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Someone just forgot to tell the friggin’ Europeans.
Crude is hovering at about US$71 a barrel, down the better part of twenty bucks in the matter of a few weeks.
Meanwhile at the provincial finance ministry they’d likely be flinging themselves out the window if their offices weren’t on the bloody first floor. Billion dollar deficit forecast based on oil averaging about $15 above where it is now and the odds are looking very good that we just had the high point for the whole year.
That would be so friggin’ cool if it wasn’t going to hurt us all.
Hurt us all very, very badly.
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At the Telegram, James McLeod hits on a huge problem with the provincial government’s efforts to foist enviro liabilities on Abitibi: who owns the facilities and related to that who actually caused the pollution?
The provincial government has already coloured its own actions so badly they’d probably have trouble getting a court order in this province to enforce the politically motivated clean-up orders Charlene signed last fall.
When they try to stick Abitibi with liabilities on the land the provincial government owned before Abitibi?
Hey, that just screams “moron” to a judge no matter what province he or she lives in.
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As a rule, you don’t enhance your credibility by saying things which are demonstrably at odds with established facts.
Take for example a news release just issued by the provincial government’s energy company. It reads like something from Hisself for polling season, not Ed Martin, but that’s another issue.
Just get a load of this bit:
Currently, there is a surplus of transmission capacity on the transmission grid which Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie was obligated to offer to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, a subsidiary of Nalcor Energy, under the Open Access Transmission Tariff (OATT), before suggesting more expensive upgrades. The surplus was never offered to Nalcor Energy. Instead, Nalcor was told it would have to pay for upgrades that were not required.
The most obvious problem for this is that NALCOR was not seeking to move energy today. They wanted to option a block of power for 30 years to service a project which, as everyone knows, doesn’t even exist. As such, any current surplus – no pun intended – is irrelevant.
The studies for the future demand showed that capacity will be needed down the road a ways to handle the power coming from a project which still exists only in the over-wrought imaginations of the Old Man and his entourage.
Not surprisingly, though, this extra capacity would be exactly the sort of thing which – as NALCOR’s release confirms – both the company and the Premier have said repeatedly they’d be prepared to pay for whether it was in Quebec or New Brunswick.
So why is Ed Martin issuing news releases late on a Friday tilting at imaginary windmills?
Aside from desperately trying to ignite some distraction from the Expropriation FUBAR Follies or giving your humble e-scribbler yet more to ridicule, only the Old Man likely knows for sure.
But let us assume, for a second, that there is a surplus currently and NALCOR is willing to buy space today or was willing to scarf it up at any time back to 2006 when they first stuck in their request.
As part of the ongoing discussion they could have worked out a deal with Hydro Quebec at any point. In fact, once the capacity studies were done, they had 45 days to either close the deal or merely indicate their intention to buy.
They didn’t do that.
Instead they started a round of procedural motions in front of the Quebec energy regulatory board.
Then after a couple of years of wrangling, they have managed to lose every single one of the five motions they brought. They lost them not because the process was biased but because the motions themselves - like this release - lacked merit and substance.
After all, if there is capacity on the line and if there was a project and if NALCOR was ready and willing to pay to get power to market, the company would have optioned the space rather than tried to stop the clock.
Since they haven’t optioned the space, then anyone with two clues can draw a logical conclusion.
Res ipsa loquitur, as the lawyers would say.
The facts speak for themselves.
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Mr. Speaker, that is the difficulties with letting people see these reports when they do not have the technical expertise to be able to interpret the results.
That’s environment minister Charlene Johnson under fire in the House of Assembly for sitting on environmental assessments of sites related to Abitibi’s operations in the province.
The video - via CBC - is even less impressive.
At this point in the questioning, Johnson was clearly having difficulty justifying her actions in keeping the reports from the public. What else to do then but to blame the ignorance of everyone else for her decisions.
Yes, folks, the public are too stupid to understand these things so everyone must trust Charlene to do the right thing.
And if there was a problem, she’d tell us.
Sure.
Just like she and her cabinet colleagues told us they’d expropriated the Abitibi mill, arguable the worst environmental mess of the lot, and they did it completely by accident.
