Kremlinology 26: Magma Displacement

In the Hunt for Red October, a computer used by an American hunter-killer submarine to identify noises in the ocean mistakes a new type of Soviet propeller noise as a type of earthquake.

Magma displacement.

In politics, it is easy to hear a noise and think it is one thing when the cause is something else.

Take – for example – Danny Williams’ most recent petty, venomous attack on Sam Synyard, the mayor of Marystown.

Some people may think this is just Danny waging the sort of scurrilous personal attack that is his political stock-in-trade, his default setting.  And as sure as Danny Williams had nothing to do with recent oil windfalls in the provincial treasury, so too has he shown a marked preference for the political version of the hockey player’s cheap hit in the corner, the spear.

A few things about this most recent Williams smear point to another cause that produced the usual cross check. 

First, Williams noted in his remark after the cabinet shuffle that Sam Synyard complained during the early days of the Igor clean-up – according to Williams anyway -  that the provincial government had not done enough after another hurricane. That isn’t the way Synyard came across back in September. It’s also very strange that Williams had plenty of opportunity at the time to smack Synyard but didn’t. Why he brought the whole thing up three weeks later seems odd.

Second, Williams and Synyard are actually on the same wavelength.  As the Premier readily noted, the provincial government is ready to pour cash into yet another private sector company.

Third, you’ll find that not only did the Premier revisit the whole Synyard affair for a second day, Premier wannabe Darin King and his fellow cabinet minister Clyde Jackman, chimed in add their voices to the din.

These members of a Reform-based Conservative Party seem a tad sensitive. Just like the political sensitivity displayed during the Igor response.  Bridge news conferences when the news story was really somewhere else.  Cabinet ministers jumping on any signs of discontent.

And then on CBC on Thursday evening, more stories of discontent on the Burin Peninsula with the slowness of provincial financial aid for people devastated by Igor.

There’s only one more detail you need to add to get the whole picture.  Danny called Sam a Liberal.

There is the key to the whole thing. People on the Burin Peninsula aren’t happy with Danny Williams, Darin King and Clyde Jackman.  There are lots of unhappy people out there after a series of natural disasters since 2003.  That’s one of the reasons why the very first thing the provincial emergency response people made sure to tell everyone after Igor was to get their claims filed early.

You can really tell the political sensitivity because the filing claims is the thing Danny highlighted for people on the day of the storm.  He really played up the cash.  And then the day after the storm,  Danny and his merry band hopped helicopters to tour the Burin Peninsula.  That’s how they showed their concern. Even though the Bonavista Peninsula took a demonstrably harder hit, Danny showed up on the Burin. The fact that this political showboating only pissed people off more was just a bonus.

What evidently scares Danny, Clyde and Darin politically shitless is that any politician might do as Danny is wont to do and take political advantage of all that discontent.  They know, or at least they think, that this is the sort of issue that could motivate voters and turn around a couple of seats in the next election.  It only needs a politician smart enough to hit the sore point. 

Attacking Sam Synyard personally is Danny’s way of trying to drive a potentially dangerous political rival off a potentially devastating issue for the for the Conservatives. It’s that simple.

Unless you connect all the dots, though, you’d only see more of the same superficial Danny-noise.

But if you know what to look for, you’ll see the magma displacement that is causing trembling in the political earth in some places.  This is not unusual rumbling, mind you, but in the imaginary world created by Danny Williams – the world where all is perfect and he alone is master – any sign of problems, any opening for an opponent is like a hurricane, earthquake and tidal wave rolled into one.

Oh yes.  Some places, plural.

It’s not just the Burin or even the Great Northern.  Labrador West, sections of the northeast coast.  They are all places where the locals are unhappy with the current administration. To the Conservatives they are threats to life and limb.

And to the other parties they are potential opportunities.  That’s what has Danny, Clyde and Darin and all their friends so jumpy.

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Campaign Sign, Two

The picture.

The missing caption:

“Can every camera get a clear shot of me?  Those people on the other side of the room can’t see me.  Can someone tell that old guy to sit down and STFU? At last I am getting something close to the recognition I so richly deserved from the beginning and tried so hard to achieve.”

The faces say it all.

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When the status quo is not an option, Newfoundland and Labrador version

A year before the next provincial election and Premier Danny Williams shifted around a couple of bodies in his cabinet.

