RBC lowers NL GDP forecast for 2010

Highlights of the latest RBC Economics forecast for Newfoundland and Labrador in 2010:

• Real GDP to grow at 3.3% for the year, down from the 4.1% forecast in June.
• Offshore oil production down 3.2% year-to-date to June.
• Non-residential capital construction to form basis of growth in medium term.
• Oil royalties expected to reach 40% of provincial government revenues in 2010, potentially supporting increase in public sector employment.  RBC states that public sector represents 30% of employment in the province.
• Real GDP growth of 3.3% forecast for 2011, up from previous forecast of 2.3%

And for the national comparison:

• Saskatchewan will lead the country in real GDP growth with 2010 and 2011. 
• NL is middle of the pack for 2010 and third in 2011 for GDP growth.
• NL has recovered less than 60% of the jobs lost since the recession.  Quebec has recovered 140% and Nova Scotia has recovered about 100%.

- srbp -

Mayor dismisses impact on passengers; world cruise pax owed more than quarter million

While obviously out-of-touch St. John’s mayor Dennis “Doc” O’Keefe can blithely dismiss the impact of a recent cruise cancellation on the passengers affected, the passengers themselves tell a different story.

Here’s how local radio station VOCM reported O’Keefe’s comments in a story headlined “Cruise ship passengers never stranded”:

The Mayor of St. John's says the people reportedly left "stranded" in the capital city after the Cruise Boat they were traveling on was sold were taken care of by the cruise company. Dennis O'Keefe says given the situation, it all went pretty smoothly. O'Keefe says most passengers on board the ship were due to disembark and fly home. He says three or four passengers were supposed to continue on a world cruise. O'Keefe says these people were either given hotel rooms or sent home by the cruise company.

Evidently, Doc never heard of the Myers, the elderly couple from New Mexico who were already in Doc’s fair city when they found out they would have to pony up for unexpected hotel rooms and airfares to back home. Their efforts to contact the company were apparently fruitless in the first few days after the cruise line shut down.

Then there are the other passengers, scheduled on the circumnavigation.  As the Seattle Times reported:

Tammy Hinshaw, of Michigan, was aboard the ship on a series of cruises around the world. After a three-week break, she and her partner were scheduled for many more weeks of cruising beginning Oct. 3 — for which they paid Cruise West 10 days ago.

"Two other passengers were scheduled to be on board until Feb. 3, and one passenger was scheduled to arrive Oct. 3 and remain on board until Feb. 3," Hinshaw said. "To give you an idea of how much money is at stake, Cruise West owes these five passengers (including myself and my partner) well over a quarter of a million dollars."

Henshaw and her partner are out $50,000 and they’ve received no answers to their e-mails to the company. They paid by cheque based on Cruise West’s guarantee of a two percent discount for people who paid in cash.  As the Times reported:

"In retrospect it was an incredibly dumb thing to do ... but many of the other passengers who are owed substantial amounts of money also paid by check, for the same reason," Hinshaw said. She and her partner did not purchase travel insurance because of its high price, and they didn't know of Cruise West's financial woes.

The Times also reported the cruise company laid off 65 employees this past week.

- srbp -

Fiscal Discipline

If you want to get a sense of where Newfoundland and Labrador fits on the spending landscape across Canada, take a gander at a comparison of program spending by each provincial government and the federal government on a per capita basis, in 2005 and in 2010.

This basically shows what each government spends – on average for each person  – to deliver government programs and services.

Newfoundland and Labrador was the highest spending province per person in 2005, but it was not out in front by nearly the same margin as it is in 2010. Newfoundland and Labrador went from spending $8,572 per person in 2005 to spending $13,300 in 2010.

No other province spends as much. 

Alberta spends about $3,000 per person less.

Newfoundland and Labrador spends $5,377 per person more than Quebec and yet, according to Premier Danny Williams, “Quebec pours its money into huge tax subsidies for its companies, the best childcare programs in the country and massive electricity subsidies for its people valued at 7 billion dollars.”

Apparently, they are that much better at spending money that they can deliver all that on only $200 more per person than Danny Williams spent in his second year in office.  In fact, they are so good – according to Danny Williams - they actually get all those bennies spending less money per person than Danny Williams has in any year he has been Premier so far. 

