The joys of monopoly

From Dan Leger at the Chronicle Herald comes a simple description of how taxpayers get shafted in any scheme of regulated monopolies:

Emera now pays an annual dividend of $1.30 per share. An investor who has held the stock since it went public has collected $14 in dividends for every share in the portfolio. In 2010, Emera shares have returned 40 per cent, including dividends and stock price appreciation. And at very little risk, because of that whole regulated monopoly thing.

The company also keeps some cash for shopping sprees. Emera owns a hydro company in Maine and is expanding in California and the sunny Caribbean, with investments in St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Barbados. And it’s doing that with profits spun off from its most lucrative market: good old monopolized Nova Scotia.

It’s beautiful when you think about it. Emera gets 95 per cent of its revenues from captive, regulated markets and most of that comes from Nova Scotia and its guaranteed return. The company uses that money to diversify into new markets and new industries, like Labrador hydro, an energy brokerage, a pipeline, wind, tidal and natural gas. And it’s all subsidized by the Nova Scotia ratepayers.

And there’s nothing requiring any of those new businesses to soften the high rates here. For shareholders, that’s sweet. For the rest of us, not so much.

Things don’t promise to get any better for Nova Scotia ratepayers if, by some chance, Danny Williams’ retirement excuse announcement turns into an actual deal.  Emera will be able to buy power for a mere $95 per megawatt hour.  Even at the end of the 35 year deal, the company would only pay $125 per megawatt hour and that’s for the very small payment up front of $1.2 billion for a line between Sydney and Port aux Basques.

Do the math.  That’s considerably below current electricity rate sin Nova Scotia, even 35 years out.  Are Nova Scotian ratepayers likely to get the full benefit of that?  Only time might tell.

Consider, by contrast, the position Newfoundland and Labrador ratepayers will face, guaranteed by Danny Williams and his successor.  They anticipate that,by the time electricity starts flowing from Muskrat Falls, rates on the island will be 40% higher than they are currently. That works out to a bit over 13 cents a kilowatt hour in St. John’s.

And that point, Muskrat Falls cuts in.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale recently estimated it will cost about 14 cents a kilowatt hour to produce power at Muskrat.  On the face of it that looks like rates in Newfoundland would  - at the very least - double from what they are in 2017.  And that would be on top of the 40% increase expected to happen in the meantime.

Nova Scotians would be getting a pretty sweet discount, by comparison, at a mere nine or nine and a half cents.

But if Dan Leger thinks that Nova Scotians have been screwed by bungling politicians and a failed energy policy, he should look across the Cabot Straits.  Newfoundlanders could teach them a few lessons after 40-odd years of politicians who wanted to be energy magnates but who wound up giving rate payers a shock.

The upside, though, is that the most recent example of lousy energy policy is just rancid enough to rouse a few people slough from their torpor and ask a few questions. When Randy Simms and the Telegram editorial board start questioning things, you know it’s got to be pretty bad.

For her part, Premier Kathy Dunderdale seems incapable of answering even the simplest of simple questions. Asked why the proposed dams at Muskrat falls would be connected to Churchill Falls, all Dunderdale would say is this:

As I said last week, Mr. Speaker, we were happy to provide members of the Opposition with a briefing when we did an announcement of this project. I have offered again, because it is a large, complex piece of work, Mr. Speaker. To offer further briefings to the Acting Leader of the Opposition and members of his party, I make that offer again, Mr. Speaker, so he understands the nuances of this deal in a very particular way. Perhaps we can have a more enlightened discussion here on the floor of the House.

Dunderdale is not famous for understanding very much of anything.  At least when Danny was around, people could have some comfort that there was someone around with a clue. Now Dunderdale is in charge. She’s Danny hand-picked successor even if she is just a caretaker until someone else takes the helm.

But the odds are that if Danny’s successor’s successor keeps pushing the Danny Legacy Option for the Lower Churchill,  Dan leger and his fellow Nova Scotians will be in a much sweeter place than anyone in Newfoundland or Labrador.

Leger is right:  political bungling in energy policy tends to leave taxpayers the poorer, but Nova Scotia isn’t the best example of that situation.

Dunderdale confirms Bond story on Fortis and Enel

As you read here on Friday, the provincial government is handing back property seized in December 2008 to Fortis and Enel.

NTV ran the story on Sunday complete with a quote from Premier Kathy Dunderdale.

Dunderdale’s comments give some credence to the idea this expropriation wasn’t about any supposed broken promises by AbitibiBowater.

Maybe it was all about a spurned bid for Abitibi shares in Star Lake.

Maybe it was something else.

Slowly but surely the whole story is emerging.

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How to win without news media – Part 2

A month or so ago, some of you may have read the post called “How to win without news media” and the story of Texas governor Rick Perry and his rather curious media relations strategy.

Undoubtedly, the smart alecks out there caught on to the real story:  Perry didn’t win without conventional news media. Perry used them as an integral part of his media strategy. Perry did media interviews.  Local news media throughout Texas  carried his news releases and other media events.  After all how could they not cover any candidate for the state’s highest elected office?

