Financial shorts – Second Monday in March edition

1.  Crack whores rebel:  Icelanders voted against a US$5.3 billion package to deal with part of the country’s financial mess.

“This is a strong no from the Icelandic nation,” said Magnus Arni Skulason, co-founder of a group opposed to the deal.

“The Icelandic public understands that we are sovereign and we have to be treated like a sovereign nation — not being bullied like the British and the Dutch have been doing.”

Sovereign Icelanders may be, but they are also broke.  If they don’t like it when people come looking for their money back – it ain’t bullying, BTW – then maybe they shouldn’t have been running the financial equivalent of a crack-house.

2.  More hidden cash turns up:  There may be a few million extra in provincial coffers when the financial year ends.  This isn’t a windfall or a gift.  It’s just what you get when you compare the actual amount of federal transfers in the current fiscal year - $1.264 billion – to the $988 million reported in Budget 2009 last spring.

Well, that’s if you use the Estimates which gives different numbers than the ones in the budget speech. The numbers in the budget speech are pretty much dead-on the actual federal transfers.

Someone should ask the finance minister to explain why he feels the need to keep two sets of books.

3. Counter-intuitive.  Okay.  Crude is up.  Gold is up and silver is is up as well. US dollar is down.  The American economy shed jobs but not as many as expected.  Some news media are reporting this as a good thing.  Basically, it’s more of the recovery-is-here-yada-yada crap they’ve been fed since this time last year.

If the dollar is down, and oil and gold are up, that’s a sure sign that not only is the US economy not in recovery, it’s virtually a guarantee it won’t recover while prices for things like crude oil are that high.

The American economy needs oil prices to be about half of what they are currently in order to see a recovery tale hold.  And when a recovery does start, it won’t keep going if oil prices shoot back up to their current levels.

In the meantime, stand by for an “adjustment’ sometime in 2010 or early 2011.  The “correction” won’t be as big as the collapse in 2008 but it will hurt.

It will especially hurt any government that doesn’t have its financial house in order.

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She’s funny even if she doesn’t try

Let’s just say that Google's translator didn’t quite get the subtle nuances of a French-language story on Sarah Palin’s speech in Calgary.

Here’s the original:

L’ancienne gouverneure de l’État américain de l’Alaska et ancienne candidate républicaine à la vice-présidence, Sarah Palin, a fait salle comble samedi soir à Calgary.

Here’s the google version.

Ummm.

Not exactly.

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KGB Connections

While some may have viewed it as politically incorrect, CBC followed up on its expose of organized crime in Canada with a documentary on Soviet espionage in North America.

KGB Connections aired in 1982 and doesn’t appear to have aired since. The thing is now in the public domain and the whole program is available on youtube.  local audiences will be interested in the reference to one Soviet spy dropped off in St. John’s when a fishing vessel arrived to change crews and pick up supplies.

This version is in black and white but the show originally aired in colour. A colour version, slightly shorter in length, is also available on youtube.

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Firds of a bleather: legislature edition

The second Monday in March.

That would be this Monday, March 8.

Why is that an important day?

Well, under the standing orders of the House of Assembly, the legislature is supposed to sit:

“in the Winter-Spring from the second Monday in March to the Friday before the Victoria Day weekend with a break from the end of the sitting day on Maundy Thursday to the third Monday after Easter…”.

Seems pretty clear.

And yet, for some completely inexplicable reason the House of Assembly is not being called back into session on Monday, March 8, it being the second Monday in March.

Anyone care to suggest a rational, sensible, plausible and/or very good reason why the House likely won’t be sitting again until two weeks after it was supposed to be back?

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Innu vow to protest, continue caribou hunt

After a while, some of this stuff gets repeated so often you could be reading the news with an early undiagnosed case of dementia and not really know for sure that slowly you are losing your grip on reality.

Penashue.

Hickey. 

Innu. 

Protest.

