The Force

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Environmentally debatable traffic, Jan 31 to February 4

Two stories this week to lighten the mood.

First:  a poster in the Health Sciences Centre announcing an event for February.  Someone crossed out the first “r” as a spelling mistake.  Likely the same person changed the spelling just down the hall to read nook-yoo-lur medicine.

Second:  Surely to merciful jumpin’s Conservative candidate Vaughn Granter did not dismiss Liberal Mark Watton’s experience in the Prime Minister’s Office or a federal cabinet minister’s office as cavalierly as it sounded.

“Some experience”?

“Could be some advantage”?

Could be a disadvantage?

That’s pretty sad for a guy who isn’t from Corner Brook originally who is trying to play himself as the local boy.

Take a listen to the campaign report linked above, by the way and notice that Granter did little besides run down his opponent and talk himself up personally.  Mark Watton, on the other hand, talked sensibly about issues that are actually of concern to the people in the district.

Huge difference.

Anyway, for those who came for the weekly hit parade, here are the week’s top stories as selected by readers.

1. Tweet of the week (early edition)
2. More of the same…
3. Financials key to Lower Churchill
4. Not the best campaign strategy, maybe
5. A Hugh Shea for our time
6. Strings and all
7. The old hum on the Humber
8. PIFO:  newly minted minister in trouble in own district
9. Ronald Harper
10. Finance minister cops to unsustainable spending

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Why don’t more women breastfeed their babies?

Good question.

You’ll find one woman’s take on it at cbc.ca/nl. 

Beware, though, of one figure that is likely off.  Both Debbie Cooper and Pam Pardy-Ghent claim that 66% of new mothers breastfeed their babies. 

That might be the number who start breastfeeding when the baby is born. Some call it the initiation rate.

The last time your humble e-scribbler checked the local stats the percentage still at it six months after the baby was born was a tiny fraction of that figure.

Try 11 or 12 percent.

And that’s really where the challenge lies.  The overwhelming majority of women who start breastfeeding just don’t manage to keep at it. 

We need to get to 66% still breastfeeding at six months in.  That’s a figure we can reach in this province within two years with just a modest effort by the provincial government. and community groups.

66 at 6 in 2.

Simple.

Practical.

Attainable.

Breastfeeding  it’s what your bazongas are for.

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Finance minister cops to unsustainable spending

The provincial government hasn’t really been managing the public purse in a sustainable and fiscally responsible way.

Your humble e-scribbler has been saying that since 2006.  There have been plenty of charts and graphs to drive the point home.

In 2009, Paul Oram said that government spending is unsustainable, but unfortunately he said it on the way out the door as he left politics. 

But you don’t have to just accept that just because you read it here.

Now you know that government spending is unsustainable because no less an authority than Tom Marshall – the province’s finance minister – is saying that in every single one of his pre-budget consultations.

Take a look at the slide deck for his presentation.  You’ve seen similar slides here and in some of the conventional media maybe.  You’ll find the information is a wee bit familiar and that’s because the figures your humble e-scribbler uses and the ones Tom is using come from the same place:  the provincial finance department.

But Tom’s slides are better because they are accurate and up-to-date. Now Tom doesn’t give you all the information you’d but what is there is enough to scare the bee-jeebers out of any doubters out there.

Before we get into the details, let’s just say that True Tory Believers should turn away and go play Free Cell or something.  They really should not read on.  Fan Clubbers should really not read beyond this point.  They are putting their heads in jeopardy.  Their whole world only keeps making sense because they have convinced themselves that nothing at BP is real, that it is all wrong and just some sort of partisan plot. 

So if they keep reading to the end, your humble e-scribbler cannot be held liable for the resulting carnage as their skulls collapse.  After all, if your faithful servant says these things only because he is a Liberal and then Tom Marshall says the same things then either Tom is telling whoppers or I am a Tory or…

You can see how easily they could wind up in the Waterford trying to make those two things fit into the same twisted mental space.

Anyway, here goes.

This slide from near the end of Marshall’s presentation shows the net program expenses – everything except debt servicing and capital costs – compared with the consumer price index and the growth in the economy. This is a really good comparison because it shows the changes in the core government spending without things like the “stimulus” capital spending.

This is the sort of spending that would be very hard to cut if revenue dropped drastically.  And you can really see the point if you recall that so much of the economy – 30% or so of the labour force – is paid out of net program expenses. This is your health care spending as well.

Now just because Tom Marshall used it, let’s look at the slide showing the comparison between the growth in gross health care spending – with capital works tossed in – and the consumer price index.  This slide together with the one above illustrates the astronomic growth in spending over the past four years.

