The Shortest-Timers

At an average of a mere 43 days, the Reform-based Conservative Party led by Danny Williams holds the post-Confederation record in Newfoundland and Labrador for lowest average number of sitting days in the legislature by an elected Premier.

The only Premiers whose administrations met the House of Assembly less frequently than Danny Williams were three people who got the job as a result of internal party politics, not as a result of winning a general election. 

Roger Grimes’ administration sat an average of 42 days, but Grimes got the job as the result of a party leadership convention.

The same goes for Tom Rideout, who won a leadership contest in 1989 to replace Brian Peckford.  Rideout served as Premier for a total of 43 days but never sat in the legislature as Premier. During the 1989 campaign, Rideout did make a public commitment that he would do so within two weeks of polling day if voters re-elected his party with a majority.

Nor did Beaton Tulk, who served for a handful of weeks between Brian Tobin’s resignation in October 2000 and Roger Grimes election as party leader in February 2001. 

At the 43 day average, Williams beats the previous record, set between 1949 and 1972, by Joe Smallwood.  He met the legislature, on average, for 53 days a year.   Brian Peckford’s third administration tied the same record after the 1985 general election.

Between 1979 and 1985, though, Peckford set what is still the record for highest average number of sitting days.  Peckford’s administration introduced scheduled fall sittings and, as a result, sat an average of 80 days annually for those six years.

That’s only slightly ahead of Clyde Wells’ administrations, which met the legislature on average 79.4 days from 1989 to 1995. 

Discounting the 1989 and 1993 election years, Wells faced the House an average of 88 days per year.  Discounting the 2007 election year, Williams has faced the House only 45.6 days per year.

In 2009, the House of Assembly sat on 32 days.

Williams himself makes no bones about his attitude toward the House of Assembly.  As Macleans related it in 2004:

He still bristles at the "wasted time" in the House, and the daily distractions that take him away from the real work of governing.

His record of attendance and his record of sitting days apparently confirms his negative attitude.

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Sources:  Parliament of Canada website and Susan McCorquodale, “Newfoundland; personality, party and politics” in Gary levy and Graham White, editors, Provincial and territorial legislatures of Canada, (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1989)

Traffic Drivers, August 16-20

1. Orcas and minke whales off Newfoundland:  video
2. When it sucks to be you (link to GovSpeak translator)
3. Williams, Dexter ink secret energy deal…but with whom?
4. No surprise in Quebec’s position on federal cash
5. One Big Election
6. The Tory Tao of Political Pork
7. Housing bubble bursts – Conference Board
8. The Expropriation Fiasco drags on
9. The truth of fiction
10. Insights into the Premier’s mindset (Henley v. Cable Atlantic)

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The truth of fiction

nottawa does a fine job of laying out the completely ridiculous media coverage this week of a few words the Old Man had with Randy Simms on Open Line about online gambling.

There’s also a Telegram story that apparently took two people to pull together. it appears to be nothing more than the same rehash of Danny Williams’ call to Open Line just like all the others.

There are a couple of aspects to this that nottawa missed. 

First of all, Williams’ call came simply because we are in polling season.  Williams wanted to generate exactly this sort of coverage and the local media are all too happy to oblige him.

When cabinet finally gets around to dealing with this issue, it really won’t matter what Williams said publicly on this occasion. This won’t be the first time he or someone from his cabinet said one thing and did another.
That sort of thing is old hat.

Nor will the people of the province know until – potentially - two years from now that he said one thing and did another.  Ontario, for example, is getting a piece of the action.  The Ontario lottery commission will take 18 months to launch their project.  Even if the provincial cabinet here met as they used to on Thursday morning and blessed this proposal, there’d be no sign of it, necessarily, until well after the next election.

By then, any personal opposition Williams really has to the idea will be completely irrelevant.  Heck, even he won’t care what he said just this past week.  Williams will take a whole new position and never have to worry someone will point out that he used to say something else.  It’s like being a have province:  Good thing in November 2008;  bad thing, two months later.  Same reporters wrote both stories like the one didn’t contradict the other.