Caribou.

Is it 2010 or 1987?

The answer  - at least for the old Canadian Press clipping below -  is 1987.  The first clue the story is older is the reference to “Innu Indians” and if you managed to slip by that one, the dead give-away is the mention of protests at a military runway.

Other than that, the rest of the story could be from events of the past six or seven years.  A group of Innu, protesting an issue they believe involves their aboriginal rights, decide to kill a few animals from an endangered herd.

A Penashue from Sheshatshiu, in this case Greg, speaks on behalf of the protesters:

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

Meanwhile, there’s a prediction of dire consequences from someone regular readers of these scribbles will recognise as a local favourite:

However, John Hickey, [right, shovelling something else in 2009] president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Now aside from the novelty of seeing the old story recycled in this way, there are a few other lessons to be drawn from all this.

Firstly, the Innu  - whether from Quebec or from Sheshatshiu – are past masters at using caribou hunts in sensitive areas as a way of attracting southern media attention for their political cause of the moment.

Second, the caribou herds involved have been used like this for more than 22 years and so far the herds have not been decimated.  There is good reason to doubt either the scientists views or, by referring back to that first point, what is actually going on.  Innu aren’t stupid people, individually or collectively.

Third, the same cannot be said for the white folks who – each and every year - fall for the same schtick without fail.  In that light,  John Hickey’s prediction of a “massacre” 22 years ago is laughable.  But he is basically no different than the crowd who have played the reflexive, knee-jerk white redneck role in the Annual Media Caribou Frenzy every year since.

What’s especially sad is that some of the biggest parts in the 2010 edition of the annual knee-jerk follies are played by a bunch of politicians who are supposed to be or who should be a heckuva lot smarter than they evidently are.  Felix, Danny and Kathy should know better than to get into the racket.  They aren’t being played for saps;  they have re-written the script for themselves and in the process done absolutely nothing to defuse the situation, strip the protest of its political value or advance the Lower Churchill land claim.

Rather, with their claims that charges might be laid they are showing themselves to be extraordinarily stunned.  As lawyers of some experience, Felix and Danny should both know that the aboriginal people of Canada have a constitutionally guaranteed right to hunt, fish and trap subject only to laws about safety and conservation.  In this case, showing any conservation issue is going to be highly problematic.  The facts speak for themselves.

In the end, if Danny and Felix try a politically-driven prosecution  - a la FPI and yellow-tail flounder, right - they can only lose as a matter of law.  They may secure the redneck vote and grumble about the friggin’ courts but that’s going to be of little use once the Innu have a much stronger political position as a result of pure stunnedness. 

On the other hand, now that Danny and Felix have built up an expectation that charges will be laid against the Innu – presumably knowing there is frig-all chance of a conviction – they are going to look like eunuchs if they decide that a prosecution is a waste of time and don’t lay charges.

They got into this mess, one suspects, for a very well-known habit of one of three  - Danny, Felix or Kathy - to shoot from the lip before the brain engages.  Henley v. Cable Atlantic is just one of many such examples. The people of the province have seen it countless times since 2003 and  - contrary to popular mythology – The Lip has cost taxpayers dearly indeed.  This case will likely prove to have a similar high price-tag attached to it.

Either way, the Innu will be stronger as a result of this little escapade. Building up sympathy among the southerners is a time-honoured part of their strategy and it will work now just as it did 22 years ago.

One potentially huge difference in the political response to the Innu outside Newfoundland and Labrador now versus earlier has to do with the level of interest of other governments in the whole affair.  If the feds were as attached to the Lower Churchill  as they were to low-altitude flight training in the 1980s or if the Lower Churchill project was more than a load of hot air, the federal politicians would be less susceptible to the political pressure that is likely to be applied to them very shortly.  There’s no way of knowing for sure – at this point – how they will react.