 

This slide also shows you a comparison which pretty much destroys any argument that the rate of gro9wth was the only thing Tom and his friends could have done.  You’ve heard all the excuses about catch-up and making up for previous neglect or that costs are just going up because things are booming.

Don’t look at 2009-2010 because that’s the recession year when the costs of goods and services didn’t grow very much at all.  Look at the two years before that.  The provincial government could have boosted spending by double the rate of inflation and they still would have boosted spending by a huge amount.  Instead, they went for triple or more.  in 2007, the year of the last election, they boosted spending by what looks like six or seven times the rate of inflation.

And all that spending was built on what Tom Marshall acknowledges are windfalls from the price of oil.  They are windfalls driven by price and by production of a non-renewable resource.  All wonderful to spend and spend more as long as the cash is rolling in.  But when the prices don’t keep skyrocketing and the money isn;t flowing in, you have a hard time driving spending up at the rate people want.

That’s the definition of unsustainable spending.

Not surprisingly, you can see all the problems in the final slide Marshall used in which he laid out his “challenges”.

That second bullet, the one about high dependence on resource revenues is the bit about price and production.  Great going up but prices do go down.

Skip down a bit and you’ll see the other point:  there’s pressure to continue spending increases and people are used to seeing growth of nine percent on average over the past seven years.  Inflation averaged around two percent each year or thereabouts over the same period.

All the stuff that comes before this points to that bullet about the “Need to control expenditure growth”.  Problem is that expectations are there for continued growth and those expectations are on top of the real need that comes from having an aging population and that is on top of the commitments to boost public spending on megaprojects like “equity” stakes. 

If that weren’t bad enough the combination of election year plus the unsettled Conservative leadership combine to make it very difficult for politicians to make the tough choices and actually control spending.

Remember 2007?

If you’ve forgotten already, scroll back up and look.

A very popular leader with a reputation for toughness and they still couldn’t spend in a responsible, prudent manner.

And if all that weren’t enough to make you cringe, take a look at that last point.  There you have the provincial government’s great plan to reduce public debt:  they will pay it off as it comes due.  That means about $200 to $300 million a year.

Divide that into the $12 billion gross debt and you can figure out how many decades will take  - theoretically - to get to zero at that rate.  Yeah don’t bother.  Let’s just sum it up by saying the current administration does not have a debt reduction plan at all.  Not really.  They don’t.  If things get really bad, they can just roll debt over and that’s what governments have done over the past couple of decades. They could pay off some debt as it came due;  otherwise they just spent as they needed and ran up the debt bill.

We aren’t done yet, though.

That middle bullet about a “requirement” to borrow to pay for the Lower Churchill.

It is only a requirement because the provincial government already made the decision to add another $4.0 to $6.0 billion to the public debt.  They don’t absolutely have to do it and, frankly, the deal as laid out currently is one that doesn’t make any sense.  It would be a huge risk for any government or private sector company that had a healthy balance sheet.  Even with a federal loan guarantee, it is sheer foolishness for the province with the biggest per capita debt load in the country.

Upside:  admitting there’s a problem could mean that Tom Marshall and his colleagues will start sorting out the mess they’ve made.

Downside:  Tom’s admitted to some or all of this in the past in the pre-budget consultations only to bring down a budget each time that did exactly the opposite of what was needed to fix the problems. Only Danny’s gone:  the rest of the people responsible for seven years of unsustainable public spending and unsound management of the public purse are still in charge.

We can hope for the best but experience tells us all to expect the worst.

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Ronald Harper

Compare this Conservative Party spot…

with this classic political spot:

The Conservative spot is darker and much less hopeful than the one that so obviously inspired it.

And for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, they will recognise the Danny Williams’ phrasing in the Harper spot.

Aren’t Canadians determined, too?

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More of the same…

But different.

A good first step is how the Premier described her first meeting with the Prime Minister.

But she was bit vague on the destination piece.

Headed somewhere but not sure where the frig that might be.

Solid leadership!

Kathy Dunderdale had a courtesy meeting with Stephen Harper.

20 minutes.

Very much routine stuff for those familiar with these things and never the chance to get into detailed discussions on anything.

Lots of vague talk from Dunderdale about stuff but very little concrete detail.

She knows the bus is moving and she knows about the doors and seats but where the driver is headed?

We’ll get back to you on that bit.

But it is good to get rolling in this new bus and new driver who is dissimilar in a differential way from the previous occupant of the conducting position.

