The Four Horsemen and government finances

Don’t be surprised if the provincial government issues a statement in the near future trumpeting an accrual surplus of several hundred millions.

Sure Tom Marshall isn’t ready to acknowledge what is going on, but it’s pretty hard to avoid making tons of money when those pre-Danny Williams oil royalty regimes meet Brent crude prices that are soaring to more than US$105 million based on Muammar Khaddafi’s willingness to slaughter thousands of Libyans in order to stay in power.

Oil prices and production levels are actually at the level where the Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador might produce a cash account surplus as well for the first time in a couple of years. That’s a good thing if only because it means the public debt won’t increase to record levels as it has under the Conservatives since 2003.

The question one must ask as we get closer to a provincial budget for the new fiscal year is how much longer the provincial Conservatives will continue to base public spending on windfalls due to war, famine, pestilence and death?

The Conservative banshees will likely start their usual screeching in the comments section at this point but the facts are plain in anyone’s face.  The Conservatives’ financial “miracle” has resulted not one teensy bit from anything they have done.  The enormous cash flow over the past five years resulted to one extent or another from political instability, economic crisis and all manner of calamities around the globe that drove oil prices to unprecedented heights.  Run those oil prices through the royalty regimes delivered before the Conservatives took power in 2003 and you have more money than the spendthrift Conservatives could actually spend.

Since 2003, the provincial Conservatives, led by first Danny Williams and now Kathy Dunderdale, have deliberately avoided sound fiscal policies.  Finance minister Tom Marshall and his colleagues have refused to create a sovereign wealth fund or to restrain public spending.  They have, in fact, willingly boosted spending to levels even they’ve acknowledged are unsustainable. 

Gross public debt remains at historic levels and, if Marshall is to be believed, there is little willingness around the cabinet table to take the sort of measures any prudent government would be doing in the face of dwindling oil production.  In other words, there’ll be no investment fund of the type found in other, responsibly run places, at least, not until Tom takes a hike to enjoy his fat pension on a Bermuda beach somewhere.

Now none of this actually comes as a surprise to the Conservatives.  Premier Kathy Dunderdale is aware enough of declining oil production – and hence revenue – but that seems to be only when she is faced with a reporter’s question about spending public on something  - like municipal bus services – that she obviously isn’t keen on.

But on things she wants, like Muskrat Falls, there is evidently no limit to Dunderdale’s willingness to spend other people’s money by increasing public debt and doubling electricity rates in the province.

In a few weeks’ time, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will find out what Kathy Dunderdale and her colleagues plan to do with public money for the foreseeable future. Let’s see if Kathy Dunderdale defines her premiership by changing the pattern of financial imprudence she and her colleagues have maintained until now.

Odds are against any change to fiscal responsibility by the provincial government.  For starters we are in a pre-election period. And when that is done, we will still have the unresolved Conservative leadership.  No one will be willing to take any steps to turn off the money spigots when votes are at stake.

Just think of political expediency in a patronage-riddled political culture as the fifth horseman.

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Whiff and poof #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Labrador member of parliament Todd Russell is not popular among Conservatives in the province. The reason has more to do with Russell’s unwillingness to kiss the Old Man’s derriere since 2003 more so than the fact Russell is a Liberal.

Russell made the news in Newfoundland and Labrador on Thursday as a result a virtual town hall he held.  Basically it was an opportunity for Russell’s constituents to discuss the proposed Muskrat Falls project using a giant conference call.  This was a big call, according to Russell’s office, with dozens of people who got a chance to speak, dozens left on the line when time ran out and a couple or so thousand people participating overall.

Here’s how Russell summarised the views he’s been hearing to a reporter at the Telegram:

“They have expressed their opinions around environmental issues, about economic issues, social issues and cultural issues. The overriding concern that’s come to light is that no thought has been given to meet the needs and aspirations of the people who own this resource, the people of Labrador,” he said.

Not surprisingly, one-time Conservative party executive director Mark Whiffen took some time on Thursday to explain to CBC’s Peter Cowan what he thought of Russell and Russell’s concern to ensure the people of Labrador benefit from the project:

“if Todd Russell doesn't see the overall benefit then he isn't a good MP.” and “there will be long-term benefits to Labrador. They all may not be direct, but they'll be there.” and “also, Lab is benefiting from offshore oil - not off Lab's coast, but no one cares. It's 1 province. Shame an MP can't see that.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It is so easy to spew out a bunch of talking points and Whiffen’s tweets are a fine example of the enthusiastic but decidedly insubstantial nature of the partisan talking point.   Someone else joined in the exchange at one point but the general thrust didn’t change much.

