It’s a pretty rare day when the likes of Charlene Johnson can score a major political blow but land one the provincial environment minister did on Friday, square between the eyes of the province’s New Democratic Party leader.
Seems Lorraine Michael served on an environmental panel in 1999 that approved use of a natural pond as a storage for tailings from Voisey’s Bay. Now Michael and her federal Dipper counterparts are lambasting the provincial Conservatives for doing the same thing at Vale’s smelter project in Long Harbour but made no reference to her own views of another project barely more than a decade ago.
There’s nothing like hypocrisy to damage the political cred. Johnson’s release must have sent the Dipper opposition office into a major tailspin trying to figure out how to unfrack themselves from this simple but devastating gaffe.
Then again that’s the sort of thing that happens when you do one thing and say another. Next thing you know, the New Democrats will try and erase many of the ideologically progressive ideas from the party constitution or push regressive tax reform all in an effort to appear more like Conservatives.
Oops.
Too late.
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When the threat of an industrial inquiry didn’t send the two sides scurrying back to the negotiating table, Danny Williams called the union and Vale Inco to his office on Friday in another effort to settle the 15 month old strike.
Industrial inquiries typically don’t work in labour disputes of this type that must be settled ultimately by an agreement.
Williams – who has been known to storm out of negotiations and engage in petty, vicious, personal attacks during negotiations or other disputes – claimed straight-facedly that he wanted “to try to be the voice of reason” with the two sides.
The provincial government has seen its mineral royalties plummet during the strike.
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With a chance to pose a question to the Prime Minister about troubles in search and rescue, CBC opted to ask Stephen Harper about his relationship with Danny Williams instead.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the acing Opposition leader about why his office had hired an experienced journalist - known not to swallow the Premier’s crap as if it were candy - to serve as communications director for the Opposition Office, a CBC radio host wanted to know how that might affect the Opposition’s relationship with Danny Williams.
Nice to know the Mother Corp has its news priorities in order.
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Politicians should know how to communicate their ideas simply, consistently and repeatedly. Repetition is one of the ways you can ensure a message gets through and that it sticks.
Take as a fine example of these simple axioms none better than Jimmy McMillan, candidate for governor of New York. Say what you will about McMillan’s political party, these edited clips of a recent candidate’s debate demonstrate how effect he is as a communicator.
If you listen to any other bits of the debate, you’ll quickly realise the extent to which McMillan is a fringe candidate. But when it comes to simply and effectively communicating his party’s key message, this guy is way out in front of the pack.
These clips running on the nightly news as part of a straightforward report would likely win the guy a ton of votes. If you don’t think it’s possible, just look at local politics since 2003.
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From Statistics Canada, the latest numbers of investment in non-residential building construction:
Total construction is up 22.6% from the second quarter and 17% year over year (Q3 2009 to Q3 2010). Institutional is up almost 30% year over year reflecting the government’s capital spending. Commercial is up 27% from the previous quarter but only 3% year over year.
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Another possible 2011 campaign song for the province’s reform-based Conservative Party:
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The Globe and Mail version by Kevin Milligan.
From the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s idea for income support reform as a means of promoting fundamental economic and social transformation:
The unemployment insurance system was originally intended to provide temporary income to people seeking alternative employment who had lost their regular jobs in the work force. The system was not designed to provide basic income support, or as supplemental income for short-term, seasonal jobs. The present downturn in the economy has pointed to weaknesses in this system which must be addressed and corrected.
Strategy Statement. The Province will work with the Federal Government to ensure that the inevitable changes to the current income security system are designed so that basic income support is provided to every household, and that weaknesses in the present system are corrected to encourage the economic growth that is needed to reduce dependency on income security itself.
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The Sir Robert Bond Papers is in the run-off for Best Blog in Canada and Best Political Blog in Canada as part of the annual Canadian Blog Awards.
Your humble e-scribbler is humbly asking for your support.