Dunderdale’s list of things she mentioned in the meeting are the same things her predecessor used to rattle off so it’s a bit unusual to hear her talking about things as if there’d been some radical change of direction in the province.

Oh.

That was the point.

But then Dunderdale said she is “in the same place’ as her predecessor.

So things are the same.

But different.

It is a new relationship but she wanted to hear some acknowledgement from the Prime Minister of those “legitimate aspirations” of her tribe and that he “understands” those things and is the prime minister of the whole country, then things will be different.

So that would mean things are still just like they were with the former premier.

But not.

Somehow.

Like in a meeting with federal cabinet minister Peter Mackay, Dunderdale talked about a multi-billion dollar megaproject for which Dunderdale sought a federal loan guarantee.

Which must be somehow different from the times Danny went to Ottawa looking for a hand-out to build a megaproject.

So things are the different.

But the same.

And firstly and fore mostly, she wants some respect.

Never heard that before.

And there wasn’t any talk about the fishery.

Ditto on the sameness file.

So in a last scrum question about the relationship, Kathy made it clear that her predecessor could “articulate” his views clearly and that things were different now, as she embarked on some kind of new path, a yellow brick road to respect for the “legitimate aspirations” of the crowd of people down this way.

Sounds all very familiar, right down to the bit about not being sure exactly where things are going and the inability to articulate specific details.

But God does she spit Quebecish gibberish like “legitimate aspirations.”

It’s all fit to make you aspirate your breakfast.

Projectile aspiration.

Given Dunderdale’s load of bafflegab and pure bullshit, such aspiration would be perfectly legitimate and likely most respectable.

Plus ca change.

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If the Danes can do it…

Maybe Kathy Dunderdale can resurrect Danny Williams big dream of a tunnel connecting Labrador to the island. Remember the Stunnel?

Surely you remember Danny Williams stopping by the side of the highway during the 2001 by-election or the 2003 election – anyone recall which? – and marvelling that he could see the mainland or some such.

Anyway, the whole goofball idea priced out at a few billion dollars and Williams quickly dropped it as unrealistic.

But then people used to say that increasing the provincial public debt by 50% was unrealistic too, until Danny and his successor committed to doing it.

Go big or go home, Kathy!.

So if Danny was planning to rack up the debt by just 50%, go the rest of the way.

And follow the example set by the Danes.

They are planning to build an 18 kilometre tunnel underwater to connect Denmark and Germany.

The estimated cost is  only US$5.9 billion.

Now sure the traffic between Sweden and Norway to Germany and the rest of the continent through Demark makes this much more commercially viable than a link between Blanc Sablon and St. Barbe.  But since when did that ever stop a politician from pissing public money down a hole.

Every great Premier in the province’s history – at least as popularly assessed -  has had at least one gigantic financial mess to his credit. 

This could be Kathy’s.

Just saying.

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Not the best campaign strategy, maybe

In a city where the environment is a big issue, a chance to speak in a public meeting on environmental issues during a by-election might be a good thing.

Well, especially if you are a candidate.

Lots of people protesting tire burning.  Government conveniently dodges a bullet on the issue right before the writ drops. You promise to be a strong “voice” for constituents.  Might be an idea to show up for a few hours in a debate format, say a few words and then get back to whatever else you are doing.

Even if the audience is hostile, it works to show you have the stones to face them.  How are you gonna stare down a hard-nosed cabinet minister like Kevin O’Brien or Charlene Johnson if a few hippies scare you crapless? 

And after all it’s only a couple of hours.

Even if you want to play the company-town-man, you are likely to get more of your own votes with the days of coverage of you tackling the tree-huggers rather than putting out some completely lame-assed excuse delivered via a representative.

These points are evidently lost on Conservative Vaughn Granter.  He begged off a debate sponsored by a local environmental group.  The VOCM version quotes an “associate” who says the man has a “door-to-door” strategy.

Whatever.

If he’s as overwhelmingly popular and as phenomenally well-known in the city as Granter claimed with on Open Line with Randy Simms on Wednesday, then Vaughn could skip a couple of doors and no one would really notice.  That is, he could skip them in a good cause like generating some media coverage to reach more people and reinforce his messages.

In another place, the candidate hisself could be heard on Wednesday babbling some drivel about having to spend a couple or three days boning up on the issues and that would just divert  from his plan to shake every door and knock every hand. Not aware of the issues and the party position such that he has to do an intense three days holed up with a set of briefing notes?

Hardly something you’d want to admit, one might think.

Vaughn isn’t much on current affairs, then?  Wee bit vague on what’s up?

Yeah.

Not the best line and not the best strategy, maybe.

