is principal of St. Peter’s Junior High School in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador.  Brigadier-General Stack will be taking a leave of absence from his civilian job in order to take up his new appointment in service of Canada.

As Commander, Brigadier-General Stack will continue the Area’s support in the coming Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., as well as in operations abroad in Haiti and Afghanistan.  Land Force Atlantic Area is responsible for all regular and reserve army units in the four Atlantic Provinces. The Area’s current strength is approximately 7,000 regular and reserve soldiers in four regular, 32 reserve and 40 Ranger patrols across the region.

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Related:  “Nflder to command Atlantic area soldiers”

Biography:

Brigadier-General Anthony Stack was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in 1961. At Memorial University of Newfoundland, he earned Bachelor of Education (Secondary) and Bachelor of Science (Mathematics) degrees in 1985 and obtained a Master of Education (Leadership Studies) in 2001.

Brigadier-General Stack began his military adventure in high school with 2415 Gonzaga Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps. He joined the Canadian Forces army reserve in 1978.  He completed two terms as the commanding officer of 56 Field Engineer Squadron and a term as G3 Newfoundland District responsible for operations and training for  army reserve units in the province. He has also served as a company commander and Chief Instructor at the Atlantic Area Rank and Trade School in Gagetown, New Brunswick.

He is a graduate of the army command and staff college,  Kingston Ontario and the Joint Reserve Command and Staff Program at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, Ontario.

In 2001, Brigadier-General Stack was the first Commanding Officer of the Land Force Atlantic Area civil military cooperation (CIMIC) unit.

In January 2004, he deployed with OPERATION ATHENA to Afghanistan where he served as the Chief of CIMIC Operations for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul.

Upon return from theatre, he was appointed deputy commander of 37 Canadian Brigade Group in September 2004 and assumed command of the brigade in June 2006.

In December 2009, he was promoted to his present rank and assigned the position of deputy commander, Land Force Atlantic Area.

Brigadier-General Stack resides in St. John’s NL with his wife Wanda and son Shane. In civilian life, he is the principal of St. Peter’s Junior High School in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Brigadier-General Stack enjoys running, reading, and watching his son compete in basketball and volleyball.

Rumpole and The Way through the Woods

Great howls came from the clerk’s room at Number 3 Iniquity Court this morning.

Over steaming mugs of Red Rose and a few cream crackers, the b’ys were having a laugh at the goings on over at the Provincial Court in Gander.

It is, for those who haven’t been following such things, the story of a court which has been one judge short since December 2008.  That’s when one of the two judges flew up to the Supreme Court leaving his benchmate, one Judge Short – Bruce, by name – to handle the unending tide of misbehaviour from Suburbia in the Woods and its environs. 

The matter should have been settled with a few appointments to the Christmas Honours List but something appears to have gone off the rails.

A lawyer in Gander, one Juan O’Quinn, turned up in a CBC News story on Friday bemoaning the problems with getting cases heard in a timely way under the circumstances.  The CBC story is still not correct on the whole picture since it links Don Singleton to the goings on.  That, as local Rumpole followers know, is a horse of an entirely other colour.

To return to the matter at bar, the clerks were quick to point out that O’Quinn is a former law partner of the health minister and the chairman of the Memorial University board of regents.  His talking publicly is not to be taken lightly especially when it is to complain about stuff not being done by cabinet appointment:

"If you have a situation where you want to get access to your children and your spouse is not permitting that and you need to get in front of a court, if the court is busy then obviously that's problematic," said defence lawyer Juan O'Quinn.

The problems in Gander are an old old story.  A year ago, the town council raised the issue with the local member of the House of Assembly for the district Gander is in.  As the Beacon put it in a story on the ongoing court problems:

The Town of Gander received a letter dated Feb. 17, 2009, from government services minister Kevin O'Brien, MHA for Gander. In it, the minister said the interview process for the provincial court judge position was underway and the it would be filled in the not too distant future.

O’Brien’s logic on the delay is  - characteristically - incomprehensible:

Minister O'Brien said he is not surprised the matter has taken this long, given the amount of interest in the position and the prominence of the provincial court.

In any event, the CBC story confirms what your humble e-scribbler had heard early, namely that Provincial Court Chief Judge Mark Pike sent a list of nominees along to the justice minister last November.  Normally that would be plenty of time to select as many qualified appointees as might be needed and to let the chosen few celebrate their good fortune over the holidays.

Not this year, as it turned out.

The clerks offered two versions of why not.

In the first version, the Chief Judge had been heard talking about appointing his team and setting things on the course he had chosen for the court.   The list went from Pike to justice minister Felix Collins who dutifully passed it along to He who Must be Obeyed.

He was not amused at all by the Chief Judge’s confusion over who actually makes the appointments and sent the list back to be re-worked.

In the second version, the list went up with only the list of people recommended by the judicial council to fill the vacancies.  There were no other names of those interviewed, as used to be the custom, broken down into categories of highly recommended, recommended (meaning they met the requirements set out in the Act but lacked some qualities the council sought) and not recommended.

There was not even a list of the type demanded for the mess that became l’affair Singleton, namely putting everyone into one of two categories:  Recommended -  which jumbled together in one undifferentiated mess the highly qualified and experienced as well as those who met barely met the minimums set down in law - and Not Recommended, which was all those who didn’t even meet the minimum requirements.

The November list apparently left off some names of individuals reputedly known to the political powers to have applied.

The list was sent back to be re-worked.

The two versions are not incompatible, it should be noted, and regardless of the precise reasons the end result is the same:  the bench in Gander as well as three other spots remain short of judges.

The cabinet is working its way through the woods and may eventually find someone to sit in Suburbia alongside Judge Short.

But in the meantime,  Bruce is on his own.

If Juan applied, he can cancel plans to lay up his shingle.

And there should be no question in any one’s mind about who appoints judges in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Well, at least that’s what the clerks said as they drained the last drop of Carnation from the tin and got back to their work, mugs full of a fresh brew.

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