Really, though, that’s just the least of Johnson’s problems in the credibility department. Take a gander at the environmental assessment for the mill that Johnson released yesterday but only because the same documents were posted to a Quebec court website as part of the ongoing legal wrangles since the expropriation Fubar Follies started last year.
They don’t look pretty. And given that Johnson tried her damnedest to keep them from being public until forced to do so as a result of a related court action, she also looks like she was trying to hide them for some reason other than the stupidity of the average Newfoundlander.
Her other comments in the legislature surely won’t help.
Take for example, her reference to Buchans where she and her cabinet colleagues acted swiftly to alert the public to potential health issues:
When we had these reports done, Mr. Speaker, if there was anything that was identified as an immediate human health and safety issue we acted immediately. Look at the case in Buchans, Mr. Speaker. [Emphasis added]
Immediate.
The word stands out against the backdrop of Johnson’s other words.
Immediate.
As in, something that can’t be avoided, postponed or delayed.
But otherwise? Not a peep, if you take the full implication of Johnson’s words.
Trust her.
People might be willing to trust her unquestioningly if only we weren’t talking about hazardous chemicals and other products. They might be willing to give her the blind obedience of a Chris Crocker Brigade member if only Johnson hadn’t tried to keep everything under wraps.
And maybe they might be able to look past even that if she didn’t try to fall back on a mishmash of pseudo-technical gibberish that perhaps even Johnson doesn’t fully comprehend:
Just to break it down so you can put it into laymen’s terms, there was one single arsenic excedence that was taken between a half a metre and a metre below the soil in the ball field. The excedence was twenty-five milligrams per kilogram. If you compare that to the risk-based number that was done for Buchans on the surface, that was forty-eight milligrams per kilogram.
Here’s how the government environmental analysts described the results of earlier testing on the ball field. Incidentally, they didn’t do any test work of their own:
A previous investigation completed by JW included the collection of two soil samples from test pits, one borehole soil sample, and six surficial soil samples in the area of the present Ball Fields. The soil samples contained BTEX, TPH, and metals at concentrations
greater than the applicable criteria.
Let’s put that into plainer English: In a total of nine samples – not one but nine – there were of petroleum, oil and lubricants spillage and metals residue at levels above those allowed by the environmental guidelines.
It doesn’t sound nearly as innocuous when you put it real layman’s terms. Maybe that’s why Johnson avoided plain English.
Johnson and her colleagues have a huge political problem. Arrogance – the standard defensive tactic of the current administration – doesn’t make things better.
At some point people will remember Johnson’s abysmal performance over a raft of bridges the public used regularly and which fell to Johnson’s department to keep track of. Public safety was so important to her department – to borrow Johnson’s own talking point – that her department didn’t inspect the bridges.
At all.
One disappeared altogether without explanation and no one seemed to know it until a federal government inspection of some of the bridges showed potentially very serious hazards. That prompted a panicked inspection by Johnson and her department.
Something should tell Charlene that with that sort of track record “trust me” is not going to work for her again.
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vocm.com is making much of the fact that NALCOR and Hydro Quebec are taking different interpretations of the ruling yesterday by Quebec’s energy regulator.
The truth of the whole affair is actually in VO’s news story.
Here’s what happened: part of the ruling yesterday was on an effort by NALCOR to suspend the timelines under Quebec’s open access tariff rules that give a company with power to ship 45 days to either book the space or to signal and intention to book the space.
NALCOR didn’t want to book the space now, especially on a project that doesn’t really exist. No markets. No money. Still mired in environmental assessments and all that.
So two and three years ago, they simply couldn’t afford to book space and build new lines for a project that – at the current pace – likely won’t even be sanctioned before the date NALCOR still claims they’ll be shipping power. Even today they still can’t afford to book the space because the project is entirely a figment of everyone’s imagination.
And here’s the line in the VO story that clinches it:
Nalcor counters that the Regie refused to suspend the timelines association with their request while the company was following formal complaint procedures, resulting in a termination of Nalcor's application.
So instead, there’s even more talk about a project to ship power to New Brunswick through the island of Newfoundland. While that option has always been technically feasible, it has also always proven to be a route that doesn’t make economic sense. You just can’t ship the power to distant markets in a way that you can still make money.
The reason is geography, especially for the Lower Churchill. Look at it on a properly oriented map and you’ll notice it is actually farther away from any major market than any other hydro project in eastern Canada (current or proposed).