That is, of course, with the exception of that one year where they bested him by a mere 200 bucks a head.

Makes you wonder where exactly is Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial childcare program then?

- srbp -

NALCOR issues update on Parsons Pond

News release as issued:

Nalcor Energy – Oil and Gas update on Parsons Pond drilling program

September 9, 2010, St. John’s, NL - Nalcor Energy – Oil and Gas (Nalcor) announced today it spud the second well of its Parsons Pond Drilling Program, Nalcor et al Finnegan.

This is the second well of a three-well onshore exploration drilling program. The program is providing valuable information which will enable Nalcor and its partners to further assess the petroleum potential in this area. “We expect this program will incent further exploration and advance the development of the basin,” said Jim Keating, VP [vice-president] Oil and Gas, Nalcor Energy.

The first well of the program, Nalcor et al Seamus, spud on February 16, 2010, reached the planned total drilling depth of 3,160 metres in May 2010 and is scheduled for further testing this fall.

Nalcor Energy has an average of 67 per cent gross working interest in three onshore exploration permits on the island’s west coast.  In addition to Nalcor Energy Oil and Gas Inc., there are four other  partners with varying holdings in the three permits: Leprechaun Resources Ltd.; Deer Lake Oil and Gas Inc.; Investcan Energy Corporation; and Vulcan Minerals Inc. 

Nalcor Energy – Oil and Gas is also a working interest partner in the White Rose Growth Project, Hibernia Southern Extension and Hebron offshore projects.

-30-

Media Contact:  Dawn Dalley, Manager, Corporate Communications  t.709.737.1315   c.709.727.7715  e. ddalley@nalcorenergy.com

Cruise ship sale and passengers “not even an issue”: St. John’s mayor

According to King 5 News, Milo Myers and his wife are out at least US$12,000 for a planned cruise on the Spirit of Oceanus from St. Pierre to Halifax that won’t happen.    Seattle-based Cruise West is currently restructuring.  The company sold Spirit of Oceanus and the cruise ended abruptly in St. John’s on September 8.

The couple flew to St. John’s in advance of boarding, spent a couple of days in the capital city and planned a short flight to St. Pierre to meet the ship there.  Instead, the Myers, who both live in New New Mexico, will also be out the cost of new airline flights home and a hotel stop in Seattle.

According to the news report, the company hasn’t returned Myers’ calls.

While news media like USAToday  can’t get any information on Cruise West, St. John’s mayor Dennis “Doc” O’Keefe seems to have turned into a spokesperson for the cruise line.  O’Keefe even seems to be dismissing any concerns about the fate of passengers affected by the cancellation.

He spoke to the St. John’s daily newspaper The Telegram:  

St. John’s Mayor Dennis O’Keefe said there were 70 people aboard the Spirit of Oceanus when it docked, and only four or five of those were involved in the full world cruise. He said they were the only ones having their trip cut short.

For the rest, St. John’s was the end of their original itinerary, O’Keefe said.

He said the cruise line was looking after those passengers.

The ship was originally scheduled to proceed to St-Pierre and pick up another 70-100 people, but that port of call is off now.

Those passengers were to travel to St-Pierre from elsewhere to board the ship, but were notified well in advance of the cancellation, O’Keefe said.

“It’s not even an issue,” he said.

That’s much more than the company itself is saying. 

A statement issued on September 8 said only that the company ended the trip at a scheduled port of debarkation. The company recommended that passengers affected by the cancellation of cruises should contact their insurance company, their credit card company or send an e-mail to the companies general information e-mail address.

The Spirit of Oceanus is registered in Nassau.

- srbp -

A relentless gift for unintentional self-parody: TOS

A sitcom about nothing:

"Are you Master of your Domain?"

A certain blogger:

• Masters of our Domain:  province lowers royalty for Hebron pre-payout phase (2007)
• Masters of our Domain: Danny Legacy Option wins Lower Churchill Contract (2006)

Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Budget Speech 2008:

We are standing tall as powerful contributors to the federation – as masters of our own domain, stronger and more secure than we have ever been before…

- srbp -

A relentless gift for unintentional self-parody II

A well-known politician, in a recent speech:

Never standing still, never going backwards and never giving ground to anyone.