And that’s the second aspect to the online gambling unstory.

Online gambling is a serious enough issue but Williams’ statement that he opposes it is not news, especially when he says it is a cabinet decision.

His comments are certainly not news in comparison to the story last week when  he revealed a billion dollar secret energy deal.  To date not a single local media outlet has covered that aspect of the Nova Scotia transmission line story. Odds are that not a single reporter has asked Williams about it and if they have, we are unlikely to see a story saying that the administration is hiding information or is stonewalling.

The local newsrooms will oblige the Premier in what everyone now knows is a quarterly farce and yet they are ignoring a gigantic hard news story.  They are turning away from it – apparently – just like they ignored the Dunderdale story from around the same time last year. Oddly enough, she made her remarks to Randy Simms as well.

On the same show this morning, one regular caller repeated the same [old] myths, half-truths, distortions and fabrications on the same old subjects – all aligning with the frame the Premier set last week - as if any of his claims were real.

And the host agreed with it all.   In fact, Simms led off his show on Thursday with the Premier’s frame on the transmission line. He [even] added a few gems of his own.

As it seems, Newfoundland and Labrador is a place where not a single public figure is concerned with facts. 

None of them is concerned with reality.  Politics and the the news media is about fiction.

Sixty years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that even in their lifetime the people he called great men are known to the ordinary citizen only through “a fictitious personality.”

Well, these days, the entire scope of public life in Newfoundland and Labrador is fiction.

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Updated 1920 hrs to fix capitalisation, add words to correct flow in two sentences and delete the word “province” where it occurred in the wrong spot.

The Expropriation Fiasco drags on

Danny Williams hasty, ill-considered and thus far unexplained expropriation of AbitibiBowater assets may well end up costing the people of Newfoundland and Labrador untold millions of dollars.

A healthy chunk of their loss will go to a raft of expensive Montreal lawyers Danny Williams is using to pursue legal action in Quebec courts.

Now that the Quebec appeal court refused to hear the government’s appeal of lower court decisions, the only place left is the Supreme Court of Canada.  Odds are against that court hearing the case simply because the provincial legal arguments are week and they have already been thoroughly demolished at the lower court level.

One must wonder why Williams persists.  His track record in court isn’t good.  Take Henley v. Cable Atlantic or Ruelokke v. Newfoundland and Labrador and the preposterous privative clause argument as good cases in point. 

You can then add the AbitibiBowater cases to the list. Anyone who takes the time to read the record of government’s actions in the whole bankruptcy can only shake their heads in disbelief at the amateurish actions.

Many of its actions has been as astonishingly lame as the government’s performance in that other Quebec legal action, the Regie appeals. One would scarcely believe that government’s lawyers did not call a single expert witness to support its case or refute Hydro-Quebec’s assertions but that is exactly what happened.

According to the Globe and Mail, [link above] the provincial government contends there are three issues that need the attention of the nine wise old owls in Ottawa.

Newfoundland said the case raises three specific issues: – ensuring consistency across the country by resolving a conflict between provincial environmental law and federal bankruptcy and insolvency law; – who should bear the cleanup costs when a company is attempting to restructure; – does the CCAA give a court power to remove all hurdles under provincial law that impair a company's ability to restructure.

Now your humble e-scribbler isn’t a lawyer but the answers to these questions seem fairly obvious.  They are obvious because AB is still on the hook.

The answers are in the Quebec court decisions: at no point has the company been relieved of any of its liabilities for clean-up of its properties in this province.  When AbitibiBowater set up the remaining properties in a holding company, the provincial government’s lawyers did not raise a single objection in court.  AB is still on the hook.  The liabilities have not been extinguished.

The Quebec court decisions are there in black and white.  The language is not complicated. One can only wonder why Williams persists in pursuing what is essentially a lost cause.

Perhaps, he carries on because of the intense embarrassment, the ignominy of such a massive mistake as the expropriation turned out to be.  As the Globe out it:

The province wants to force Abitibi to clean up five sites it ran between 1905 and 2008.