What is telling about this event is not so much what happened but what the Premier said about it. Aside from the platitudes about the three people who got new jobs, the Premier said the shuffle came as a result of the death of one of his ministers. That’s no doubt quite literally true, but the clear implication is that if Diane Whelan had not contracted cancer last year and, sadly, passed away a few days ago, he’d have left everything exactly as it is.

No change. 

No shuffling. 

No new direction.

Just more of the same.

Take that as confirmation that,as Bond Papers has noted before, we are in a strange pre-election period coupled with a pre-leadership spell. Ordinarily a party and a leader headed for his third term would already be looking at bringing in a new crop of faces around the cabinet table, working out some new ideas and, generally, laying the foundation for the future. Think of it as a sort of political version of Mike Holmes meets Sarah Richardson.

Successful political parties tend to re-invent themselves over time. In Alberta or in Ottawa, the more successful political parties have tended to shift as the public mood has shifted.  Different political challenges require different political styles.  The public likes change periodically,.  They get tired of the same crap over and over. The people themselves tend to wear out. There are a bunch of reasons  for it, but change is important if parties want to stay in power and actually do something while they are at it.

The alternative is that they get punted and the public sticks in another bunch. With the exception of Joe Smallwood, post-Confederation’s successful elected Premiers have tended to stay in office for 10 years or less.  Frank Mores left after seven years in office.  Ditto Clyde Wells.  Brian Peckford went for a decade but, realistically he was worn out after 1985 or 1986.

If the Tories had run a leadership campaign in 1986, they might well have carried on running the province forever.  But for some inexplicable reason, Peckford hung around growing increasingly paranoid or grandiose or whatever that was.  By the time he finally handed off, the party was so split up internally they settled on Tom Rideout.

In 1989, the Tories ran a crop of worn out faces who tried to pretend they represented change. Voters responded accordingly. In St. John’s, the Liberals scored historic victories in the 1989 election. Not post-Confederation historic, but historic electoral success since 1833 kinda stuff.

Failure to change is basically the story behind the Liberal defeat in 2003 as well.  One old Liberal political hand said publicly at the 2001 leadership convention that the party would have to change – to reinvigorate itself – or the voters would change for them.  He was right.

There is still time for the Reform-based Conservative Party currently running the province.  Nothing says the Old Man won’t shuffle his cabinet in the spring.  After all, there are a bunch of cabinet and caucus members looking at hanging up their skates next fall. Spring could still be a good time to put a lick of paint on the old house.  The scouts might have picked up a few local stars at the municipalities convention in St. John’s last week.  We won’t know for sure until happens.

But the trend and the attitudes suggest that what you are seeing today is what you will get to vote for next fall.  Any change will come after 2011.

The only problem is that the province needs some new ideas right now. 

The big news on Wednesday was an announcement by business minister Ross Wiseman that the provincial government will now aim cash handouts specifically to airplane operators.  Now this practice of offering cash hand-outs to businesses has a very long and sorry history in Newfoundland and Labrador. That history  - well known to anyone over the age of 30 in the province - and their own sorry-assed experience  - known to anyone who can read - hasn’t stopped the Reform-based Conservative Party led by Danny Williams from keeping up the practice.

From tossing public cash at any hare-brained scheme imaginable to unsustainable public spending to constantly looking for federal hand-outs, the current administration is an homage to every idea that never worked for this province.

The status quo is not a viable option for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

But the news from the provincial government today, on any front, is that we are doomed to more of the same.

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Pudding is for afters

Those known to purr sweet nothings about the Old Man's rear have a new claim.

A book ostensibly about the Old Man's 2004-05 feud with the federal government for more transfer payments is - as voice of the cabinet minister claimed this morning - the fifth best selling book in the country. You can find the claim in other places, no doubt, but the Great Government Oracle of the Valley spouted that one this morning.

Curiously enough, this book does not appear at all on the Canadian best seller list printed by the Globe on Wednesday, October 13.

The Number Five book on the Globe and Mail's own soft-cover best seller list for non-fiction is a book titled A heartbreaking work of staggering genius.  While the title may fit with Bill Rowe's own view of his latest magnum opus, this is not the book in question.

For some bizarre reason, a memoir by the original provincial ambassador to Hy's is listed on the Globe's hardcover non-fiction page.

The book has a soft cover.

Oh well.

Significant chunks of the book are fiction as well but that didn't stop them from listing it there either.

In any event, the book that was six months in the living and five years in the writing is listed with titles that seem oddly appropriate:

• Shit my Dad says is Number 6.
• Even silence has an end is Number 4.
• Assholes finish first is Number 3.

