Tory angst might be well founded

Conservatives across Newfoundland and Labrador seem to be in a bit of a tizzy. Danny Williams’ sudden departure has the caucus so spooked they are trying to engineer a backroom deal to avoid a leadership contest.

On some level you have to wonder why they might be so uptight.  After all, to casual observers they would appear to be guaranteed an easy victory in October’s general election with or without the Old Man.

But then you see things like an online poll at The Western Star:  “If you were a Danny Williams supporter, are you less likely to vote PC now?”

So far, 46% of respondents are saying yes, they are less likely to vote Tory. 15% say they are more likely to vote PC and the remainder  - 39% – answered “no”.

Even in the government’s own polls, Danny always ran way ahead of the party.  In the most recent government poll, though, support for the party dropped about 10 percentage points compared to a poll done three months earlier. That wasn’t good even when people thought Danny would still be around for the fall election.

Now that he’s gone, things will likely turn out very differently.  People who barely won their seats at the peak of supposed Danny-mania in 2007 might not have such an easy time of it in 2011.  They might need a boost, like say from a cabinet appointment, to try and counteract the loss of Danny Williams’ entire coat.

Stop and think about it for a second, though, and the long term trend of Danny running in front of his party’s support and the Western Star online poll are pointing in the same direction.  It would make sense that people who had voted Conservative in the recent past would now be thinking about shifting their vote.  They were Danny Tories, as it were, not committed Tories.

All that would lead explain why Conservatives in the province are a wee bit out of sorts these days. 

And if the number of soft Tory votes is actually close to the 46% the Star found, then politics over the next eight or 10 months is going to be way more interesting than anyone suspects right now.

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Layton renews call for Conservative-style tax cuts

On a visit to St. John’s Monday, federal New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton renewed his call to cut taxes from home heating:

Layton called for the federal government to cut taxes to home heating in this year’s budget, and he called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to extend a program to provide subsidies to people who make their homes more energy efficient.

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The King’s Speech

Via the BBC, a short article on King George VI and his speech impediment.

The article includes the complete audio of the King’s speech in September 1939 that forms the climax of the recent movie.

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Rick Hillier? Tim Powers? No thanks, say NL Tories

Whatever is going on in Newfoundland and Labrador these days certainly is politics but it most certainly is not democracy.

What is dizzying, to borrow Tim Powers’ word, is the pace at which the province’s Conservatives are trying to keep a back-room political plot hatched over Christmas from exploding into a catastrophe as large as Danny Williams’ polling numbers.

“Everyone should have a right to put their name on a ballot assuming they adhere to the rules,” write Tim Powers in the Globe and Mail last week.  That is certainly true but it assumes that the rules are clearly known or, to be more accurate faithfully applied by the “officials” who, after exampling Brad Cabana’s nomination documents, “decided they didn't fit the criteria set out by the party.”

Perhaps the most useful way to look at this political farce is to use not Brad Cabana as our test subject but no less a person than Tim Powers. 

You see, when Danny Williams took to his heels and fed the Confederation Building, Tim’s was one of the first names some people offered up as a potential replacement.

Some other contenders, like finance minister Tom Marshall and then-education minister Darin King said they would take the time over Christmas to talk with friends and family.  They’d come back after Christmas end let the world know what they’d decided.

By Friday, December 24, though, that had changed.  Marshall, King and presumed heir-apparent Jerome Kennedy held news conferences to say that they’d be backing Kathy Dunderdale instead. Dunderdale, you may recall, was supposed to be the interim leader and had indicated she had no interest in the job. 

Off went everyone to Christmas holidays.

Another minister dropped out and by December 30, Dunderdale wanted the job. Virtually the entire caucus, she said, backed her.

Curiously that was the same day the party announced it would accept nominations for leader until January 10. 

Now if either Tim or Rick Hiller – living in Ottawa, were still pondering their future, they certainly wouldn’t have had much time to get their papers in order.  By the time the party announced that it would accept nominations, the race was effectively over. That’s exactly the point that cabinet minister Ross Wiseman and his executive assistant made to Cabana on January 5.  Since the entire caucus and their district associations backed Dunderdale, the odds of winning were very slim.

Besides, wrote Chick Cholock, Wiseman’s executive assistant, a contested leadership would put at risk Danny Williams’ legacy. “We do not want a Party [sic] divided now that Danny has moved on,” wrote Cholock in an e-mail.”