But whatever the problem with the Lower Churchill is, we know one thing for certain: NALCOR boss Ed Martin doesn’t think it is Hydro Quebec.
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Then: Max Ruelokke’s “ties” to the oil industry made him an unacceptable candidate to head the offshore oil industry regulatory board.
Now: Mark Turner’s ties to the oil industry make him the perfect candidate to assess offshore oil industry regulations.
Then: Hydro Quebec was a worthy partner to take an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill, no redress for 1969.
Now: Hydro Quebec is the latest incarnation of foreign evil.
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CTV - via the Canadian Press’s Shawn McCarthy - got it wrong.
Badly wrong.
So too did the Globe: they relied on McCarthy’s story.
VOCM got it wrong, too.
They relied on NALCOR and the provincial government. After all, Danny Williams admitted he hadn’t read a translation of the decision; he was relying on four pages of “errors” from the decision by the Quebec energy regulatory board on three applications by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro related to transmission lines through Quebec.
The Montreal Gazette got it right.
So too did CBC St. John’s, graced for the first time in a while by Hisself live and in person.
Here’s the CBC lede:
Quebec's energy regulator has turned down a request from Newfoundland and Labrador to intervene in an ongoing dispute over pushing power from a proposed hydroelectric megaproject across Quebec's power lines.
And here’s the Gazette [link above]
Hydro-Quebec's existing power lines don't have the capacity to transport energy from a new hydroelectric project in Labrador south to export markets, Quebec's energy board said in a controversial ruling Wednesday.
The CP story started out completely wrong:
Quebec’s energy regulator dealt a blow to Newfoundland and Labrador’s plan to develop a massive power project on the Lower Churchill River, denying the province’s push to have Hydro-Québec transmit electricity to markets in the U.S. and Canada.
One of the reasons CBC got the story right is because they have the actual decision. They weren’t relying on the opinions - legal or otherwise – of the same rocket scientists who delivered the Abitibi FUBAR Follies.
The Lower Churchill project has no markets and it has no money, other than what is coming from provincial taxpayers. As such, it is a project that exists on paper; it’s an imaginary project.
There is also absolutely nothing stopping NALCOR from doing what Danny Williams has committed to doing all along; running power through Quebec and, if need be, paying for new transmission facilities to carry the power. Therefore, there is no reason to believe this decision by the Quebec energy regulator affects the Lower Churchill project at all; therefore it is an imaginary news story, at least as presented by the people who got it wrong.
And by the way, in the got-it-wrong, imaginary news category, the new CBC story that the Premier is thinking of taking his campaign against Hydro-Quebec to the Untied States is way off:
The Régie de l'énergie dismissed a complaint of fair dealing from Nalcor, Newfoundland and Labrador's Crown-owned energy corporation.
NALCOR’s three applications to the Regie included in the decision on May 12 were about technical questions in the way certain calculations were made in preparing an assessment of the costs and implications of Hydro’s plan to wheel power from the imaginary Lower Churchill project to five destinations.
This wasn’t a “fair dealing” issue either directly in the sense of the other lawsuit NALCOR is pursuing, nor was it a decision against fair dealing, as implied by the sentence.
But for all that, there is a huge Lower Churchill story the mainstream media continue to ignore. What a time to bring it up, as Danny Williams is ranting once again about the evil Hydro-Quebec:
Despite five years of secret efforts, Danny Williams could not persuade Hydro-Quebec to take an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill without having to pay any compensation for the 1969 deal. That’s the story natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale - inadvertently - revealed last fall.
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Hisself in the House of Assembly on Tuesday:
Let me be very clear. This government never has and never will inflict retribution on a district. It does not happen.
Jerome! on the same day, in the same place:
Mr. Speaker, as pointed out by the MHA for The Straits & White Bay North, there is quite extensive medical personnel in St. Anthony; four anaesthetists in St. Anthony for a population of 14,000 people on the Northern Peninsula; four general surgeons, Mr. Speaker, more than in Grand Falls-Windsor or in Gander.
Mr. Speaker, besides all of that we have put over $12 million in capital equipment in this hospital in the last number of years. There is a hospital there to serve the needs of the people. I would suggest to the members opposite that they should concentrate on that because when you look at the numbers of doctors there, it certainly causes concern.