A book might be known, one thinks, by the company it keeps.

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Pudding proved

The proof of any pudding is in the eating, so they say, and in the case of Danny "Puddy" Williams, it seems we are talking blood pudding.

Not a week ago did these words of glorious praise for the Premier appear in a national newspaper, courtesy of  Tim Powers:

What often goes unreported about Williams is his decency. 

Then on Wednesday, the Premier decided to offer his views on a local mayor who did nothing other than speak his mind about an issue or two of concern for his town [via the Telegram]:

He called the Marystown mayor “ignorant,” said the comments were “asinine,” and said Synard “doesn’t count.”

Pudding proved.

Doses of humanity, indeed, Tim.

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Campaign Sign

A media advisory on the official opening of a basketball court.

Seriously.

If ever there was proof the provincial government has quotas of happy news each department must meet, let one look no further than a media advisory heralding the official opening of the first outdoor basketball court in the Town of Conception Bay South.

As further proof of the undeclared leadership war in the province’s ruling Reform-based Conservative Party, note that it took not only two cabinet ministers to announce this monumental achievement, but one of them is undeclared leadership candidate Darin King.

Next thing you know King will be turning up at a conference of the province’s mayors and councilors to discuss municipal issues.

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Air Canada, the Maple Leafs and sucking

Air Canada sucks.

The Toronto Maple Leafs also suck.

Both suck for the same, basic reason.

They have fanatics who will suffer any indignity, pay any price, endure any privation and bear any humiliation to support them.

One could find evidence of this on the morning after Thanksgiving at St. John’s International Airport. A line up of Air Canada fans  - most of whom had used the online or kiosk check-in system – stood silently in a queue for upwards of an hour in order to check their bags for one of four flights leaving Capital City at ungodly hours bound for destinations on the mainland.

This is proof - in an instant -  of both the stunnedness of the economist's “Rational Actor” model of economic behaviour and proof that the markets work. You see, Air Canada continues to suck because people continue to fly with them despite the inconvenience, cost, indignity, humiliation, privation and apparent indifference of the airline to its customers. 

The airline bosses know the cattle will still line up.

No matter what.

So where is the incentive to change?

Ditto the Maple Leafs. 

Compare the Leafs to the Canadiens.  If the Habs lose three games in a row, the stands look like a Quebec provincial Conservative Party conference.  The team then has to change or face some pretty serious financial consequences.  Bums in seats pay the bills.  Empty seats cause problems.

Politics is a bit like that as well.  In Ottawa, where the three mainstream parties each continue to suck in their own unique way, the voters have rewarded their collective  - and continuing - suckiness with a political pox on all the houses. The parties are each struggling to find the magic solution that will put more votes in their column.  Votes are the key to electoral success and when voters are stingy with their love, the parties have to come courting.

Meanwhile in St. John’s voters prove that politics within the province is pretty much down to perceived popularity.

Tim Powers proves the point in spades the day after Thanksgiving with a little homage to the fellow who created the state-owned energy company that Tim’s been know to lobby for in Ottawa.

Danny Williams is amazing, as we are supposed to believe, because he has decided, in all his magnificence, not to kick the living political shit out of a woman who – as we speak – is battling breast cancer.  “Doses of humanity can pay real political dividends…”.

That’s the sort of sentence that should make the blood run cold. Few politicians could be quite so brazen as to make political hay out of someone else’s personal tragedy.  Fewer still could make such a point so crassly by putting the political ahead of the human:  the rest of that sentence reads “never mind that it [ – humanity – ] is the right thing to do.”

Never mind, indeed.

Tim, it seems, is made of sterner stuff than the rest of us. Either that or he is waging a campaign to have politicos replace lawyers in the old joke about barristers and lab rats.

Powers does note, rightly, that Yvonne Jones wished the Premier well when the Old Man scurried off last winter to get his heart fixed up by an American surgeon.  Tim  does not mention, though, that no one wrote a column or a blog on how wonderful Yvonne was for not kicking Danny in the balls. 

And that’s really the difference in the two situations and the difference between Danny Williams and his Reform-based Conservative Party and all other parties.

Tim likes Danny Williams and his Reform-based Conservative Party just as he likes the Ottawa version of the Reform-based Conservative Party.  Both are characterised by an over-weaning emphasis on central control and secrecy.