A well-known Internet prank:

Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, Never gonna run around and desert you, …

- srbp -

Time to retire the old schtick

On a certain level, you can’t blame Danny Williams for saying the same stuff over and over.

After all, audiences like today’s gathering at the Board of Trade keep lapping it up.  They turned out in force, chuckling and applauding in all the right places as if they knew the script by heart.

As the scrum video shows, local reporters from the province’s two television networks never tire of asking him the same old questions over and over, getting the same old answers over and over,  and then passing them yet again to the audience at home as if they heard it for the first time.  

But while some people never seem to tire of re-runs, there are likely an ever-increasing number of people in the province for whom the province’s political news is starting to look like watching some borscht-belt comedian on a 1970s American talk show.  Decades ago, the guy had one joke that sort of worked, yet the host thinks the old codger is a comedic genius.  So he flies the guy back from Florida to inflict him on his audience over and over again.  In the two channel universe of the 1970s or even the 13 channel cable world of the 1980s, audiences didn’t really have much choice.

Just to make sure you have a clear picture in your head, though, think Bobby Bittman from The Sammy Maudlin Show.

Then think of a parody of Bobby Bittman on The Sammy Maudlin Show.

Now you are getting close to the reality that is Wednesday’s vintage Danny Williams speech.  Take an endless recitation of how much money government spent on this that or the other.  Rattle off supposed triumphs. Talk of a new attitude of “confidence, courage, maturity and integrity”. Cliches and pat phrases interspersed with random quotations from Bartlett’s.  As formulaic as The Ropers.

The result is jarring even beyond the idea that merely spending increasing amounts of cash is the only measure of success, that running massive deficits displays “fiscal discipline” or that calling Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney “a very powerful individual” is not trite.  With all the bravado and self-praise thrown liberally around as well, one has a speech that reeks of insecurity, fear, and childishness.

For Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, the speech was surely embarrassing. What else could it be when anyone  - let alone the Premier of a province – speaks of noble virtues, promises to “take no prisoners” in a political war with Quebec over the Lower Churchill, then immediately afterward quotes Mohandas Ghandi and yet remains completely oblivious to the stupidity of doing so in such a context.

On one level no one could blame any politician for doing what appears to work politically, but on another level,  the Premier’s performance at the Board of Trade was also a sign of an administration that has – to put it plainly - run out of ideas.

That lack of ideas is hurting the province.  The Premier has neither the markets nor the money to erect his $14 billion wet dream.  If he did, then Danny Williams would be building it instead of talking about it.  In the meantime, his obsession blocks out any development of wind or other energy power in the meantime.  That – as strange as it seems – is the government’s energy policy.

What’s more, the opportunity that does exist south of the border is being squandered in imaginary political squabbles.  Neil Leblanc just finished his appointment as Canadian consul in Boston.  As he noted in a recent interview, the northeastern United States is a ripe a lucrative market. 

But, Leblanc noted, it is not good enough for Canadians to say simply that we are here so “Come buy from us”.  In other words, it is not enough to say we have the most phantasmagoric undeveloped green energy planet in all Creation.  Canadian provinces cannot sit and wait for business to fall into their laps. The New England states themselves are also building new energy sources.  Other American states are already building new generation and transmission facilities to supply the eastern seaboard.

"There is time for the Atlantic provinces and Quebec to put their best foot forward. We have a lot of natural resources here, which we can hopefully take advantage of," he said. "It's a win-win situation if we can do it."

It could be a win-win situation.

Unfortunately, as long as Danny Williams uses the same speech over and over again, the best foot is not going forward. 

Far from it.

It’s time for the old schtick to retire.

- srbp -

Related: 

• Bury my lede at Muskrat Falls
• The Old Man, Old Habits and Old Chestnuts
• Reach for the Screech
• Five years of secret talks on Lower Churchill;  the Dunderdale audio

A relentless gift for unintentional self-parody

A well-known politician, in a recent speech:

Never standing still, never going backwards and never giving ground to anyone.

A well-known cartoon character (fake politician):

…we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

- srbp -

Cruise ends abruptly in St. John’s

Passengers on a 335 day circumnavigation of the globe that began in March got a surprise on Tuesday as they arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland only to be told the cruise was ending early.

They were put ashore with no word of a refund.

