All we want is fairity

At some point you have to feel sorry for the crowd currently running the province or, as some astute political watchers are calling them:  the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

In the rotation of private members’ resolutions, the Tory turn came up this week and Ray Hunter stepped forward to offer a motion on the provincial government’s ongoing war with Quebec over just about everything.

The motion read:

WHEREAS Newfoundland and Labrador is home to one of the best undeveloped, clean, green, renewable energy projects in North America at the Lower Churchill River in Labrador; and

WHEREAS Ontario, the Maritime Provinces, and the Northeastern United States are in need of affordable, clean energy sources; and

WHEREAS last week’s ruling of the Régis [sic] de l’énergie in Quebec on a transmission service request by Nalcor Energy once again demonstrates that province’s arrogance and discriminatory business practices, in particular their determination to see the Lower Churchill proceed only on their terms; and

WHEREAS this ruling is deemed by this Province to be completely contrary to the rules of fair, open and competitive access; and

WHEREAS this government is determined to proceed with this project in the best interest and for the benefit of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly affirms its full support for the approach of Nalcor Energy and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to continue plans to develop this extraordinary clean, renewable energy project, including two alternative routes to market, including the Labrador-Island Link, the Maritime route, as well as the pursuit of a separate 724 megawatt transmission service request into the Maritimes and New England.

Now the gang has had no luck at all in distracting public attention from their series of shag-ups and controversies so it is only natural that the guy by the back door to the House should come up with an effort to go with an issue the Tories should be able to win on.

Things were going along just fine until the Liberals pointed out the obvious, namely that the honourable members were being asked to vote on an issue  - the Quebec energy regulator’s decision last week – which had only been published in French.

Now in the ordinary course that wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem since the Liberals only have a few votes and the motion is worded in such a way that they’d be voting down what has become motherhood and partridgeberry pie if they didn’t run alongside the Tories.

The whole thing seemed to be going along just fine. That is, until Kevin O’Brien, minister responsible for permits and licenses, the guy who doesn’t know what district St. Anthony is in, former president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador and erstwhile Tory leadership candidate decided to make a few public comments of his own on a local call-in radio show.

And that’s when things went horribly wrong, as the hideous television news cliche goes.

According to O’Brien he didn’t need to read anything to know how to vote.  Talk show host Randy Simms seemed genuinely surprised at O’Brien’s argument.  He also had an easy time ridiculing it as Simms noted that only a few short months ago all 48 of the members in the House had voted for a bill thinking they weren’t expropriating a paper mill.

Ouch.

Incidentally, here’s the shorty version of exchange from the vocm.com website.

The whole thing went completely off the rails as O’Brien insisted that all the province was looking for in Quebec was fairity.  He didn’t say “fairity” just once mind you.  He kept saying it.

Even a call from Ross Wiseman a couple of seconds after O’Brien hung up couldn’t save O’Brien’s performance and put what should have been a safe Tory motion back on the rails.  Shortly after O’Brien hung up, calls started circulating that the Tories were pulling the motion and planned to sub another one in its place.

Now for those who don’t know, pulling motions like that happens about as often as special emergency sessions.  So the obvious conclusion any seasoned political watcher would take is that the Tories had basically rogered themselves so hideously that they didn’t want to keep going.  Even if they won the vote – as they inevitably would – the news reports would be all about the comparisons to the Abitibi TARFU, not the start of any great rallying to the barricades during polling month.

As it is, Question Period was basically a litany of those sort of comments anyway, all centred on poor hapless Kevin and the missing English translation:

Ms. Jones:  I do not put a lot of credence into briefings, I say to the minister opposite. We got briefings from your government on Abitibi as well, and then we find out you expropriated a mill and liabilities around the environment which we were told were not part of the deal, Mr. Speaker. So forgive us if we want to see the information and read it ourselves.

I ask the minister again, Mr. Speaker: When that motion was being tabled in the House of Assembly yesterday I was receiving an e-mail on my BlackBerry from the Premier’s office telling me there was no English version of this available. Why would you even bring a motion to the House of Assembly to be voted on when you had no English copy of the information to be circulated for the debate?

The questioning then carried on to other topics, but the shag-up on what should have been an easy win for the crowd what runs the place was pretty much the front end of Question Period.

The rest of QP didn’t go any better for the gang that apparently can’t shoot straight, but that is another story.

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Cartoon U

Some vintage political cartoons turned up in a hunt through your humble e-scribbler’s parental archives. It’s a small collection of cartoons from the now defunct Daily News.