Unfortunately for Williams, he and his lawyers screwed up the expropriation. The provincial government now owns some of the most contaminated of the sites. His clever little scheme – seize the assets and leave the company with all the liabilities – blew up in his face.

And what must be especially galling is that Williams knows  the law is absolutely clear on this as well:  the liability flows to the new owners.  When Williams seized the property, he seized the pollution and the responsibility for cleaning it up.

If things go as they are likely to go, the SCC won’t waste time hearing the appeal. Unfortunately for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, though, a quick end to the legal action only limits a small portion of the costs that will flow from Williams’ monumental shag-up. The final tally for that mess has yet to be calculated

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Orcas and Minke whales off Newfoundland: video

Video from Trinity Eco-Tours of an orca pod attacking a minke whale in Trinity Bay Newfoundland:

Last week, CBCNL posted video of a similar attack off Tors Cove on the Avalon Peninsula.

Trinity Eco-Tours has other video on its website including this one of a humpback in relatively shallow water.

From the company website:

Robert Bartlett is your skipper. A native Newfoundlander, his love of the sea and of Newfoundland history drew him to the Trinity area where he has chosen to live.  He has over 25 years of sea experience and is fully certified in boat and tour operations.  

Robert is an avid SCUBA diver.  Newfoundland has many shipwrecks spanning many periods of history.  In the Trinity harbour alone, there are three separate known wrecks that can be visited including the wreck of the HMS Spedwell, an English frigate that sank in 1750. Robert does offer SCUBA tours to these wrecks for interested and experienced SCUBA divers only.  He also offers dives to see the various sea life in the bay.  If interested in knowing more about a diving adventure please call and let us know. 

"One thing that I love to share is my love of the ocean, its secrets and its occupants. Yours will be a day trip experience that will be treasured as the highlight of your travels here."  - Robert Bartlett 2009.

Pictures and videos on the website highlight whales, icebergs, wrecks and the awesome rugged beauty of the ocean, cliffs and majestic nature of the bay. Most of the pictures were taken by Robert Bartlett above and below the water. All pictures were taken on our tours and used with express permission of the photographer. Their experiences were unique, so will yours.

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Housing bubble bursts – Conference Board

The hyperactive St. John’s housing market will be slipping back toward demographic requirements in the second half of 2010, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“We had that little bubble in the first few months of this year, which means that moving forward, we’re going to move back more toward the demographic requirements,”

according to the board’s senior economist Jane McIntyre.

Meanwhile, Deer Lake is experiencing a mini boom of its own, according to the Western Star. The town council issued 30 building permits in May.  On top of that there’s a new 31 unit apartment building going up.

But it gets interesting if you look at the source of the growth in town:

With new homes come new residents, and local real estate agent Carol Anstey of Remax Realty Professionals Ltd., said the clients she deals with cover a broad spectrum.

“There’s a certain percentage of people whose husbands are flying back and forth to Fort McMurray who live on the Northern Peninsula.  We’ve had a few of those families relocate here because the airport is here and they don’t have to do the drive up the coast,” she said.

Anstey said some customers are moving from other parts of the country to Deer Lake to retire, while other younger families are growing out of their starter homes and looking for newer and bigger.

People from the Great Northern Peninsula are relocating to Deer Lake because someone in the family is actually a migrant labourer working in Alberta. It’s easier to live In Deer Lake because that’s where the airport is.  Meanwhile another bunch of people are actually retired from working somewhere else – not in the province either – who have decided, quite rightly, that Deer Lake is a beautiful place to retire.

Nowhere in there did anyone mention that the town is growing because the local economy is booming with new manufacturing or service businesses.

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The Tory Tao of Political Pork

For members of the Reform-based Conservative Party in Newfoundland and Labrador, road paving is done in an electoral district.  Sometimes, the release refers to an “area” but the name for the area is curiously the same as the electoral district. 

Take this one for example, even if the headline makes it sound like the program in Torngat Mountains gave the money instead of got the cash.

Torngat Mountains Recreation Programs Provided $15,565

The media release will include a quote from the local representative of the Reform-based Conservative Party. In the one cited, the member turned out to be a cabinet minister.