But just notice that not just accepting those benefits, especially the indirect and undefined ones, makes one a bad member of parliament.  Asking for more, presumably,  would be naughty.

Naughty, naughty, Todd.

Makes you wonder what a Conservative might say.  Well, a Conservative other than Whiffen who is not, quite evidently, either from Labrador or very familiar with the issues as seen from the perspective of someone who lives in the Big Land.

Why what about someone like John Hickey, currently drawing a cabinet minister’s pay and rumoured to be organizing a run for the federal Conservatives in the next federal election?

Back in 2002, Hickey took part in a massive anti-Lower Churchill rally organized by the guy who would one day deliver the starting bits for the Muskrat Falls project.

Here’s how the Telegram (December 4, 2002) reported Hickey’s comments at the rally:

He said they want to see a development fund set up for Labrador and a plan for long-term sustainable development attached to the project that will bring new industries to the region.

Hickey was even more forthright in his insistence – back then, of course – that not one megawatt of power should leave Labrador until local were met.  As the Globe reported 9 December 10, 2002:

Mr. Hickey said the community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay can only acquire 55 megawatts from Churchill Falls and has been stymied in its attempts to bring in industries such as an aluminum smelter because of uncertainty about the electrical supply. 

Mr. Hickey was one of several Labrador business and political leaders who met with Mr. Grimes two weeks ago and demanded that any Lower Churchill agreement contain a clause that would allow Labrador communities to obtain 500 megawatts of power for future industrial development.  

"I've got a message for Mr. Landry: 'you aren't going to get a megawatt of power out of Labrador until our needs are looked after,' " Mr. Hickey said.

That was then, of course.  Hickey’s been notoriously silent on the project and whether or not the existing proposal meets the standards Hickey set back in 2002.  (Hint:  it doesn’t). But if you look at Hickey’s view you can see it is pretty much along the same lines that Todd Russell is talking about today. There’s none of the vagueness of Whiffen’s comments.

So is the former Conservative party executive director going to be supporting John Hickey in the next federal election or is John already branded as a naughty boy in Conservative circles for expecting more for Labradorians than the island Conservatives are willing to cough up?

Hard to say at this point but this little exchange does go to show the problems that come when you only know the TPs and not the wider context. 

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Dippers fear Byrning In St. John’s East #cdnpoli #nlpoli

Your humble e-scribbler made a comment on Thursday in response to another comment by Conservative strategist Tim Powers about the potential Jerry Byrne had to give incumbent New Democrat Jack Harris a tough run:

W/ feud over, trad vote patterns spell tough fight for Harris if not defeat.

That garnered a pretty quick and pretty sharp retort from Sally Housser, the NDP press secretary that the comment was “categorically ridiculous.”  She followed up with a recitation of the vote percentage’s from the last federal election.

That would be wonderful if it actually mattered.

The vote results in the 2008 were an anomaly, a one-off.  That’s because Danny Williams and some of his fellow provincial Conservatives waged an effective campaign to suppress the Conservative vote or to drive it to Liberal or New Democratic party candidates.

In St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, the Connies actually defied Williams and voted New Democrat.  Now that might seem strange to some people but you have to appreciate the extent to which local Conservatives in St. John’s are basically Tory by anti-Confederate or anti-Smallwood heritage.  If they don’t vote Tory, they will vote New Democrat before they will vote rouge.

Meanwhile in St. John’s East, the New Democrats profited by running Danny Williams old law partner and they got a double-whammy bonus from the Liberal candidate whose campaign imploded based on his own baggage. It’s not surprising, therefore that Harris swept the seat with a gigantic percentage of the votes cast.

But what are the usual voting patterns in St,. John’s East, the ones more likely to come back now that the feud is over and all is well in the Conservative corner? Take a look at this chart from an earlier post on the 2008 election results.

Basically you can lop off about 15,000 votes from Jack’s vote for starters.  That reflects the people who voted Connie before but who switched in 2008 based on the conditions at the time.

Suddenly the race looks a wee bit different.

And Jack Harris’ personal support?

It might count for something but people who think that even half of that 31,000  went Dipper because people love Jack might want to give their heads a good shake. 