At the same time, these recent protests and the strong words being tossed highlight the huge cleavages within the Innu communities north and south of the Labrador-Quebec boundary. The white folks in this end of the province might want to consider that in a worst case scenario, there’s no guarantee “our Indians” will side with us against “their Indians.”  None of that bodes well for the Lower Churchill.

And if nothing else, all this highlights the sheer idiocy of believing that history started in 2003 and that – in an of themselves – the current lords and ladies ruling this place are inherently smarter than any average bear that went before.

If they were, then they wouldn’t have volunteered so eagerly to play the horse’s arse – yet again - in the pantomime that is Labrador hydro development.

April 22, 1987

Canadian Press

Innu Indians, locked in an escalating battle over native hunting rights and provincial laws, set up tents yesterday on the runway of a military airport.

Five tents were pitched at Canadian Forces Station Goose Bay by members of the Naskapi Montagnais Innu band to protest against the resumption of low-level flights by NATO fighter jets.

The Innu, who believe the flights disrupt the migratory patterns of caribou, were also protesting against the imprisonment of band members arrested on charges of illegally hunting caribou.

The tents, which were not disrupting airport activities, come after a winter of defiance by Innu from the central Labrador community of Sheshatshit.

The Innu, non-status Indians native to Labrador and Eastern Quebec, say they have killed at least 50 caribou from the protected Mealy Mountains' herd on the south coast of Labrador. The Innu consider the area part of their traditional hunting ground.

Six band leaders and Rev. Jim Roach, a Roman Catholic priest, are in jail awaiting a court appearance next week on charges of illegally hunting or illegally possessing caribou meat.

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

''How can they guarantee us rights when they throw us in jail virtually every day for practicing our traditional way of life?'' The Innu claim the right to roughly 300,000 square kilometres of land in Newfoundland and Quebec, saying the tribe was hunting caribou as its way of life before Newfoundland existed and has never signed a treaty giving up its rights.

However, John Hickey, president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Other native peoples in Labrador have also claimed traditional rights in the Mealy Mountains. The Innu receive government assistance in the form of subsidized housing, social services and hunting trips.

''If you get right down to it, the Innu went into a section of Labrador which is traditionally used by the Metis people,'' said Joe Goudie, president of the Labrador Metis Association.

''They have impinged on our land without consultation, without anything.''

The Mealy Mountains and the nearby Red Wine Mountains were closed to caribou hunting after the herd dwindled to less than 200 in 1975 from about 2,500 in the 1950s. The Innu are allowed unrestricted access to the George River caribou herd far in the north, whose numbers have mushroomed to more than 700,000.

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The Dead Parrot of Graduate Studies

“This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker.

This is a late parrot. 

It's a stiff. 

Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he’d be pushing up the daisies.  

Its metabolic processes are of interest only to historians. 

It's hopped the twig. 

It's shuffled off this mortal coil. 

It's run down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible! 

This.... is an ex-parrot.”

One could pity Noreen Golfman, Ph.d.

Theoretically, that is.

One could  - entirely in the abstract, mind you - actually manage to find some measure of sympathy for the good professor as she copes with the crisis besetting her academic charge, the School of Graduate Studies at Memorial University.

But that sympathy could only exist in the absence of the facts.

You see the university administration froze the grad studies budget for new students.  Starting this fall new graduate students won’t get any fellowship cash from the university.  According to Golfman, about half the university’s masters and doctoral students rely on the estimated $12,000 to $15,000 to help pay for their studies.

Grad Studies is facing a budget shortfall of about $2.0 million a year.  Supposedly the shortfall is the result of a 60% increase in enrolment within the past year.

Note the word:  enrolment.

That is slightly different from the words that appear in the Telegram story on the mess where the word “application” is used. A 60% increase in applications wouldn’t matter since those applications could be turned down in the absence of funds.

A problem exists because someone – maybe Noreen Golfman as dean of graduate studies – or some group of someones allowed enrolment to increase at such an insane rate in a single year.