In another release, the reference is to the Southern Shore, but the district of Ferryland covers pretty much the whole thing.  The locals would understand the two things are synonymous.  There is the obligatory thankful quote from the local Conservative Party member.

But if the cash is going to a district represented by an opposition member, any references to the district or anything that might be construed as the district get obliterated.

Take, for example, this release about money for the district of Cartwright-L'Anse au Claire.  It’s represented by Opposition Leader Yvonne Jones. Money for that district is going to the area around Pinware.

The only quote is from the transportation minister.

All government spending is partisan pork for Tories.

That is their eternal, unchanging rule.

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One Big Election

Back after a brief absence, nottawa poses the provocative suggestion that we might see simultaneous federal and provincial elections across the country in the fall of 2011.

The implications both locally and nationally are bigger than you might think.

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Should I stay or should I go?

Something for everyone.

1. Political humour version – featuring Tony Blair:

2.  The original version - The Clash:

3.  Ukulele mania!

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When it sucks to be you

What else do you need but a website that takes trendy, hideous business jargon and translates it into plain English?

You know the garbage-words and crap phrases.

Things like “on a go-forward basis”. 

Pure drivel.

So run it through the grinder at unsuck-it.com and this is what you get:

On a Go-Forward Basis

We will be leveraging core competencies across the enterprise on a go-forward basis.

Unsucked: In the future.

Some of you might be surprised to find out that “on a go-forward basis” means nothing more grandiose than “in the future” or “from now on.”

Others of you are no doubt wondering why some people use jargon quite so much or why it is that politicians like to use gobbledy-gook when there are perfect simple words available in English that everyone can understand.

And then there are the people who work for those politicians who will be thankful there is a website that spits out this shite so they don’t have to do the miserable job any more.

Don’t say your humble e-scribbler didn’t try and help you all out.

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No surprise in Quebec’s position on federal cash

No one should be surprised that the Government of Quebec is objecting to federal funding of an electricity line between Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

Since talk started up again about an East-West electricity grid in Canada, Quebec has objected to federal funding.

A cyberpresse.ca article on August 9, 2007 gives Quebec’s succinct position, straight from the lips of Premier Jean Charest:

« Est-ce que le gouvernement fédéral devrait intervenir pour financer la construction de lignes ? C’est là-dessus où le Québec dit non », a-t-il déclaré.

This particular statement is interesting for two reasons.  First of all, it came at a news conference during a Council of the Federation meeting on energy.  Second, the issue at the time was a potential line from Labrador to Ontario.

Hardly surprising, therefore, that Quebec continues to object to federal involvement in funding electricity lines.
And, as labradore pointed out last week, Quebec’s intergovernmental affairs minister repeated the government’s position that electricity infrastructure ought to be paid for by provincial governments but not the federal one:

«N'importe qui peut vendre de l'énergie aux Américains, a réagi mercredi le ministre provincial. Ce qui compte, c'est que les gens suivent les règles. Et la règle, pour nous, c'est que quand on construit une ligne, ce sont les sociétés d'État qui paient. Pas le gouvernement fédéral.»

The context of those comments was announcement of the interconnection upgrade between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

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Williams, Dexter ink secret energy deal …but with whom?

A service contract between a public authority and a private sector concessionaire, where the public authority pays the concessionaire to deliver infrastructure and related services, Typically, the concessionaire, who builds the infrastructure asset, is financially responsible for its condition and performance throughout the asset lifetime, or the duration of the agreement.

P3 Canada Fund definition of public-private partnership

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams and Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter have apparently signed a deal to build underwater electricity transmission between the two provinces in partnership with a private sector company or companies.

Williams revealed the agreement when he launched into yet another tirade against the province of Quebec during a hastily-called news conference in St. John’s last week.

Williams said that the two provinces applied for federal funds in late June under the federal government’s public-private partnerships infrastructure funding agreement.

But that’s all he said about the secret deal.