Cruise West, the Seattle-based company that owned the 120 passenger Spirit of Oceanus, seen at right in an online stock photo, sold the vessel overnight.  The company is in the midst of restructuring.  The new owners did not plan to continue the cruise. 

One passenger from the world cruise e-mailed a message to the Seattle Times saying:

“Cruise West's flagship, the 'Spirit of Oceanus,' has been sold to an unnamed party and the passengers (including myself) are being put ashore at St. John's, Newfoundland. No word yet on refunds”

A similar e-mail sent to the website cruisecritic.com included this information:

"So far, we know very little; all we've been told is that the ship has been sold and the around-the-world cruise is over, as of tomorrow morning."

Spirit of Oceanus is currently secured pier side in St. John’s harbour inside a security fence.

- srbp -

Transparency and Accountability: speeches

We live in a funny country.

The Clerk of the Privy Council – Canada’s top federal public servant – posts copies of his speeches to the Internet and broadcasts the fact via Twitter.

Meanwhile, a politician who got elected on a platform of openness, transparency and accountability, wants to charge somebody thousands upon thousands – it started at $10K and has dropped downward – for copies of his public speeches.

And – if that weren’t enough – the politician then bitches publicly about the fact somebody wants copies of his speeches.

Come to think of it, the country isn’t funny.

Some of the people in it are.

Hysterically funny.

- srbp -

The Not-So-Great Escape

Police and news media described two men who escaped from provincial prison on Tuesday as “violent”  or as having convictions for offences involving violence.

All media report that someone – presumably provincial prison guards - a small white car acting suspiciously near the prison.  As one spokesperson described to CBC Radio’s mid-day show, the suspicious activity involved driving around an area that is basically deserted except for the prison.

If provincial prison officials noticed the car, did they call the local police detachment before they discovered the escape?

And if VOCM is correct, the pair escaped by slipping under a fence. Apparently no one ever heard of burying the bottom part of the fence below ground level in order to frustrate the mile-like behaviour of some criminals.

That’s interesting because a 2008 report on the province’s prisons noted the province’s prison system suffered from weak security, aging infrastructure  and management problems. A CBC news story on the report includes a link to a copy of the entire report, complete with the faulty redactions of the version originally release by the provincial justice department.  The blacked out sections can be read by anyone with basic computer skills.

- srbp -

Who speaks for cabinet?

Apparently, a newly elected backbench government member of the House of Assembly who also sports a new title of “Legislative Assistant”. Here’s a story that ran in the Western Star on September 3:

The province is working toward an emergency phone system that meets its needs.

So says Paul Davis, MHA for Topsail and legislative assistant to the minister of Municipal Affairs, adding that a committee of senior officials was struck early in 2009 and charged with the task of preparing a request for proposals for a feasibility study into a provincewide [sic] enhanced 911 system.

The province as a cabinet minister responsible for this.  Her name is Diane Whelan.

There is one – there may be two – officially designated alternate ministers able to speak authoritatively on behalf of cabinet when the minister is not available.

In some cases, the deputy minister of the municipal affairs department could speak on the record about government plans. 

There is also a very senior official responsible for emergency services  - called the chief executive officer, but he’s equivalent to a deputy minister - who would be able to deal with this inquiry about province-wide 911 service.  

There’s also an assistant deputy minister for fire and emergency services.

Now if Paul was a parliamentary secretary, then he’d have the to speak on behalf of the government and  - in effect  - on behalf of cabinet about the government’s policy intention.  There used to be a minute of council in the 1980s that set out the duties, responsibilities and powers of a parliamentary secretary.

What about legislative assistants?  They are pretty shadowy creatures.  There’s not even any official public list of how many government backbenchers carry around this extra title. Sometimes they just pop up attending events on behalf of ministers.  

Sometimes, apparently, they can speak about what government is doing.

But on what legal basis do they do anything at all?

One has to wonder as well on what basis backbenchers like Paul Davis get elevated to some sort of pseudo-cabinet job – speaking on behalf of a minister and the government – within only a figurative few days of getting elected while other capable backbenchers just languish. 

It’s all very odd.

Very odd, indeed.

- srbp -

Process Stories, or real insiders don’t gab

A piece this week in the Hill Times this week conjures up images of a West Wing episode. The night of Jed Bartlet’s re-election, some guy turns up on the major networks purporting to be a Democratic Party insider. The guy claims he advised Bartlet on issues during the campaign that turned out to be crucial to victory.