Freezing spending is not, as Golfman claimed, “sending the right signal about being fiscally responsible.” Rather it sends a signal that someone or some group of someones was so utterly incompetent that they let the situation develop in the first place. The university administration had to freeze the thing in place or face catastrophe. 

As an aside:  what are the odds, incidentally, that Golfman didn’t make this decision all by her lonesome?

The implications are far more serious for the university than the mere inconvenience to a few thousand students. 

"It means that it will be very difficult to attract graduate students to the university this coming year because when you're a graduate student you apply to different universities and see who is going to offer you the best package," [faculty association president Ross] Klein says. "It affects the stature of the university because the graduate programs are one of the things that raise the stature."

You can tell Golfman understands the magnitude of the shag up because she has been bullshitting so heavily in the Telegram and to other media like the CBC:

“We will get control of our budget and hope to move forward with more support, but we couldn't in conscience go forward at the growth rate we are without knowing if we've got the money to do it.”

As Golfman knows, though, she and her colleagues did "go forward at the growth rate” knowing that they didn’t have the cash.  There isn't any indication anywhere that the funding levels were cut, tightened or otherwise altered until after the enrolment part of this fiscal fiasco.  Make no mistake, though: if there is a mess,  Golfman made it.

That isn't what you will see her acknowledge anywhere, though.  Nowhere does the bullshit about this flow more heavily than on Golfman’s own weekly blog Postcards from the edge. 

Golfman tries blaming the media for the current flap:

A freeze by any other name would not be a freeze. That’s of course why the media love to use the word: it signals exactly what freezes are, an act that seizes everything up.

She tries a minor play for sympathy:

“Forgive me, but I am somewhat preoccupied with the word freeze right now…”.

She tries to obfuscate by relying on the extracts from the Standard Book of Bureaucratic Bullshit:

Our staggering growth in the last couple of years has outrun our more limited capacity to support it, and so we are doing some intense focusing on how best to move ahead while staying committed to both the university’s Strategic Plan and the many students who are currently in our programs and require reasonable, long-term funding through the healthy front ends of their programs.

There is a mysteriously capitalised pair of phrases that seem as if they were cut and pasted whole from someone’s hastily typed notes on how to torque the whole shite-pile:

NOT SUCH A BIG DEAL, REALLY. IT’S CALLED GOOD FISCAL MANAGEMENT.

She tries to blame the media – slow news week – and then turns the whole thing into a commentary on “how basic communication works in our society”:

In a world of tweets and twerps, you know just how quickly the facts can be distorted. Just put a few nouns and verbs out there and watch how suddenly the message gets transformed into something quite different from its original meaning and context.

Ah yes, the ever popular “I was misquoted”, not by the usual culprits the news media but by the faceless crowds on facebook and other social media.

Golfman only accepts responsibility for a poor choice of words:  “I admit the memo used the phrase ‘temporary freeze,’ and if I had my time back I’d trade the word in for something softer, like ‘temporary hold’ on fellowship support for new, incoming students.” 

However in her bass-ackwards version her mistake was for telling things as they were – it really is a freeze – rather than employ the sort of mind-numbing drivel one used to find in news releases from Eastern Health about breast cancer testing.

And of course, Golfman would be remiss if she didn’t resort to the old academic stand-by, the supposed ignorance of those who have not been exposed to the rarefied intellectual environment of the average graduate school:

The whole world of graduate studies, as is the domain of research, is also a bit mystifying to the general public who, if they haven’t done a graduate degree, understandably find the whole notion of giving students money to study a little odd.

Only someone with the unadulterated arrogance to believe that could also try the extensive line of sheer foolishness Golfman has been peddling the past day or so in an effort to deflect attention from the rather obviously unsound fiscal management that led to this fiasco in the first place.

