From Canadian Press:
HALIFAX - Halifax-based energy company Emera Inc., is declining comment on whether a deal is imminent with Newfoundland's Nalcor Energy on the proposed Lower Churchill hydroelectric project in Labrador.
…
Emera spokeswoman Sasha Irving will only say that talks are ongoing with both Newfoundland and New Brunswick on an energy link.
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Via labradore comes a copy of the 1978 ad used to push the idea of selling Lower Churchill power to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Next up: NALCOR invests in a pet rock factory.
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Danny Williams always said that building the Lower Churchill was the only thing he wanted to do before leaving politics. He took a huge step down that road in 2006 when he rejected other options in favour of the supposed go-it-alone strategy.
With no markets and no money for the project, and with setback after setback in the environmental and land claims fronts, the odds were slim he could achieve that dream.
Slim odds, that is, until this weekend. Williams told provincial Conservatives he is trying to lure Nova Scotia and Emera into a deal to build a greatly scaled down version of the project. That confirms he is trying to cut a deal so he can leave politics.
The Telegram reports that:
The agreement would develop the smaller of the two parts of the project — Muskrat Falls — first and work towards the larger part — Gull Island — later on.
If the deal comes to fruition, Lower Churchill power would travel from Labrador to the Island part of the province first, to eliminate the Holyrood generating station.
There are more than a few problems with that proposal as the Innu Nation pointed out in a recent submission to the environmental review:
On top of that, the residents of eastern Newfoundland would wind up bearing most of the costs for power they actually don’t need. There is no plan to shut down Holyrood, as NALCOR has already acknowledged publicly, so the power isn’t needed to displace the diesel generators at that plant. Still, taxpayers would left paying for it.
And even if NALCOR did shut down the Holyrood diesels, the 2008 seizure of hydro-electric assets owned by three private sector companies coupled with the shutdown of the Abitibi mill at Grand Falls meant that NALCOR has more than enough generation to meet existing and forecast demand already. They just don’t need the juice.
It gets better. Weak electricity prices coupled with the front-end loading of capital on on Muskrat Falls would likely mean power sent to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the United States could only sell at heavily discounted prices. Even Muskrat Falls power at a break even price would likely be too expensive for the markets to bear. That’s an old and fundamental problem with trying to sell Labrador power so far away from Labrador.
No problem for NALCOR, these days. Thanks to changes made to the Electrical Power Control Act in 2006, the Hydro Corporation Act, the Public Utilities Act, and government policy, NALCOR wouldn’t suffer any losses. The company can export all the discounted power it wants knowing that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will wind up paying for it.
As for a federal loan guarantee mentioned in the Telegram story, the Premier can look forward to a truly sweet deal. In 2006, federal Conservative party leader told Premier Williams that a federal Conservative government would consider joining in the project in the same fashion as Hibernia. That would mean only one thing: an equity stake. What a massive climb down that would be to go from attacking Stephen Harper as a kitten-eating alien to welcoming him in on the Williams Legacy Project.
None of that would actually matter if Williams was planning to stay in Florida permanently before the next election, though. He need only announce a memorandum of understanding with Nova Scotia and Emera to give him the excuse he’d need to go wheels up on the private jet. His successor would get the job of negotiating a deal. And if the whole thing fell apart, Williams could just point to his successor and shrug.
If Williams is close to any sort of announcement on the Lower Churchill it can only be part of a plan for him to exeunt stage right, tout de suite.
Well, that or this is just another part of Williams’ revival of the 1964 ploy conveniently timed for polling month. That could be another version of something BP noted in another post:
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.
Anyone who seriously thinks this is exactly what the Premier announced is in for a rude shock.
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Almost immediate update: Added reference to rumour about polling month from earlier post.
Talks between Vale and its Voisey’s Bay union broke down again on Saturday.
This is after Premier Danny Williams tried to be “the voice of reason” on Friday.
Will Danny expropriate?
Well, he’s undoubtedly desperate to find a foreign demon to distract attention coming into an election year. It wouldn’t be too hard for Williams to cast Vale as another foreign multi-national attempting to use local resources without properly compensating the resource owners. He could even posture as a great defender of unions.
The mine has a huge market value and – unlike Grand Falls-Windsor – the provincial government would have an easy time unloading the mill or operating it profitably as a Crown corporation. Heck, revenue from the mine could pay for the Lower Churchill.
And, also unlike the old AbitibiBowater properties, there are no stinking environmental messes to expropriate by accident. There may be environmental problems but nothing that should hold up the expropriation or even cause the province’s New Democrats to lose a wink of sleep.
Much would depend on whether or not Vale had a legal angle under NAFTA. If the company can’t find a way to sue, then stripping the company of its mine and the smelter project at Long Harbour is a pretty simple affair for a government with such a commanding presence in the House.
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“Blogging’s like sex cos: to do it well u need to do it frequently, really enjoy it and take careful note of feedback.”
Tweet by Paul Waugh, deputy political editor at the London Evening Standard, quoted in a post at Left Foot Forward.
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As the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party gathers in St. John’s for its annual rally, the editor of the province’s major daily assesses its leader in the plainest English yet used in the conventional media:
So, are you fighting for the little guy when you deliberately use your power and position to insult and belittle any opponent, or are you just another bully?
How long is this going to go on, and who else is the premier going to tag as a traitor or a nothing or a zero?
Here’s my opinion — this kind of behaviour is petty and childish and an abuse of power.
He’s more than willing to sit as judge and jury over the rights of ordinary citizens to speak their minds. Let’s hope he’s not looking for the third part of that triad.
It’s now only a matter of time before the pitchfork and torch mob take to the Internet and elsewhere to denounce this kind of penetrating insight into the obvious.
That’s not to diminish in any way Russell Wangersky’s comments. He’s right on every point of the editorial. What Wangersky said long ago became obvious to a great many people in the province.
It’s just to say that seven years in, Danny Williams can count on unquestioning support and public defences of him from all quarters in the province, including - scarily enough - some newsrooms.
Whenever their god is challenged, they’ll set fire to the heretic in a moment.
And right now, Wangersky just nailed his theses to their front door.
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Related: The video that has turned out to be a minor Internet success.
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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