The cartoons all date from the mid-1970s so some of the characters may be unfamiliar to the young readers of these scribblers. The two characters in this one, though, should be well-known to most of you.

They are offered solely as a reminder of another age, not so very long ago.

Enjoy!

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Buchans saga deepens: Johnson claims credit for Abitibi work

CBC may have retracted its story about the provincial government and possible lead pollution at a former mine in Buchans but that isn’t the end of the Buchans saga.

As CBC quoted it:

"We held a town meeting. The public meeting was in fact reported on. That site was, in fact, remediated that very summer," Environment Minister Charlene Johnson told the legislature on Monday.

Johnson told the legislature that:

Mr. Speaker, quickly we hired a consultant to go out and do a Human Health Risk Assessment. That piece of work was done in literally less than months. The report came to our office in December 2007, at which time my officials went out to the Town of Buchans, gave the report to the Town of Buchans in less than days. The Town of Buchans at that time, Mr. Speaker, asked to have a public meeting. That public meeting was held and my officials were there. In fact, Mr. Speaker, CBC carried the reports of that within days after the public meeting.

But the full story is very different.

According to the Grand Falls-Windsor Advertiser, the environmental review was done by AMEC, a consultant retained by Abitibi. And the timeline for when the town council first learned of the problem was the spring of 2007, not late 2007 or early 2008 as Johnson suggested in the House of Assembly:

With ASARCO declaring bankruptcy a number of years ago, AbitibiBowater is left bearing the brunt of the responsibility for the site.

It wasn't until a representative with AMEC, a consultant for AbitibiBowater, met with the Buchans council last spring to update its members on environmental improvements that the town's municipal leaders became aware of the situation.

It wasn’t until six months later, in the fall of 2007 – when current MHA Susan Sullivan was fighting for her seat in a by-election - that the provincial government got involved as Johnson described.  According to the Advertiser:

The council contacted Susan Sullivan in November, who was campaigning for her seat as MHA for Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans at the time, for an immediate meeting.

She visited the town to hear their concerns and brought the council's demand for a complete human health risk study to the minister of environment.

The Buchans story demolishes the provincial government’s efforts to portray Abitibi as abandoning its responsibilities in the province.

Again, as the Advertiser reported well before the botched expropriation:

Remedial action and/or additional studies in the area were recommended.

And that is exactly what AbibitiBowater and AMEC intend to do, although it will be a costly venture. Already the paper company has anywhere from $1.6-2.5 million budgeted for the clean-up.

If that's not enough, they are prepared to spend more to ensure the job is finished.

"The day we ask for a certificate of approval from the government to carry out the work, we have to carry it out to the end and if it costs more, we're stuck with it; we have to do it," said Nicole Lee, environment manager with AbitibiBowater.

The Advertiser reported that the best containment option at that point seemed to be collecting the contaminated materials and burying them in a glory hole or in an abandoned mine.  The Advertiser also reported in March 2008 that both a mining company and the provincial natural resources department opposed this option.

Interestingly enough, when the provincial government finally announced the clean-up option for the land it expropriated, a new remediation proposal cropped up:  cover it over.  Again as the Advertiser reported in late 2009:

He said that of all the option open to his department the "cap in place" option was the best because it would among other things minimize the amount of dust created during construction and wouldn't affect future mining operations. SNC Lavalin has been contracted for $114,000 to prepare and tended documents that are hoped to be ready by late spring with construction to be carried out from June to September. As well as the tailings spill area, the identified arsenic problem by the old ore shed will be taken care of with a layer of berm. [Emphasis added]

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Reach for the Screech

In a couple of weeks time, the Memorial University political science department is holding a reunion.  The thing is timed to coincide with the spring convocation.  A bunch of alumni will be there, none of whom has written – as best as your humble e-scribbler can determine – what we used to joke was the definitive doctoral thesis on local politics.

The influence of rum on Newfoundland public policy.

That was the working title.

On the surface, it would be a piece about the triangle trade and especially the exchange of salt fish with Caribbean countries in exchange for that magical elixir.

But on the more cynical level it was supposed to be a work that noted the number of times local politicians made decisions that seemed – in the cold light of morning – as if they’d been tanked up on the dark liquid at every stage from the moment the idea popped into someone’s head until someone scrawled the last  signature across the last contract.