In other words, in that straight match-up Jack Harris would basically have a tight race and conceivably could lose. He’s going to face a very aggressive Conservative candidate in Jerry Byrne.  Byrne’s a successful local businessman with a reputation for being hyper- energetic.  He’s got deep roots in the provincial Conservative party.  He’ll have a strong locally-based machine that will ensure Conservative voters get to the polls. Add to that the likelihood that Byrne would be a natural cabinet selection in a future Conservative administration and you can see a tough fight shaping up in the East.

Now the one wild card here is the Liberal.  Just like Jack can’t count on local Conservative support next time, Jack Harris also can’t count on a Liberal candidate with a penchant for self-immolation.  There’s no Liberal candidate even rumoured at this point although Ignatieff major domo Paul Antle would have to cough up a candidate or run himself.  Antle did very well when he ran before and that too might pose a bit of a problem if he can bleed off any of the support from one side or the other.

As it stands right now, Jack Harris will have a fight to win re-election in the next federal election.  This is not to say Harris is already dead; it’s just to say that he will have to wage a hard fight to win.

The Dippers know that, by the way.  You can tell they know by just exactly how quickly their press secretary jumped on the suggestion Jack would have to campaign. The New Democrats are obviously afraid of getting Byrned in St. John’s East.

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Quebec interested in lunatic megaproject

Around these parts it’s known as the Stunnel.

As in Stunned Tunnel.

It makes absolutely no economic sense but people like to talk about it.

And now, as CBC is reporting, the Government of Quebec is interested in the idea, but apparently at the behest of the Conservatives ruling Newfoundland and Labrador.

Talk about a place sorely lacking in new ideas.

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Super-duper Mega Update:  The Northern Pen two days ago -

The Pen can reveal Quebec’s minister for transport Norman MacMillan wrote to provincial counterpart Tom Hedderson on December 1 agreeing, in principle, to undergo a joint study into not only the 15km tunnel, but the completion of Route 138 on the Quebec side.

The letter proposes “conducting a large-scale socio-economic study to investigate the current status and the potential evolution of economic activity and demographics within the entire territory in question, and whether the existing transport infrastructure is adequate.”

There’s a Radio Canada report as well.

Just wondering about implications

Since safety is current the responsibility of the offshore regulatory board and since that came from both the 1985 Atlantic Accord (not to be confused with the one time transfer of federal cash in 2005) will the federal and provincial government’s have to amend the original agreement in order to create a separate offshore safety board?

And if they do that, will one of the parties want to change around some other details of the deal as well?

After all, cracking open the original deal is a bit like opening Pandora’s box.  You never know what would hop out.

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Connies drop

So much for all those polls showing the Conservatives were on fire.

Ekos’ most recent poll puts the Connies at 32% with the Liberals at 27%. The pollsters at Ekos put it down to the usual pattern of Canadians getting queasy about the idea of a majority Conservative government.

 

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Noseworthiness, redux

Sometimes you do have to wonder if anybody – let alone Auditor General John Noseworthy himself - actually reads what his office spits out.

Take, for example, the most recent report on operations in government departments.  Page after page of the report contain sentences containing random spacing that one piece of software or another has added to text as someone cut and pasted it back and forth.

Your humble e-scribbler knows the problem all too well. There’s a huge difference, though,  between someone writing in his spare time and the province’s official accounting watchdog.

But perhaps the worst part of Noseworthy’s report is the shameless massaging of numbers to make his office look way more effective than it actually is.

No, we are not talking about a problem identified in previous reports: the AG actually made up recommendations he never originally made and then claimed departments had complied with the fake ones.

This is a case of basic math problems.

Previous reports contained a total of 193 recommendations according to Noseworthy’s most recent report.  In following up on them, he reported that 89.1% “had been acted upon”.

Nearly 90%?

Wow.

That’s amazing.

Until you look at the detail.

Departments and agencies only fully accepted  79 of the 193 recommendations.

That’s 41%.

Departments only partially implemented another 79.

And they didn’t implement another 21 at all.

The remainder are less than partially implemented, whatever that means.

But think about it:  Noseworthy’s success rate is not 90% as his statement implies;  it’s really only 41%. 

Government departments either gave up implementing 60% of his recommendations fully or simply refused to implement them altogether.

So if the guy massages the numbers about his own office in order to make things look better than they actually are, what might he be doing with the other numbers?