Six weeks after the provinces reached an agreement, the people of both provinces still don’t know when the deal was signed, the conditions of the agreement, how much taxpayers will be on the hook for or the proposed financial arrangements with the private sector company or companies the two governments are or will be partnering with.

In his scrum, Williams very obviously avoided giving a simple, direct answer to a question on costs. He said only that the project cost would be billions depending on which combination of dams and transmission routes NALCOR built.

The cost of the project is currently estimated at more than $14 billion, including an interconnection to the United States. A study completed for the Nova Scotia government earlier this year  - reported by the Chronicle Herald but no longer on line - put the cost of the interconnections between $800 million and $1.2 billion.

Williams also made the false statement in his scrum that the decision of the Regie de l’energie – presumably meaning the May decision – had blocked NALCOR transmission through Quebec.

Meanwhile, though, the public doesn’t even know the name of the company or companies involved in the new secret deal on an intertie to Nova Scotia.

And obviously, there has to be a private sector partner or partners involved even if the two provincial governments haven’t said anything about that aspect of the deal.

The federal government established the $1.2 billion P3 Canada Fund in 2007 to “develop the Canadian market for public-private partnerships for the supply of public infrastructure in the public interest.” The fund will supply qualifying projects with a maximum of 25% of the projects qualifying direct construction costs. 

Typically, public-private partnerships include private involvement in everything from design to the long-term operation of public infrastructure. As the fund’s annual report puts it,

[t]he P3 procurement model is unique in that the private sector assumes a major share of the responsibility for the delivery and the performance of the infrastructure – from designing the concept, architectural and structural planning to its long-term maintenance.

The public sector gets needed infrastructure at reduced risk and cost.  Among the examples cite din the annual is the Confederation Bridge between PEI and New Brunswick.

In order to qualify for assistance under the fund, the private sector partner must have a substantive, continuing role in the project.  It must design or build the project and finance or maintain and operate it. [Round Two application, s. 5.2] 

In a P3 project, the private sector partner would also typically share in the profits of a long-term project as well as adopt risk. In some scenarios, as the application appendices suggest, the project may offer potential spin-off money-making opportunities for the private sector partner separate from the core public interest in the project.

Infrastructure assets developed by public authorities are rarely used to generate additional revenue. In some instances, private sector providers are motivated to develop opportunities for revenue beyond the public authority payment stream and this could be used to reduce the cost to the public authority.

Applicants must submit a business plan for the project between September 2010 and March 2011.

While Danny Williams mentioned a connection between the secret deal and the Lower Churchill, the Nova Scotia intertie is a separate project.  

It’s also bizarre that Williams mentioned possible shipment of power from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Demand projections used in the Lower Churchill environmental review show that demand on the island isn’t strong enough to support development of the Lower Churchill, let alone warrant importing power from Nova Scotia.

And if the intertie carried Lower Churchill power, there’d be no need to send Nova Scotia power into Newfoundland and Labrador.

A connection to Nov Scotia without the Lower Churchill would facilitate the development of untapped alternate energy potential on the island of Newfoundland.

To do that, though, the provincial government would have to abandon the 2007 energy plan and Williams’ obsession with the Lower Churchill.

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Fact Check: the mainstream and Williams/Quebec

The following quotes all appeared in recent media stories about Danny Williams’s comments on energy developments and Quebec.

Neither of them is true.

1.  Montreal Gazette:  “…after Quebec's energy regulator refused to grant a request from Nalcor Energy, Newfoundland's energy corporation, for capacity on the Quebec power grid.’

2. CBC:  “particularly after regulators in Quebec in May dismissed Nalcor's bid to move power to U.S. markets on Quebec's transmission system.”

3.  Telegram (Transcontinental):  “after Quebec’s energy regulator decided not to grant Nalcor Energy’s request for capacity on the Quebec power grid.”

Here’s what actually happened:

NALCOR started talks with Hydro-Quebec’s energy transmission division on access to the Quebec grid in order to transmit power from the future Lower Churchill project.  HQ conducted studies based on the route and load options NALCOR indicated it was interested in studying. The goal of the studies were to determine whether capacity existed on the existing infrastructure to handle the new demand or if the companies (NACLOR and HQ) would have to build new transmission lines.