None of the arguments Wiseman and other Conservatives have offered about Brad Cabana had anything to do with following rules or his quality has a candidate. 

They had everything to do with an apparent desire within the caucus to avoid a contested leadership fight of any kind.  In other words had Tim or Rick decided to go all-in  now that the caucus made a decision, they would almost surely have been met with exactly the same arguments that faced Cabana:

1. They wouldn’t stand a chance since all the people now determined to be party members had already decided, and
2. a leadership contest in itself created the risk of fracturing the party beyond repair.

The Conservatives could lose the October election, as Cholock suggested in an e-mail he sent Cabana before nominations closed on January 10.

Wiseman and others did slide in another interesting qualification that doesn’t appear anywhere in the Conservative Party constitution.  Cabana hadn’t lived in the province very long, Wiseman noted in a scrum he gave after Cabana revealed Cholock had visited him on January 5 to try and discourage him from running. Nor had Cabana been very active in party functions, apparently.  There are two other grounds by which both Tim Powers and Rick Hillier would be disqualified.

If you are tired of the tedium that is federal politics, there is a drama unfolding in Newfoundland and Labrador.  But  the party that Danny Williams built is hell bent on showing that what they are up to is about as far from democracy as Parliament Hill is from excitement.

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Overture: “William Tell”

Sadly, split into two bits:

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Overture from “The Barber of Seville”

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Political blarney stone gone

Danny Williams’ political backside used to be like a blarney stone on legs.

Any politician of any stripe loved to kiss Danny’s hind bits in hopes some of Williams’ magic would rub off.  

The latest sign Danny’s butt is out of visible power comes from Jack Layton.  The federal New Democrat leader now claims he can get a better indication of what is going on in the province by meeting with ordinary people.

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Iceland opportunity lost

Danny Williams’ obsession with signing something he could have called a Lower Churchill deal before he quit politics ignored a far better opportunity for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

According to documents released by Wikileaks, the Icelandic government sought American financial assistance in 2008 to deal with its crushing foreign debt situation. The government was looking for a loan of $1.0 billion with “medium term maturity”.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government had twice that much in cash at the time as the result of gigantic oil price windfalls.  It also had the capacity to borrow billions more if needed. The Icelandic loan would have guaranteed payoff from the interest rate charged.  An Icelandic bailout might also have given the provincial government influence in Iceland and the country’s energy and fishing industries.

Instead, the Williams administration pursued his obsessive desire to develop something on the Lower Churchill river that would enable him to retire from politics.

Under Williams’ retirement plan,  the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador will have to borrow almost three times the size of the Icelandic bailout and face guaranteed doubling of current electricity rates to finance a dam on the Churchill River and expensive transmission lines.

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Connie Leadership 2011: Party delays appeal hearing

According to the Telegram, the provincial Conservative Party is postponing the appeal into it’s decision on Brad Cabana’s leadership bid.

The party is postponing the hearing date from January 21 to January 24 to accommodate one member of the hearing panel who has a scheduling conflict.

The party rejected Cabana’s leadership nomination claiming that he did not have enough signatures of people the party recognises as members.  Cabana and the party both contend that the party has an open membership process.  The party contends that open membership doesn’t mean it is actually open.

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HQ signs new power deal with Vermont

Starting next year, Hydro-Quebec will ship power to Vermont under a new 26 year power purchase agreement, according to the Montreal Gazette.

The starting price for the power is US$58.07 per megawatt hour.

By contrast, and if it goes ahead, the recently announce Muskrat Falls project in Labrador will produce power in 2017 for about $143 per megawatt hour according to Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale.*

Under the new agreement, Vermont utilities will purchase up to 225 megawatts of energy, starting in November 2012 and ending in 2038.

The agreement includes a price-smoothing mechanism that will help shield Vermont customers from volatile market prices, the utilities said.

Under the proposed 824 megawatt Muskrat Falls project, the only confirmed customers are Newfoundland and Labrador  - where the power isn’t needed – and Nova Scotia where Emera will receive 35 terawatt years of power in exchange for building a $1.2 billion intertie between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

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*Edited to clarify the reference to Muskrat Falls

Connie Leadership 2011: Spooky stuff

In the middle of the 1990s, some guy  - a “prominent young St. John’s lawyer” apparently thought the Tories should have a leadership contest because the caucus was behind Len Simms:

His reasoning: Simms will win anyway so endorsing a competitive political race would be a waste of PC party funds. It came down to money for him.