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Related: 

• “Noseworthiness”
• “Auditor General’s examination of offshore board mysteriously vanishes”

Atlantic energy co-operation: where Lower is higher

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner is in Halifax talking energy co-operation with his counterparts in the Maritime provinces.

Odd that the provincial government didn’t play it up more than issuing a few lines in a media advisory on Monday, the day the meetings started.

After all, New Brunswick energy minister Craig Leonard is interested in some of Skinner’s Lower Churchill electricity.  As Leonard told the Telegraph Journal:

"There will be a considerable amount of energy that's moving through the province," Leonard says.

"That's an opportunity for us. That's clean, renewable power that will be moving through our transmission system, whether it's en route to New England or we could utilize it ourselves."

Now as regular readers of these scribbles know, the Muskrat Falls proposal is a hugely expensive proposition that Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her Conservatives expect Newfoundland and Labrador residents to pay for. The cost to produce the power, according to Dunderdale back before Christmas will be at least 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Now that is interesting given that the old NB Power deal with Hydro-Quebec was supposed to lower electricity rates in the near term. When the New Brunswick government unveiled the deal, consumer electricity rates were around 11 cents per kilowatt hour.  Hydro-Quebec had oodles of electricity, some of it from very low-cost operations and could have made a tidy sum off New Brunswick customers even at reduced current rates.

Leonard and his colleagues campaigned against the deal and if they now buy Muskrat Falls power, they’d be doing exactly the opposite from what the Shawn Graham deal would have delivered.

Maybe the crowd in Fredericton will just settle for making some cash off the power that Nalcor will wheel through to the United States.

Oh.

That’s right.

There’s a power glut south of the border.

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Layton will cave

Just a gut feeling.

Jack Layton will not trigger an election this spring.

Forget the tough talk.

Heard it before.

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What it means to be an energy warehouse

Governors of New England states come to visit you looking for more juice.  In this case, Vermont’s top political leader took a two-day trip to Quebec to discuss power and transportation.  Governor Peter Shumlin wants to route a New York to Montreal high speed rail line through Vermont.  He also discussed electricity and natural gas pipelines.

"Everyone's trying to sell us power," Shumlin said. The New England market has excess generating capacity, and Vermont utilities have been approached with several offers, he said.

"It's a buyer's market," Shumlin said.

Let’s get that Muskrat Falls in production soon to take advantage of that buyer’s market.

Yeah.

Right.

So when are Pete and his buddies making a pilgrimage to sit at Kathy Dunderdale’s feet?

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Connies torquing Bev Oda

The Globe and Mail carried an exceptionally well crafty effort by someone to counteract the fairly obvious problems federal cabinet minister Bev Oda created for herself recently.

It is not just spin, however.

It is beyond mere spin.

It is torque.

Pure torque.

It is such a heavy load of torque this piece should be accompanied by the whine of one of those wrenches they use in garages to change tire lugs.

Bev Oda is a former senior executive in the communications industry who, we are to believe, is now a “serious minded minister” who has one tragic flaw – she simply can’t explain what she means.  She cannot communicate effectively. 

Someone was so concerned to get that message that they made it the headline of the piece.

The lede then reframes the entire controversy and ascribes it to “sketchy paperwork”.

But here’s the simple truth:  Bev Oda lied to parliament.

The paperwork was not sketchy.  it’s there and plain and as Oda herself acknowledged she directed someone to insert the word “not” in a document and thereby change its meaning.

The lede of the Globe piece is factually incorrect.

It is, to use a simple word, untrue.

In case you missed it, the lede is based on an entirely false premise.

The rest of the article describes Oda’s desk piled high with papers and cases where decisions were left to the last minute.  The article refers to former staffers who attribute this to her penchant for reading each document thoroughly. Oda is, we are assured “a stickler for details and a pains-taking reader of files.”

Sure she is.

What the article describes is a person who actually appears to be overwhelmed by her responsibilities and who is working well above her ceiling.  Delay of this sort is not an attention to detail;  it is likely an avoidance of making a decision and that comes from only one source:  insecurity.

Ministers who are on top of their files, as the phrase goes and who are, at the same time, sticklers for detail tend to keep their desks cleared with an endless flurry of paper coming and going.

They do not hesitate to make decisions.

They are constantly making decisions.