Unlike Danny Williams, Stephen Harper lacks a gang of ruthless fans who will go anywhere and say anything to perpetuate the illusion surrounding their guy.  From Open Line shows to Policy Options to the Globe – the Newfoundland nationalist’s newspaper of record – they are there to keep the myth alive. When it comes to polishing their own guy’s knob or pettiness and viciousness in attacking enemies, Stephen Harper and any of his communications directors are toddlers compared to Williams and his fanboys. 

Air Canada, the Maple Leafs and Danny Williams are successful business ventures, each in different fields.

The reasons for their success are not necessarily what is advertised.

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When the rubber meets the paper mill

The provincial government ships used car and truck tires to Quebec where they are burned.

Operators at the province’s last remaining paper mill is considering using tires as a source of fuel in its operations.

Here are two points to consider right off the top, taken from the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s web page on tire-derived fuels.

First of all, burning isn’t the optimum. It’s the fourth use of out a list of five:

EPA supports the highest and best practical use of scrap tires in accordance with the waste management hierarchy, in order of preference: reduce, reuse, recycle, waste-to-energy, and disposal in an appropriate facility.

Second of all, paper mills require tires that have a large amount of processing before they are used as fuel:

The main problem in using TDF in the paper industry is the need to use de-wired tires. The wires often clog the feed systems. Also, the mills sometimes sell the resulting ash to farmers who require the ash to be free of iron. De-wired TDF can cost up to 50 % more than regular TDF.

Let the discussion being.

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The weight of office

Any political office can take its toll on a person but the job of Premier is in another league.  Take a look at most elected Premiers of Newfoundland and Labrador and the guy who left the office looks a damn-sight older than the fellow who walked in the door a decade or so earlier.

Danny Williams is no exception, but in some respects the wear of office is quite striking.  Someone pointed this out to your humble e-scribbler the other day with reference to a 2004 clip of Rick Mercer and Danny Williams from 2004.

Slim, lively and young-looking even allowing he was – at the time – the oldest person ever elected Premier.  That still doesn’t do Danny justice, by the way.  Take a look at the clip and realise it was only six and a half years ago.

Then take a look at a clip of the Premier from last week.

Puffier, heavier-set and very much a man looking his age. This is one of the better recent clips and stills, incidentally.

Now the Old Man doesn’t look like he’s on death’s door or anything even close to it.

But the contrast with the vibrant, young-looking man who took the world by storm in 2004 can’t be any more stark.

The job takes its toll.

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What’s happening?!!!

Well, in the world of provincial fisheries not much of any value to people in the fishing industry.

In July, the provincial government announced it would start spending cash duplicating scientific research on some fish stocks that was already being done elsewhere. “Study” is what some government’s do when they lack the political mojo to do something concrete. Nothing screams impotence like the July fish science announcement.

Somewhere along the line, the provincial fisheries department hired Fred Stubbs to handle media in the department.

Hence Friday’s announcement of an announcement previously announced.

And they will be studying a fish stock which is – in case someone missed the announcement in 1992 – under a fishing moratorium.

Odd they missed that little tidbit of information. 

It was in all the papers.

Anyway, there are two bits of actually useful information in this vacuous POS from the fish department:

First, we now have a date when the Irish will send us their boat.

Second, we also know of yet another junket to Ireland that produced nothing other than expenses that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will have to cover.

There is a third thing, but that isn’t really in the release.  It’s what’s not in the release. The provincial government is going to spend bags of taxpayer cash to study cod, a species that is commercially extinct and that could easily become biologically extinct as well if we aren’t careful.

What isn’t in the release is a mention of species that people in this province depend on to earn a living and about which the scientific and commercial fishing community know relatively little.

Crab.

Shrimp.

Stuff like that.

If we are going to spend public money, surely we should be spending it to gather information we don’t have on fish stocks that are commercially important.

Hiring out-of-work Irish crews to study cod seems like a monumental waste of time.  Well a waste of time unless you want to distract attention away from the government’s complete impotence when it comes to fisheries issues that matter.

Someone check Clyde Jackman’s luggage and make sure he didn’t lose the memorandum of understanding file in some Galway motel.

That’s the last thing fishermen need.

Okay.

The last thing they need other than a $14 million study of northern cod.

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Edit:  removed question mark not needed.

Information expropriation: Premier threatens industrial inquiry over Voisey’s strike

Premier Danny Williams is warning both parties in the 14 month old strike at Voisey’s Bay that his administration will appoint and industrial inquiry commission under the province’s labour laws to settle the dispute if the parties can’t find agreement within 14 days.