Now there’s an unfailing testimony to the sterile decline in respect for the value of democracy in the PC party of Newfoundland.

That prominent St. John’s lawyer? You guessed it — Danny Williams [via The Telegram letters page last week]

As Premier, Danny Williams gave Len Simms a plum patronage job heading the province’s housing corporation.

Hmmm.

Makes you wonder now about all the Danny sightings in and around the Confed Building the past couple of weeks and the rumours that he helped broker the back-room deal to keep Kathy Dunderdale in place.

Whatever is going on in those Conservative back-rooms and the front seat of an Escalade, it sure as heck ain’t about democracy.

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Dunderball - Traffic for Jan 10-14, 2010

Who would have thought a mere two months ago that the ruling Conservatives could be embroiled in a political clusterfrack entirely of their own making?

Who would have thought that Danny Williams would be parking in the Confed Building parking lot with Kathy Dunderdale the day before a surprise cabinet shuffle?

Well, all of that has gone to making this another big week for Bond papers traffic.  Not surprisingly, all but one of this week’s top 10 posts are all about the bizarre psychodrama that is the province’s Conservatives.

The other one is an op-ed from Kelvin Parsons that the conventionals carried and the Liberals sent along here as well. Any of the other parties who want to do the same thing are welcome to send their submissions along as well for consideration.

1. Brad and Circuses
2. Is anyone surprised?
3. Logically Challenged Conservatives
4. Cabana candidacy causes Connie caucus consternation
5. Dunderball Run!
6. The persistence of patronage politics
7. The caucus’ worst nightmare
8. Kremlinology 29:  Easybake Tories
9. Cabinet Shuffle Bored
10. A sweet energy deal for someone

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Money for nothing

A change in lyrics, if ya notice…

No Muskrat Falls in BMO forecast

Curiously, BMO’s latest economic forecast for the province doesn’t include any reference to Muskrat Falls.

The bank’s economists forecast overall economic growth in the province of 3.,9% in 2011 driven by provincial government infrastructure spending totalling $5.0 billion “over the next several years.  BMO says that the province’s capital spending hit 3% of the province’s gross domestic product in 2010.

BMO forecasts continued strong capital spending over the next three years.  While the bank mentions Hebron, Hibernia South and Long Harbour, there’s no reference to Muskrat Falls. That stands out like the proverbial sore thumb since the forecast is up-to-date enough to note the change in Conservative leadership late last year. it’s also odd because the forecast of capital spending comes entirely from the provincial government’s figures.

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Related:  Labour force indicators raise questions about economic health and competitiveness

Building permits value drops almost 50% in November

The value of all building permits issued in Newfoundland and Labrador in November 2010 dropped 49.3% from the month before, according to figures from Statistics Canada released last week.

The value of non-residential permits dropped 74.5% in the same period while residential permit value increased 4.3%

Those were the largest drops of any Canadian province.

In St. John’s, the value of permits dropped 60% from $149.8 million in October to $59 million in November. Permits in September for St. John’s were valued at $54.5 million.

You can get a better perspective on these figures by comparing them with a post from last December.

Paternalism on display

Members of Danny Williams’ personality cult tend to infantilise themselves and those around them. It’s an expression of paternalism, one of the hallmarks of the past seven years in local politics.

Take for example, this comment on a post by Nalcor lobbyist Tim Powers over at the Globe and Mail:

Cullihall

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. You are correct: we cannot take a step back. Danny has set the bar high enough that no politician will dare settle for less and survive the people's wrath. Deceitful people, like the PM and other provincial people will continually try to impede us as they have always done. Thankfully, we now have the confidence and pride to stand up to them.

The basic construction here is that a group of people were childish and incapable of properly looking after themselves until a strongman political leader stepped into protect them.  This strongman then gifted the child-like people with self-esteem.

The same sort of ideas have cropped up in several online comments by different people.  They all have variations on the same idea:  he gave us pride.