Premier Danny Williams has consistently stated that NALCOR would pay reasonable prices for transmission including the construction of new transmission facilities.

HQ completed the studies and informed NALCOR of the results.

NALCOR submitted five complaints to the Regie de l’energie for adjudication.  None of these was an application for access to the Quebec grid.

Among other things, NALCOR sought to stop the clock on 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 an intention to book the space.

As well, NACLOR sought a ruling on what was including in the Quebec management grid.  One effect of the ruling on one appeal, if NALCOR had been successful, would have been to displace existing power generation and transmission from Churchill Falls in favour of non-existent Lower Churchill power. 

NALCOR lost each of the five appeals.  None of the decisions prevented NALCOR from proceeding with acquiring space on the Quebec grid.

The Regie did not, at any time, refuse to grant, decide not to grant or dismiss NALCOR’s bid for access to the grid.

As it appears, NALCOR opted for its appeals because it did not have a project and power to transmit, nor did it have a prospect of developing it within the time frames originally proposed.  It opted instead for administrative delay tactics. 

In June 2010, Danny Williams told the House of Assembly that NALCOR did not pursue other contracts for transmission at the time  “because we did not have any power to sell.”

Earlier that same month, Williams confirmed that the Lower Churchill is up in the air indefinitely.  The Telegram buried the comment  - a nugget of hard news - at the end of another story.

However, when it did have power to sell, NALCOR successfully concluded a contract to wheel power through the Quebec grid.  At the time – April 2009 – Danny Williams declared that the transmission deal was historic as it opened the way for future developments. The NALCOR appeals to the Regie de l’energie predated the April 2009 deal.

The facts of the Regie decisions on NALCOR appeals are contained clearly in the decision of the Regie on NALCOR”s appeals. They are available in English and French from the provincial natural resources department’s website as well as from the Regie de l’energie in French.

It is understandable that mainland reporters might rely on other news reports without checking the details.

It is inexplicable why local reporters continue to make false statements when the correct information is right in front of their faces as to what actually took place.

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Traffic Drivers, August 9-13

1. The Old Man, Old Habits and Old Chestnuts
2. The World the Old Man Lives In
3. NALCOR: the power of constipation
4. Connies, pork and electoral ridings
5. AbitibiBowater creditors meeting
6. The Search for Meaning Challenge
7. Connies and “Stimulus”
8. Jerome! if you want to
9. Disclosure/scheduling delay Vermont/Quebec hydro deal
10. [tie]  A summer like no other:  torquing in Technicolor on the cheap
11. [tie]  Williams-era capital spending pales in historical terms

Quebec and Vermont signed a long-term power purchase agreement on August 12.  here’s the Montreal Gazette version.

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Finance department reveals low tech privacy shag up

An unidentified employee in the finance department mailed personal information on 78 applicants to the province’s heating subsidy program to an unidentified person outside the provincial government.

There’s no indication in a typical wordy government self-praise release what information actually went out in the envelope.  The release only tells the sort of information government collects for the program.  If the phantom recipient got all the information, it included: the applicant’s name as well as his or her spouse’s name, social insurance number, and “whether the amount of family income falls above or below a particular threshold level.”

The release also doesn’t say when the information originally went out, how long it was before officials in the the finance department figured out the mistake and who it was that got the information by mistake.

It only really tells you that the provincial government is serious about privacy and that they cleaned up the mess in their usual efficient way.

There’s no praise like self-praise.

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A campaign against typos in the Untied States

Your humble e-scribbler* brought you links to the campaign against typos back when it happened in early 2008 all as a way of segueing into a riff on some local typographical errors.

Well, now the duo who traipsed around the United States of America armed with sharpies and a grammarians sensibility, are the proud authors of a book on their adventure.  The title is the Great Typo Hunt.

Typos are a scourge, as regular readers of this space know all too well.

Typos also manage to creep into federal grant applications:

Are their opportunities for the private sector to generate revenue by delivering ancillary services to the public?