The second - and final - round of voting lasts until October 26. You can vote once a day until then and can always get as many of your friends to vote as possible from their computers. Vote early and vote often is not a joke in this case.
For convenience, there are links to both polls on the right hand side there. it might be tough to pull out a win in the Best Blog category but there is a shot at best Political Blog. The competition is pretty stiff in both categories but hopefully you’ll agree that, almost six years after the first post, BP is one of the best political blogs in Canada.
Thanks to all those who voted in the first round and now it’s on to the run-offs. With your continued support Bond Papers will go far.
Click the pictures to vote for Bond Papers
Best Political Blog in Canada
Anyone who wants to understand the reason why the fishery in this province remains an economic and social disaster need look no further than recent comments by the former Premier and former fisheries minister who had not one but two kicks at the portfolio.
Tom Rideout spoke to a young audience in Corner Brook the other day. As the Western Star reports it, Rideout gave only two options for the future:
One option is to let the private sector take over the industry — whereby non-profitable plants will eventually close and licences will lapse, solving the problem of over-processing capacity.
“It will be messy, but it will solve the problem,” he said.
However, as the past has shown, he said, whenever a processor closes a plant, often another group will claim they are able to do it better.
“The communities get together, their political leadership get together, they demand the licence be transferred, the new operator limps on from one crisis to another, and the communities continue to what I would call a slow march to their own death,” he said.
The second option is for government to buy out processors in geographically defined regions of the province. He said there are many employment opportunities on the Avalon Peninsula, that the plants in these areas can be be more easily closed and these areas could survive.
By his own version, Rideout served as fisheries minister in the 1980s –at a time of supposed boom – and then served in the same job about 20 years later, at a time when things were much worse. Rideout’s version of that in-between time [CBC audio link] is, to put it generously, a bit self-serving. For the moment, however, let us stick with Rideout’s version of events in the 1980s and then the later bit within the past few years.
During Tom Rideout’s tenure as fisheries minister in the 1980s, the fishery was in the early stages of a decline that led, ultimately to the 1992 cod fish collapse. The policies at both the provincial and federal level encouraged people to fish anything and everything that could be caught. The boom, as Rideout sees it, was entirely a time of artificial plenty brought about by policies that contributed significantly to the 1992 collapse. Things looked good but anyone who wanted to see could tell things were bad.
If we did not know this from other comments, as we do, we know that the fishery was in a very difficult state because Rideout tells us that in his interview with CBC. Someone else can ask why it is that Rideout at one time claims things were great when he was minister and at the same time acknowledges the arse was pretty much out of ‘er at the same time.
Suffice it to say that Rideout’s appreciation of his original tenure, therefore is superficial, at best. He apparently has no grasp of what happened in the 1980s. he has some understanding of the basic problem – too many people, too few fish – and the political dynamic that helped to create it in the 1980s when he was minister. This is the same dynamic that took hold once again in the late 1990s when another fisheries minister did what Rideout and his cabinet colleagues did in the 1980s.
That is, they operated under the assumption that the provincial government must interfere in the fishery to a degree it does not do in other sectors of the economy. You can see this in the way Rideout describes the two options, quoted above. In both, it is the provincial government that manages the fishery as it does now by controlling the issuance of licenses.
What Rideout describes as “letting the private sector take over” is, of course nothing of the sort. He is basically describing the situation that exists today. That’s how he can then describe this part of the scenario:
“The communities get together, their political leadership get together, they demand the licence be transferred, the new operator limps on from one crisis to another, and the communities continue to what I would call a slow march to their own death…”.
If the fishery were left to run as a business, there would be no licenses to transfer based on political criteria. A company could apply for a license to operate business and, so long as it met the same business regulations as all others, it would open. Licenses would be issued only on the basis of operating a business, not on the location of the plant, the type of fish or anything of the sort. These are all artificial restrictions on business that reflect the very situation in the time Rideout was first the fisheries minister that created the political morass that continues today.