The secret to Perry’s success lay in part in how he used the media. Perry used his polling to tell him the attitude he needed to take toward conventional news media in order to strike a chord with voters across the state.

The answer was to ignore them, for the most part and kick at them every once in a while.  Most certainly, Perry never kowtowed to them or showed any sort of deference to the conventional media.  And when newspaper editors, long used to being courted, got wind of his attitude and took up their pens against him, Perry profited by their anger.

Rick Perry capitalised on a thread of animosity toward news media that runs through a swath of the North American population and cuts across a wide range of demographics like age, income and education. 

It tends to be concentrated in the Republican or Conservative bits of the population, though. Sarah Palin plays on the anti-media theme, as have a number of successful Republican politicians in the United States over the past few decades.  Palin likes to talk about the media’s negative slant or their dark and sinister side. 

Conservatives north of the 49th also use the media as a convenient prop, much like their southern cousins.  And that’s really what the media is:  a prop.

Old media hands like Bob Wakeham [audio link] can live in the past all the want. Danny Williams’ rant at the news media last November, all 12 minutes of it, was not an effort to get the heretics to conform.  Rather, Williams was just reciting another part of the catechism that binds his own followers together.  They love Danny and loathe the media and having that outside enemy helps unite them in the greater cause. 

There’s a bit more to it than that, as well.   There’s no accident that Williams singled out the CBC for his ire the other night. Aside from the visceral hatred many ideological conservatives feel toward the Ceeb, the Mother Corp is to some local Conservatives what the New York Times is to southerners:  it symbolises the smarmy, elitists who suppress the Conservatives’ truth.  And let’s not forget the big part of it for these Conservatives:  the CBC is not local.   It is the Canadian broadcaster.

There’s not a shred of reality in the anti-media belief system, of course.  The Ceeb’s been as good an outlet as any local news media for spreading the Williams’ mythology. In that respect, they are the electronic version of the newspaper supposedly run from Quebec that, in fact, tended to favour Williams and the Conservatives more often than not over the past seven years.

But for all that, some people cling to their hatred of the Ceeb so intensely that last spring they laid siege to the Corporation’s Parkway bunker last spring for something that the Ceeb reporters didn’t do.  NTV broke the story of the Premier’s heart surgery. Yet, the cultists attacked the CBC and, to a lesser extent, the Telegram.

November’s rant was by no means the first such Williams tirade against the news media.  In fact, it was a regular feature of his fund-raising speech starting in 2006. He’s launched into the same sort of tirade at other times, as well, claiming that he’d have been able to do so much more if only pesky people wouldn’t bother him;  bother him, that is with requests for information about what government is doing.

And, of course, Liberals were always a favourite source of Williams ire.  They were the ones who supposedly gave away all the province’s resources, for instance.  There’s a bit more to this whole thread, however, than just a Tory rant.  Consider, for example, the vicious rhetoric Williams employed in a June 2001 in a speech he delivered to Nova Scotia Conservatives:

The more that I see, the more nauseous and angry that I get. The way that our people and our region have been treated by one arrogant federal Liberal government after another is disgusting. The legacy that the late Prime Minister Trudeau and Jean Chrétien will leave in Atlantic Canada is one of dependence on Mother Ottawa, which has been orchestrated for political motives for the sole purpose of maintaining power. No wonder the West is alienated and Québec has threatened separation. Canadians - and Atlantic Canadians, in particular - realize the importance of dignity and self-respect while Ottawa prefers that we negotiate from a position of weakness on our hands and knees.

Yes, friends, conservatives love to use liberals – with initial capital letters or not – and the media for good measure as scapegoats.  That’s a subtext to all this by the way:  things would be better except for these identifiable groups who conservatives, like Danny Williams, can blame for stuff.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, though, scapegoating is a much more deeply ingrained part of the local political culture than one might imagine.  The most obvious one is something  called Quebec.  All Danny Williams ever had to do was say that Quebeckers were behind it and everyone accepted the idea, without questions. 

No Lower Churchill deal?  Quebec is blocking it.  Ask a question about problems with the Lower Churchill?  Get ready to be labelled a Quebec-lover, code for race traitor.

Lest you think these are peculiar examples, consider the Western Star editorial last spring after the people of the province found out that the provincial government had buggered up the AbitibiBowater expropriation rather badly.

Blame the people who did it?  Heavens, no.

It’s time they admitted their shortcomings in the process.

It’s the duty of the opposition to challenge the government on legislation it brings before the house, and make sure these kinds of potentially expensive hiccups don’t make it into law.

They were asleep at the switch in this matter — there’s now way around it.

They dozed in their seats, didn’t ask enough questions ... and let the bad legislation become the law of the land.

It should be a lesson for all concerned.

Our system works best when the tough questions are asked ... not when  government gets a free pass.

Liberals got the blame not only for the mess but for not questioning it in the beginning.