Just saying.

.At least Vaughn has a few days to change his mind or get up to speed.  The debate is set for February 10.

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Tweet of the Week (early edition)

Ken Dryden dropped in to Corner Brook last weekend to endorse his old chief of staff – Mark Watton – who is running in the by-election to fill the vacancy in the House of Assembly by Danny Williams’ abrupt departure.

Watton is a Liberal, in case that wasn’t obvious.

Seems some provincial Conservative supporters are a bit spooked by Dryden’s visit and, by extension, by Watton’s chances. Here’s an example of Twitter comments by one passionate provincial Conservative on Tuesday night:

Unable to recruit local volunteers or what?…what does Ken Dryden know about the issues facing Corner Brookers? …I'd rather someone who had known where Corner Brook was located prior to visiting.

To quote a great conservative thinker, what a terrible thing it is to lose ones mind. Those of you who know the original quote – before Dan Quayle babel-fished it – will get the point.

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Financials key to Lower Churchill

From 2006, an article by Craig Westcott that appeared originally in the now defunct Independent. 

Premier Kathy Dunderdale went to Ottawa today with her hand out looking for some federal financial aid to get the Danny Williams retirement project off the ground.

The key is still in the financials.

Let’s see what, if anything, she gets.

And then let’s see what that will cost us.

Growing interest:  Solving interest rate riddle critical to Lower Churchill project

At a Memorial University lecture hall one evening last week, Gilbert Bennett stood and gave a 45 minute talk on the challenges and opportunities of the Lower Churchill River hydroelectric project.

Then his real work began. For the next 45 minutes, people in the crowded lecture hall peppered the vice president of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro with questions.

They asked him about everything from the chances of getting redress on the infamous Upper Churchill deal to what kinds of benefits the Innu Nation members can expect from the project.

Then came one of the toughest questions to answer, but one that is critical to the viability of the $6-billion to $9-billion project that Hydro is hoping to have on stream by 2015.

“The surprise for me tonight,” said one man, “was that this project, to get off the ground, is going to take as much as 10 years. Interest rates are starting to rise. Isn’t there a risk in taking this project so far out?”

Bennett allowed there is. “I’m with you in that interest rates are going to be essential,” he admitted.

And that was putting it mildly.

<Growing interest>

As Bennett himself pointed out, there are a number of key factors that have to be resolved before the Lower Churchill hydro project can get sanctioned for construction. A land claim and impact benefits agreements must be negotiated with the Innu Nation. The federal and provincial governments have to agree on the form the environmental impact statement will take and who will head the review. And the province must decide who will develop the power plants at Gull Island and Muskrat Falls, who will get the power from them, how they will get it and how the whole thing will be financed.

“As you can see, we have a lot of work to do,” Bennett told the gathering.

But among all the challenges and risks, perhaps none is more important than the matter of interest rates. If the Upper Churchill was a boondoggle because of BRINCO's inability to negotiate a re-opener clause to cover inflation, the killer for any Lower Churchill project could be interest rates. And that’s because just like the man in the lecture room observed, this project is going to take a long time to develop.

“If you had the right contract, it doesn’t matter,” says Cyril Abery. “You’d have to build into the contract that the price you’re agreeing to (sell the power for) is based on certain interest rates and you’d have to have a clause that if interest rates went up, the price gets adjusted. Otherwise you could get screwed. There has to be re-openers in there. If they do that, there‘s no problem. But if they don‘t do that, yes, it is a problem, especially since today interest rates are low and they‘re probably going to go up.”

When it comes to interest rates and the Lower Churchill project, Abery knows what he’s talking about. From 1985 to 1991, he was the president and CEO of Newfoundland Hydro. He helped negotiate a Lower Churchill deal with Hydro Quebec in 1991 that Premier Clyde Wells ultimately rejected.

“He was nuts in my opinion,” says Abery. “It’s a long story, but the long and short of it is I thought he was nuts. I’m not so sure we haven’t got another one now.”

Abery wasn’t at Bennett’s lecture, but he well understands how interest rates could cripple the development.

So does another former Hydro president and CEO, Bill Wells. He headed the provincial Crown Corporation from 1995 until about a year and a half ago. Like Abery, he too tried hard to reach a development deal on the Lower Churchill.

The problem is that while interest rates may be low now, nobody knows what they will be in 15 years time, if the project is even completed by then. Nobody even knows what they will be next year. And once the project is sanctioned, the developer will be borrowing money every year until it gets built.