Only thing is the guy wasn’t really an insider.  Rather he was a pollster Bruno Gianelli hired to do some polling in one part of one state.  The guy knew nothing but he talked a good game and the networks ate up his story.

The Hill Times story quotes an unidentified ‘Liberal insider” as saying:

"They can't win. If you go province-by-province and riding-by-riding, what does it give you? I know the spin will be that the cross-country tour elevated Iggy, and the long-gun and census stuff pulled Harper down, so now we're tied. But when the crunch comes and people are going to vote, I don't think—whether they had to fill in a long-form census or not—I don't think it's going to be a serious factor…".

Someone actually so far inside any political party as to know what the leadership team is actually thinking:

1. wouldn’t discuss it publicly, and,
2. wouldn’t talk the sort of pure crap contained in this article.

You can tell the “insider” is full of crap by this simple paragraph:

In Newfoundland, for example, if Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams "goes whole hog" and puts his support behind the federal Conservatives in the next election campaign, the Tories could win five of the province's seven seats, the insider said. Liberal MP Siobhan Coady's St. John's South-Mount Pearl riding and Scott Andrews' riding in Avalon are the most at risk.

Right off the bat, this anonymous character predicts the Tories would gain five seats in Newfoundland and Labrador, but only names two that might change hands.  Where are the other three?

Any person who actually knew what happened on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador  - as opposed to the bullshit - wouldn’t claim for one second that Danny Williams could turn the tide and suddenly have everyone vote for a party Williams himself savaged not so long ago. 

The simple reason is that Danny Williams didn’t do it the last time.

All Danny Williams did in 2008 was strangle the Conservative vote.

Well, for the most part he strangled it.  In St. John’s East, Tories turned out en masse for Danny’s old law partner, Jack Harris.  The Liberal vote there collapsed as well, giving Harris a giant majority. Don’t count on that one changing hands back to the Conservatives.

In St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, a sizeable number of Conservative voters actually rejected Danny’s instructions and turned out to vote for the New Democrat.  That’s right.  Even though Danny Williams’ cabinet ministers turned out for Liberal Siobhan Coady, a sizeable number of rank and file Conservatives in the riding actually made a choice for the New Democrat.  In other ridings they just stayed home.

But in SJSMP, they voted for the New Democrat as a protest over Conservative ministers actively campaigning for their hated enemy, les rouges.  Call it a hold over from the 1949 Confederation racket if you want, but Conservative townies tend to vote for the New Democrats rather than Liberals if the can’t vote for their own guy.

Put a stronger Conservative candidate in play and this riding might change its colours.  Then again, it might not.  If you apply the current poll configuration to old votes, the riding tended to vote Liberal more than Conservative more recently.  What usually made the difference in the old configuration was the solid blue voting along what is now known as the Irish loop.  Even losing coming out of St. John’s and Mount Pearl, the Conservative would go over the top as the Southern Shore went solidly Conservative.

One of the other key differences might be the New Democrat candidate. If the NDP run a candidate with a strong enough profile and the right messaging, he could split the blue vote. Yes, that seems counterintuitive for people who think of voting only in left-right terms – like the “insider” apparently -  but the distinction could be important in the next federal election.

Another factor to watch would be the impact of migration on the vote. The old Conservative stronghold in Avalon has moved to the metro St. John’s region.  Where they live now could have a huge impact on the vote in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl as well as neighbouring Avalon.

In 2008, the fight turned out to be a straight fight between the Liberals and the Conservatives.  You’d have to do a poll by poll breakdown to see where the Conservatives lost votes and where they picked up.  The New Democrats were a distant third, but they did increase their vote sizeably. They won’t have the Conservative Family Feud to count on this time and those extra 2400 votes the NDP gained last time might swing to one of the other parties.

None of that takes into account the value of incumbency.

Nor does it take into account the fact that in 2004 and 2006 – when Williams and his party actively supported Conservatives across the province – the best the Conservatives could do is win the same two seats they usually win. In 2008, though, Williams wiped out the Conservative vote and In St. John’s East in particular he may have locked that one in New Democrat hands for a while.  Conservative insiders –real insiders – are likely thinking that with friends like that…well, you know where that goes.