And what about the sorry state of House of Assembly, sitting for a scant eight days of a fall sitting this year?  The Star’s sister newspaper opted to highlight last week the supposedly weak opposition, the Liberal opposition who, the editorialist claims, have had a whole year to do better than make a single mistake.  And for good measure, the Telegram repeats the same foolishness the Star did, blaming the Liberals for things done by the government:

Governments and their ministers are paid by taxpayers to govern the province.

Opposition members are paid to thoughtfully and thoroughly examine the decisions of the government — not for opposition’s sake alone, but to try to help the province keep from falling into errors like accidentally expropriated paper mills and hydroelectric deals without escalator clauses. It’s a serious job with serious responsibilities.

Get some game. Earn the pay

Danny Williams’ political success came in part from his skilled use of messages that resonated with his audiences.  Blaming Liberals and the news media for everything is a case in point, but you have to add in the notion of scapegoating to truly appreciate the power of his messaging and the extent to which patterns of thought are so thoroughly accepted in some segments of the population in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Danny Williams, like Rick Perry, couldn’t win without news media.  The difference was in how each politician used them.

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Crazy Crazy Train

On the sousaphone:

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Ho, ho, ho the Traffic. December 6-10

1. Connie Leadership 2011 (Who’s running.  Who’s not.)
2. Williams’ disgraceful Christmas card (Tacky idea, badly photoshopped.  That’s right.  The shot was photoshopped!)
3. Who isn’t running in 2011?
4. All your incoherence are belong to us
5. Conservatives to give back seized hydro assets  (Yet more on the disastrous expropriation)
6. Have yourself a tacky little Christmas  (Danny’s 2009 Christmas stinker)
7. Tory support drops sharply
8. The Cable Atlantic solution  (Nalcor offers Internet and phone cable to Labradorians to win support for its plan to double or triple electricity bills by 2017)
9. The end of history
10. Another Muskrat Falls sceptic

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Conservatives to give back seized hydro assets

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner gave notice on Thursday of a bill that is part of the compensation for two companies caught in the crossfire of the Williams administration’s expropriation bill in 2008.

In giving notice of motion, Skinner only gave the title of the bill - An Act To Amend The Abitibi Consolidated Rights and Assets Act – but Bond Papers has learned that the bill will restore assets seized from Fortis and ENEL two years ago.

Last spring, then natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale said that Fortis and Enel would have their power purchase agreements restored as part of the settlement. In August, Danny Williams said the companies would receive cash compensation, a long-term power purchase agreement or some other combination of arrangements as compensation for the government’s action.  The only reason to amend the expropriation bill would be to restore to the two companies the assets the provincial government seized under the December 2008 law. 

With the assets restored, the provincial government’s energy company – Nalcor - could then also make a new long-term power purchase agreement with ENEL and Fortis to supply power to the island grid.  There’s no indication at this time whether or not Nalcor will retain any interest in the hydro-electric generation operations or simply act as a customer for the power.

There’s also no word on what other compensation the companies might be receiving from taxpayers for Williams’ blunder.

The provincial government is already paying a $60 million loan for Fortis that the company defaulted on as a result of the seizure.

In December 2008, Danny Williams’ Conservative administration introduced legislation in the House of Assembly that seized hydro-electric assets from three companies -  AbitibiBowater, Fortis and ENEL – supposedly because AbitibiBowater reneged on a 1909 commitment.

The legislation also quashed a court case Abitibi brought against the provincial government over an earlier dispute and stripped the company any right to compensation.

The expropriation bill also set the provincial cabinet as sole arbiter of any compensation to be paid. 

While the bill was met with cheering at home, it met with condemnation across the country. Bond Papers was one of the few voices in the province that questioned the bills’ purpose, its motivation and its assault on the rule of law.

AbitibiBowater sued the Government Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement.  The company reached a settlement with the federal government in August 2010.

Earlier this year, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador learned that the provincial government had accidentally expropriated  the former Abitibi paper mill at Grand Falls along with all the environmental liabilities associated with it.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, the minister responsible for natural resources at the time, learned of the massive error several months after the expropriation but failed to disclose the mistake to the public.

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The Bow Wow Parliament at work

Among the important pieces of legislation introduced in the House of Assembly for the eight days of its fall sitting, an act to amend the Real Estate Trading Act by adding the word "and" at the end of subparagraph (ii);  deleting the comma and the word "and" at the end of subparagraph (iii) and substituting a period; and deleting subparagraph (iv).

The amendment will also change section four of the Act by deleting the word "or" at the end of paragraph (d), and by adding immediately after that paragraph this clause:  “(d.1)  a person in the business of property management who arranges a lease or rental agreement; or…”.

You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

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Freedom from Information: Not exactly the news

For starters, there is no news in telling us that the provincial Conservatives are not delivering on their promised whistleblower legislation in 2010.

Thanks, CBC, for that bulletin.  Maybe we can get an update on that Lindberg guy flying the Atlantic next.

What really stands out in this bit of non-news from the provincial legislature’s extremely short fall sitting is what the mighty Ceeb tells us about Danny Williams and this bit of legislation.

Williams committed to bringing in whistleblower legislation during this term in office, but would not specify when the public might expect to see it.