“You’re borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, spending, spending, spending (until 2015),” explains Wells. “Somebody’s got to lend you that and that interest cost during the period of construction, that just adds on to the principle because you’re not paying anything back. So at the end of the day you’ve got this lump sum of money that you owe and when you close out your financial agreement going forward for 30 years or 40 years financing, what you’re going to pay in interest is determined at that time, it’s not determined now. So interest rates in 2016, who knows? They may be up, they may be down. And one of the things is, who takes the risk on interest? That used to come up in previous negotiations. It‘s a critical factor.”

Wells says the province, or Hydro, could try at the outset of the construction project to get a lender to agree to a range of future interest rates, as some measure of protection, but that would cost a lot of money.

“Interest is a big factor and then it depends on how you’re financing it,” Wells says.

<Quebec again>

One of the ways the province is looking at raising money to build the project is on the strength of a power purchase agreement with a future customer of the power. That’s how BRINCO financed the Upper Churchill deal in the 1960s. Back then, the only customer BRINCO could get to sign a guarantee that it would buy the electricity was Hydro Quebec. With Ontario and some United States utilities facing the prospect of energy shortages, it may be easier to find other buyers this time around. There will be enough electricity from Lower Churchill to power 1.5 million homes.

But the power will still have to go through Quebec.

“You can’t get the power out of Labrador without going through Quebec,” says Abery.

Williams has raised the prospect of building a transmission line through the Maritimes.

Abery is sceptical.

“We always put that out there to make it sound like we had options,” Abery says. “But everybody in the business knows that’s foolishness. It sounds good in the newspaper. Joe Smallwood started that back in the 1960s calling it the Anglo-Saxon route. It was crazy then and it’s crazy now.”

Abery says any talk of a Maritimes route doesn’t fool Hydro Quebec.

“They just smile,” he says. “I mean you’re in the middle of Labrador. The only border we’ve got is with Quebec. So you’ve either got to sell it to Quebec, or go through Quebec. And there’s no reason you wouldn’t sell it to Quebec. Their money is just as good as anybody else’s money as long as you got enough of it.”

Abery says Newfoundland could sell the power to another customer, in Ontario say, and simply pay Hydro Quebec to wheel it across its transmission lines. The fee for doing it wouldn’t be unreasonable, he notes.

“But the farther you sell it, the more transmission lines you’ve got to build and the costlier it is,” he points out. “The simpler thing is to just sell it to Quebec and let them deal with it. But if you’re getting enough money out of Ontario, then sell it to them. If you’re getting enough money out of Manitoba, I suppose you’d sell it to them. But it would be expensive power. The further you go, the more expensive it is. Transmission lines are not cheap. And you lose energy on the transmission line. That’s why you can only go so far with the transmission line, otherwise there’s no energy at the end of it.”

Wells, meanwhile, sees one way around a purchase power contract with Hydro Quebec or any other customer as the main way of financing the project. But it’s one that didn’t get anywhere in the past.

“If the federal government said ‘We’ll back the project,’ well nobody is going to argue the federal government is going to go broke over (it),” says Wells.

Bennett says obtaining federal backing is an area the utility is going to explore very carefully. He notes Premier Williams raised the idea with all three parties during the last federal election. Stephen Harper, then the Conservative Party Leader, now the Prime Minister, said his party supported the idea of a project “in principle.”

Whether that includes a financial commitment remains to be seen.

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The old hum on the Humber

Politicians running for the government party in Newfoundland and Labrador usually have a simple message;  vote for me or the district won’t see pavement again. 

Now they often get more sophisticated in the presentation these days:  Vaughn Granter, for example, is telling voters in Humber West that he will be their strong “voice” but the idea is basically the same.  Having someone in government will help to bring home all the pork you need.

In Granter’s case, his comments give new meaning to Squires-era political slogan about putting the “hum on the Humber”. 

After all, Humber West has been represented in the House of Assembly by more Premiers than any other district in the province.  Period.  If the good burghers of  Corner Brook are missing something it is not from a lack of patronage, pull, pork or anything else.  Face it: it’s doubtful that Vaughn could succeed where the likes of Joey, Frank, Clyde, Brian and Danny failed miserably.

That’s not all. Over most of the past 20 years Corner Brook has had not one but two senior cabinet ministers.  For the past seven alone, they’ve been pork-teamed by none other than a townie who never lived in Corner Brook for more than a couple of nights at the Glynmill in his life and local boy Tom Marshall.

If this much isn’t clear by now make no mistake: Corner Brookers who might be persuaded by Granter’s truly pathetic appeal can rest easy on the future of their city.  Vote for Mark Watton.  If Tom Marshall, the province’s finance minister, cannot keep the provincial tax dollars flowing for the next 10 months, all by himself then it is only because there isn’t any space left to stuff another ounce of pork inside the Lewin Parkway anyway. 