Under the Labour Relations Act, the province’s labour minister may appoint a commission of as few as one person to inquire into a dispute under terms of reference set by the minister.

Some news reports refer to the purpose of the inquiry to "maintain and secure industrial peace." 

That’s not really the strength of the inquiry approach in this case.

The commission will operates with the powers of a conciliation board under the same act.  That’s an important step in the collective bargaining process the provincial government skipped in its sudden desire to intervene in the lengthy strike.

The real value of an inquiry for the provincial government  - as opposed to a simple conciliation board – is that the government alone controls not only the outcome but when and how the results of the inquiry investigations will go to the public.

Think of it as information expropriation and the threat is clear enough in the Premier’s comments:

“Why aren't they settling? Does the company have some reason it doesn't want to settle? Why did it settle in Sudbury and not settle in Newfoundland and Labrador?…

"If the union is getting some of the wage demands that it wants but not getting everything that it wants, is there some reason why the union is not settling? Is it personalities?"

With a conciliation board, the parties would settle the strike with the help of a government panel.  With an inquiry, there is the threat that one side or the other or maybe both will have their private information tossed into the public bear-pit. The government may not make the information public, though. They may just sit on it and use what they learn about the profitability of the company operation for their own purposes.

It’s not like they haven’t tried that sort of thing before with other companies. Anyone ever hear of the data room application?

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Traffic Drivers, October 4 - 8

1. Municipal affairs minister passes away after lengthy illness
2. A leaf from Harper’s political playbook, by J. Layton
3. Breasts:  they’re not just for gawking at
4. French fried over oil
5. Court docket now online
6. Jane Taber – Twit
7. Mystery company looking to buy AB fishing camp
8. Bell 206 crash – photo interpretation
9. Lowering the boom
10. Minister in hospital, “seriously ill” and No greater shame…third anniversary (tie)

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AB fishing camp mystery solved

As it turns out, the numbered company registered in Alberta that is buying a fishing camp in Labrador from AbitibiBowater for $1.4 million is connected to Chris Verbiski, one of the co-discoverers of the massive nickel and copper find at Voisey’s Bay.

1512513 Alberta Ltd. lists its business address at the same downtown St. John’s office suite occupied by Verbiski’s Coordinates Capital Corporation. The office outside the province in the corporate register (above) is for a Calgary law firm.

A 2009 news release on Verbiski’s appointment to the board of International Royalty describes Coordinates Capital as a “private natural resource investment firm.”  The entry in the Newfoundland Labrador companies register lists Verbiski as the only director. 

The companies registry in Newfoundland and Labrador lists the same address for the numbered Alberta company and Coordinates Capital but gives a different contact name for the numbered company.

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Public too stupid to understand

Apparently, deputy premier and natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale believes firmly in the public’s right not to know what she’s up to.

She told an audience in Grand Falls-Windsor that “[i]t is probably wiser not to share information because people don ‘t understand the analysis that has to go into it once a proposal comes up, you have an obligation to do an analysis on it.”

Dunderdale was referring to the problems that resulted when the people of the province learned she and her cabinet colleagues were entertaining a proposal from a bankrupt company to take over the Grand Falls paper mill the provincial government mistakenly expropriated in 2008.

The province doesn’t want to comment any more on who the proponents may be, said the minister, given what happened with the Lott Paper incident where that news was revealed in the media.

“Once bitten, twice shy,” she said. “It underlines why you can’t share information, even though people ask the questions and they want to know.

In late June, Dunderdale told reporters that Lott, a German paper company, was interested in taking over the mill. What she didn’t tell the public – and apparently didn’t know – is that the company filed for bankruptcy protection in a German court.  Bond Papers posted that information two days after Dunderdale’s comment to reporters.

Confronted with the new information, Dunderdale’s department stuck to the original story and added that she was still waiting on a proposal from the bankrupt company.

Talks broke down however, with the company accusing the provincial government of overtly politicising their business proposal.

At that point, Dunderdale changed her story.  The proposal would have come from another, related company and not the one she had named. As it turned out, the proposal also wasn’t about making paper. And even though the provincial cabinet apparently wouldn’t entertain cash subsidies, Dunderdale and her cabinet colleagues were entertaining a proposal that reportedly included a request for more than $50 million in provincial cash.

Dunderdale also told her audience in Grand Falls-Windsor that she would be asking the nine companies that had expressed an interest in central Newfoundland wood to resubmit proposals.  None of them measured up the first time.