Take a look at the words “I felt like an orphan”.  The idea behind it, though, seems to be paternalism, although your humble e-scribbler has rendered it a little differently.  Individuals are supposedly incapable of governing themselves and must be cared for by an authority figure. While it is usually referred to as paternalism, having someone who is apparently not part of a ruling elite advance the idea seems to be more a case of reducing oneself to a child-like state of incompetence, i.e. infantilizing.

You can see here the victim mythology that is prevalent in certain segments of political culture in Newfoundland and Labrador.  According to this view, outsiders take advantage of the place and its people, sometimes helped by locals.

surrounded by those who will, again, try and rob us of what we have achieved

And that’s a related and very intense part of Williams’ political message:  fear of outsiders with the corollary that only Father Dan  - or some comparable parental figure - could protect his children.

Is it any wonder how many of Danny’s loyal followers have used Brad Cabana’s birthplace as a reason to suspect him and his motives?

Minnie on Night Line proposing all sorts of conspiracies including that Cabana is a Harperite plant sent to cause strife among the Danny faithful?

Or Ross Wiseman in a scrum with reporters noting, almost as a throw-away line, that Cabana hasn’t been in the province very long.

Talk about dog-whistling Ross.

But it all fits the pattern.

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Empty gestures and tells

The fact that Kathy Dunderdale volunteered a certain comment in a scrum on Thursday tells you it was a prepared line, likely to try and counteract the fairly plain idea that her leadership is a done-der-deal cooked up in a back-room somewhere before Christmas.

Dunderdale volunteered that she “would have” welcomed a contested leadership for the Conservative Party.  She changed the verb tense because the one that first spilled from her lips actually confirmed the “done deal” impression everyone has but the damage was done.

It’s a bit like the Conservative Party website. Before Christmas it proudly displayed a heavily photoshopped shot of the new Premier, identified as the party’s “interim” leader.

Now the whole thing is gone.  It looks like the Conservatives don’t have a leader at all.

You can tell the Conservatives have a mess.

The tell you they have a mess by all their gestures to deny there is a mess.

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Cabinet Shuffle Bored

The back room plan to slide Kathy Dunderdale into the Premier’s job isn’t going so well.

The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight is back shooting itself in the foot.

Kathy Dunderdale meets with Danny Williams one day and then the next day there is a surprise cabinet shuffle that Dunderdale explains with some lame comment about getting fresh blood and shifting ministers around to give them experience.

That is most definitely NOT what this is about.

Oh and to be really sure, you can guarantee that it is not about Dunderdale “picking her key lieutenants” as CBC has been presenting it. None of the portfolios involved are biggies.  This is purely a shuffling around at the bottom end of the cabinet list.

So what is it about?

Well, for Derrick Dalley it is a huge promotion that can only mean he is in serious political trouble in his district.  Danny’s coat-tails were barely enough to get him elected last time and without the Old Man, that seat is likely to flip.  This way Dalley gets a nice boost in pay and a higher profile.

Dalley has no background in business so sticking him in that portfolio makes no sense at all.

Charlene Johnson got a sweet little promotion after years of slogging it out in a  department that is usually a starter department for ministers.  She’s a loyal Dan-ite so giving her a higher profile helps bolster the back-room deal crowd:  she takes direction very well.  Johnson’s never shown signs of understanding the portfolio she had and she’s unlikely to inject anything other than further listlessness in a new department that is still struggling.

Here’s hoping there are no more giant controversies in a department known to generate nasty headlines. Charlene had a tough time even with Danny on the ground to shore her up.  With the Old Man out of the picture, she could be a major disaster waiting to happen. 

Ross Wiseman slides downward to environment and conservation.  He isn’t likely to run again so this just keeps around one of the Dan-ite stalwarts until Dunderdale gets through the current crisis and the spring budget.

Darin King gets a huge demotion.  The leadership hopeful and likely internal dissident got the big ole bitch slap for something.  Like he’s paying a double price that includes a bill for the shitstorm he caused by trying to do his old job at Eastern School District.  Darin’s school reorganization is a cock-up of monumental proportions since it has served only to agitate voters needlessly in seats the Conservatives normally would call safe. 

Joan Burke is being called back to the limelight likely to clean up Darin’s mess.  It’s a novel concept and logically, Burke’s arrival should mean the plan goes in the bin.  Burke’s usual approach would be like adding gasoline to a political fire and even Dunderdale couldn’t blunder that badly. 