There’s no question Williams promised it.

There’s also no question he promised it for the very first sitting of the legislature after the October 2007 provincial general election.

Here’s what the Telegram reported on October 7, 2007 [quoted at labradore]:

Progressive Conservative Leader Danny Williams pledged Saturday a new Tory government will implement whistleblower laws in the first session of the legislature after the Oct. 9 election.

"We'll get that on at the very earliest opportunity," Williams said in response to questions from reporters at a Carbonear shopping mall.

"The very first session of the House that we have, that's something we'll have a look at. As a matter of fact, there'd be no reason why we wouldn't get it on."

In other words, CBC’s claim is factually incorrect.

Then there’s the line that in 2009 Williams “reiterated his government's promised [sic] to create the legislation.”

That would be a huge “not exactly” on that one too.

In June 2009, Williams started inventing excuses for the lack of legislation.  He claimed that there wasn’t much experience with whistleblower laws even though the first one was enacted in the United States in 1863.  By one count, there are no fewer than 18 separate federal whistleblower protection statutes in the United States.  Then there are ones in various state jurisdictions, provinces, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere.

What the Ceeb is referring to in its story are comments Williams made in may 2009.  At that time he linked whistleblower laws to access to information legislation.  The record shows he had a chronic problem with those laws that allows people to access such secrets as his public speeches.  Williams said he was worried about people with a personal vendetta against the government.

So basically the real story is that we are now long past the third anniversary of Williams’ broken promise. Williams has skedaddled and his former caucus colleagues are left holding the bag.

CBC might not be quite that blunt, but at least they could try and report accurate information rather than things that are – quite obviously – false.

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All your incoherence are belong to us

For your amusement or amazement, here are some choice, unedited portions of a speech by Conservative member of the House of Assembly Kevin Hutchings. 

He was speaking on a resolution supporting the provincial government’s apprenticeship policies.

Apparently, looking back and forward, back and forth, for years to come next year and other temporally challenged concepts:

Mr. Speaker, as we look back and where we are today in looking forward in terms of significant growth we are seeing in a broad spectrum of industries here in this Province; whether it is the oil industry, whether it is technology and engineering, industrial and residential development, we have seen unprecedented growth. As we move forward for years to come, the predictions for next year are that the GDP for this year Province will be growing at a rate, probably the highest in the country.

What we have seen in past years, and what we are going to see in future years looks very promising. Skilled trades in terms of meeting that demand in terms of the labour market, meeting those projects that lay ahead of us is important. We have to have the foresight and do the work to make sure that we can meet those needs in the labour force, that our population, all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who we encourage that they seek a career in the skilled trades. As well, that the opportunity is there for them to access what they need to make that career in the skilled trades as we need them, as we move forward.

Mr. Speaker, just recently obviously, with the term sheet on Muskrat Falls, the Lower Churchill. We have things like Long Harbour, in the mining industry, commodity markets have come back over the past year. Good things are there happening as well.

All of that in terms of those projects and what is needed out there, that is a requirement that this government has supported the initiatives of the skilled trades and will look forward to continuing to build on what we have done to date, so we can meet all of those needs, Mr. Speaker. It includes thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity, current and what we will see in the future as well, Mr. Speaker.

…

Hmmm.

North.

To the future.

Something suggests Kevin’s idol is Sarah Palin.

Just don’t expect Shatner to be making any performance art out of this little gem.

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NB Tories and NL politics

Corporate Research Associates president Don Mills thinks that the Conservatives should break whatever promises and do whatever else it takes to get the province’s financial mess under control.

He thinks they can get away with it since it is early in their mandate.

“They shouldn't worry about their performance numbers or their voter support in the first year and a half of their mandate," Mills said.
"They should just make the decisions that need to be made, apologize for it, say it wasn't their fault, and just get it done.
"Two or three years later when things are looking much brighter they can take credit for taking tough action when it was needed to be taken.”

That’s interesting advice if for no other reason than it is exactly the opposite of what Mills’ favourite client did when ostensibly faced with the same situation.

Danny Williams never ever stopped worrying about his performance numbers of voter support.  When the numbers fell after Williams’ first six months in office, he abandoned the whole plan announced in the spring of 2004 to get the province’s finances under control.

And he never apologised for anything.

That’s not the only difference between the two provinces and CRA.  In New Brunswick, CRA’s latest news release on their quarterly poll included figures from the recent New Brunswick election.  Let’s just say that CRA’s polling is actually close to the election result.  In 2007,  Mills missed the provincial election here by a country mile.

As you scan the chart, get a load of the party support numbers on which Mills is offering his advice.  Conservative support is at 42% of respondents. 31% of respondent’s were undecided.  The Liberals and the New Democrats together didn’t add up to the UND number but that doesn’t matter.  If you look at CRA’s numbers over time in New Brunswick and you can see that it doesn’t take much to piss people off and keep them pissed off.

Ask Shawn Graham.

Just to be sure, look at CRA’s satisfaction numbers.  The New Brunswick  Conservatives are exactly where Shawn Grahams’ Liberals were before the election.  The only difference is that 33% of the population think it’s too soon to judge the Conservatives’ performance.

With Graham, they were somewhat dissatisfied.  CRA seems to misreport the question they asked on that one, incidentally.  Might be that the 33% of respondents who aren’t ready to give the Conservatives either a thumbs up or thumbs down just yet are the same crew who turned away from Graham over ideas like selling the provincial power company to Hydro-Quebec.

That could make things interesting if the Conservatives took Mills’ advice.

For a second, let’s just suppose they took Mills’ advice and voters didn’t plan a neck-tie party for the provincial government.  Frankly, if they got things under control, voters would be more likely to reward them even if it meant nice cheap electricity came from Quebec.  Mills’ advice is reasonable enough even if it isn’t based for a fraction of a second on his polling.

Nice for the New Brunswick Conservatives.

Not so nice for their cousins across the water in the former Republic of Dannystan. If nothing else, Danny Williams helped stir up anti-Quebec sentiment among the New Brunswick anglophone Conservative voters because he needed to keep open the appearance of an option of selling his very expensive Lower Churchill power to them. When Williams said on October 29, 2009 that he feared being stranded, what he apparently meant was that the last potential markets for his super-expensive juice would be gone.

It worked.

Just remember though that Danny Williams was shit-baked, to use an accurate term for it, over the prospect that not only New Brunswick but Emera would fall under the spell of the hydro seductress with the French accent.

Things appear to have changed in the year since Williams voiced his fears.  There’s a new deal on the table and with it comes the possibility of shipping that expensive Muskrat Falls power to New Brunswickers.

But if the New Brunswick government decided to listen to Don Mills?  Well, let’s just say if they did consider a new deal to offload New Brunswick Power to Hydro-Quebec, regional politics in 2011 could get even more interesting than they are shaping up to be already.

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Russell launches survey on Muskrat Falls proposal

Now this should cause a bit of a stir in some quarters:

Labrador M.P. Todd Russell today announced that he is conducting an opinion survey throughout Labrador, in order to gauge Labradorians’ opinion of the proposed Muskrat Falls hydro project, recently announced by the provincial government and Nalcor.

“The proposed Muskrat Falls project has been planned for decades,” Russell said. “This important Labrador resource can only be developed once. If it is to be developed at all, it has to be done right. This survey is intended to give Labradorians a collective voice before final decisions are made that will impact generations to come.”

The survey consists of twelve simple questions on various aspects of the proposed Muskrat Falls project. Survey forms have been distributed by mail to every residential address in Labrador. In certain communities, the survey forms will be distributed in bilingual Innu-aimun/English or Inuktitut/English formats.

“I appreciate that this proposed project is of great interest to people in other parts of the province and the country,” Russell said, “and I thank them for their interest.”

“As Member of Parliament for Labrador, I need a clear picture of where my constituents stand on this issue. Only those responses from people who live in Labrador, or who are eligible to vote in Labrador, will count towards the final results.”

In order to be included in the tabulation, contact information will be required. Additional demographic information may also be provided by survey respondents if they choose to do so.

Russell assured all participants in this survey that their personal information and individual responses to survey questions will be kept strictly confidential.

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You can get the survey, online, in four languages at www.toddrussell.ca.

Who isn’t running in 2011?

While lots of things can change between now and next October, here are the current members of the House of Assembly who your humble e-scribbler thinks will take the pension (if they qualify) and head for the door before the next election:

• Roland Butler
• Kathy Dunderdale
• Roger Fitzgerald
• Tom Hedderson
• John Hickey
• Clyde Jackman
• Tom Marshall
• Sheila Osborne
• Patty Pottle
• Bob Ridgley

There are a few more who have enough service to be pensionable and who have no real promise of better days ahead.  For now, though, there’s the list to work with.

Think of it this way.  When Danny took off, the Tories went from having five seats they could focus their attacks on to having about 15 seats where they could face a bit of fight to hang onto the seat.  Now that doesn’t mean all the seats likely to be vacated above are likely to change hands.  The 15 or so include seats where the Conservative incumbent is likely to seek re-election but where there is a certain level of local discontent.

Of the crew listed above, John Hickey has had his five best years to fatten up the pension and there’d be no real reason for him stick around anyway.  Future premiers might be less inclined to keep him in cabinet.  Doesn’t matter, though, since Hickey’s apparently got his sights on going federal in the next federal election.
Just think about that for a second.  If the federal election comes in the spring, we could be seeing a provincial Conservative leadership racket and all the fund-raising that entails with a federal election and all the fund-raising that entails.

Then pull John Hickey and Tom Osborne off to run as federals and you potentially have a couple of seats coming up for grabs.  Depending on the timing of the leadership and the general election, Danny’s electoral reform legacy could force the Conservatives into having by-elections at a very inconvenient time both for cash and for volunteers.

And before anyone chimes in that the two could just Beaton up and try to Tulk their seats back, there is simply the question of why would they.  Both Hickey and Osborne are pensionable. At least in Osborne’s case, there are some other members of the clan with political ambitions ready to step into the seat.

But in Hickey’s case?

The seat could be up for grabs before the next provincial election.

More than a few provincial Conservatives are hoping Jack Layton doesn’t pick an inconvenient time to keep his promise to vote against the federal Conservatives on a confidence motion.

Anyway you look at it, 2011 is going to be a fascinating year in local politics.

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The Boom Gap

The value of building permits in Newfoundland and Labrador went from $79.9 million in September to more than $188 million in October.

Great, right?

Well, yes, as long as you are in St. John’s.  That’s where the bulk if the growth came: $149.6 million to be exact.

A mere 20% of the total value of building permits in the province came outside St. John’s.  That speaks volumes about how economic development is doing outside the capital city region.

And the source of that townie growth?  “Institutional” building permits. Government spending, in other words.

Spending public money seems to be a popular economic development idea these days.  The provincial government has been pushing it since at least 2005. The local business community likes sucking the public tit.

But neither the provincial government nor the business sector seems to give a rat’s behind that this trend is very unhealthy. Very unhealthy, indeed.

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Have yourself a tacky little Christmas

So far Danny Williams’ parting finger to the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador is going over like a fart in church.

People are showering something but it isn’t the love Danny wanted.

For some reason, normal people don’t like the idea of the guy taking a war memorial and using it as the backdrop for his political Christmas cards for a job he just vacated.

And by all the signs people in the province are genuinely fracked off about it.  In this corner, the post from Monday rocketed to wind up as the top post of the past 24 hours by a two-to-one margin.  Over at CBC’s online story, the two negative-for-Danny options  - “It’s inappropriate” or “It’s disrespectful” -  are together getting about 2,000 of the 4453 votes that were cast up until about 1845 hours local time.  More people have actually chosen the supposedly neutral choice – “It doesn’t matter to me” – than have selected the Danny-loving choice.

Danny’s fanboys are more than a bit peeved that this story is out there and that people aren’t loving the Old Man as much as they are supposedly supposed to.  They are trying every line from “it’s no biggie” to blaming the media. There’s some original stuff for ya.

The poor little darlings are clearly in a lather. 

And well they should be.

Their hero, the fellow for whom they have embarrassed themselves in public for almost a decade, frigged off on them with hardly any notice. One minute he was there;  the next he was in Florida soaking up the rays.  One minute they were happily clicking away at the VOCM question of the day, the next thing the talking points are gone and  he’s buggered off  leaving them to deal with this little embarrassing piece of egotistical excess. You’d be fried too is suddenly you were the guy at his high school reunion sporting at mullet at age 50.  That’s what the fanboys are looking like these days.

But truthfully there’s really no surprise at the tacky choice for Christmas cards.

Really.

Anyone on the Premier Danny Christmas card list got at least one other Yule-turd greeting besides the one they got this year. In 2009, the card  was a piss-poorly photoshopped shot of Hisself near Churchill Falls.

Remember the big Atlantic Premier’s meeting there last fall?  Danny waging war against the evil foreigners?  Invoking the spectre of Churchill Falls?

If you didn’t know better, you might be fooled into believing this shot was taken at the same time.  Take a closer look at the shot, the lighting and the edges of the Danny-figure and you can see he was cropped and dropped. The effect winds up looking like John Wayne walking into the sunset on a Vietnamese beach at the end of The Green Berets.

The fanboys can only hope this is the least embarrassing little mess the Old Man left behind.

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Connie Leadership 2011

Here’s your scorecard for the upcoming rumble.

This should also help you cut through the noise likely to come from all sorts of sources.

A.  Who will run…

• Joan Burke – According to some accounts her crew started working the phones the Danny Danny announced. She’s also reputed to have had a war chest ready to go for a couple of years.
• Jerome Kennedy – The perceived front-runner;  officially playing coy and a wee bit reluctant but that’s just for show.  Rumour on the Hill is that he’s got cash in the bank and a bunch of loyalists salted away in short-term jobs all through the Confed Building.  Jerome!’s been working on his image a bit here and there, suggesting he’s got someone coaching him. 
• Darin King – Hoping to come up the middle between two polarising candidates with gigantic negatives.  Bland might work.

B.  Who is likely to run…

• Kevin O’Brien – Premier Fairity  - below - may be the only person who thinks he should run. Likely wants to take the shot he gave up in 2000 to let Danny take the job.
• Steve Kent  - Officially, he won’t comment until after Christmas.  Expect him to give it a run to raise his profile. Someone registered draftstevekent.ca on November 29 when Danny’s political corpse wasn’t even chilly, let alone cold.

C.  Who might run…

• Shawn Skinner – Principal Skinner is one of those guys who might take it in his head to run but who is more likely to back someone like Kennedy.  His appointment to Natural Resources suggests he’ll be responsible for smacking the Muskrat Falls thing every now and then to make it seem like the Norwegian Blue is just kipping.
• Tom Osborne – the member that works is rumoured to be eyeing a job as the federal member that works.  His name still comes up and can’t be completely discounted.

D.  Who you can count out…

• Kathy Dunderdale – Headed for retirement anyway.  She got beatoned as a thank you on her way out the door for her loyal, if uninspiring, service to the Old Man.
• Tom Marshall – Ditto on the retirement thingy.  He hedged his bets for appearances sake during a recent scrum. 
• Tim Powers – A candidate in the imagination of people in Ottawa.  If, by some bizarre turn of events Powers actually runs, he’ll likely drag up the arse end of the pack slightly ahead of Kent and O‘Brien.
• Doug Moores
• Rick Hillier – the first name that cropped up  people anxious to have the racket start.  He’s got too much else on the go.  And besides, why would he give up a national profile for that gig?
• Senator Beth Marshall – Set for life and with a steady paycheque until she turns 75.  Would you give that up?
• Senator Fabian Manning – Seen in the Avalon Mall on Monday afternoon doing some shopping but as with Beth, why would any sane person give up the sinecure?

E.  Sentimental Favourite

Right in!  Right on!  Rideout!

 

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*   Edited for typos and to clarify some sentences.

 

Catch-Update:  The mighty Ceeb cornered Darin King and got him on the record giving the standard line candidates use before they are ready to it over announce. Someone also asked Clyde Jackman and while Jackman said he’s going to take the holidays to mull over a leadership run, expect him to announce he is leaving politics.

Williams’ disgraceful Christmas cards

Danny Williams is sending out a batch of Christmas cards – presumably at taxpayers expense – identifying himself as the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador even though he quit the job last week.

What’s worse, the tasteless cards feature a shot of Williams from his good bye news conference using a war memorial in the Confederation Building lobby as a backdrop for his face.

The text inside the card reads:

"I have been so honoured to be your leader for the past seven years. Thank you for your continued support. I will miss you all and will never forget you. I wish you a very Merry Christmas, peace, happiness and good health. Danny Williams, Q.C., Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador."

Williams is shown standing in front of the display holding the province’s official copy of the Book of Remembrance for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who paid the supreme sacrifice during the First and Second World Wars. 

The book is a duplicate of one on display in the Memorial Chamber in the Peace Tower in Ottawa.
They are described officially at the Veterans Affairs Canada website:

The Newfoundland Book of Remembrance commemorates the men and women of Newfoundland who gave their lives in defence of freedom during both the First and Second World Wars – before Newfoundland became a province of Canada on April 1, 1949. Those listed are from all three branches of the military – the Navy, Air Force and Army. The book includes memorials to First World War campaigns, including Gallipoli and Beaumont-Hamel, and Second World War campaigns, including North Africa and Italy, and Northwest Europe. The Newfoundland Book of Remembrance, containing more than 2,300 names, was installed in the Memorial Chamber of Parliament in 1973, and a replica was placed in the Confederation Building in St. John's.

Since the photo appears to be from Williams’ announcement, the cards could only have been prepared after he knew he was leaving the job.

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Tory support drops sharply

Support for the province’s ruling Conservative Party dropped by about 10 percentage points in Danny Williams’ last month in office according to a poll released on Monday by the provincial government’s official pollster.

Corporate Research Associates reported that 75% of decided respondents to a survey said they would vote Conservative if an election were held tomorrow.

CRA reported that the undecided, do not know and will not vote categories amount to 31%.  In itself, that’s the largest UND reported by Corporate Research Associates in the past five years.  It’s also up dramatically from the 19 percent reported in August.

When you adjust CRA’s party support number to show as a percentage of all respondents, the Tory vote drops to 51.8% from the 61.8% reported three months earlier. The graph above gives the CRA polling results since the last provincial election, adjusted to show the responses as a percentage of all respondents.  The reddish-brown line shows the actual Conservative vote share in the last provincial election – 43% - shown as a share of eligible voters.  That’s the same basis on which CRA polls.

Don’t get overly excited by the gap between the two lines though.  It illustrates the extent to which CRA’s polling is out of whack. 

Except for a couple of odd drops or climbs (November 2008, February 2010 and August 2010), the Conservative support has been declining steadily since CRA’s first post-election poll. The drop overall has been from 67% in November 2007 to 52% three years later. There’s even a bizarro period in the middle where the party support was within fractions of a percentage point for nine months consistently.

If you accept the drops and spikes, the Tories have dropped from 67 to 52 since February 2010.

There are a few things to bear in mind when looking at CRA polling numbers.  First, it is well established that the provincial government organizes its political communications to influence the outcome of the quarterly poll.  Second, as the actual 2007 election result shows, CRA also gives poll results that are significantly different from actual election experience.  In 2007, CRA’s results show the Conservative vote to be much higher than it was on election day and radically underrepresented the “will not vote” by approximately 20 percentage points.

Even allowing for those considerations, the Tories appear to have experienced a dramatic decline in voter support in a relatively short span.  Neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats picked up the disaffected vote, apparently.

Nonetheless, this poll shows the extent to which the Conservatives were bleeding support even before Danny Williams announced his departure.  What happens in the 10 months to the next provincial election will hinge on developments over the next five to six months.

The Conservatives will pick a new leader and bring down a new budget.  They also face labour and other problems across the province.  A significant number of voters in the province look like they have decided to wait and see what happens.

Keep your eyes fixed on the February polling period.

CRA’s news release was not available on line as of 1430 hours Newfoundland Daylight Savings Time.

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The Cable Atlantic solution

They say that you can never go home again but Danny Williams’s parting gift to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador seems to be more than a massive guarantee they’ll bear an ever greater public debt than the crushing one they carry now.

The guy who made his fortune delivering Detroit television stations to townies just couldn’t resist adding some cable to the deal.

Seems that Nalcor, the government-owned energy monopoly Williams created is now promising the people of Labrador that if they go along with his plan to bring Labrador power to townies, they will get cable.

Now to truly understand just exactly what this little bait and switch deal is really all about, recall that Danny Williams once promised, in writing, that

[c]onsistent with our energy policy objectives, a Progressive Conservative government will make use of the hydroelectric potential of the Lower Churchill and any electricity that can be recalled or reclaimed from the Upper Churchill to accomplish the following priorities:

•   Promote industrial development and meet domestic energy demand in Labrador and then on the Island of Newfoundland. [Emphasis added]

But that promise went out the window right as soon as Williams got into the business of trying to build his debt-laden legacy. They’ve been offering cash for the past couple of years for people to study small hydro projects as an alternative to powering these coastal towns with diesel.

If the Old Man and his hand-picked successor get their way, power lines from Muskrat Falls will run right by communities now served by diesel generators.  Power lines will run by the towns and take that Labrador power off to St. John’s and down into Nova Scotia, but none of it will go to the people closest to the dam, if it is built.

So, as it turns out that promise about using Labrador power for Labradorians is headed for the same dustbin that holds the one about only developing the Lower Churchill with Hydro-Quebec if there was redress for the 1969 deal.  As it turned out, Williams spent five years of his seven in office trying to get HQ to take an ownership stake without redress.  Set redress to one side is the way Premier Kathy Dunderdale described it last year.

What was that some famous politician said once about greatest frauds and unkept promises?

Anyway, …

The people in different parts of Labrador are none too pleased about this idea, apparently.  You can tell because there are suddenly Internet and telephone cable lines in the mix for the Lower Churchill.  The existing lines in Goose Bay are apparently at capacity and can’t handle any more subscribers.

Only a handful of years ago, back when the Old Man’s party was cutting a deal to subsidize some private sector cable companies, the cost of adding the lines to Labrador was something they needed to study.  And at a cost of $80 million or so back in 2006, it seemed to be a bit much, apparently because the provincial government couldn’t manage to step up.  Billions in public infrastructure but no cash for a Labrador cable line.

And then in 2009, Danny Williams was mongering any scare he could find just to sling a power lines through a World Heritage site.  The cost of going around the park was about $100 million according to Williams, and that was too much since it might jeopardize granny’s heart surgery or some such foolishness. 

But now – suddenly – they can find the cash.

If…that is.

Even though fibre optic lines would be a completely separate thing from the Nalcor project, government is now talking it up.  Maybe they are counting on the gullibility of the people of the Big Land.

Maybe they should think again.

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The end of history

From the Telegram’s Saturday edition, comes a provocative idea from another opinion piece:

If Churchill Falls is the alpha and omega of provincial politics, what happens now?

How does a political culture evolve once it has reached the promised land, where have-not is no more?

Mr. Williams did not change the province’s political culture so much as he embodied it. And for the past forty years, that culture has been predicated on the politics of anticipation.

For two generations, Newfoundlanders have waited for political deliverance from the injustices of the past.

This anticipation created a political teleology so deeply ingrained that it’s hardly recognized, let alone questioned. The unspoken assumption has always been that Newfoundland and Labrador is not just a place but a time: it’s always on the cusp of going somewhere, becoming something, fighting someone.

To be a Newfoundlander is to know in your bones that the next big announcement is just around the corner, because one day the sun will surely shine.

Being Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador has meant never having to say you’re sorry, because suffering have-not status and Ottawa’s perfidy justifies doing whatever is necessary, from hauling down a national flag to slandering opponents as traitors and betrayers.

Yet if politics has meant struggle, what happens when the struggle is won?

Historian Jerry Bannister comes up with a poser.

After all, Labrador hydro-electric power is the political equivalent of paradise on Earth in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

It’s something that is always just around the next bend.

It’s the better tomorrow we have to be ready for.

So what happens now that we are supposedly at that point in history?

What’s next?

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Another Muskrat Falls sceptic

Add talk show host Randy Simms to the pile of people who now appreciate that the Lower Churchill announcement wasn’t about a deal to get the thing done.

His column in the Saturday Telegram (not online) couldn’t have been any plainer:

Premier Danny Williams did much the same thing, declaring, "Today will go down in history as the day that finally eclipses that day back in
1969 when the Upper Churchill Contract was signed."

Really?

…

I think the spectacle we saw at the term sheet signing was more
political than practical. It was done for the benefit of the home
audience.

And it only took a couple of weeks.

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