If none of that makes voters in Corner Brook suck some air between their teeth, then let them consider the sad example of one David Brazil.  He’s the newly minted member of the provincial legislature who replaced the late Diane Whelan.  Brazil campaigned on improving the ferry service to Bell Island, a big voting block in the Conception bay East-Bell Island district.

On January 9, Brazil spoke to VOCM and pronounced himself pleased with his colleagues in government  Great job.  Bright future. VOCM’s disappeared the story but you can still find traces of it via google.

David Brazil won a by-election in Conception Bay East-Bell Island in December, and he feels the PC Party is well positioned. He says they have a good caucus ...

And now as his pal the transportation minister is cutting the service back, all Dave can do is smile and try to foist the blame on someone who had nothing to do with the decision. The best he could say is that the cuts were “unwelcome.”

Voters in Conception Bay East-Bell Island are discovering, likely much to their annoyance, that Dave is not their strong voice inside government.  Instead, he is yet another basenji, a dog that won’t bark.

Is there any reason to believe Vaughn Granter will do any better?  Not really.  There are plenty of decent people sitting on the Tory back benches but take all of them together, plus a buck and a half and you might get a decent cup of coffee somewhere.

Such is the fate of a backbencher in the current Tory administration.

Such will be Vaughn Granter’s fate if he’s elected.

Count on it.

Meanwhile, the people of the Straits-White Bay North voted against Danny Williams himself and look at what happened to them. Not only did they get a member of the legislature who kept the government under close and very public scrutiny, they also got a new health care centre that some would have had you believe would disappear unless there was another basenji sitting faithfully at the feet of Premier of the moment.

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The sun whose rays…

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The January Traffic 2011

Okay so if January comes in like a political nut-bar, it makes you wonder if it will go out in a straightjacket.

Like is this the most sane the year will be or is this like a tiny taste of the mania to come?

Maybe the traffic pattern for January will give us a clue.  The numbers are still running at more than 20,000 readers a month with close to 40,000 page loads.  There’s no shortage of interest in political commentary and that’s a decent thing for someone who writes a political blog.

See if you can find a pattern in what dominated the news based solely on the top 10 posts as selected by the readers:

1. Tory angst may be well founded
2. Connie leadership rigged?
3. Watton to carry Liberal banner in Humber West
4. Brad and circuses
5. Rick Hillier?  Tim Powers? No thanks, say NL Tories
6. Is anyone surprised?
7. Logically challenged Conservatives
8. Cabana candidacy causes Connie caucus consternation and Dunderball Run! [tie]
9. Fear and Loathing in the Caucus Room and Democratic Deficit [tie]
10. Coo-coo for Connie Puffs

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A Hugh Shea for our time

In the most recent twist of an already bizarre tale, Brad Cabana has managed to turn what had been a fiasco inside a tragedy into a farce.

There is no other word for it, but farce:  a member of the federal Conservative party and wannabe leadership candidate for the provincial Conservatives expresses his fervent desire to perpetuate Dannyism in the province…and having been rejected by his own party now proposes to take that bag of ideological and other wares to the Liberal party.

Not to be left out of the play, some local Tory supporters – the most ardent of Danny-ite diehards among them - are claiming that this is proof that Cabana was just the tool of some dark Liberal or Harperite conspiracy in the first place.  The smallest problem with that thought is that they are deadly serious about the idea.

Some might put this down to being nothing more than another symptom of a political system still working through a great shock. Danny Williams’ hasty departure would certainly count as that shock.  And perhaps Cabana is nothing more than the usual local political gadfly or eccentric character with a rare opportunity to get more attention than he might otherwise.

There might be something to that.

Then again, if that is the case, we may well have yet more proof that the province’s political culture is in a precarious state.

Forty years ago, as Joe Smallwood’s political empire crumbled around him, even the most ossified corner boy could rhyme off four or five potential premiers from the Liberal or Progressive Conservatives.  Most of the prospects had served in Smallwood’s cabinet at one time or another.  And there were the colourful characters thrust into the limelight at different times over the course of 1971 and 1972 as they changed parties and plotted and planned. 

These days, the most addled patient in a methadone program couldn’t name a single politician, most likely, let alone a brace.

And as for the others, let’s just say that as the province seems to be missing the broad range of political talent it once produced, so too is it short the rest of the spectrum.

Brad Cabana is no Hugh Shea.

Not by a long shot.