They are the ones who, after a very long day,  take home a bunch of hundred page tomes and skip the one page briefing notes to dive into the detail.  The books comes back the next morning with hand-written notations on page after page in the middle.

Your humble e-scribbler can say this because he has worked for or with a bunch of them and knows a bunch more by reputation.

Oda served as a senior vice president at CTV but she is, according to the sources in this article, beset by a communications problem.

Again, a nose-puller of Mulroney-ego-esque proportions.

Bev Oda lied to parliament.

She should go.

And if the Prime Minister and his crew had half a clue they’d have punted this fairly obvious inept minister a long time ago.  Surely there’s a sinecure somewhere for her other than sitting in cabinet.

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Never heard that before

Memorial University’s political science department is undergoing a reinvigoration of the kind not seen in the department in nearly 40 years.

You can credit it to a crop of bright, aggressive and curious professors like Alex Marland and Matthew Kerby.

In the second part of a series on the department, the Telegram’s Dave Bartlett interviews Kerby and Marland and the pair discuss three myths that affect Newfoundland and Labrador politics.

Marland and Kerby also discussed some of the accepted — but not necessarily factual — beliefs in this province’s political culture, which they’ve discovered through their research and by observing local politics.

“What bothers me about Newfoundland politics is, the more I research … the more I realize that things (are) repeated, and it’s not necessarily always for good reasons,” said Marland.

And the three myths?

One, that the pro­vince would be better off if it didn’t join Canada in 1949. Two, the reason for the collapse of the fishery, and three, that it’s not the pro­vince’s fault it was ripped off by the Upper Churchill agreement.

Bond Papers readers will find this discussion fascinating if not just a wee frickin’ bit familiar.

Don’t expect some of this corner’s regular commenters to take too kindly to the professors’ ideas.

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Romantic Traffic

1. Humber West post mortem
2. From 61% to 44% since August:  NTV poll shows Tory support slides further
3. Kremlinology 32:  the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
4. Signs of the Granterdannerung
5. Think federal equity stake
6. Dunderdale admin awards lucrative government legal work without tender
7. Low Turn-out
8. Kremlinology 31:  AG report on offshore board mysteriously vanishes
9. Cheryl Gallant sinks
10. Twitter or huckster:  the political uses of social media

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Low Turn-out

As the Telegram editorial pointed up on Thursday, the winners in a series of recent by-elections took what is ostensibly one of the province’s most important and prestigious jobs based on the endorsement of the less than 30% of the eligible voters in the districts involved.

The Telegram blames the voters for this problem:

If you couldn’t even get off your backside to vote, you have no right to complain about how lousy, venial or downright pathetic your representation turns out to be. Heck, if they steal from you (as some of our politicians recently did), you hardly have a right to complain; you took no part in picking them, so they hardly betrayed your trust.

With possibly one brief period, politics in Newfoundland and Labrador has never been based on mobilisation of voters around a common goal or agenda based on their fundamental equality and on their shared and equal right to determine the future of the province.

Typically politics in Newfoundland and Labrador is based on the idea that citizens surrender their power to the patron who will deliver such benefits to the district – in the form of jobs and public spending – as he might be able.  Typically that sort of idea is reinforced by the sort of politics we’ve seen in the recent by-election in Humber West. 

In his campaign foray, Danny Williams took pains to remind voters how good he and his colleagues had been to the region.  That’s none-too-subtle coded for “look how much pork we brought” and now pay us back with a vote for my guy.  That’s pretty much the same sort of thing he said after the embarrassing defeat in the Straits.  Williams famously expressed disdain that voters could be so ungrateful to him – perhaps personally – for not electing his candidate after all the money that Williams and his colleagues had delivered to the district.

That basic message in provincial politics is what lay at the heart of the spending scandal.  Individual politicians got to distribute pork to their districts or to withhold it as they saw fit.  No one pretended to distribute the money fairly.  No one, including a former auditor general, thought that government programs – administered impartially by departments – were the right way to handle health and social services assistance of the kind many politicians claimed to be delivering out of money meant to maintain constituency offices and the like.

The current Conservative administration isn’t doing anything radically new in comparison to most of their predecessors. Like poll goosing, they are just doing it more aggressively and much more blatantly.  Fighting public disclosure of information? Discouraging public debate?  Closing and restricting membership in a supposedly open party?  All reflect the basic attitude that the majority of citizens have no role to play in the political system except to obey and acquiesce.

