Tories at 44.5%, UND at 39%: government pollster #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Double-down Update:

• CRA's issued a correction that its UND category was 23% as shown in the table not 39% shown in the text.  That's one mother of a typo and therefore that's worth a whole new post, coming later.
• CBC apparently piggybacked on this one and has some specific questions of its own coming later on Monday evening.  That would warrant a separate post on its own.
• New post:  “Dunderdale boosts Tory support from last Williams poll”

Original Post begins...

Support for the ruling provincial Conservatives under Kathy Dunderdale is at 44.5% compared to 61% last August under Danny Williams according to a Corporate Research Associates quarterly poll released on Monday.  The results match almost exactly with a recent NTV/Telelink poll that put support for the province’s Tories at 44.3%.

Undecided, including those who refused to answer and those who do not plan to vote is at 39%, up eight percentage points from CRA’s November 2010 poll.  NTV/Telelink reported 37.9% of its respondents didn’t know how they might vote, wouldn’t state a preference or indicated they would not vote.

And that’s where the real story is for these polling numbers.  According to CRA’s polls, support for the provincial Conservatives started to slide during the last three months of Danny Williams’ leadership.  His abrupt departure didn’t stop the slide.

What’s worse, the margin of error for this poll is 4.9%.  That means there is a possible variation in those numbers of almost 10 percentage points.  Given that the Tory and UND number is less than 10% is it possible that more people are undecided or won’t state a preference than are actually indicating they will vote for the provincial Conservatives.

There are problems with the way CRA presents its figures.  For example, they show party choice for decided voters.  This is highly misleading as can be seen in the party vote numbers. The obvious decline in Tory support vanishes completely because of the way CRA reports its figures.

Still, if you look at the numbers, understand what you are seeing, and can check them against a second set of figures like NTV/Telelink, the results can be dramatically different than what you will see reported by conventional media.

These poll results from two different firms don’t  mean the Tories will lose the next general election.  What they do show is an electorate which is sufficiently uncomfortable that they will not state a clear support for the ruling party.  The fall general election could be up for grabs, depending on what the Conservatives and the opposition parties do over the next three to seven months.

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MOU PIFO 2

For those who haven’t watched it yet, the raw video of fisheries minister Clyde Jackman’s news conference on the fisheries restructuring report  is worth watching in its entirety. 

Jackman and his staff apparently tried to rush the reporters and overwhelm them.  Instead of the usual background briefing on the report and a lengthy introductory statement, Jackman simply sat down, blathered out some perfunctory thanks and quickly asked for the first question.

What happens next is both beautiful and horrifying.  The beauty is in the elegance of reporters’ questions, especially CBC’s David Cochrane:  simple, focused and sharp despite working with the considerable handicap of not having read the lengthy report ahead of time.  They fillet Jackman’s credibility in living colour and lay out for anyone who cares to see it both the solution to the fisheries crisis and the only serious obstacle to it, namely the provincial government itself.

The horrifying bit is Jackman, his finger sometimes point here and there while he desperately tried to say something that did not sound asinine.  What Jackman fell back on repeatedly were a bunch of stock phrases about the need to treat the industry like an industry or the “ask” for a whole lot of money.  The result – the horrifying bit – comes with the realization that either the cabinet is completely fractured over fisheries reform and cannot figure out what to do or that they are agreed that the fishery must simply be allowed to collapse of its own accord.

There simply isn’t another alternative for Jackman’s performance.  After all, you don’t have to watch too much of his squirming to get the feeling that Jackman was busily clicking his heels under the table and muttering “There’s no place like home, Toto” under his breath.

In all likelihood, the current cabinet, like previous cabinets simply can’t get a position they can all agree on.   That would explain why Jackman never could define what he actually wanted instead of the report in front of him.  That’s why he relied on stock phrases that themselves meant nothing.  And as a result, one gets the idea pretty clearly that the provincial government simply doesn’t know what it wants, except to know that they did not want to accept the report in front of him and all its implications.