Rum, it would seem, played a role in a few of the more colourful events in local political life.  Elections sometimes turned on the number of swallies doled out in the right districts. Fistfights in the legislature sometimes came complete with their own aroma – essence of the captain – to cover over the smell of blood and snot on the curtains behind the Speaker’s chair from the odd poke in the snoot one gave another.

Heck, so pervasive is the rumoured connection between politics and the bottle that the current Premier – the Old Man Hisself – could not help but make a half-joking reference to it.  That was back in 2004, incidentally, in an editorial board meeting with the crowd at Macleans. 

But while tippling on the job fell out of favour a few years back, few would blame the current crowd were they to ever to be found seeking comfort with a reach for the Screech. 

After all, they have not had a good political day in the better part of a year:  Resignations, the stunning loss of a by-election, public finances in a mess, caught frigging with the 1961 Churchill falls lease and then forced to hold an emergency session of the legislature to clean up the mess of that, the shagged up expropriation of Abitibi’s polluted properties, pollution reports they tried to keep secret.

And still no Lower Churchill.

The finest undeveloped hydro project in North America, as the Old Man likes to call it.  The phrase is getting a little shop-worn by the way, since it was first called that way back before the provincial government nationalised BRINCO in the mid-1970s. 

40 years later, still undeveloped but still the finest.

Once said to be Hisself’s legacy project.  Staying until it as done, he said.

But now things are so dark that even Hisself apparently doesn’t like to talk about legacies anymore.

Don Martin, still desperate to see his 2004 “Harper wins majority” headline used as something other than a joke, took a trip to the far east to chat with the Old Man. The account of the visit – or a least the sampling of the local heart-stopping cuisine – is in the weekend National Post.

"I hope my own legacy -- which is a stupid term but it's in vogue so I'll use it -- is that we can keep this feeling of pride and respect and self-confidence, that we're as good as anybody else.

"For the longest time we were perceived by Canadians as second-class citizens. Those who knew us knew it was bum rap, but it was an overall perception that's changed dramatically. When you've got young people from other parts of the country coming here, not just for an education but also to stay and work, it shows we have a real good future."

There it is:  Williams wants to be remembered for something he didn’t do.  Williams has nothing to talk about except a throne speech from five years ago:

This is a speech which claims credit for finding that which was not lost. It praises the lustre restored to that which had not been dulled. It lauds the cleansing of that which is not sullied. It remembers what was never forgotten. This speech sings hymns of praise to its authors unhindered by modesty or fact.

Williams chose to call his 2005 hand-out from Ottawa the “Atlantic Accord” and not surprisingly it is often confused with the real accomplishment of the same name done by someone else 25 years ago.  It shouldn’t be surprising he now wants his legacy to be claiming credit for something Newfoundlanders and Labradorians never lacked:  confidence in their own abilities. Forget what others thought.  Self-confidence and ability is something the people of this province have always had, in spades.

But look at Danny Williams’ comments in this Martin column and you can see the state of affairs almost eight years after he took office.  We need to be masters of our destiny Williams says, or more like it: masters of our domain as a budget speech two years ago put it.  “Need to be”, as if we aren’t now and never have been.

Again with the false goals.  Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have always been masters of their own fate.

The problem they face today is that as they roll up on the end of the period Williams used to say was the time frame for his plan to take effect, things are not looking all that good.

The local economy seems more dependent than ever before on public spending.  The Conference Board of Canada predicted last week that the provincial economy would grow by 2.4% in 2010 based mostly on public infrastructure spending. But the government budget last year was short by a half a billion dollars, one of the largest cash deficits in the province’s history.  The forecast is that it will be short again by at least that much, if not more. If growth depends on the public purse, then this province is in for a hard time any day now.  

Williams came to office promising ”jobs, jobs, jobs” that he would create based on his proven ability as a local businessman. A new department – with the creative name “business”  - sprang up to to channel his genius. 

After a couple of years, no one  - least of all Danny - had any idea what the department was supposed to do.  Scuttlebutt had it that his own deputy minister couldn’t get to see him for months on end. The only thing that piled up were claims about how many files from companies sat on someone’s desk.

By the time someone figured out what the “plan” might look like, Williams had long since handed over his own personal department to first one and then another and then another of his ministers. Other things needed the Old Man’s attention more urgently than did his own personal department.

The “plan”  - as the successors finally hit on it in 2007  - would be to hand out free cash to any company that would come here to do business.  The only thing missing from this revolutionary, never-before-seen concept was the Latvian crook to run around clicking his heels together with a snappy “Yes, My Premier” at the prospect of yet another rubber boot factory or eyeglass plant.