Putting her back in charge of education also gives Burke the chance to raise her profile again in anticipation of the leadership race that will inevitably follow the next election. 

Everyone knows Dunderdale is just a placeholder.  Well, everyone except people who think she is promoting her key lieutenants for the next election.

Sheesh, what a head-slapper of an idea.

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Scrum Update:  Take a watch of the post-swearing in scrum. The most over-used line – after Charlene talking about “the children” and how important they are -  is the effort to portray this as some sort of renewal and refreshment.

The cliché is so over-worn that all you’d have to say is “deck chairs” but everyone will know instantly how true it is as a description of Thursday’s cabinet shuffle.

As for Darin King, notice that he spoke last of all and started by thanking Dunderdale for the privilege of serving.  If anyone has any doubt that this guy is being punished then let them watch the scrum and seen the proof.

Connie Leadership 2011: Logically challenged Conservatives

So if the whole thing was a slam dunk  because all the Tories – by their own definition – were backing Kathy Dunderdale and Brad was wasting his time, why have so many Tories been so agitated for the past week or more about the prospect he might file nomination papers?

I mean if he had no chance then an experienced political operator like Chick shouldn’t have been so agitated that he took it upon himself – according to Ross Wiseman -  to head out and have a chat with Brad to explain to him why he didn’t stand a chance.

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Connie Leadership 2011: Dunderball Run!

How many surprising things could we find out on Wednesday in the ongoing  soap opera that is the back-room deal to a leadership contest of any kind within the province’s Conservative Party?

Well, certainly no one would have expected that the Conservatives would send out business minister Ross Wiseman to confirm that the whole thing was, in fact, a lash up.

He didn’t mean to do that, supposedly, but he did.

Wiseman spoke to reporters after wannabe Conservative candidate Brad Cabana accused Wiseman’s executive assistant of threatening him and otherwise trying to persuade Cabana to stay out of the race.

We’ll get to that scrum in a minute.

Let us first of all consider the contents of an e-mail that the executive assistant – Chick Cholock – sent to Cabana, apparently some time in December.  You have to say apparently because in the version posted by CBC the thing is devoid of any identifying marks of any kind. The e-mail could have been typed up on Wednesday or heavily edited to remove any incriminating or dubious statements.

For the sake of keeping this moving, let’s just imagine for a moment that the parties to this farce are not complete imbeciles incapable of organizing even a garden variety Christmas pantomime.  And let’s note that Cholock is either not very well informed, incidentally, or is pulling his nose in the opening sentence, but that is another story.

Let’s just look at this bit, first:

In an ideal world there would be no leadership challenge.  They always end badly.  This paragraph displays Cholock’s ignorance of political history in the province.  It also shows a fundamental anti-democratic strain that is, sad to say, not very surprising.

On the other hand, it confirms, as regular readers know, that there are indeed cleavages inside the Conservative Party that are so deep that the back-room types are petrified at the prospect.

Let us now turn to Wiseman’s scrum.  There’s a version on the CBC website and another on the Telegram’s website.

In his first long answer to the first question, Ross states that “it was well known and well understood” that the entire caucus backed Dunderdale at that point as were most of the district associations. Wiseman says that given that it was highly unlikely any challenger could succeed.

That hardly sounds like an open process.

When asked about an open process, Wiseman tries to insist that the process is open but then quickly returns to the point that everyone – caucus and district executives – were all backing Dunderdale and therefore Cabana had a tough row to hoe if he ran.  That was the “backdrop”, according to Wiseman, for Cholock’s comments.

Wiseman insists that Cholock was acting as a private individual when he visited Cabana’s house in the middle of the work week to discuss Cabana’s candidacy.  Wiseman does rattle off Cholock’s extensive experience in the party and his history of party involvement but then claims that any conversation was done on Cholock’s own time and was unofficial. Wiseman did not explain why he was speaking for his executive assistant on a personal matter, as opposed to having Cholock do the talking for himself.

Wiseman also acknowledges that Cabana contacted the Tory caucus seeking support before he submitted his nomination papers.

But here’s the thing:  Wiseman essentially confirms that Cholock went to cabana’s house to explain that Cabana was wasting his time, given that everyone had already declared for Dunderdale.  David Cochrane from CBC asks the question using those words – “wasting his time” – and Wiseman concurs.

But the fix was not in.

Sure.

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