Golfman, of course, is the only one who has been avoiding facts, let alone distorting them. Her efforts to massage the message have been so amateurish, so lame, so pathetic that anyone with the IQ of a cup of warm spit – let alone the crowd at the university – could see what is actually going on.

The only thing Golfman succeeds at doing is giving the people of Newfoundland and Labrador a textbook example of how to bungle.   If she didn’t cause the problem in the first place – and she shouldn’t be off the hook for that one yet -  then she has certainly buggered the response to the crisis. 

But what is perhaps the most unforgivable sin in a string of Golfman’s unforgiveables is her mangling of the sacred canon of Monty Python:

(I am starting to feel like John Cleese defending his not-so-dead parrot, but I digress, again.)

Fans of the show will appreciate that while Golfman may like to think she’s playing Cleese’s part, she’s auditioning  - rather badly - to replace Michael Palin.  Cleese was the customer who;d be sold a bill of goods.  Michael Palin was the shopkeeper who tried every manner of deflection and bullshit to dodge responsibility for the fraud.

Oh yes, and the parrot was, unmistakably, and without question, dead.

One can only hope someone in the university administration will step in, like The Colonel, and put an end to Golfman’s miserable efforts at sketch comedy before more damage is done to the university.

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Norwegian Blue bonus:

The audio of the dead parrot sketch from the Live at Drury Lane album.  Those with a penchant for trivia and other things will note the sketch originally appeared in a Python episode titled “Full frontal nudity”. [dead link deleted]

Revised 27 April 2017 to correct typos,  clarify sentences,  and to advise that,  after the Grad Studies Fiasco, Golfman won a lovely promotion.

They are speaking his language

What I said before and I said going in, this is about principles, but it's also about money as well. At the end of the day, the promise and the principle converts to cash for the bottom line for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

That’s Danny Williams talking about the feud with Stephen Harper.

And now the Quebec Innu are looking for compensation for any development of the Lower Churchill.

This one should be easy to resolve.  Both sides are already speaking the same language:  the language of money.

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It’s all how you ask

Not all CBC is bad and not all CBC is bad all the time.

There was da Ceeb reporter in British Columbia who starts by asking very meekly if it is alright to talk to Hisself. 

Hisself obliges. 

And then there’s the appearance on the national Ceeb show that ran out of laughs long before they hired the low-rent Scott Thompson impersonator.

Hisself looks as tired as one might expect of a guy who had major surgery three weeks ago and who just hauled himself out to Vancouver to attend the Olympics. There are other times when he seems just plain annoyed.  Let’s just say this ain’t Colbert or the Daily Show.  Heck, it would have to stretch to come close to Air Farce. 

At the end of it you only wind up wondering why – after all the effort expended to kill off the media fascination with his hair and his scar  - he actually agreed to do this sort of thing.

 

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The Politics of the Caribou

Some pictures turned up in ye olde in-box showing caribou in Labrador.  The shots were taken this year.

At this point don’t get concerned with the discussion of which herd is which.  Are biologists in agreement that the various herds  - George, Red Wine, Joir, etc - are actually separate entities?  Or are they merely sub-sets of one large caribou population that ranges over what some people have referred to as the Quebec-Labrador peninsula?

If the Red Wine herd was really only 100 animals and it seldom migrated very far then six or seven years of hunting by both Labrador and Quebec Innu should have wiped them out.  Well, certainly if the Innu are reportedly taking way more than 100 animals every season.

The biology of it is one thing.  The politics of it is another and as this story of the Innu hunt has really taken off, people are getting a better perspective on the deep political cleavages that lay behind the annual caribou media frenzy.

There is the pressure on the provincial government, evidenced by a statement issued by Hisself  - presumably recuperating from heart surgery in sunnier climes - and the companion piece – a media availability by Hisself’s hand-picked political mouthpiece and occasional stunt-double.