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Strings and all

Frank Moores was the second premier to hold office in Newfoundland and Labrador after Confederation.  He led the Progressive Conservative Party to victory in the 1972 provincial general election, defeating Joe Smallwood and ending Smallwood’s 23 year reign.

That was no mean feat and Moores didn’t do it single-handedly. He led a large group of people who organised themselves in a political party that was distinctly  different from Smallwood’s Liberals.  Until the late 1960s, the Liberal party had no district associations, for example.  Smallwood maintained a hand-picked fixer in every district who handled all the party business.  Smallwood himself picked candidates and until the 1969 convention, there’d been no leadership debate of any kind.

Moores won the Tory leadership at a convention held in May 1970.  A group of influential Conservatives, including Danny Williams’ mother and father spearheaded a drive to get Moores back from Ottawa where he sat as a member of parliament.

Now, in itself, that’s fascinating in light of the political outlooks of provincial Conservatives like Chick Cholock.  Ross Wiseman’s executive assistant wrote an e-mail to Brad Cabana, the Tory leadership hopeful back in late December.  Cholock wrote – you may recall – that “in an ideal world there will not be a leadership challenge.”  As Cholock saw it, a leadership battle “always hurt the party for years.  Any Party at all…”.

In the 1970 leadership convention, the Tories had a handful of candidates.  The list included Herb Kitchen, John Carter, Walter Carter and Hugh Shea.  Moores won handily and there was a minor controversy but for the most part, the party managed to sort out the difficulties and carry on.  Almost a decade later, the party held another leadership convention and managed to avoid any lasting controversy. The Tories stayed in power for another decade.

That hardly sounds like a series of unmitigated disasters, does it?

In the 40 years since Moores’ convention victory, the provincial Conservatives have certainly changed.  They’ve become – in essence – a fairly typical local political party for Newfoundland and Labrador.  Now, as before Confederation, the parties aren’t programmatic. They don’t have ideologies or set agendas.

And, at least as far as the province’s Conservatives have shown over the past few weeks, they certainly aren’t driven by grass-roots members.  They are most certainly not, as Danny Williams described them last year, a Reform-based Conservative party.  The Reformers believed very firmly that political parties ought to be directed by their members.  Policy used to get set at regular conventions.  District organizations picked candidates.  The party constitution laid down clear and unmistakeable rules and people paid attention to the rules.

No one could mistake the difference between that approach to politics compared to the provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Sure the party has a constitution and bunch of people have titles.  But even the rules about something as crucial as membership aren’t clearly spelled out in the party’s fundamental document. And when it comes to deciding what those rules mean, only the insiders get to decide who the insiders can be.

In that sense, you could say that the local Tories aren’t democratic.  Now before anyone goes off the handle, understand that is not the description offered up by your humble e-scribbler.  A Tory supporter posted a comment on Twitter last week that said exactly that:  “a political party is not a democratic institution.”  Open Line host Randy Simms said exactly the same thing last week as well.

While you can disagree about what democracy means exactly, it is rather striking that two politically aware and presumably politically astute people in the province could state that political parties are not democratic organizations.  They weren’t troubled by the idea, apparently.  They didn’t find it odd.  In fact, it would seem that they found it perfectly natural for a political party to be run by an inner cabal accountable only to themselves.

And, as it seems comments online, provincial Conservative supporters seem to think every political party operates this way.  They don’t, but that is another matter.

What’s really striking is the way Frank Moores viewed political parties 40 years ago. You can find this quote in Janice Wells’ recent biography of the former premier:

Political parties are what people make them.  We’ve got to get people involved who don’t even recognise the need that they be involved in their own welfare, their own future, who perhaps after twenty-one [sic] years don’t even realize they have that right, and we have to get our best people involved, our best academics, artists, businessmen, educators.  I want these people to become totally involved in the work that faces us, and to know that they won’t be manipulated like puppets but will have major roles to play in reviving the province.

Political parties are indeed what people make of them.  In some bizarre twist, the people who make up the provincial Conservative Party in the early years of the 21st century have managed to turn Frank Moores’ party into something he most likely wouldn’t recognize.

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PIFO: Newly mined minister in trouble in district

Derrick Dalley?

Appointed to cabinet to boost his chances of re-election and then delivers pork to his own district?

Liberace gay.

The Tory back-room boys reject Cabana.

And now this.

So many shocks in a row.

Call it a penetrating insight into the frackin’ obvious but still fun to point out, just as your humble e-scribbler did the day they swore him into cabinet.

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Binary politics

Okay so finance minister Jim Flaherty says there’s a 50-50 chance of a federal election this spring over the budget.