What Jackman did mention one too many times for comfort was the idea that some people think time will take care of the whole thing.  In other words, in an industry dominated by people rapidly approaching retirement, most of the people who would be “restructured” will simply leave the industry on their own if nothing else happens. He also talked about signs that prices might be climbing again soon, perhaps another clue as to what some in the provincial government might be hoping for.

Cochrane asked if the entire MOU process was now a waste of time.  Four and a half years of work at building a consensus in the industry seems to have come to naught. Not at all, said Jackman since now everyone has a study that describes exactly how bad things really are; now people can talk about solutions.

People have been talking about solutions for years.  This report was supposed to be the first step to action, not to further talk.  For anyone willing to pay attention, comments this past week made it pretty clear that both processors and fish harvesters are done with talking.  They want some action.

That leaves the provincial government in a terrible spot:  there is an election in October. The fishery is a gigantic political problem affecting many districts on the island and in Labrador. The governing party not only has no idea what to do about the fishery, they cannot even develop a strategy to effectively manage the controversy.

And what’s more, they have no distractions, no foreign demons, no bits of absurd political theatre to use to distract people.

What a terrible place to be in.

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Traffic without patronage, Feb 28 to Mar 3

1. HMV
2. Provgov pollster seeds ground for bad news
3. A cheaper, green alternative to Muskrat Falls
4. MOU PIFO
5. Are city councillors paid enough?
6. Patronage, pure and simple
7. CB city council by-election down to five
8. Birds of a Conservative feather
9. Court docket now online
10. 35% unsure of Dunderdale

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Charlie or Gaddafi-Duck?

From the Mirror, a list of comments.

You have to pick whether the line came from Charlie Sheen or Muammar Qadafhi.

Then try the Vanity Fair version.

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So who would be the deputy Max?

The Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, 1987 allows for the appointment of two vice-chairs at the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

But with two vice-chairs, who will be the board member to fill in for chief executive officer Max Ruelokke if he is away for a vacation or is otherwise not on the job?

Here’s what section 14 says:

The Board shall designate a member to act as Chairman of the Board during any absence or incapacity of the Chairman or vacancy in the office of Chairman, and that person, while acting as Chairman, has and may exercise all of the powers and perform all of the duties and functions of the Chairman.

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Patronage, pure and simple

Take out a piece of paper and a pencil and it wouldn’t take you very long to write down the names of men and women from the private or public sector who are qualified by their experience to take on the job of vice-chair at the federal-provincial agency that regulates the offshore industry.

Limit the list to just women and you’d still have a fair number of very capable people.

Elizabeth Matthews  - Danny Williams’ former communications director  - wouldn’t be on the list anywhere.

She wouldn’t be left out of consideration because she isn’t smart or capable in her own right.  It’s just that she lacks the experience necessary for the job.

It’s that simple.

By proposing to appoint the unqualified Matthews as vice chair of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, Kathy Dunderdale has shown exactly the same tendency to propose unqualified people for very important jobs her patron had.  Andy Wells, the former mayor of St. John’s is perhaps the best example of that. 

However, Andy Wells is surely not the only example of an appointment that left many people scratching their heads in bewilderment or – as again with the Matthews appointment – setting teeth on edge in the province’s oil industry. They might have understood appointing Danny Williams’  former chief of staff who is also looking for a new gig now that Williams has left politics.  At least, Brian Crawley had work experience in the industry on the Hibernia project.  For the past couple of weeks though, the movers and shakers in the local oil patch are shaking their heads at the sort of appointment one might find in some banana republic rather than in a Canadian jurisdiction that aspires to be among the world leaders in regulating a complex industry.

Conservatives are trotting out the idea that Matthews will somehow change the communications practices at the board because of her work experience.  The board already has a competent and experience public relations practitioner, for one thing and Matthews certainly isn’t needed for that.  What’s more important to realise in that regard is that, as others have pointed out, Matthews helped to create and sustain one of the most secretive political machines in the province’s history. 