It is hardly surprising in that sort of political environment that people don’t participate in by-elections:  they aren’t supposed to turn out, beyond the identified party faithful.  And beyond the incumbent party, it takes a certain level of courage to swim against the stream.  The shouts of quisling and traitor aren’t designed to encourage discussion and it isn’t surprising that this sort of thuggery and intimidation has been as prominent as it has been during one of the most paternalistic regimes in the province’s history.    

It’s also not surprising that the most recent general election produced one of the lowest participation rates in the province’s history, right in line with the last time a paternalistic and patronage riddled party ruled the province.

So perhaps the next time the telegram editorialist is penning a finger-wagger, he or she might explain how it is the voter’s fault for not being braver when  the local political culture discourages participation.

Well, discourages participation beyond tugging the forelock.

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From 61% to 44% since August: NTV poll shows Tory support slides further

For those who have lived by the provincial government’s polling as proof of how popular the governing Conservatives have been, the most recent provincial public opinion polls offer no comfort.

An NTV/Telelink poll released Wednesday [link to NTV report] shows support for the governing provincial Conservatives is currently at 44.3% with 37.9% undecided.

NTV is reporting those figures as being not much different from the last provincial government poll in November, but that’s not the case.

A straight comparison – using the Telelink approach – shows that support for the province’s Tories is down from 51.8% in the CRA poll.  Undecideds in the Corporate Research Associates poll conducted last November stood at 31% on the party support question.

Danny Williams didn’t announce his resignation until the end of CRA’s polling period and it is unlikely his departure significantly changed the poll results.  in other words, undecideds in November increased despite the fact Williams was still the premier at the time CRA conducted the poll.

And in case you missed the point,  support for the province’s Tories has plummeted in the past six months from 61.8% to 44.3%. 

While CRA polling has some very serious credibility problems, Telelink has been notoriously more accurate by comparison.  Their September 2007 poll nailed the Conservative share of eligible voters smack on the money. CRA was 20 percentage points off.  For those counting, CRA was out by something like 32 percent, not the margin of error cited in the poll at the time.  Telelink also got within seven percentage points of the undecided/will not vote (31% polled versus 38) while CRA was basically OTL (18% polled versus 38% actual)

What’s going on?  You can get a good sense of this by looking at the undecideds. Over the past 20 years or so, local polls tend to see a change in “undecideds” when people are unhappy with the incumbent party. They may not be so disgruntled that they switch to the major opposition party;  they may not see the opposition as a viable alternative at that moment.

In this survey, NTV/Telelink did something CRA never does:  they probed the undecideds and asked them which way they might be leaning.  The Tory number climbed but the undecideds were still around 25% according to the NTV report.

That’s still pretty high and it cannot be very encouraging for the Tories.

In Newfoundland and Labrador politics, there are cadres of dedicated party voters.  They turn out and vote the same way pretty well every time.  But the biggest chunk of voters are swing voters.  They are not ideological or overly wrapped up in one party affiliation or another and they are the prize for any party wanting power. When polling in the province changes significantly, odds are the swing voters are swinging. [new sentence added for clarity]

For those who accept CRA polls, you’d have to be worried about the change that showed up last November. This most recent change happened under Danny, the supposedly invincible. he’s gone and the slide is still there. Now the decided party support for the Tories is down again by about 18 percentage points.

Now look at the vote results in the by-elections off the Avalon since 2007. In Humber West, Tory support dropped about 24%, the largest percentage since 2003.  The Liberal vote climbed by a comparable percentage for a combined swing of 45%. That’s in the heart of the Tories’ west coast base.

Remember Danny Williams’ comments right before the by-election about how good Tories have been to the entire west coast?  Yeah, well here’s the payback on that investment.  In the Straits, they rejected the Tory candidate altogether and the Tories retaliated or appear to have retaliated with the air ambulance move.  That couldn’t have helped their overall position on the peninsula.

And in case you are wondering, the swing in Humber West was larger than the 2011 swing in the Straits and St. Barbe that heralded the rise of Danny Williams.

Take Humber West as the example of a trend.  Even when the Tories win, it’s getting pretty clear that they are losing some of their voters.  Some may be core Tories who are getting getting complacent.  Some might be Tories who are just tired of the internal war with their federal cousins.  More likely, they are losing independent or swing voters owing to nothing more radical than fatigue. 