And about 25 years ago, Gwynne Dyer predicted there was a 50-50 chance we’d get out of the 1980s without a nuclear war.

For those who aren’t into the really out-there, mind-bending conceptualising and thinkerising, let’s make it simple:  there’s a 50-50 chance of anything.  It either will happen or it won’t.

What bullshit artists count on when they pour out this pseudo-analytical crap is that there are only 10 types of people in the world who understand binary:  those who do and those who don’t.

Get it?

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Traffic for small buildings, the last week of January 2011

1. Coo-coo for Connie Puffs
2. Irresponsible Government League:  free-wheeling in Dunderdale’s department
3. Connie Leadership 2011:  a small but apparently overlooked point
4. One sign of the political Apocalypse
5. The same old excuses
6. Unsound public finances:  Tom Marshall’s travesty
7. Watton to carry Liberal banner in Humber West
8. A country apart?  More like a world apart
9. No wind, please.  We’re Nalcor.
10. Stelmach bails

Trivia bonus question for people who get the humourous reference in the title:  Two Conservatives with last names referring to small buildings. Name ‘em.

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Breaking news and breaking wind

Loyola Sullivan thinking about running as a federal Conservative. [Update: CBC online story]

News in 2011?*

Try 2008.

Tom Rideout eyeing a Conservative nod.

News in 2011?*

Try 2008.

Unless they’ve made the official announcement – Jerry Byrne did -  it is still just  as much a case of scuttlebutt as it was in 2008.

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Addendum:  John Hickey looking at a federal run?  Posted here in December:

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.

Don’t forget Tommy Osborne, too, in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, another perennial favourite.

* Date fixed

How to be a Tory

The bunker team that ruled on Brad Cabana’s appeal of his rejected leadership bid made a fascinating – and most likely inadvertent – description of what standards they used to determine who might be considered a member of the provincial Conservative Party.

You can hear this in a debrief CBC Provincial Affairs reporter David Cochrane did with the St. John’s Morning Show’s Jeff Gilhooley on Friday morning.

Cochrane reported that the Conservative appeals team found that only three of the names on Cabana’s nomination forms were considered to be party members.  They came to the conclusion after scouring membership lists from district associations, youth groups and other affiliated organizations as described in the party constitution.

Sounds good and official so far, right?

And then Cochrane started listing the three.

The first one he described was a person who may have – note the conditional language – put up a few signs during an election campaign.

Hold the phone.

That’s it?

May possibly have been vaguely recalled to have helped out on a sign crew. 

Okay.

So how many signs do you theoretically have to stick in the ground? 

Is it one? 

A dozen?

Do the signs have to be in the ground or could you have been seen holding one lovingly at some point?

Do you actually have to have done it or is it a function of someone else’s efforts?  After all, maybe this was back in the 1990s when every Tory householder included a sign.  Junior sticks it in the window to piss Dad the Dipper off and presto the whole family is down in some registry of known Tories kept in someone’s basement?

Maybe the whole membership process isn’t even that specific.

Maybe you only have to look like someone who might have erected a sign: Yes, by. That fellow looks like a guy who helped me out years ago.  He’s a member then.

After all, as Cochrane related the tale, the Tories weren’t even sure this guy or gal actually wielded the hammer or got the splinters from holding the two by two. They thought he may have.

And while they weren’t even 100% certain of that they were prepared to say that the person was a member in order to meet the clear and stringent requirements set down in the Tory party constitution.

We know this is such a document since coronation chairman Shawn Skinner – with no real or perceived conflict of interest whatsoever, surely – duly blessed the outcome.

Now that sign guy doesn’t sound like someone whose name wound up on an actual membership list. After all, the party  doesn’t really have membership lists as such since the party doesn’t have members, as such. There are no cards or dues or any formal way of identifying as a member of the party.

In fact, the party considers every person in the district over the age of 18 years to be a member for the purposes of voting in nomination contests.  And under the party constitution only members can vote.

So basically before Cochrane even got that far in this tale, the story totally demolished the bit before it. If the Tories had actual membership lists to scour, they wouldn’t have had to be beggar someone’s failing memory of a sign crew that could have gone off with a van and the dozen bear and a few dozen signs at any time back to 1972, at least.

And if they really had some sort of membership lists with rules that are clear, widely known and fairly applied, they wouldn’t be crediting Cabana with finding a possible Tory sign jockey.

In case you'd forgotten, the same people who are living this tale of membership stupidity are the same people who control about seven billion a year in public money.

it would all be hysterically funny if that were not true.

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