What both the provincial [and] federal governments ought to have done in this case is what the position warrants:  an open competition in which the successful candidate is appointed based on merit.  That’s how such a senior position ought to be filled.  That’s how they filled the chairman’s job a few years.  The process wound up a mess [in that case] simply because Danny Williams intervened to try and foist his blatantly unqualified whim onto a process that was supposed to be driven by merit. Just because the law says appointments like this are made by cabinet does not mean that they must be handed out as patronage plums.

Merit ought to count for much more that it does with the current provincial administration.

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*   Corrections in square brackets

Birds of a Conservative feather

Not surprisingly at all, the federal Conservatives now call it the “Harper government”. 

From 2003 to 2010 in Newfoundland and Labrador, it was always the Williams government, too.

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From the extraordinarily stupid comments file

The Western Star -  the newspaper that previously blamed the opposition Liberals for Danny Williams’ expropriation fiasco – now thinks that Liberals should just go away and let the Conservatives do as they see fit.

Is that just an extraordinarily stupid comment, even for the Western Star, or what?

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HMV

Danny Williams, on why he got into politics:

I was tired of the patronage and the corruption.

Well maybe he as tired of half of that.

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35% unsure of Dunderdale

A new poll by VisionCritical/Angus Reid shows Kathy Dunderdale with the second highest approval rating of premiers across Canada. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall topped the list at 63% approval, with 16% undecided

But look at the numbers in the wider context and you can see why the provincial government’s pollster was in the news this week lowering public expectations for his client. Don Mills told the Telegram that: “[Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s popularity is] not going to be 75 per cent, I wouldn’t think.” 

Mills’ polling firm was cluing up the quarterly survey when he made the comments. The VisionCritical/Angus Reid numbers give an indication of the numbers Mills was likely picking up.

Dunderdale’s got the highest reported undecided – 35% – of any Premier in the country. Dunderdale is slightly ahead of New Brunswick Conservative at 33% undecided.  His approval rating is also the third highest at 42%.

Dunderdale is also a long way from Danny Williams’ approval numbers.  In November 2010 he was at 67% and in February 2010 he had the approval of 80% of those surveyed.  Fully 78% approved of Williams and only 12% were unsure in November 2009.

That was an enormous drop for Williams and the trend is still downward for his hand-picked successor.

What’s more, VisionCritical/Angus Reid’s question is not a choice of one leader compared to others:  it merely measures people’s opinion about the premier himself or herself from people within their respective provinces. Mills’ polls ask respondents to chose the political party leader they would prefer to see as Premier.

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A cheaper, green alternative to Muskrat Falls

Natural resources minister Shawn Skinner has hit on a cheaper, less risky green alternative to the Muskrat Falls megaproject.

He didn’t mean to do that, of course.  he was actually trying to justify Muskrat Falls by claiming the project will give the province energy security by allowing the island portion of the province to import power from the mainland in the event of an emergency.

The major way of doing that would be through the tie to Nova Scotia, according to Skinner. As the Telegram quotes Skinner:

“We’re anticipating to mostly use it to export excess capacity, excess electricity into the Atlantic provinces and the northeast United States, but in the event of a catastrophe … it would be possible for us to import electricity,” Skinner said in a recent interview.

That’s certainly true, but that isn’t a rationale for building a very expensive dam in Labrador and a very expensive power line from that dam to St. John’s especially when the island portion of the province doesn’t need the juice. 

But let’s just allow for a second that the island needs power. Skinner has actually given Newfoundlanders and Labradorians a far better option to meet the province’s energy needs that building Muskrat Falls.

At $1.2 billion, the line to Nova Scotia would actually meet the island’s energy needs and give the energy security Skinner is talking about. Nalcor or Newfoundland Power could import power from the mainland if it is needed. 