Then there is Innu leader Peter Penashue pissing all over the Quebec Innu for supposedly being backward-assed and stunned.  Peter reveals the schism between the Innu south of the border and those north of it pretty nakedly. He may also be a bit ticked at being on the receiving end of some of the same tactics he and his associates have been known to use, but that’s another story.

But truth be told, Peter himself is not representing a monolithic group. Heck, Peter’s own mother isn’t on side with the deal.  And when it comes to hunting endangered caribou, Peter was singing a very different tune before Christmas than the one he spouts today.

In other words, the issues involved in this are complex.  They cannot be dismissed as easily as Peter dismisses them or as some of the non-aboriginal people of the south are making them out to be. 

Heck, it isn’t clear yet Peter’s own crowd north of the border will buy into the New Dawn or view it as merely a dolled up version of the original Matshishkapeu Accord. He may like people to think that everything is tucked in, but we heard that same story from him when the Matshishkapeu Accord rolled out the first time.  Whatever happened to that January 31 2009 ratification vote, there, Peter? 

As with a herd of caribou, there is much more to this story than may first appear.

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Firds of a bleather

Provincial finance minister Tom Marshall, speaking in Corner Brook in mid-February:

“Now we have to benefit from new industry, benefit from the knowledge economy, the innovation economy.”

Adios “stimulus”. 

Innovation is the new buzzword on provincial Tory lips.

And then a couple of days before the federal budget, you’ll never guess what federal Tories are saying, well according to Globe and Mail sources:

The Harper government's Throne Speech and budget this week will try to shift the spotlight away from the billions of dollars in short-term stimulus and onto measures designed to generate higher-paying, longer-term jobs.

 

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A knowledge economy, indeed

Finance minister Tom Marshall, in mid-February 2010:

“Now we have to benefit from new industry, benefit from the knowledge economy, the innovation economy.”

Sure, Tom:

A spending freeze on funding for graduate students at Memorial University of Newfoundland is expected to affect hundreds of professors and students.

The university's administration is freezing funding for new graduate students, starting fall 2010 because the university's School of Graduate Studies is running a deficit.

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Oil production figures

BP gave you the numbers in November 2009.

Turns out the provincial finance department’s statistics division did a run of the same figures in October but didn’t make them public until January 2010, three months later.

Still, they projected oil production over the whole fiscal year would be down 21% from the previous year. They changed the exact numbers from 98 million barrels forecast in March to 101 million barrels by December and – in true political hyper-torque mode -  in the December financial update this was pushed an an increase compared to the forecast.

It was – obviously -  an increase compared to the forecast; but that only masked the fact they were actually forecasting a drop of 21% in production regardless of how you looked at it.

That, almost inevitably, will translate into a substantial drop in revenue as well.  Yet,  the December financial statement claimed there’d be only a modest drop in oil revenue from the blockbuster year in 2008.  The finance officials never did show how they came up with that calculation.

The BP forecast for revenues used used actual royalty figures from the federal natural resources department. They show the provincial government’s royalties tracking below the March forecast.

And while the treasury will pocket close to $200 million from the Hibernia transportation dispute settlement it’s still a bit hard to see how oil prices are going to rebound sufficiently to produce the extra $520 million in oil revenues – compared to March’s forecast  -  that the revised treasury forecast said would be in hand by the end of the year.

Still, the final tally on the budget update in December only shift the figures around slightly.  If it holds on track, the provincial government will still wind up borrowing close on a billion dollars in cash – either from the banks or from its own temporary cash reserves – in order to balance the books.

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But if the “mother fish” is dead…

Apparently someone missed the fairly simple point that if a large size cod is a sign of a healthy stock – the big ones are successful breeders – then it only stands to reason that a large dead cod can’t help the endangered cod stocks to recover.

Because…like…you know…umm…

Dead cod don’t breed.

Right?

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Priorities

New legislation consolidating the province’s animal control and protections is due in the House of Assembly in a couple of weeks’ time.