Given that Jerome!’s information on how many doctors of what type are where in the province is highly suspect, Jerome either didn’t get the memo about retribution and threats or Hisself is no longer in charge.
The two comments can’t live in the same space.
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How do you know Hisself is desperate to change the political channel during polling month?
He appeared live on CBC Here and Now.
The same evil CBC he and the Chris Crocker Brigade just spent the last year or more vilifying in any forum they could find.
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As labradore documents yet again, the Premier can deny all he wants that things like paving is apportioned on a partisan basis, with the most money going to districts that vote the “correct” way.
The facts tell a complete different story.
When it comes to Danny Williams’ claims that he doesn’t do political retribution, you might say that nothing could be further from the truth.
The first set of tables show the simple distinction of Tory versus Grit and Dipper.
The second set of tables colour cabinet ministers in a darker blue.
Here’s the 2008 figures:
There’s only one quibble. Labradore claims that the minister of pavement, as he calls it, is the transportation minister.
As the people of the province discovered during the Rideout resignation fiasco, the whole pavement program is supervised by a political staffer in the Premier’s Office. Some people described this sort of thing as “normal” at the time.
Oh, yes, one more thing:
As labradore also notes, the provincial government no longer gives dollar amounts for road paving done in each district. They hype the heck out of the cash but they hide the amounts involved.
Purely coincidentally, they stopped giving the dollar figures last year after labradore’s analyses started making the rounds.
Transparent and accountable sounds like “Canada’s New Government”.
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The company looking to explore the Old Harry oil prospect in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has another discovery on its hands.
According to CBC, Corridor Resources president Norm Miller told a Halifax audience Tuesday that Corridor and its partner Apache found a significant deposit of natural gas in Sussex County New Brunswick.
The gas find came in a hole originally drilled and abandoned 11 years ago. Miller said that new technology allowed Corridor to find gas in a shale bed where it previously missed it. The Chronicle Herald reports the find is the largest shale gas deposit in North America. One independent estimate projects as much as 67 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be found in that area of New Brunswick.
The find is also related to Corridor’s ongoing exploration for oil in New Brunswick. [map]
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Health minister Jerome Kennedy today refused to answer questions from reporters following his claim that incidents in St. Anthony related to his decision to relocate the air ambulance service had reached the pointed where he was speeding up the relocation.
As CBC reported:
"There has been at least one other incident that has caused us some concern," said Kennedy, who added that the situation in St. Anthony has become so volatile that the government moved up its timetable on relocating the air ambulance service.
But Kennedy would not describe other incidents, and was not available to speak with reporters later.
Kennedy is moving the air ambulance without a trained crew to handle medical evacuations. As a result, the aircraft will have to fly from its new home in Goose Bay to St. John’s to pick up a crew and then return to carry out the med evac.
The relocation came after two incidents in Labrador where aircraft were unavailable for medevac flights. Neither incident was connected to the aircraft base location.
In the fall of 2009, for example, a child waited for nine hours while the lone air ambulance then flying made a series of runs to and from Labrador with more urgent patients. The second of the provincial government’s two medevac aircraft was down for repairs at the time and – apparently – no arrangements had been made for a backup.
Other aircraft were potentially available. For example, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation – owned 65% by the provincial government’s energy corporation - owns a B-300 King Air that is both available for charter under certain circumstances and which can be configured for medical evacuation.
In late 2006, entrepreneur Bill Barry tried to interest the provincial government in chartering aircraft from a company he owned at the time to provide medevac service from Deer Lake. It appears nothing came of the idea.
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From the House of Assembly, Monday May 10, 2010:
MR. F. COLLINS: Mr. Speaker, given the situation we had in that office as of September of last year, this government had to make a decision to find somebody who was competent to fulfill that role in an acting capacity, to get that office back on stream, to re-establish morale, to advocate for youth, and to do all of the things that office is supposed to do.
We were very fortunate, Mr. Speaker, to get a person of such impeccable credentials as Judge Rorke. He is a retired judge - I assume he has a pension as a retired judge. Whether he is collecting it or not, I would not know, but if he is, he is certainly entitled to it.