But more importantly the line from Nova Scotia and an upgrade to the line across the Isthmus of Avalon would help bring to market all that stranded central Newfoundland hydro seized by government in the botched expropriation.  In addition, it would allow for wind and new small hydro projects on the island.  Right now, there’s no place for that extra power to go when it isn’t needed on the island.  A link to Nova Scotia would take care of that.

And all that wind generation and small hydro – far cheaper than Muskrat Falls  - would help displace the thermal generator at Holyrood with green energy that is far cheaper than the $5.0 billion dam and power line project that is at the heart of Danny Williams’ legacy project.

The line would cost $1.2 billion compared to $5.0 billion for the dam and line to St.John’s.  Emera is already committed to the Nova Scotia line.  If Nalcor split the bill 50/50, then the actual cost of Nalcor would be a mere $600 million plus annual operating costs.  Nalcor and Emera wouldn’t need a federal loan guarantee or any federal financial help at all in that scenario.  Nalcor could fund its share from offshore oil revenues.  Heck, the provincial government could build it’s share of the line right now for cash since it has billions on hand in temporary investments.  Talk about the perfect go-it-alone, stand-on-your-own-two-feet, “have province” option.

On top of that, there are plenty of private operators ready to build wind projects on the island;  the only thing stopping them right now is Nalcor and government policy.  In other words, there’s no practical reason not to pursue the cheaper, green options.  Private sector companies could build the projects either alone or in partnership with Nalcor. 

Unfortunately, the tie to Nova Scotia is the last thing on the list of things to be built for the current version of the Lower Churchill. And right now Skinner and his colleagues are obsessed with a very expensive very risky project that could wind up going way over budget. 

Given the soft markets for electricity in the near-term, it would actually make economic sense to wait a while to build the entire Lower Churchill until the markets will buy the power with long-term deals.  That’s much better for consumers in the province who, right now, are staring at a government hell-bent on doubling their electricity rates by 2017 and saddling them with $5.0 billion in debt on top of the $12 billion they currently owe.

There’d be an added bonus in building the Nova Scotia line first:  Nalcor would have export infrastructure plus it would have a megaproject to its credit to prove to investors it can deliver complex engineering work on-time and at or under budget.

On top of that, a policy that encouraged private sector investment for wind development would go a long way to reversing the image the province has gained since 2003 of a banana republic where the government is closed for business.

Cheap, green energy to meet the needs on the most populous part of the province at a low cost and with the potential to bring new revenue from exports?

Job done.

Association of Seafood Producers responds to Jackman

Below you’ll find the complete text of a statement issued Tuesday by the Association of Seafood Producers.

Key bits:

• ASP clearly supports the process that led to the report and the report itself, describing Tom Clift’s work as “a comprehensive analysis of the predicament facing the industry” and as something that lay the groundwork for “a planned landing”
• By refusing to take the report to cabinet, fisheries minister Clyde Jackman is apparently breaking one of government’s commitments in the memorandum of understanding.
• The processors were looking for government assistance in securing a loan to help pay for the industry down-sizing, not a simple request for cash as the fisheries minister suggested.

:

You an find the Telegram’s online story here.

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Labrador Metis to seek injunction blocking Muskrat project

The NunatuKavut Metis Nation will be seeking an injunction to halt environmental assessment hearings on the Muskrat Falls project, according to CBC News.

Chris Montague of the NunatuKavut Metis Nation said the group is meeting with a lawyer Tuesday morning.

He said the Metis group expects to file an injunction against Nalcor, the provincial environmental department, and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday.

UPDATE:  The Metis filed an injunction on Tuesday morning in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, according to the Telegram.

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Are city councillors paid enough?

Debbie Hanlon doesn’t think so.

Residents of the city took pains to explain otherwise in the comments section of Monday’s Telegram story. Their comments make this story well worth reading.