Meanwhile, there are at least 10 pieces of legislation – one dating back to 2004 – which passed through the legislature but which are not in force.

And on top of that there are campaign promises, some of those dating back to 2003, which are still unfulfilled.

Danny Williams may think the crowd at the Ceeb are mothers for poking around his heart business but apparently  - what with those damn Dead Dogs from Dunville  - he sure looks to the Mother Corp to drive public policy.

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Whistleblower Protection Bill – the annual reminder

From January 2009,  here’s, here’s the link to the text of a draft bill to protect people who blow the whistle on misdeeds by public officials.

Your humble e-scribbler offered up this self-contained piece of draft legislation as a way of helping a government that seems to have a spot of trouble meeting its campaign commitments.

This one dated from 2007 and in his 2008 year-ender with the Telegram, the Premier said:

"We indicated that we would try and get that done by the end of this year. We realized getting into that, that that's a very complex piece of legislation that we have to make sure that it's done properly…".

No need to fear complexity.  This draft bill is based on a tested example from another province.

Never let it be said that your humble e-scribbler didn’t try and help out the provincial government, especially since it has been off for the past month recovering from major heart surgery.

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Bullshit headline; bullshit story

“Quebec Innu hunters may face charges” screams the headline above a cbc.ca/nl story.  The subject  - the annual caribou frenzy  - rivals the annual march madness of the seal slaughter for the media play it gets and the howls of protest from people within the province.

There is the first sentence that supports the headline and makes it look like the provincial government might actually be doing something to stop the hunt of caribou near an endangered herd.

The second sentence is a quote from the minister:

"We certainly do," [justice minister] Felix Collins told CBC News. "We certainly hope that the evidence will be sufficient to lay charges.”

Unfortunately the rest of the story reveals the naked truth:  the headline, lede and quote are sheer bullshit because the provincial government doesn’t have a scrap of evidence worthy of the name. 

There’s a quote from the minister that anyone with half a clue could figure out:

"Evidence taken from surveillance cameras presents some challenges because you have to identify a shooter with a dead animal on the ground, and given the angles of the cameras and the lighting and the clothing and distinguishing one individual from the other and what not, it takes quite a challenge to do that."

Collins said no evidence was seized at the scene.

If you listen the audio that goes with the story, Labrador Morning host Cindy Wall very simply notes for justice minister Felix Collins that there have been no charges laid despite the fact this stuff goes on regularly. Collins gamely insists that work is progressing and evidence is being assessed.  He even tries to make it sound like there is still a possibility charges might be laid arising from events last year.

Good luck with that one, there Felix.

Collins even insists that charges would be laid against anyone, including Innu from Labrador.  Wall pointedly corrects that one, too by calmly speaking truth to power. The last time Labrador Innu hunted in a restricted zone they got their gear back and no charges were laid.

Admittedly, Collins is in a hard spot on this one.  He’s caught between the domestic political pressure to do something and the practical problems of trying to do anything at all with a massive hydro-electric legacy project at stake. 

But Collins dilemma hardly warrants a news story that starts out with sheer crap for a headline, lede and opening quote.

Leave that for the crowd in the Confederation Building who get paid huge amounts to pour out just exactly that kind of bullshit.

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The Annual Caribou Frenzy: 2010 edition

Every year Quebec Innu hunt caribou in the northern part of the territory they claim.

Every year there is a panic about it.

This year was no exception.

There was just a unique excuse this year:  the Matshishkapeu Accord.

But every year the Innu hunt caribou, and every year the government gets its collective knockers in a giant bunch, some locals call for the army to be sent in to arrest the interlopers and every year the endangered Red Wine caribou herd and its 100 animals never seem to get slaughtered into extinction.

And it’s not like someone hasn’t pointed out that this pattern occurs.

Same bat time, give or take a few weeks.

Same bat place.

Every.

single.

year.

 

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SCANners

One of the pieces of legislation included last May in Bond Papers’ list of legislation  not in force has turned up dead.