Now consider that in the face of this fairly obvious weakening of Tory support, their most recent decision is to play all-defence with virtually no change in the fundamental direction of the party.  Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters in Corner Brook that there’s no change in the overall make-up of her administration until sometime after the fall election.

A defensive game might win.

However, that strategy depends very much on what the Liberals do.  it smacks of the same sort of conventional wisdom slash complacency that led them to count on Danny being around for another one and then some.  Shit happens, as they say.

If the Tories can hold it together, keep a lid on internal fractures, avoid making any controversial decisions, spend like drunken sailors and run a Humber West-style hide ‘em if ya got ‘em campaign, they might  hang on to most of the seats they currently hold.  

That assumes, though, that the Liberals just stumble their way along as they did in 2007.  If the Liberals shift their direction just a bit a lot can change.  Solid local candidates, for example, can make local races competitive in districts outside the metro St. John’s region.  There are plenty of districts that went barely blue in 2007 and there are undoubtedly plenty of polls within districts that reverted – as in Terra Nova – to their former, Liberal voting patterns. It doesn’t take much to swing a poll or a district as the Tories and those familiar with the province’s long electoral history should know.

In the current political environment, small changes can produce disproportionate results. There’s more than enough time between now and October for one change or a combination of changes to produce the sort of political upheavals that happened in the last week of November and the first week of December last year.

2011 could be one of the most interesting political years in Newfoundland and Labrador history.

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Barnes to tackle Tory incumbent

Former conservative member of parliament Rex Barnes announced today that he will be challenging Conservative incumbent Ray Hunter for the nomination in Grand falls-Windsor-Green Bay South.

Hunter will apparently seek the nomination again;  at the very least Hunter doesn’t look like he’s ready to pack it in.

Some observations:

• Hunter’s never been tight with anyone in the Tory caucus.  Danny used to keep him by the door and that was not to guard it.
• Barnes evidently has a good idea Ray is vulnerable and that his candidacy will garner some favour from the party backroom.
• Don’t be surprised if Ray crosses the floor or that the backroom persuades him to retire.
• Don’t be surprised if there are more challenges to incumbents or floor-crossing.

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Humber West post mortem

Granter won. 

Watton lost.

Myers came a distant third.

Tories held the seat and they still do.

That’s the simple result and for the truly simple, that’s all they will see:  no change.

Take a deeper look, though, and  you have a really interesting set of results. The figures used in this post are from Elections Newfoundland and Labrador’s website.

Over the three Danny elections, he polled an average of 3728 votes.  In the 2001 by-election, Williams polled 3606.  In 2003, Williams polled 3823 and in 2007, he actually polled fewer votes:  3755.

Vaughn Granter polled 2109 votes.  That’s 56% of Danny’s average over three elections.  He took 63% of the turnout but consider that Granter left home almost one Tory vote for every Tory vote he got.

Of course, it wasn’t Granter who left them home although the results suggest this was not any great endorsement of the local high school principal.  This by-election was really about Tom Marshall, Danny’s West Coast organizer.  Marshall campaigned hard for Granter, right down to an attack on ACAP debate organizers and their integrity.  And then there was the curious decision to leave the Premier home and bring out Danny Williams for some last minute campaigning. 

But still, for all that the Tories only managed to get 56% of Danny’s vote to the polls.
Meanwhile, Liberal Mark Watton garnered 1097 votes in his first time out.  That’s actually larger than the three-election average of 1088. The Liberals turned out 79% of the average for 2001 and 2003, their best results during the Danny Williams period.

Turnout was also down, coming in at  slightly less than 40%.  Turnout in the two general elections and the 2001 were – chronologically – 53%, 61% and 60%.

So sure, on the surface things look the same now as they did last December as far as seat count goes.

Just below the surface, though, lots of things seem to be changing.

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Think federal equity stake

So the provincial Conservatives are still looking to Uncle Ottawa for a loan guarantee to build the Danny Williams Memorial Money Pit, a.k.a Muskrat Falls and a bunch of transmission lines. This is a really old story.

Danny Williams claimed he had a commitment at one point but for some reason the provincial Conservatives have to keep asking for it.

In the latest version, Kathy Dunderdale – Williams’ chosen heir – is asking again, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper is carefully examining the whole project that he supposedly already committed to fund.