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February Traffic Patterns

1. Humber West post mortem
2. From 61% to 44% since August:  NTV poll shows Tory support slides further
3. Connies torquing Bev Oda
4. Cheryl Gallant sinks
5. Layton will cave
6. Kremlinology 32:  the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
7. Signs of the Granterdannerung
8. Tweet of the week (early edition)
9. Dunderdale admin awards lucrative legal work without tender and Never heard that before and Think federal equity stake (three way tie)
10. Quebec interested in lunatic megaproject

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Noble gets deep water license in Gulf of Mexico

The United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement has issued a license to Noble Energy to continue work on a well located 115 kilometres southeast of Venice, Louisiana, according to the Globe and Mail and other media outlets.

The company started drilling the exploratory well just before last year’s catastrophe.

The Wall Street Journal reports the well is in 6,500 feet of water.

There are six other permits for deep water drilling currently awaiting approval, according to the New York Times.

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CB city council by-election down to five

cornerbrooker.com has a great little piece on the west coast city’s municipal by-election.

This leaves five candidates competing for one City Council seat: June Alteen, Gary Kelly, Trent Quinton, Tarragh Shanahan, and Alton Whelan.

Aside from some lawn signs, most candidates have been fairly quiet so far, however I think that Gary Kelly is at least proving that he’s visible and willing to work for the position. You may have seen him marching up and down O’Connell Drive in all sorts of nasty weather, or standing outside hockey games at the Pepsi Centre with his bright yellow campaign sign, waving as the cars head down the hill.

They mention that Gary also has a website and is using Twitter and Facebook.  That’s not surprising for a guy who was an early adopter to blogging  and who ran one of the best little gems of a blog in the process. A lot of politicians in the province could learn a lot of lessons from Gary.

For what it’s worth, Gary has the Bond Papers endorsement. Corner Brook readers of these e-scribblers would be well served if they voted for Gary in the by-election.

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Provgov pollster seeds ground for bad news

Provincial government pollster Don Mills is in the Telegram on Monday getting people ready for yet a further decline in polling numbers for the province’s ruling Conservatives.

“[Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s popularity is] not going to be 75 per cent, I wouldn’t think,” he said. “To some extent, it will have nothing to do with Kathy Dunderdale at all. I think it’s just going to be people realizing that (Williams) was a pretty extraordinary personality that commanded support across party lines.”

As you can see, Mills wasn’t just contented to hint that the numbers would be down;  he also felt obliged to offer his opinion on the implications.  The basis for his opinion won’t ever be found in any of his polling numbers.  They are – like his seat projections in 2007 – based on something else.

Mills is talking about personality popularity – or even name recognition – but neither of those are directly connected to ballot results.  Danny Williams personal popularity soared after 2005 but in the 2007 general election, the Conservatives garnered the same share of eligible vote they had in 2003. 

A recent poll by NTV/Telelink puts the Conservatives under Kathy Dunderdale as the choice of  44% of eligible vote.  That continues a steady decline registered by Corporate Research over the third and fourth quarters of 2010.  If the implication of Mills’ comments are borne out, CRA’s poll that is just clueing up should confirm the NTV/Telelink numbers.

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MOU PIFO

A classic Telegram editorial, your humble e-scribbler once wrote, consists of a summary of an issue concluding with a blinding insight into the completely frigging obvious.

Such is the Saturday Telegram offering, this time on the latest fisheries report unveiled and summarily rejected on Friday by fisheries minister Clyde Jackman:

Something has to be done. It may end up being a half-measure, or even less.  But the sheer size of the problem is now abundantly clear.  And for the industry, it has to be terrifying.

Four phrases.

Four penetrating insights into what is obvious to even the most casual observer of the fishery over the past 30 years.

That closing paragraph is right up there with Clyde Jackman’s claim on Friday that the MOU process was not a waste as everyone now had a detailed description of how bad things are.

Who didn’t know that already?

Well, besides Clyde Jackman, evidently. 