So that none of that looks even remotely like a scenario where the Old Man is going to hand his old enemy Steve five easy seats. And it gets even harder to see the “insider” scenario if you realise the farther one gets from St. John’s, the harder it is to elect a federal Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, even with the enthusiastic help of a guy whose strongest supporters are still found among townies.

Of course, the “insider’’ assessment only works on any level if you continue to think that Danny Williams remains as popular as he ever was, even within his own party.  As the insider aptly shows by his or her appearance of knowing things, appearances can be deceiving. 

The 2008 Family Feud did its most damage within the Conservative Party itself.  Even having Danny Williams call off the feud  or claim that he leads a Reform-based Conservative Party might not be enough to win back the enthusiastic support of Conservatives who voted Blue long before Williams was a gleam in his own eye. Those are the people he screwed with in 2008 and those people didn’t like it one bit.

Williams himself also hinted recently at internal political problems with his party.  And let’s not forget that earlier this year, someone dropped a dime on his little plan to scoot south secretly to have heart surgery.

To be fair, though, the one part of the scenario the Liberal “insider” didn’t mention is another one:  what might happen in one of the ridings if Danny Williams himself decided to take a shot at federal politics.

That wouldn’t change the federal Conservatives’ chances a great deal in Newfoundland and Labrador, but it would make the nomination fight in one riding a lot more interesting than it might otherwise be.

Wonder which riding it might be?

St. John’s East is already safely in the hands of his old friend and law partner. Odds are the Old Man wouldn’t run there.

But he does own a sizeable house in Avalon, the seat once held by his political nemesis, John Efford.

Hmmm.

The Old Man jumping to federal politics.

Maybe the Hill times wasn’t speaking with a Liberal after all.

Their assessment sounds more like what one would get from a member of the Old Man’s crew.

- srbp -

Traffic Drivers, August 30 – September 3

A mix of old and new and for the first time a double tie for rankings.

1. Bury my lede at Muskrat Falls
2. Second escape from police, accused faces two sexual interference assault charges
3. Info commissioners and ombudsmen call for open government
4. Danny Williams and the National Post:  Fact Check
5. Math Problem:  Oil Production, Oil Prices and Oil Revenue
6. Court docket now online (tie)
7. I knew Marilyn Monroe (tie for 6)
8. Bell 206 crash – photo interpretation
9. Digging (up) the past (tie)
10. Statoil explores renewables (tie for 8th spot)
11. Jerome! if you want to
12. The August Traffic round-up

- srbp -

Baby Torque

Perceptions can sometimes be influenced by how information is presented.

Prices are an easy example.  Saying that something is $9.99 somehow gets interpreted by people as being closer to nine dollars than to $10.  Sure we understand the concept, but for some reason, people tend to round numbers down sometimes.

Some bullshit artists passing themselves off as media trainers have been known to suggest using kilometres than miles for measurement if you want things to appear farther away.  Like say a potential environmental hazard from a sensitive spot.

In a news conference on Thursday, the province’s largest health authority passed out some information on how many pregnant women and how many newborns wound up being sent to hospitals on the mainland because of an overload in the neonatal intensive care unit at Eastern Health.

The Telegram reported on the newser.  It’s a straight-up account of the information presented by Eastern Health. In one part of the report, there is some information about statistics on what they seem to call “diverts”:

…from June 2008 to July 2010 the health authority transferred 15 mothers and nine babies out of the province…

Over a two year period, Eastern sent a total of 15 women and nine infants to other hospitals. The CBC online version of the story gives the same information at the end of the piece.  They just broke it down into two periods of 12 months each.

But now we get to the curious bit.  That’s where we find out how many infants and pregnant women are now outside the province since July 2010.

Here’s the way the Telegram put it:

From July 31 to Sept. 1, 12 mothers and three babies have been transferred to health care facilities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.

CBC gave the information by talking about what happened “since July 31.”

So here’s the thing:  how many months are covered by that period in Eastern sent 12 pregnant women for care at hospitals outside the province?

Quick scan and you might say three.

Then it might dawn on you that there is something in between July 31 and September 1.

It’s called the month of August.

In a single month, Eastern shipped almost as many women and babies out of the province for care as in the
two years prior.