Well, at least that’s what Kathy told us what Stephen said which is basically what happened before when Danny told us over an dover again that Stephen gave a loan guarantee which he apparently never did since Danny and Kathy have to keep asking for it.

Yes, yes, it is just more of the same but let’s just make this really simple.

Let’s remind everyone of what Stephen Harper said in 2006 when Danny Williams asked him to finance the Lower Churchill:

A Conservative government would welcome discussions on this initiative and would hope that the potential exists for it to proceed in the spirit of past successes such as the Hibernia project.

Hibernia project.

1992.

8.5% Equity stake.

How big a piece of the Muskrat Falls pie is Kathy willing to sell to Stephen Harper to build Danny Williams’ legacy?

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Kremlinology 32: the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Since 1949, not a single Premier has left office and then come back later to campaign on behalf of a by-election candidate for his party while his party was still in power.

Not one.

Once they resigned, they were gone.

They handed over the keys to the eight floor washroom and buggered off to the sun or the Wet Coast or whatever they were up to after quitting.

But not the Old Man.

In Humber West, the Conservatives under the curious leadership style of Kathy Dunderdale flew Danny Williams out to campaign for their hand-picked candidate.

Vaughn Granter seems to be having some tough sledding in the by-election in Williams’ old seat.  Granter is usually seen practically running from door to door, bundled up against the cold like some blue-clad moustachioed gnome.  CBC’s Doug Greer caught Granter on one portion of his frenzied campaign and heard yet again about Granter’s extensive experience in dealing with parents and students.  This is not surprising since Granter is a teacher but it does not logically follow that a high school principal is a natural community leader ready to step into the shoes vacated by one Danny Williams, Q.C (Quixotic Conservative).

Hisself’s sudden appearance smells of concern in the Connie bunker about Granter’s chances. Put that with Tom Marshall’s appearance on open line trying to claim the environmental debate his candidate buggered was somehow tainted.  Then add Tom’s unexplained cancellation of a budget consultation on polling day and you have some pretty solid clues that all is not well with Danny’s legacy in Corner Brook.

The fact that Danny tried to claim the seat is still his – he left it vacant on December 3 – seems all the more curious.  What really demolished any lingering doubts about Granter’s current status on the leaderboard was Danny’s use of The Phrase:  “Nothing could be further from the truth” to deny troubles for the provincial Tories in the mill town. More often than not that phrase used to signal that one could not be, in fact, any closer to the truth.

Danny’s sudden appearance in Humber West may do more than signal Vaughn Granter’s in trouble and may lose the by-election.

His appearance suggests Kathy is not up to the job or, much worse, that maybe she is merely the premier for show.  The real leader had to come out of hiding to finish the job for his ersatz replacement.  On the face of it, one can easily think that Dunderdale and her entire team can’t win a by-election in a supposedly safe seat without Danny.  You have to wonder why. 

One must also wonder why Kathy Dunderdale spent so little time campaigning in Corner brook.  Dunderdale did make a brief appearance in the campaign early on and a couple of cabinet ministers showed up.  For the most part, though, Kathy hasn’t been out running around with the candidate she wants in the House with her.  She hasn’t even been heard talking him up all that much.  What gives with that?

In a manner of speaking, Hisself’s sun-tanned appearance is a bit like taking a Tommy gun to Kathy Dunderdale’s leadership.  He’s shot it full of holes. 

If Mark Watton wins on polling day or even comes a decent second, people around the province will start to wonder about her her ability to lead the party and the province.  Sure the faithful and the pitcher plants will cheer and pretend all is well.  But  among the politicians and the politically inclined, the view may be decidedly different. 

There may well be questions about Dunderdale’s ability to do the job.  In a caucus where her leadership does not have deepest of deep support, there could be a move to replace her before she gets to wear the crown officially.  Political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador aren’t known for their internal stability when unfettered ambition smells the stink of weak, ineffectual leadership.

Just think of it this way:  unless Vaughn Granter blows Mark Watton into dust at the polls, Danny’s trip to Corner Brook will be seen as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre of Kathy Dunderdale’s political credibility and maybe her career.

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Signs of the Granterdannerung #hwblxn

First Danny Williams emerges from his hiding place to campaign in Corner Brook on behalf of the hand-picked Conservative candidate in Humber West.

Then Tom Marshall suddenly  - and for no apparent reason – cancels his budget consultation in Goose Bay originally set for polling day in Humber West.

No weather excuses.

No real explanations at all.

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