The most common proposal Dunderdale mentions is one to turn top quality trees into wood pellets.  While Dunderdale seems to downplay pellets because they don’t produce enough jobs, the reality is she is still thinking about pellets.  Everywhere else, pellets are what you make out of the sawdust and scraps from other high-quality wood product manufacturing.

But for all that, Dunderdale apparently thinks the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are too stupid to understand what she’s doing. Maybe what Dunderdale is really afraid of is that they understand all too well and that the only way she’ll survive any longer is if she keeps them in the dark.

Of course what else would one expect in an administration where the Old Man refuses to deliver his own campaign commitment to protect whistleblowers.

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Mystery company looking to buy AB fishing camp

A numbered mineral exploration company registered in Alberta but headquartered in Newfoundland and Labrador is looking to buy a fishing camp owned by AbitibiBowater.

Hunt River Lodge, located about 40 miles north of Hopedale, is listed by Sotheby’s International Realty at an estimated value of $3.5 million.  The mystery company is reportedly paying $1.4 million plus applicable taxes for the property.  AbitibiBowater must get the courts permission to sell the asset.

The main lodge plus two smaller outlying camps are on land leased from the provincial government for $500 annually.  The provincial government did not include the camp in the 2008 seizure of AbitibiBowater assets in the province.

The provincial government did, however, mistakenly expropriate the mill itself and all the associated environmental clean-up costs.

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Lowering the boom

Supposedly, there’s a baby boom in the province:

After years in decline, Newfoundland and Labrador’s birth rate has been steadily increasing in recent years — and the trend is expected to continue this year.

There isn’t really.

A steady increase or a boom.

And it isn’t clear from the Telegram front page story who expects the trend to continue.

First, the numbers.

In 2008, the number of live births in the province jumped by 300 to 4,905.  In 2009,  the number went up again by 35.  That’s not a steady increase.  It’s a big jump and then a tiny increase that is actually less than 10% of the total number of live births. Put another way, that’s almost a seven percent increase the first year and a point  seven percent increase – 0.7% (less than one percent)  - the next year.

This is not a trend. 

It’s curious but it isn’t a trend.

As for what will happen in 2010, look at it this way:  In 2008 and 2009, there were on average about 410 live births each month in the province, give or take.  If the same birth rate carried on into 2010, we’d expect to see about 3900 live births by  the middle of September (410 times 9.5)  As the Telegram notes, we’ve only reached 3300 or so by that time in 2010.

So unless people were making like bunnies nine or 10 months ago or there are a crop of twins and trips out there no one really has talked up, the provincial birth rate seems to be on track to come in well below the 2008 and 2009 figure. That’s even allowing that October is one of the big baby months according to some analysis. In fact, if the current trend holds, the birth rate might well be back to where it was in 2007:  around 4500 live births.

As for the Telly claim that someone expects the growth trend to continue, there’s no one quoted in the article who actually says that.  The Telly article includes a reference to a 2009 news release by the provincial centre for health information, but your humble e-scribbler had a few choice words about that piece and its dubious commentary when it came out.

The article also makes an obligatory mention of the provincial government’s breeding incentive program. That’s the one Danny Williams announced during the 2007 campaign with the infamous quote “we can’t be a dying race”, but that’s another story.

Basically, there’s a cash bounty of $1,000 for every live birth or adoption in the province. Aside from the fact these sorts of programs don’t usually work, this one isn’t likely the cause for the spike in births since it doesn’t really change what the provincial government’s own statistics agency identified as long term trends affecting the population:

The number of births has been trending downward for four decades because of declining fertility rates and, more recently, a decline in the number of women of child-bearing age.

A grand for successful copulation doesn’t really get at the core problem fewer people at the right age to have children wanting fewer children than previous generations.

Most likely, the two year increase in live birth rates came from the increase in migration that started in 2007.  All those young people who moved home to escape the recession may well have decided to carry on with their lives and have babies.  Since out-migration seems to have picked up again, it would only make sense that the birth rate is down, as the Telegram’s statistics suggest.

The real stunning figures from the Telegram article though – and in some respects the real story – are in the print edition but not in the online version.  In print, the Telly gave registered births in selected communities in 2009 and from January to September 2010.  Labrador City, with about 8,000 people there and in neighbouring Wabush saw only 88 births registered in 2009.  Bonavista had none in 2009 and has had two so far in 2010. Corner Brook (2006 population = 20,083) saw 650 births in 2009. meanwhile, St. John’s and its 100,000 or so residents registered 2629 births in 2009.  For those keeping track that was 53% of the total number of live births in the province that year.