The specific time frame the Telegram used is actually taken, almost word for word, from the Eastern Health news release:

Since implementing divert on July 31, up to September 1, Eastern Health has transferred 12 moms and 3 babies to facilities outside of the province.

The release itself is a curious mixture of sterile jargon on the one hand – calling the practice “being on divert” – and the rather folksy and familiar practice of calling the pregnant women involved “moms” on the other.  It also follows a fairly standard provincial government formula of not putting substantive information in the first few paragraphs.  News releases, you may recall, should follow the convention of putting the big idea right there at the beginning, usually in the first sentence.

Rather, the most important information in this bit of writing  - according to Eastern Health  - is that Eastern provided an update. That’s not only the first sentence, it’s also the headline.  Double whammy to reinforce their main point.

The second sentence has some potentially relevant detail, namely why they are shipping people out of the province.

Then there’s a quote from Vickie Kaminski.  But it isn’t until you get to the third paragraph that you start to get any sense of exactly how significant this whole issue is.

Then there is more background, detail and filler until you get to the end of the things more than two pages later.  That’s a gigantic news release by any standards.  Government and its agencies apparently have no shortage of words when they need them.

In thinking about this news release and news conference you might also be interested in thinking about what the key idea was that Eastern wanted to convey.  What was it about this whole situation that Vickie and her team wanted you to remember?

According to the news release, it was that they gave an update.  That’s the main idea because that’s the first sentence.

According to the Telegram, the big news was this:

The president and CEO of Eastern Health says it will likely be December before pressure eases up on the Janeway Children’s Hospital neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU).

CBC put it this way:

Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority is reassuring expectant mothers that everything is being done to protect the health of their babies despite a shortage of equipment and staff that is forcing pregnant women and newborns out of the province for care.

NTV – and the biggest audience in the province – led with a statement in the introduction that the health authority will cover costs.

For good measure, here’s the first sentence of VOCM’s story:

Eastern Health is working to ensure both nurses and mothers are well in light of a situation at the Janeway's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

One newser.

Five completely different news ledes.

And the one from the regional health authority itself is – just guessing here – not the takeaway Eastern Health itself had in mind. The Telly one is most likely the one they’d least like to see and NTV’s account – while accurate – focuses on a huge negative aspect of the story rather than carry the message that the authority is concerned primarily with its patients' health and well-being.

Interestingly enough, the CBC online version begins with what is most like Kaminski’s key idea. VOCM got it as well, in a much pithier way.

They found it in the last two sentences of the second paragraph, in the quote from Vicki Kaminski.  But even then it wasn’t the first bit of Kaminski’s quote:

I want to assure all expectant mothers that their safety and the safety of their babies are of utmost concern for us. We are closely monitoring the situation and will arrange a transfer if required, to ensure that the appropriate level of care is provided to mothers and their babies.”

The release should have started with the assurance because Care is Job 1.

Then they should have described the situation that led to the decision to “divert”:

• Almost as many high risk pregnancies and sick newborns in a single month as they had in two whole years before coupled with
• Staff issues

And then there should have been the list of actions taken;

• full cost reimbursement
• recruiting and training
• administrative steps to increase trained staff etc

And then an update on the ones from August.  This shows, among other things, the extent to which the situation is being managed and that people are being cared for appropriately.

Anything more than a page and a half was too much because busy reporters don’t have time to dissect two and bit pages of stuff.

Perception is affected by how information is presented.

- srbp -

Info commissioners and ombudsmen call for open government

Information commissioners, privacy commissioners and ombudsmen from across Canada issued a call on September first for government sin the country to adopt open government principles.

They issued the call from their joint meeting held this year in Whitehorse.

Specifically, the commissioners resolved:

1. The Commissioners endorse and promote open government as a means to enhance transparency and accountability which are essential features of good governance and critical elements of an effective and robust democracy.

2. The Commissioners call on the federal and all provincial and territorial governments to declare the importance of open government, including specific commitments for stronger standards for transparency and participation by the public.

3. Governments should build access mechanisms into the design and implementation stages of all new programs and services to facilitate and enhance proactive disclosure of information.

4. Through ongoing consultations with the public, governments should routinely identify data sources and proactively disclose information in open, accessible and reusable formats. Public access to information should be provided free or at minimal cost.