Maybe there’s public cash available in this country to develop software that would check for typos.  There’s got to be provincial cash for something like that.

Such an innovative idea.

Surely.

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* corrected typo

Loyola new ambassador to Dublin next?

Looks like Loyola Hearn is up for a new job.

With former Prince Edward Island Tory Premier Pat Binns shifting from his comfortable digs in Dublin to more comfortable ones in Boston, that leaves a diplomatic post open. Binns went to Dublin in 2007 to replace a career diplomat who’d been in the job of about a year.  Binns’ relocation looks to be a bit premature.

Word around Ottawa for some months now has one of the architects of the Conservative Party merger heading to the Emerald Isle to replace Pat Binns. Yes, folks, if the rest of the little scenario plays out, Loyola Hearn will be the new Canadian ambassador to Ireland.

Loyalty to Stephen Harper certainly seems to have its rewards so it wouldn’t come as any surprise if the next diplomatic appointment sent Hearn to his native soil.  Hearn stuck with the party he helped create and its new leader through the family feud. 

Now that the feud is officially over its would be only natural for the leader of Canada’s other Reform-based Conservative Party to endorse the appointment.

Wonder what Danny would say about that appointment given the harsh words he used to have for Loyola?

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Housing starts in NL down by 28% in July

Housing starts in the province were down 28% in July 2010, compared to July 2009 according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. [Link to Telly story]

There were 195 starts across the province in July 2010 compared to 270 in the same month of 2009.

More interestingly, only 19 of the 195 starts were outside the metropolitan St. John’s area.  That puts a July 2010 CBC story on the economic boom that is supposedly Grand Falls-Windsor in a different light.  it also gives an excellent sense of what is happening in the provincial economy, as a whole, when one gets beyond the overpass.

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The Old Man, Old Habits and Old Chestnuts

labradore lays bare the foolishness that is the Old Man’s latest anti-Quebec tirade.

Score one for His Premierness’s crack research and intelligence team; after all it was just three weeks ago that Quebec’s intergovernmental affairs Minister — unlike some provinces, they actually have one — telegraphed his province’s opposition to federal subsidies for transmission lines.

…

Curiously, these nefarious Quebec plots seem to cycle at about three-month intervals; His Premierosity exposed the previous one back on May 12th.

And yes, ladies and gentleman, the last time the Old Man got in a back-risking lather was during the month his pollster was in the field collecting numbers.

Funny how that happens.

Regular readers of these scribbles will recall that the Premier’s foray into the anti-Quebec realm prompted this rather neat diagram of The World as the Old Man Sees It.  Thousands of you read it, no doubt laughed and – in a great many cases- downloaded it as the wallpaper for your computer desktop.

Perhaps it’s time to get some tee shirts made up. They’d go like hotcakes.

Levity to one side – and it is hard not to snort at this same old story being recycled yet again -  your humble e-scribbler would be remiss if there were not reminders of the following salient points:

1. There is no Lower Churchill project the power from which would presumably course down these currently non-existent but hopefully federally-funded transmission lines.  NALCOR has no customers and doesn’t have the $14 or so billion the thing will cost.
2. Not so very long ago, Danny Williams was working feverishly to get Hydro Quebec to take an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill, with no redress for the Churchill Falls contract included.  This would be – of course – completely contrary to his pre-2005 comments/commitments on the subject.  This is the biggest story of 2009, if not the entire Williams administration to date.  It remains one story that the conventional media in the province have steadfastly – and one must say now very deliberately – refused to mention for almost a full year. They have determined it is an “un-story” despite the evidence from natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale’s own mouth.
3. There is no Lower Churchill project.
4. Your humble e-scribbler first discussed the whole idea of the permanent campaign and the quarterly poll goose in a series of posts in 2006.  There’s “The ‘Danny’ Brand”, “Playing the numbers”, “The media and the message” and “The perils of polling.”
5. There is no Lower Churchill project.
6. The bit from the CBC story after “particularly”  is false:  “Williams has had a tempestuous relationship with Quebec officials, particularly after regulators in Quebec in May dismissed Nalcor's bid to move power to U.S. markets on Quebec's transmission system.”  The Regie d’energie did no such thing. Anyone who read the decision in English or French would know that. Your humble e-scribbler’s challenge from May remains unanswered.
7. There is no Lower Churchill project.
8. This bit is absolutely true:  “when we have a situation when one province is deliberately trying to thwart at least two other provinces, and indirectly affect four other provinces, that's sad."  And the Old Man should know since the last time it happened, he did it.