To be fair to both Jackman and the Telegram editorialist, though, they really are just a reflection of the fundamental problem that has plagued the fishery in this province since 1949.  People know what needs to be done to turn the fishery into an industry that is sustainable and relatively prosperous.  People in the current cabinet know.  People in past cabinets have known. Those who know and who are willing to do it are hampered by those who know nothing and others who vigorously oppose any changes at all. 

In the meantime, the only people suffering are the people in the industry.  Eventually time will take care of them.  Clyde Jackman kept mentioning that last Friday.  He really didn’t need to.

Everyone knows it.

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Irresponsibility of power: Dunderdale flip flops on Muskrat electricity rates

My, oh my what a little public angst over electricity bills will do for a government’s talking points.

The public angst has turned up in Labrador where a who mess of people are concerned they won’t get any of the benefits of the power and yet will wind up paying for it instead.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale zoomed into Happy Valley-Goose Bay late last week to reassure the unhappy valleyians on a few things.

Among the things she talked about was electricity pricing.   According to the Labradorian, Dunderdale said that Labradorians would not see rate increases once Muskrat is on line.

Fair enough.  They will still be getting powered by diesel along the coast since it is apparently too expensive to sling off lines to the coastal communities from the giant lines that will run right along the coast to get the power to Newfoundland.

“The responsibility of power will be charged to the people who use that power,” she said.

Garbled sentence to one side, that “responsibility of power” would not fall to Nova Scotians.  They’ll pay whatever Emera wants to charge them and Emera is getting its power from Muskrat for free if the final deal turns out to be the same as the one Danny Williams inked in order to catch his plane to retirement.

That “responsibility of power” would definitely be the people on the eastern end of Newfoundland. They are getting the power and will have to bear the full load of the cost and potentially more more besides even though they really don’t need it. 

And how much will they be responsible for?

That’s where Dunderdale went wobbly.

Last fall, natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, later morphed to be premier, was absolutely adamant that the Danny Williams Legacy Dam project was absolutely wonderful.  It was splendiferously necessary, sayeth Dunderdale, because by 2017, electricity prices in the provinces were going to skyrocket thanks to the price of oil. 

She even had a number she swore by:  120 American bucks a barrel, sustained, by 2017 and as much a 200 bucks a barrel within the next decade. And with crude running at those sorts of prices, it would be damn expensive to generate electricity at Holyrood. Enter Danny Williams Legacy Dam to save the day.

Some of you may recall her interview last November with CBC radio’s West Coast Morning Show.  Your humble e-scribbler even wrote about it for those who don’t normally tune in to the show:

Dunderdale claimed that electricity prices would increase an average of five percent each year from now until 2017. That’s the year Nalcor would supposedly bring Muskrat Falls on line. So electricity prices would be about 35% higher than they are now, according to Dunderdale.

And then on top of that you’d have to whack on the cost of Muskrat Falls power which Dunderdale estimated to be between 14.3 and 16.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

But with all the public concern over rate increases, Dunderdale is now not so sure about her projections.  As the Labradorian reported:

“The project is not advanced enough at this point to determine with that degree of accuracy what you are going to pay per kilowatt hour in 2017.”

She said at the average rate of increase of 5 percent per year, Newfoundlanders could expect to get about the same bill on current power in 2017 as they would under the Muskrat Falls hydropower with similar rates of increase.

Not advanced enough to determine with that degree of accuracy.

Riiiight.

And yet last fall, Kathy had great confidence that the prices would be exactly as she described.  After all it was the absolutely concrete, cast-in-stone, sure-as-Danny-made-little-green-apples certainty of the energy price forecasts that justified upping the gross public debt by about 50% of its current level.

And now Dunderdale can’t be sure what domestic electricity prices will be when the dam is finished in 2017.

That’s a gigantic change in just a few short weeks.

Expect more changes if the public starts paying more attention to what Danny Williams Legacy Dam will cost them.

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