And people wonder how the province’s finances could be in such a mess.
They need only ask a cabinet minister who thinks such double-dipping is just tickety boo.
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During that time I had the complete and unwavering support of the Premier for viable legitimate investments in the district, to the tune of $163 million during the six years we were in government, one of the biggest investments in any district in the province.And then he finishes with a heartfelt “f- you to his former constituents:
The district voted for change, change is what you are getting.Trevor’s letter also suggests that there was a deep-seated dissatisfaction with Taylor and no shortage of deep animosity between Taylor and his constituents.Taylor’s letter speaks volumes about how he and his colleagues operate: pork, for one, and if you read between the lines, payback for the other.
Simple question.
But first, the background: Retired Provincial Court judge John Rorke is pulling down $175 an hour for a 35 hour week as the acting child advocate in Newfoundland and Labrador.
That’s more than double what his predecessor made.
It’s also more than a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador pockets annually.
Rorke is also the commissioner for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Public Complaints commission.
So here’s the simple question:
Has Rorke parked his judge’s pension?
It’s one thing to be pulling in some pin money as a complaints commissioner, essentially a part-time job.
But collecting a gigantic salary as acting child advocate and collecting a pension at the same time seems a bit extreme if it were to be happening.
After all, in Ontario, the issue is a hot one across Ontario where the Globe revealed that school boards spent $16.7 million last year using retired teachers to fill in rather than hire new teachers. 
After all, it isn’t like Rorke doesn’t have a pot to piss in.
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Think of it as another type of mother’s day:
"The reality is that a friendly dictatorship definitely applies in this case."
Resulting legislative dysfunction is "quite shocking," [Memorial University political science professor Alex Marland] said.
"A number of the parliamentary principles that are supposed to occur don't occur here. The biggest problem is the lack of opposition and the lack of scrutiny of government operations."
Three things:
One: there’s nothing friendly about the sort of nasty, mean-spirited, vicious, petty, personal digs quoted in this Canadian Press piece running across Canada this weekend. They may not be friendly but they have been very much par for the course since 2001.
Two: Marland ought to know how dysfunctional politics is these days in Newfoundland and Labrador. He used to be a comms director in Williams’ administration.
Three: Irony is referring to a Quebec judge making palpable errors in the context of the Abitibi expropriation TARFU.
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Head Shaker Update: The Globe headline on this CP story makes it sound like the Old Man just dropped the writ: “Williams seeks third term as Newfoundland’s premier”.
The next election isn’t due until October 2011. A lot can change in the time between now and then.
The irony in all this is that Williams has absolutely no need to stoop to this thin-skinned foolishness, turning molehills into mountains, and portraying himself as a mannequin for diapers.
The premier is still immensely popular, has done more things right than wrong, and should keep his disgust with journalists like Gullage (and commentators like me) buried.
Perhaps it’s part of the addictive power trip.Now here’s a definition of irony:
Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.There is nothing about Williams’ action in the Gullage complaint that is different from what occurred before. So if one expected Williams not to moan, whine, bitch and complain, then one has not found irony, but blindness on the part of the observer.
What about George Baker who got muzzled after they bought him off? What happened to him?George Baker: bought, i.e. corrupt as in bribed into silence.
The provincial government is reviewing an $8.0 million interest-free loan made two years ago to Kodiak, according to the Telegram.
The cash was supposed to cover the cost of consolidating the company’s Canadian operations at Harbour Grace. As a result, and according to the official government news release, the work force of 170 at the boot plant in Newfoundland was supposed to increase by another 75.
Last week, the company slashed the Harbour Grace operation to 100, blaming a depressed marketplace.
The loan to Kodiak represents more than half the cash the Williams administration has managed to hand out to business since it announced its cash give-away programs in 2007.
Out of $75 million in total budgeted for the business attraction fund since 2007, only $14 million has actually been announced. In the first year, the government spent not so much as a penny of the $30 million initially budgeted. As the Telegram’s Rob Antle noted:
Other pots of cash set aside by the department to generate economic activity in the province have had similarly little take-up.
A "special initiatives" fund has doled out just $4 million of a budgeted $19.5 million over the past three years.
The department has budgeted an additional $7.75 million for special initiatives this year.
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Related – The Fragile Economy series: