Kathy Dunderdale: The New Paternalism

Dunderdale has sought to continue key points of the Williams government, including development of the Lower Churchill megaproject, but she has already shown a different approach on labour relations.

She ordered ministers to settle a 13-month strike involving a small group of support workers on the Burin Peninsula, and later asked ministers to end a nearly two-year negotiation with physicians that concluded last week with ratification of a new pay package.

That’s the way cbc.ca/nl described Kathy Dunderdale on a story Wednesday that did everything but explain that the Conservative caucus met on Wednesday to endorse the deal that had already been cooked up in order to avoid a leadership contest.

Note that last paragraph, though.  It shows how readily conventional news media are already absorbing the new Conservative Party political narrative about the kind of leader Kathy Dunderdale will be.

It’s right in line with a comment by Conservative parliamentary assistant Steve Kent, as reported by VOCM:

Kent describes Dunderdale as a compassionate, thoughtful, and principle-centered leader.

The new premier may well be all those wonderful things but the point to notice here is that in the construction of the whole idea Dunderdale personally directed that ministers clear up not one but two embarrassing situations.  She has the positive qualities.  She personally bestowed benefits.

Incidentally, this is exactly how Dunderdale described her role at the news conference in which she announced the deal with doctors.  There’s no accident to this:  lines like that are worked out in advance and comments don’t wind up on the page in some sort of arbitrary fashion.  They are selected to convey very particular ideas.

Dunderdale’s prepared statement describes opening the lines of communication with doctors as “my first priority…”. According to Dunderdale’s prepared remarks, the two ministers directly involved in the negotiations merely played a role.

This is essentially the same construction used by Danny Williams:  he did things or directed them, especially when they were beneficially. Ministers took orders in a clearly subordinate role.

You can see the same sort of construction in the way his most ardent supporters describe Williams:  he personally bestowed pride, courage and so forth on the poor benighted people of Newfoundland (and Labrador). Take as an example this comment on a post by Nalcor lobbyist Tim Powers over at the Globe and Mail:

2:12 PM on November 27, 2010

I know we have to believe there are strong leaders out there who will step forward and continue the work of Danny Williams. Quite frankly, with the news of his departure, I felt somewhat orphaned, a sense of being left alone surrounded by those who will, again, try and rob us of what we have achieved. …

Williams is a father figure, in the classic paternalist sense.  His departure orphaned his children.

What this political line ignores, of course, is the role that Kathy Dunderdale played in the Williams administration,  She was Williams’ hand-picked Number Two and his hand-picked successor. Like Tom Rideout before her, she represented a direct link to the older Conservative Party and its supporters who predated Williams.

Had she felt strongly about the doctor’s dispute or about the Burin situation she was in a position to change the government’s position. She didn’t. She supported it consistently. Similarly, both Tom Marshall and Jerome Kennedy held ministerial portfolios that gave them both legal and political power to resolve the matters long before the government finally settled both. The truth is that cabinet changed its approach to these two issues for reasons other than the arrival of a new leader who is compassionate.

In other words, the reality of how political decisions get made is considerably more complicated.  It’s also not something politicians really want people to know about, let alone discuss.

Instead, politicians fall back on time-worn attitudes to politics that people quite readily accept without even realising what the words actually mean.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale is no change from the resurgence of paternalism in Newfoundland and Labrador politics.

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2010: The year in review

For the year-end post, you’ll have to wait until Friday to find out what the readers picked as their favourite stories of 2010.

For today, here’s another view.  Your humble e-scribbler has picked one Bond Papers post or topic from each month as a reminder of the year’s events.  I f you take the time to wander back through the archives, you’ll find all sorts of things from the UFO story that ran among last winter to a couple of posts on education.  There are also posts on the fishery that got some public attention – h/t to CBC’s Fisheries Broadcast.

So much more happened in the province than people seem to remember and the stuff they do remember is often not the most important things.

In any event, here’s the Year in Review:

January:  Spending scandal:  when “facts” aren’t true

February:  Three on one topic:  Deep Throat, Deep T’roat and Deep Throats

March:  The Fragile Economy:  staying the course

April:  Jon Lien:  mensch

May: The search for meaning challenge – yet more unfounded news media claims. 

June:  Roger Fitzgerald’s bias – the House of Assembly is at the point where partisan bias openly displayed by the Speaker is now commonplace.

July:  Calamity Kathy’s story doesn’t add up.  The local media are already praising her political genius.  Here’s another example of how short their memories are or how low are their standards.

August:  Good to the last fish

September:  The politicisation of public emergencies

October:  Breasts:  they’re not just for gawking at

November:  Reversing the entrepreneurial drive

December:  How to win without news media – Part 2

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Is Gerry Byrne completely nuts or what?

Byrne says to saddle his constituents with massive debt and increased electricity prices.

That’s not exactly how Gerry Byrne might want to say it but that is exactly what the federal politician is looking to do.

The member of parliament for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte wants the federal government to backstop Danny’s Get Outta Dodge legacy plan.  Danny wants exactly the same thing and, to be frank, that’s one of the few ways this pig of a deal will fly.

The other way is for Byrne’s constituents to pay for it with a guarantee of doubling their electricity rates – or worse – for electricity they could get more cheaply using other ideas.

Now why, in a likely election year, would a federal politician want to shaft his his constituents twice over with double their electricity rates and increasing their public debt by $4.0 billion or more?

Has he gone completely insane?

Totally bonkers?

Been spiking the eggnog with oxy?

Heavens knows, but Byrne is obviously getting very, very bad political advice from someone who clearly hasn’t thought this through and who most definitely doesn’t have Gerry’s political best interests at heart.

And rest assured, gentle readers, that whatever imp perched on Gerry’s shoulder, he certainly doesn’t give a toss for Gerry’s supporters. So how did this ludicrous thought get inside Gerry’s skull?  There’s a question begging for an answer.

Someone ought to get the miserable idea out damn quickly though before it festers any further and we ordinary mortals get screwed.

From VOCM, in case they disappear the story:

Liberal MP is encouraging the federal government to step in with support for the Muskrat Falls hydro development. Ottawa has been asked to help finance the subsea link across the Cabot Strait, as well as for a federal loan guarantee. Gerry Byrne says the latter wouldn't cost anything and says the federal government should recognize that when it comes to climate change the development of the Lower Churchill is vital. Byrne says the Lower Churchill is an absolute essential plank in the overall Canadian climate change strategy and for that reason there should be no hesitation in participating.

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The Top Stories of 2010

So it’s time for the obligatory top stories posts. 

Danny quits?  Been there, done that, shoulda printed tee shirts in 2006 when he announced it.

The big story coming out of Williams’ hasty departure is the evident panic within the Conservative Party.  Ordinary Conservatives were obviously expecting Williams to carry on.  His abrupt exit left them decidedly uneasy. For its part, the party leadership seemed to be caught flat-footed and despite initial claims there would be a leadership contest early in the New Year, someone started to work behind the scenes to engineer a deal to keep Danny Williams’ hand-picked successor in place through to 2012.

But the deal as it is currently shaping up is a stop-gap, at best.

Dunderdale was planning to retire from politics. Like Tom Marshall – another supposed successor – Dunderdale is getting toward the end of her political career.  She isn’t likely to be the one to lead the party through two general elections. So sometime between 2011 and 2015, the provincial Conservatives would be back in the leader-finding business again.

If Dunderdale packs it in before October 2014, the province will be plunged into an election thanks to Danny Williams’ Elections Act fiddling in 2004.  If she hangs on for four years, the party will still have to spend the early part of 2015 running some sort of leadership contest.

And in the meantime – the second biggest story to flow from Williams’ escape -the policy doldrums that have beset the Tory party since 2006ish will continue.  Odds will remain decidedly against the provincial government launching any significant new programs unless it involves spending bags of money, that is. There’s also no chance the provincial government will reform its fiscal policy to cope with a massive public sector gross debt.

In the worst case scenario – the third biggest potential story to come out of Williams’ departure -  the Conservatives will forge ahead with Danny Williams’ Get-Outta-Dodge legacy plan and move the province into an even more precarious financial position.  Remember when the public sector debt and  and the size of the economy were the same number?  You will.

The there’s the fourth biggest story to come out of Williams’ departure:  who will replace him.  Bottom line is that we still don’t know.  Likely we won’t know for upwards of four years.

Ready for a fifth story tied to Williams’ surprise retirement?  Hurricane Igor.  Absolutely.  A huge story that affected thousands.  Revealed some serious problems inside the province’s emergency response organization.  And let’s not forget that natural disasters seem to be tied to the political future of certain types of political leaders.

Danny Williams’ political exit may wind up being the most commonly selected top political story for 20120 in Newfoundland and Labrador.  But it’s all the other bits related to his retirement that dwarf the event itself.

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Counting your chickens

There’s something very odd about the way the provincial government and its agencies make huge announcements about not much.

Like say just before Christmas when Nalcor announced that it had signed a letter of intent with SNC-Lavalin to oversee construction of a generating plant and overland transmission lines if the Muskrat Falls deal goes ahead.

Big deal, right?

Well, maybe not. Here’s a line from the Montreal Gazette:

Leslie Quinton, SNC-Lavalin's vice-president of global communications, said: "We don't usually comment on letters-of-intent signings, but in this case we can say it's very good news for our Newfoundland office."

It will be even better news if the project goes ahead.  you see an experienced company like SNC-Lavalin usually doesn’t count its chickens before they are hatched.

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Media trends: the technical term is “suckass”

In a normal place, news media would not use this sort of commentary from a politician about his own caucus, well not unless it was to ridicule the comment and the politician who issued the statement.

Then again, they don’t call this particular media outlet voice of the cabinet minister for nothing:

Terra Nova MHA Sandy Collins says he's extremely pleased to see such a smooth transition of power after Danny Williams announced he was stepping down earlier this month. Collins says it could have been a difficult time for the party and government, but it went smoothly much to the credit of Premier Kathy Dunderdale.

Hey Gerry!

Ed Murrow called.

He said he wants his awards back.

Either that or put a disclaimer that any resemblance between this sort of shite and journalism is purely coincidental.

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For the love of three oranges…

Via the Globe and Mail, a tale of one man and his Christmas orange tradition.

Not the colour.

The fruit.

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Pop Drop 2010 continues

Newfoundland and Labrador’s population dropped again in the third quarter of 2010, according to the latest estimates from Statistics Canada.

International migration is up, but wasn’t enough to pull things into the growth category.

Could it mean that the recession is over?

Well, at least it could be over to the extent that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are feeling comfortable enough to venture off  - again - to Alberta or Ontario or wherever it is they will go to find work. The growth in population from the second quarter of 2007 onward is attributable to the North American recession.  As in previous recessions, outmigration from the province halted and more ex-pats started flowing back in as the economy slowed down.

That pattern started to change a the middle of 2009.

For those like finance minister Tom Marshall and his colleagues in the provincial cabinet - who tried to imagine this was due to the attractiveness of local economic opportunities -  these figures are bad news.  They confirm that their interpretation is wrong. If their view was correct, the population ought to be growing at a much greater rate than it has been for the past year or so.  Locals would be finding work and staying while more people would come from outside to take up the extra jobs created by a booming economy that somehow managed to escape the ravages of the worst recessions since the 1930s.

Short answer:  it didn’t.  And to go with that there are still some major economic problems in the province that the politicians aren’t talking about.  Let’s see if they start talking about them in 2011.

As a last point, as you can see from this second chart, the population of the province has dropped more often each quarter than it has grown over the past five years.  And if you were to extend that back to 2003, you’d see the downward trend continues.  In fact, the trend goes back before 2003.

So much for the government’s pronatalist policy.

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The politics of history - editorial version

The history of politics in Newfoundland and Labrador is very much the history of patronage.

The practice is accurately described in this Western Star editorial titled “Independence” (04 September 1956):

If an electorate thinks that the prime purpose of democracy in action is to provide patronage for their particular constituency and the politician gets the feeling that in order to curry votes he has to descend to the level of the electorate, then it is understandable at least why he follows the path of least resistance, expresses no disagreement whatsoever with the party in power, thereby hoping to be able to wheedle from the government patronage and public funds for his constituency where votes will reward him by returning him to office again.

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Related:  “The politics of history”

Merry Christmas and all that Traffic! – Boxing Day edition

The top stories for the week of December 20-24, 2010, as determined by the readers of Sir Robert Bond Papers.

1. Williams’ abrupt departure “shocking”: Dunderdale
2. Williams to head Rogers sports empire?
3. The horrors of democracy
4. Connie leadership 2011:  Fairity got the call, too 
5. Belinda Stronach pictorial (Sadly the macleans.ca link is dead and apparently unrecoverable)
6. Potholes and compensation
7. Delacourt and the rumour mill
8. Muskrat Falls:  Internal Contradictions 2
9. Internal contradictions:  the editorialist version
10. Of Death Eaters and Horcruxes

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A Christmas Festival – arr. Leroy Anderson

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Joy to the World!

That way it should be:  Tuba Christmas!

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Good King Wenceslas

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Once in Royal David’s City

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Gesu Bambino

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Delacourt and the political rumour mill

From Susan Delacourt at The Toronto Star comes a column taking issue with two of her colleagues at other publications who have taken, it seems, to writing about a rumour as if it were true.

Delacourt quite rightly chastises her colleagues and truthfully her metaphorical pen has an edge to it that ought to cause corporeal real wounds it is so skilfully wielded.

Journalism involves investigating tips or questions, determining their accuracy, and telling the public the facts.  The difference between Misters Spector and Cohen is that they seem to have taken a little shortcut there, or worse, done it backwards. They've reported the rumour and asked other people  to investigate. I would hope that Mr. Cohen is not teaching young would-be journalists to do the same. Apart from being supremely unfair, it's also just plain lazy.

Over the past few weeks, the local political world has been beset by all manner of story.  Your humble e-scribbler tossed up two separate ones so that readers could be aware they are out there.  Neither was presented as fact.

One of them merely added a bit of colour to what had existed as whisperings but that was quite clearly becoming fairly obvious true:  within the Conservative party someone  - alone or in concert with others – had resolved to avoid a leadership contest over the next couple of months and instead have Kathy Dunderdale carry on as leader of the party and, by default as premier, until sometime after the 2011 general election.

The other, as David Cochrane reliably tweeted, is one that he tells us all he’d checked into it a couple of weeks ago and received a denial from Danny Williams’ publicist. 

That one is important, though, not for the substance of it but for the fact that it existed in the first place. Danny Williams’ left abruptly and without apparent cause or explanation.  As a result, a great many people are wondering why Williams left as quickly as he did.  A great many of those are Conservatives who have been left very unsettled by his departure. 

And if nothing else, the rather speedy exit he made created the climate in which the party is now engineering a little story to avoid a leadership contest of any kind at least until after October 2011.  People are searching for an explanation.  The Maple Leafs’ rumour seems as good as any of the others that are flying around the entire province but which are more obviously preposterous.

In a sense, that’s the same sort of discussion Susan Delacourt offers after slapping her two colleagues.  She recounts the story of the rumour story itself.  That’s actually quite useful since by telling the whole tale, Susan has helped inoculate people against this sort of foolishness in the future. 

Nothing kills corruption like daylight.

Good on Susan for spreading a little daylight on this nasty infection.

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Krampus!

Think of him as the anti-Claus or the Counter-Nicholas.

In many parts of central Europe, Saint Nicholas may bring presents to the good boys and girls but Krampus is the one who deals with the naughty children.  Some versions have him coming around at the same time as Nicholas.  Others have him coming around a few weeks beforehand.

As you can see from this video, the tradition continues and attracts quite a large crowd as various interpretations of Krampus roam the streets.

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Connie Leadership 2011: Fairity got the call too!

Kevin O’Brien told VOCM is isn’t interested in replacing Danny Williams.

Did anyone else have him in the race except your humble e-scribbler?

Sheesh. 

No one wants to be Ernie Eves.

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Marshall wants Dunderdale for Premier

Of course he does.

The fix is already in.

“This is not the leadership you are looking for” Update:  As the Telegram reminds us all, Tom Marshall pledged to take time over Christmas to think about the leadership.  Christmas must have come and gone while no one was looking.

It’s almost as if someone called him up and told him the right decision to make.