5. In implementing open government policies, the federal and all provincial and territorial governments should give due consideration to privacy, confidentiality, security, Crown copyright and all relevant laws.

- srbp -

Digging (up) the past

Geologists exploring western Newfoundland have discovered a fossil belonging to an amphibian that live about 325 millions years ago. (cbcnl)

The 12 to 15 centimetre long bone is the first find of its kind in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Gulf News quoted Dr. Liam Herringshaw, one of the researchers, who explained why:

“In terms of land animals, there’s almost nothing. Partly because most of the rocks are too old, there are no dinosaur-bearing rocks on the island of Newfoundland,” he said. “ This would seem to be the first evidence we’ve got of really ancient land animals. The rocks we were looking at were 325 million years old and that’s 75 million years before dinosaurs appear, so it’s a pretty early vertebrate.”

Meanwhile, in Sheshatshiu, workers building new homes in the Innu community  unearthed evidence of aboriginal inhabitation of the community 3,000 years ago. The artifacts, including weapons and tools, add to modern knowledge of human presence in the area.

- srbp -

Hebron awards FEED-EPC contract

On August 27, 2010, the consortium developing the Hebron oilfield offshore Newfoundland and Labrador awarded the project’s front-end engineering and design contract to WorleyParsons.

ExxonMobil is the lead partner on the project.

Under the contract, ExxonMobil may, at its discretion, award WorleyParsons with the project’s Engineering, Procurement and Service contract.

According to the project timetable, the consortium are anticipating project sanction in early 2012.

- srbp -

Throw money at it: provgov to study garbage

Sometimes it seems as if Gus Portokalos’ brother wound up running the Newfoundland and Labrador government.

While Gus wanted to put window cleaner on everything, Gus’ imaginary brother in the provincial government likes to throw money at it.

The most recent example is a fund set up with a research centre at Memorial University. There is now $300,000 available to probe garbage.

Apparently, there are “unique waste diversion challenges” in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

So now the fine folks at the province’s university can get up to $15,000 to study ways of “reducing the amount of waste created, reusing materials and products, recycling or reprocessing waste, recovering some useful benefit from waste, and disposing of waste that has no further economic or environmental benefit.”

Ummm.

Right.

And these sorts of thing, the sorts of thing they’ve been doing everywhere else for decades, are not only unknown to people in Newfoundland and Labrador but we must fund university-level research to crack the garbage code that apparently bedevils us.

Once the researchers produce answers to the refuse puzzle, the second pillar of the anti-trash strategy will cut in:  they will tell people about it. And maybe, once they’ve told people about it, those people might come up with suggestions to – in the words of the guy running the research centre -  “shape research questions, leading to new ideas which then encourage further research to achieve implementation.”

So they’ll think about something.  Then they’ll tell people what they thought about.  And then the people they told will come up with new things to think about.  So the people doing the thinking will go back and think some more about the stuff they’ve been told to think about.

And maybe at some point, after all this thinking and talking and thinking and talking, someone might be able to do something with the garbage.

The technical term for this approach is GIGO:  garbage in, garbage out.

People unused to the refined language of the government and the university will only look at the complete lack of action on waste reduction since 2003  and think “circle jerk”.

And they will be right.

This is the administration, after all,  that is now renowned for its inability to do stuff.

This is the administration that took almost four years to take the waste management strategy of their predecessors, photocopy it, move all the target dates back a decade and then announce it as their own, brand-new strategy.

Just in time for an election.

And now three years after that announcement, they toss money at a bunch of people to supposedly figure out what to do with garbage.

This is the same administration that gave a consultant some unspecified hunk of public money to spend 18 months studying ways of keeping young people in the province. The result of the cogitation was truly Earth-shattering in its inventiveness:

1.  Create jobs.

2.  Put services in major centres. Like maybe St. John’s, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor and Corner Brook?

3.  Link education to the labour market.

4.  Build “an understanding of the benefits of immigration and diversity through public education, community dialogue and strengthened curriculums in the education system.”

Well, d’uh.

And it even came with a spelling mistake in the bit that talks about education.

Brilliant!

There is no way that anyone could possibly invent this policy.  It is, after all, nothing more than a hideous self-parody of an administration that is obviously lacking any sense of direction.

Reductio ad argentum, indeed.

- srbp -