Not content with just that bit of genius, after threatening expropriation a couple of times and then finally doing it to no fewer than three companies, the current crowd put in authority over us have so fouled the investment climate in the province that they cannot even pay companies to come here and create jobs. 

Think about that for a second.

Out of $75 million budgeted for the give-aways since 2007, the business department has handed out only $14 million of it.  Some went to set up a marine service centre in  a land-locked town. Half the cash they did dole out went to a company – itself a descendant of the Latvian legacy – that promised to add 50 jobs but instead cut nearly twice that. No word if they’ll still get all the cash.

The Tories said “no more give-aways” but somehow this doesn’t seem to be what they had in mind.  Things have changed on many fronts, alright, but not in the way people might have expected.

The government backbenchers don’t talk so much any more about how great things are across the province.  Their speeches in the legislature these days are more likely than not great homages to their glorious leader.  They offer paens to his posterior that seem to be either laying the groundwork for his departure -  he is, Martin tells us, “mindful of being closer to the end of his political career than the beginning”  - or coded, panic-stricken pleas for him not to shag off permanently to the new digs in Florida. 

It’s likely been a bit jarring for the poor dears to poke their heads out of the fog of their prepared Open Line talking points only to discover that they are not – in fact – just coming up on the New Jerusalem as foretold in the speaking notes;  they are in fact currently midway up shit creek and none of Danny’s potential replacements appears to know where he keeps the batteries for the GPS, let alone have a clear idea of how to work it.

And that original eight year plan, the one it took them four years just to figure out?

Even that has changed:

But that's just the beginning of his 30-year plan to harness offshore oil and gas, wind and hydro electric power into Newfoundland's shield against buffeting by external forces.

It’s enough to make anyone reach for the Screech.

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Top 10 Posts: May 9 - May 14

Courtesy of Google Analytics:

1. Lower Churchill:  Imaginary Project.  Imaginary News Story.
2. Rumpole and the Double Dippity-Do
3. Potato, potato:  Hydro version
4. Rumpole and the Piss Pot
5. That was then. This is now:  Desperation edition
6. The Same and the Different
7. Desperation
8. It’s always about the money
9. Hydro Quebec not an issue:  Ed Martin
10. How our system doesn’t work

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The recovery is here all right…

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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Polluter pay?

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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Desperation: NALCOR edition

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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Arrogance never impresses

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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Potato, potato: hydro version

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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That was Then. This is Now: Desperation edition

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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Lower Churchill: Imaginary project. Imaginary News Stories. (and one they ignore)

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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Retribution

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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Desperation

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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Nothing could be further from the truth: political pavement pork punishment version

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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Corridor hits big gas

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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Jerome! ducks reporters on medevac fuss

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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Justice minister approves of double-dipping

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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It’s always about the money

Former cabinet minister Trevor Taylor, whose surprise resignation last fall triggered a wave of set-backs and problems for the ruling Conservatives, wrote a letter to the newspaper in his former district last week about the air ambulance controversy.

Trev’s argument in a nutshell, paraphrased by your humble e-scribbler:

• “Any intelligent person” would have seen that an independent review of the air ambulance service would lead to government shifting the airplane from St. Anthony, however, it was only through Taylor’s political intervention that the ambulance stayed in St. Anthony.
• Oh yes, and I brought $163 million to the district and [some people] claimed I did nothing.  You elected the other guys.
• Live with your f*ck up.

Did he really mean to suggest he created the situation that triggered the review and relocation, i.e. the incidents in Labrador?

Methinks not.

But the logic is inescapable:  Taylor is effectively taking responsible for the circumstances that existed before the relocation.  If any “intelligent person’ could have foreseen the service needed to be moved, then only Trevor’s political arguments based on something other than the most effective and efficient operation of the service kept it in what Trevor suggests would be the wrong place, were it not for political interference.

Interesting.

Curiously,  he makes no reference to the fact that the review recommending relocation was structured in such a way as to support that conclusion already, not as an independent and open-ended review on the efficient operation of the air ambulance service. 

Oh yes and it is all about money:

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.

The current administration is viciously partisan in a way not seen in this province since the 1960s.

Maybe that’s why it feels like 1970.

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Rumpole and the Double Dippity-Do

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. It wasn’t so long ago that the same thing happened here.  In fact, if memory serves, there was even a treasury board directive that placed some pretty strict conditions on the practice of hiring people who were already collecting provincial government pensions.

After all, it isn’t like Rorke doesn’t have a pot to piss in.

 

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