- srbp -

A summer like no other: torquing in Technicolor on the cheap

One of the great things about summer for perpetual campaigning is that cabinet ministers can spit out sheer nonsense and reporters for the local paper won’t even bother to ask pesky questions.

Like how will an imaginary project could ever  lower carbon emissions in the real world.

And in this bucolic world, where minister’s publicists apparently don’t have to pitch a puff piece, even one of the most incompetent of ministers can sound like she knows something.

The result is better than the stuff pumped out by the official government publicity system:  in this case, the reporter’s name goes on the piece and it appears in a local newspaper. Having gone through a supposed editorial review, the resulting piece suddenly has way more credibility than it actually deserves.

Charlene Johnson – arguably the second biggest bumbler in the current provincial administration  - recently got the chance to dazzle readers of the Western Star with her thoughts on how the province has an opportunity to lead the world in tackling global warming.

“There are opportunities to use energy more efficiently, displace fossil-fuel based power generated by Holyrood with renewable energy from Lower Churchill, and ensure we continue to manage our land and forests in ways that store greenhouse gases rather than release them to the atmosphere,” Johnson said.

If Johnson knew something more than her briefing books or was willing to speak frankly, she’d acknowledge a couple of relevant points here.

The most obvious is that the Lower Churchill doesn’t exist and likely won’t exist within the next decade or two.  As such, any ideas about reducing emissions from Holyrood using the Lower Churchill is just pure bullshit.

Second, the government’s energy plan places economic benefits ahead of environmental ones.  It isn’t about sustainable development or reducing the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.  It isn’t an energy plan or environmental plan as much as it is a business plan.

Everything is held hostage to the LC anyway, but the project talks about ways of building new energy generation for export.  It doesn’t address local needs at all.  If it did, the plan would set policies that encouraged energy conservation on the island and the development of new generation that has a low environmental impact. 

You can see this rejection of local needs in the Lower Churchill environmental review documents, for example. The first thing that strikes you is that the LC isn’t needed to meet current or anticipated energy needs on the island. 

Those demands are so minor that a combined program of conservation (including improved efficiency) coupled with new generation (more than 54 MWs of wind) would meet any demand anticipated in the LC documents.  And just remember that document was drawn up in a world where all that hydro from Abitibi’s Grand Falls-Windsor operation was making jobs in central Newfoundland.

As for Labrador, the Lower Churchill documents plan to continue using diesel generation, despite the fact power lines for the Lower Churchill would pass right by some of the communities it plans to leave on diesel generation. As astonishing that seems, that is the project the province’s environment minister is holding out as a way of dealing with emissions in the province.

This is not a new idea, by the way.  The 2005 climate change action plan contains the same fundamental bias in favour of large, expensive megaprojects.  It anything but a modest development of wind energy because wind is supposedly intermittent.  However, experience elsewhere shows that wind can deliver consistent power levels if a series of projects over a wide area are joined together and managed effectively.

There are opportunities for Newfoundland and Labrador in the fight against global warming.  The problem is that the provincial government policy rejects ideas that could take advantage of those opportunities or puts obstacles in their way.

Anyone can see the fundamental problems in the provincial government’s policy – it doesn’t actually have a sustainable development act or a green energy policy, for example – if one had the time or took the time to read.

Fortunately for Charlene, the crowd at the Western Star didn’t have the time to get ready for her.  As a result she gets to spout complete bullshit and have the Star present as if it were gold.

What better way for a bumbling minister top spend August than torquing in Technicolor on the cheap.

- srbp -