Cause of death is reported to be changed priorities.

As Terry Roberts reported in the Saturday Telegram, the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act (SCAN) won’t be put into force despite being passed by the legislature in 2007 and supposedly still being on track in 2008:

"At this point in time, there's no inclination to proclaim it because our priorities now have changed," Collins said.

"We've put significant investments into policing in the last couple of years, and that's where our priorities have gone."

He said the province's policing budgets have increased $40 million since 2004.

Collins said financial concerns played a role in deep-sixing the SCAN law.

"It's a question of getting the best bang for the buck with the resources you have," he noted.

But the minister could not put a dollar figure on how much implementing the Safer Communities law would have cost taxpayers.

Odd that Collins said financial concerns entered into consideration.  A highly misleading news release issued in 2007 – it was an election year, don’t forget – carried the title “Government takes action for safe communities and neighbourhoods” and also included this line:

Budget 2007 provided $237,000 for an investigation unit within the Department of Justice that will be in place as early as this fall.

Less than $250,000 dropped in 2007 with the clear implication in the release that not only was the legislation in force – when it wasn’t – but that government already budgeted cash to get the whole scheme up and rolling.

So how come three years later the whole thing is dead and money was a contributing factor to the project’s demise?

The SCAN messaging fit perfectly with the Tory campaign that fall which placed a heavy emphasis on crime and crime prevention.  The campaign even included a staged event with police recruits. 

SCAN didn’t get the highlight the Tory campaign expected though.  That’s likely because, as the Telegram reported, the law proved unpopular with community groups.  The Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women warned of serious problems with the bill and no evidence it actually worked in any of the other provinces  - like Alberta, Saskatchewan, and  Manitoba – where this type of law actually was in force.

Amendments to the bill seemed to address some of the concerns but apparently not sufficiently to avoid controversy.

SCAN legislation is supposed to deal with cases where property is being used for illegal activity but where it’s unlikely that the Crown prosecutors could  get a conviction under the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.  SCAN can also serve as a tip to law enforcement about illegal or suspicious activity.

SCAN isn’t the only topical piece of justice department legislation that is on the side of milk cartons.  In 2004, one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Tory-dominated legislature was designed to beef up court security. Six years later, the thing is still not in force. 

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Related:  “Massive cost overruns, delays now normal for provincial government?”

Too close for comfort: Gladiator and Pirates

Close your eyes and just listen to the music.

This is what you get when you hire the same guy  - or his associates - for both movies.  You not only get music that “sounds like” what so-and-so did for that film over there, you get pretty much the same stuff.

And if that wasn’t enough proof of One Thought Zimmer’s penchant for borrowing from himself, about half way through this compilation, you’ll find that Glad and pirates sounds like a chunk of the soundtrack for a Wesley Snipes parachuting movie.

 

Zimmer’s not alone.  James Horner seems to have had one idea and milked it through several movies as well.  The bits from Willow and Enemy at the Gates are laughable. And right at the end, there’s the past master of “homaging”, John Williams with photocopy job in JFK and Jurassic Park.

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The Last Post: Dead Dipper Dale

Tickling Bight  is no more.

It has ceased to be.

Bereft of life, it has run down the curtain and joined the invisible choir of political blogs in this province that vanished without a trace and without warning.

It has hydroqueened, you might say. Where is Hydroqueen these days, any way?

Tickling Bight may not have managed to last for one rideout, the shortest measurement in local politics. One rideout is 43 days, the length of time Tory Premier Tom Rideout held office in 1989. .

Tickling Bight was the partisan outlet for Dale Kirby, a local New Democrat organizer.

There’s no word on why the blog – which started without much fanfare -  slipped quietly into the night.

Resurrection Update:  And then just as mysteriously as it vanished, Tickling Bight reappears.

Again, just like the hydroqueen.

Someone forget to pay the bill or something?

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