Outside the St. John’s census metropolitan region, large swaths of Newfoundland and Labrador are basically devoid of people under 50 years of age.  Once bustling communities are collections of retirement homes. And in places like Grand falls-Windsor or Deer Lake, the local construction “boom” is pretty well all from retirees returning to the province from outside or people from smaller communities along the coast heading into the major centres.

What the demographic trends mean for the province is way more interesting than a minor – and temporary – shift in the birth rate.  It’s also a subject the local crop of politicians, from the Old Man on down, quite clearly don’t have a sweet clue what to do about.

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French fried over oil

Via nottawa, a link to a story by Canadian Press that so far has eluded local news media.

Seems Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois is a wee bit fried that, as the PQ members of the legislature claim, Newfoundland will be stealing Quebec oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They attribute this to Premier Jean Charest’s supposed federalist-induced impotence.

The Quebec government imposed a moratorium on exploration in the Gulf.  Meanwhile, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board approved this week plans to explore the part of the Old Harry field that is within the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore area.

Also via nottawa, you can find a few choice excerpts from the PQ questions in the Quebec National Assembly.  Like take this bit from Pauline Marois:

Il me semble que, si le premier ministre est vraiment sérieux, cultiver l'économie du Québec, appuyer l'économie du Québec, la première chose à faire, c'est, à tout le moins, de faire respecter nos droits, de nous défendre à Ottawa. On est en train de laisser Terre-Neuve piller nos ressources, voler notre pétrole, M. le Président...

Basically she says that if Charest were serious about developing the Quebec economy, he’d be protecting the province’s interests in Ottawa.  Instead, he is “letting Newfoundland pillage our resources, [and] steal our oil…”.

or this bit:

Mr. Speaker, the Premier of Quebec,offers us a pretty sad spectacle. He is absolutely incapable of responding to my questions and above all responding to the people of Quebec, who are very upset by the fact that this government does not defend us while Newfoundland is in the process of exploiting and exploring in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We're going to assume the risks, and Newfoundland the benefits…

For his part, Charest noted – among other things -  that Marois called for a moratorium in August and now attacks the idea.  The whole exchange makes for some very interesting reading.

- srbp -

Only Chips With My Fish Update:  In a post at labradore, you can find a comparison of the oddly similar rhetoric used by the Old Man hisself earlier this year and the Parti Quebecois energy critic in the National Assembly.  Apparently both were concerned with betrayal and taking sides.

No greater shame…third anniversary

In honour of the third anniversary of Danny Williams’ promise to bring a whistleblower protection bill before the House of Assembly in the spring of 2008, here are a few relevant links.

1.  The draft public interest disclosure law offered by Bond Papers to assist the Premier in keeping his promise.

Yes, you read that correctly: a complete piece of legislation ready for someone to lay before the legislature.  Could be government.  Could be the opposition. 

There are three parties in the legislature and either of them could introduce the bill.  Of course, if the government doesn’t want it, they will work to defeat it or stall the bill.  But since it is their promise that remains unkept three years later, any action to further delay the bill would only add ignominy on top of shame.

In any event, there’s the bill if anyone in the House of Assembly is genuinely interested in protecting public interest disclosure. So far all the people of Newfoundland and Labrador have heard from the three parties is blather.

2.  From May 2009, a post that picks up on some comments by the Premier with the conclusion that the Premier is evidently scared to death of a whistleblower protection law.  Frankly there’s no other reason for his failure to keep his own promise.

He’s obviously scared.

3.  From June 2009, here’s another post in which the Premier resorts to complete bullshit to deflect from his fear.

Well, fear or maybe he was just playing politics, like he did with a completely unfounded accusation he, himself, made in 2002.

4.  And just for good measure, in a province with one of the highest levels of unionisation in North America, not to mention the highest level of public sector employment in North America, a reminder that the province’s largest public sector union talks a lot about about protecting public interest disclosure but just can’t deliver.

Come to think of it,  there might be a shame that is at least equal to the unkept promise. Carol, Yvonne and Lorraine can collect their prize alongside the promise unkeeper himself.

- srbp -

Breasts: they’re not just for gawking at

This is important.

66 at 6 in 2: We need to get 66% of new mothers still breastfeeding their newborns at six months and we need to do that within two years of making the commitment.