As long as the plant could make money it would stay open. If it could not make money, then it would close. Period. Rideout is apparently concerned about workers. Well, undoubtedly some bright people could figure out how to deal with that just as bright people in other industries do now.
That is what would happen if the fishery were run as any other type of industry. And incidentally, the fishery department would comprise a few officials in another department of food related industry or something of the sort. A small fishery department would be nothing but a reflection that government finally got out of the Frankenstein experiment in social engineering Rideout - and a great many others - helped run.
Rideout’s second scenario is nothing more than a dolled up version of the first, but with a much greater financial burden for ordinary taxpayers in the province.
In short, whatever Tom Rideout told that young and impressionable audience in Corner Brook a couple of days ago, he showed them how persistent is the thinking that created the mess in the fishery and that continues to torture the men and women of the province today with the same blinkered thinking.
Rideout is right about one thing though, aside from his admission that like the rest of us he has made mistakes. Rideout is right that nothing of any consequence will happen as long as we are in this pre-election period. We can add to it the pre-leadership period and then right after that, the next pre-election period. That is always what happens as long as politicians of a certain type want to play God in the fishery.
Until politicians decide to get themselves out of the fishing industry altogether, the people involved in the industry are doomed to live daily in reruns of the same social slasher film.
Update: Here’s the CBC online version of Rideout’s comments.
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Related:
Only 3.8% of the St. John’s businesses that responded to a survey conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business felt that government had a good awareness of small business.
Almost 60% of respondents expressed concern about the burden of government paperwork on their business.
67.1% felt the state of business was good but only 24% expected to hire new full-time works within the next three to four months. 55.3% felt that their business would be “better” or “somewhat better” over the next 12 months.
From the CFIB news release:
There is no single best way to measure the entrepreneurship quotient of cities, so CFIB combines a range of approaches to arrive at an overall score. It may seem obvious, but the surest signs of an entrepreneurial hot spot are the presence of a high concentration of entrepreneurs and a high business start-up rate. It is also important that business owners have high levels of optimism and success in their operations. Good public policy is also critical, so we look at the presence of supportive local government tax and regulatory policies.
St. John’s placed 36th out of 100 cities studied by CFIB.
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A possible 2011 campaign song for the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party:
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The former Premier who left Danny Williams’ cabinet in a huff and under fire from the Old Man himself had a chat with some students at Memorial University’s Corner Brook campus (formerly Grenfell College),
He apparently had a few choice observations, as CBC lifted out for the morning newscast on Tuesday. For example, Rideout warned that not much will happen on the fishery - even though it needs to be done – simply because there’s an election on the way. Rideout also said something along the lines that the current - or any administration for that matter - administration shouldn’t get a sweep of the House after the next election because that wouldn’t be good for the province.
For the record, here’s a link to podcast of Tom’s interview with CBC radio’s western Morning Show Monday morning:
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/nlwcmornshow_20101018_39763.mp3
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The New Dawn agreement is dead.
Again.
The provincial government announced the land claims deal in 2008, touting it as crucial to development of the Lower Churchill. The whole thing was supposed to go to a vote in January 2009 but the Innu leadership quietly shelved those plans. Despite comments from the Innu leadership in mid-2009 that some substantive issues remained to be negotiated, the deal was still off the rails a year after it was signed.
Now Labradorian columnist Michael Johansen tells the world that the Premier recently met with the new Innu leadership and got some bad news. The premier apparently wanted to get the whole thing signed by November. According to Johansen, Grand Chief Joseph Riche explained that the deadline wouldn’t fly.
The new grand chief is Joseph Riche. He also trained in the law, like Williams, but they might not have much else in common. They don’t seem to share the same enthusiasm for damming big rivers, or for passing the New Dawn. As a consequence, Williams is learning that the issue won’t be settled one way or another before spring — and no guarantees.
So, until possibly April or May, the premier must wait, sitting in the morning twilight for his New Dawn, hoping it doesn’t all go black.