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The horrors of democracy

From a recent Telegram editorial:

Those same Republicans are now saying these heroes, many of whom suffer from chronic respiratory diseases, must stand aside until the country’s fattest fat cats get to keep their three per cent tax holiday. 

One could hardly imagine any greater depth of moral bankruptcy.

And from the news:

The US Senate on Wednesday approved a long-awaited multi-billion-dollar health package for emergency responders to the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001.
…
The legislation was to be passed later Wednesday by the House of Representatives and sent to President Barack Obama's desk for signature. The approval by both chambers of Congress would come on the last day before lawmakers head home for a holiday recess.

Moral bankruptcy indeed.

Democracy is a messy business but as this bill demonstrates, in a healthy democracy parties can reconcile their contending points of view in a compromise that works for all.  In the end, the health care bill passed the Senate unanimously.

The Congress also passed a bill repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that discriminates against homosexuals serving in the American military. And those are just some of the measures passed as the members head off to a Christmas break.  The legislators will be back in January, incidentally, hard at work passing laws and keeping the current administration accountable to the people whose money the government spends.

All that noise  that hurt the ears of the Telegram editorial board is, in fact, an essential feature of any democracy worthy of the name.  It is, to be sure, a very necessary and very natural expression of a thriving society where people can argue about ideas,  have strong disagreements and then find a middle ground that allows everyone to move forward.

Compare to the current goings on in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The legislature sits for a handful of days a year.  When it does sit, as in the eight day wonder just completed, the members spoke about a handful of pathetic bills that did little more than change the punctuation is some straight-forward bills.  They spoke about those bills – debate is hardly the word for it -  with some of the most incoherent speeches delivered in this or any other legislature on the planet.

At the same time, the governing Conservatives are busily working to avoid having any sort of open political competition within their own party for the Premier’s job recently vacated in an unseemly haste by Danny Williams.   These denizens of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms and politicians like Jerome Kennedy and Darin King are afraid. 

They are afraid not only of debate, perhaps, but of their own inability, ultimately, to bring people together.

They seem to be genuinely distrustful of politics itself.  After all, debate and reconciliation, are core features of politics in a democratic society.

Seriously.

The problem in 2001 that Tories are pointing to was not that the Liberal leadership produced differences of opinion.  Those differences exist as a matter of course in every group of human beings. The political problem for Liberals came from the fact that Roger Grimes hard trouble bringing people together on his own team in a common cause.

The Conservative effort to deliver a leader without an open competition will do nothing except point out that the Conservatives not only lack a suitable replacement for Danny Williams, they are desperate not to risk their hold on power.  What’s more, Jerome or Darin or Kathy know that they lack the leadership skills to reconcile the factions within their own party.  Otherwise they wouldn’t stand for a back-room fix.

And in the process, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should be highly suspicious of whomever the back-rooms boys settle on to run the Conservative Party.  After all, how can the people of Newfoundland and Labrador trust them to bring people together in much larger causes than who gets to head the Tory tribe?

Politics is supposed to be adversarial and the more open the differences the easier it is for people to consider the various aspects of difficult ideas.  Consider what might have happened, for example, had the legislature done what it is supposed to do and forced the cabinet to explain and fully justify something like the Abitibi expropriation.

The job of holding government accountable is not just for the opposition. Government members have a role to play as members of the House.

Newspapers and other media also have a role to play in a healthy democracy.  Usually, the role is to question and to criticise those in power.  Yet instead of showing any enthusiasm for democracy, the Telegram editorial board is slipping into the same anti-democratic way of thinking it offered in March and April 1931.  At that time, the country supposedly needed a break from democracy and the Telegram was all in favour of it.

Simply put:  just as one could not be a democrat and support the imposition of an unelected government in 1931, one cannot support democracy and hold out the recent session of the legislature as anything other than the embarrassment that it is.
 
If, as the Telegram editorial board contends,  the most recent session of the United States Congress is a sign of moral bankruptcy and if  the House of Assembly is a repository of nobility and virtue by comparison, then let us all hope the province is very soon beset by every form of political debauchery the human mind can imagine.

There is, after all, something much more horrible than democracy.

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