And if you want to know how far the province has come since 2006, let’s just say that the numbers today likely aren’t remarkably better than they were back then.

If we wait for politicians, nothing will ever get done.

October 1-7 is Breastfeeding Awareness Week.

Don’t just stand there staring.

Lead by example in your own little corner of the universe.

66 at 6 in 2.

- srbp -

A leaf from Harper’s political playbook, by J. Layton

Jack Layton and the New Democratic Party want the federal government to drop the goods and services tax on home heating costs.

Layton had a wonderful story to go with his call, as recounted by Aaron Wherry at macleans.ca:

“Mr. Speaker, Frank Rainville is a senior in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario who told me about how his bills for basic utilities have gone up by $20 a month just this past month because of the government’s HST,” the NDP’s Jack Layton reported a short time later. “He asked me how he could cope with heating bills when he has to turn the thermostat on because it is cold up there. The fact is heating bills are going up all across the country and working families are struggling right now. Will the Prime Minister show some leadership, join with us and work to take the federal sales tax off home heating fuel now?”

Yes, folks, Jack Layton and his fellow new Democrats are standing up for the working poor, people and fixed incomes and all sorts of downtrodden, hard-done-by people. Well, at least that’s what the die-hard Dippers out there will tell you.

But just think about it for a second. Mr. Rainville is going to have to cough up an extra $20 a month for heating thanks to what Layton has taken to calling the Harper Sales tax.  Rainville’s on a fixed income and that 20 bucks will come in handy.  Even though Layton’s little HST cut is aimed primarily at voters in Ontario and British Columbia where the HST is very unpopular, there are plenty of Mr. Rainvilles throughout Newfoundland and Labrador and the same cut to the heating costs will help them out, too.

Yay, Jack.

Well, not so fast.

These sorts of blanket tax cuts – the stock in trade of conservatives  - have the wonderful effect of cutting costs and they have the even more wonderful effect – from a Connie perspective of helping rich people proportionately more than people like Mr. Rainville. In St. John’s someone in public housing will get a break, but the person down in King William Estates or one of the other swankier neighbourhoods springing up in St. John’s East will just love the cut on heating oil or electricity that it takes to make their blimp hangers all the more cozy in the cold January night.

If Jack Layton really wanted to help people on fixed incomes, he’d go for something other than a blanket tax cut. Layton and his crew would offer rebates or  - better still - tax breaks tied to income. That way the people who need the help the most could get it and those who can well afford to heat their massive homes can carry right on doing so while footing the bill for their choices.

And actually the problem is not just with giving a disproportionate big break to the wealthy – as the NDP idea would do – or carrying a huge public deficit while helping out the wealthy.  That’s all bad enough just as it is bad enough that the average Republican looking at this scheme would embrace Layton as a discipline of Karl.  

Jack Layton’s tax cut idea is also damned poor environmental policy. Canadians don’t need to be rewarding energy inefficiency or giving people the chance to consume more energy.   An across-the-board tax cut does just that.  It potentially makes the NDP vulnerable on the left from the Greens, but there seems to be a conscious effort in the NDP thinking that they should just look for more votes in places where they can fight Conservatives, like out west or in a couple of ridings in Newfoundland.  That’s pretty much in tune with the NDP position on the gun registry as well.

Now the NDP position isn’t all bad.  They do want to bring back an energy efficiency incentive program.  That’s a great idea and coupled with a targeted tax break scheme, it would be a progressive social policy.

Unfortunately, this isn’t about progressive social policy:  the New Democrats are playing politics like Stephen Harper.  This HST thing is just Connie-style retail politics.

And politically, it is a sensible  - if monumentally cynical - thing to do if you want to get elected.  Jack Harris in St. John’s East will win re-election handily with such an idea.  All the well-heeled people in his district will love his conservative policies while the people on fixed and low incomes will get a bit of cash to make them happy too.  Over in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, the same thing applies even if there aren’t as many people with giant houses there.

Basically these sorts of Conservative-looking policies might help sagging New Democrat fortunes in a place like St. John’s where, as bizarre as the idea might seem, Conservatives will vote New Democrat if they can’t vote Connie for some reason.

It might work.  Too bad for Jack Layton and the New Democrats there likely won’t be an election for some months yet.  By the time people head to the polls federally, this sort of thing will likely be long forgotten.  But in the meantime it is interesting to see just exactly how much influence Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party have had on Canadian politics.

- srbp -