Interestingly enough, the rumour started to sputter a couple of weeks ago with talk of an impending Lower Churchill announcement in November. Those of us who’ve been following the latest saga of the Lower Churchill didn’t see anything obvious on the horizon. The environmental assessment process is bogged down with significant problems. There are no markets and no money and the provincial government itself can’t afford to backstop the $14 billion project all by its lonesome.
The Innu Nation gambit seems to fit the rumour mill scenario, but, as Johansen notes, even that angle is now gone.
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Not so very long ago a bunch of provincial politicians rushed forward to insist that the federal government ought to do more to help people in peril on the oceans offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.
Ignore for the moment that what most of them really wanted was more federal jobs in the east-end of Newfoundland.
Just notice that not a single one of those same politicians – federal or provincial – will dare step forward to endorse an idea that cropped up this past weekend in Labrador. Well, they won’t step forward as long as the scheme has to come from the provincial government’s coffers.
A fellow travelling the highway in the sparsely populated region of the province found himself in a nasty truck accident. It took police an hour and a half to make the trip by road and when they arrived, the police car didn’t include any sort of rescue equipment to help get the guy out of the twisted remains of his truck.
His idea is pretty simple:
"If they [the provincial government] had emergency services at those [highway maintenance] depots then they would have been there more quickly and they would have had the proper equipment to push my seat out of the way."
Now if someone could find a way to beg Ottawa for the money….
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When it comes to absolutely idiotic, nothing quite matches the operators of a local party bus.
No, it’s not idiotic that people apparently want to drive around St. John’s on its absolutely pathetic streets and drink alcohol in a confined space, although the thought of that never quite seemed to make sense to your humble e-scribbler. Let’s not discuss, for the moment, the fact that one of these tarted up school buses has a zip line in it.
That’s actually another issue of potential idiocy.
No, the idiocy is the claim by the operator of one of these buses that he will continue to serve alcohol or allow alcohol but will work to ensure the people on the bus are over 19 years of age. Police pulled over one of the buses recently and ticketed the driver under the Liquor Control Act.
This guy needs a brain, a lawyer or a lawyer with a brain.
This isn’t an issue of the legal drinking age in the province.
It has to do with the black and white words of the law:
80. (1) A person shall not drive or have the care or control of a motor vehicle as defined in the Highway Traffic Act, whether it is in motion or not, while there is contained in it, alcoholic liquor, except
(a) alcoholic liquor in a bottle or package that is unopened and the seal unbroken; or
(b) alcoholic liquor in a bottle or package that is packed with personal effects in baggage that is fastened closed or that is not otherwise readily available to a person in the vehicle.
(2) Where a person is convicted of an offence under subsection (1), the court may order that person to pay a minimum fine of $250 and a maximum fine of $500 or, in default, to imprisonment for a minimum term of 2 days and a maximum term of 7 days.
People have been done for drinking in a van parked by a picket line and used as a shelter during a labour dispute. You cannot have open liquor containers in a vehicle.
Period.
If the people operating party buses want people to be able to tipple in the vehicles, they’ll need to get a change in the law. promising to restrict drinking to people over the legal drinking age is foolish.
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It’s an easy and quick read, if that’s part of your criteria for literary entertainment, although there’s nothing particularly revealing about the battle over the Atlantic Accord.
Rowe did not play a major, consequential role in the Accord talks, and remained, for the most part, on the periphery.
The Telegram’s Bob Wakeham recommends Bill Rowe’s light-weight, gossipy book about his very brief tenure as the Premier’s personal representative to Hy’s.
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Related:
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Prediction: This will go viral:
Prediction: This scares the shit out of the provincial Reform-based Conservative Party in the province already campaigning hard for re-election.
Prediction: The socks will wear themselves out attacking it as viciously as they attacked CBC over Danny’s heart surgery. (That goes hand in hand with the second prediction)
(h/t labradore)
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