Jack knows jack

Living in the west end of St. John’s out by working dairy farms you get used to the smell of cow manure and chicken crap.

Nothing however, compares to the hum coming off Jack Harris and Ryan Cleary who’ve been running around claiming that their victories in the federal election will translate into provincial gains.

A left-wing wave that is sending two St. John's New Democrats to Ottawa could keep rolling into the Newfoundland and Labrador election this fall, a re-elected MP says.

"Something that I believe firmly is that most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians actually have the same values and the same idea of what government should be about as New Democrats," St. John's East MP Jack Harris told CBC News.

Okay.

So for that to be true, people who usually and steadfastly vote for provincial Conservatives and who readily switch parties federally would have to abandon decades of practice.

Every single seat on the northeast Avalon – which Cleary and Harris as members of parliament in Ottawa - is a Tory seat and has been for seven years.

The NDP won Cleary’s seat by getting switch voters to switch.

D’uh!

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.

But here’s a second check on Harris’ prediction.  Jack won his riding handily in 2008. Again, massive Conservative vote switching, plus people who abandoned the Liberals at the same time.

There have been two provincial by-elections in Harris’ riding since then.  Both went to the provincial Conservatives by embarrassingly gigantic margins.  Jack Harris’s victory in 2008 and his electoral machine had zero discernable impact anywhere at the provincial level.

Now there are reasons for that we’ll get into for another post.

For now let’s just say that Jack and Ryan have a talking point that just laughable. Doesn’t matter though.  The boys have their work cut out for them in Ottawa so they’ll be a bit pre-occupied come the fall to try and live up to their predictions.

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St. John’s South-Mount Pearl: Vote Results Commentary

Take a look at the vote results in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the last four federal general elections and you can see the dramatic switch of Conservative votes to New Democrat votes.

Let’s start with the advance poll turn-out.  This is really just to remind everyone of the first sign something big was on the way.

The 2011 advance turn-out was 91% above the next highest, in 2006.  The advance vote turn-out in 2008  - the year of the Conservative civil war called ABC - was slightly below the range for the two previous elections but there was actually nothing radically out of line with it.

Now look at the results for the three major parties for the same elections.

First of all, the total vote for all three parties ranges from 33,137 in 2008 to 38,567 in 2011.  Leaving 2008 aside, total vote for the three parties in 2011 is only 4.2% higher than it was in 2006.

The Liberal 2011 vote total is 550 below the 2004 result and 3799 below the 2008 tally. On the whole, it is consistent with Liberal vote in the riding going back more than a decade. The 1997 Liberal vote in the old riding configuration, for example, was roughly 12,500. 

On the face of it, Siobhan Coady appears to have managed to capture and hold most of the usual Liberal vote in the riding over the four elections.  She gained about 2600 votes during the Conservative civil war, commonly known as the ABC campaign in 2008.

The most striking changes are in the Conservative and New Democrat vote.  Basically the two parties have traded places.

In 2004, when the provincial Conservatives held back from completely supporting the federal party, Loyal Hearn held the seat for the Conservatives.  Hearn increased his vote total in 2006 when the provincial Conservatives openly supported their federal cousins. In 2008, the civil war destroyed the connection between the two almost completely.

Take a look at the New Democrat number in that election and you can tell where the homeless Conservatives went. The bulk of them went to Cleary.  Some others stayed home.  A few went to Coady, likely the result of direct appeals by provincial Conservative cabinet ministers and members of the provincial legislature.

The 2008 vote total is the lowest of the four elections and the total for the four elections is actually fairly consistent over time. That strongly suggests that new voters didn’t enter the field suddenly in 2008.  Rather, existing Conservative voters opted for the New Democrats instead of the Liberals.

That same trend continued into 2011. The other part of the change was Loyola Sullivan who appears to have attracted old Conservatives back or pulled them away from Coady.  The new voters into the system were either old Conservatives who came back or some new voting from people who had not voted in the preceding four elections.

In 2011, the NDP vote increased by 4684.  Conservative vote increased by 4539.  That’s a combined total of  9,223. Liberal vote dropped by 3,799.  Total vote for all three parties increased by 5,430.  That’s a total of 9,229. 

There are a couple of things one can say about all this:

First, there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty which voters moved where and whether the increased total in 2011 came from new voters, old voters coming back or a combination of the two.  There just isn’t any information that would let anyone figure it out conclusively.

Second,  given the overall consistency in the total votes for the three parties, it is more likely that the changes in NDP support came from vote moving from the Conservatives to the New Democrats than from Liberals or from new voters.

Third, the result in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl isn’t part of any national trend toward the New Democrats. The 2011 result came from a trend that began before the 2011 campaign.

Fourth,  since the federal NDP voters in 2011 appear to be coming predominantly from provincial Conservatives, it is highly unlikely the New Democrats can translate their federal success into significant changes at the provincial level.

The party may have a good cadre of workers. They simply don’t have a reliable pool of voters who consistently vote for the same party federally and provincially.  The NDP won St. John’s South-Mount pearl by appealing to swing voters.  By definition, they are liable to swing in the future.  What could make them swing would be a good subject for further, detailed research.

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Why the Liberals lost…and the way ahead

You will read plenty of commentary on this election and the overwhelming majority of it will be complete and unvarnished horseshit.

Put it all out of your mind.

If you want to understand why Michael Ignatieff and the federal Liberals tanked so badly, read Rob Silver’s take on things.

Unite the left?  Rob puts it slightly differently that this but your humble e-scribbler is in the exact same neighbourhood: the two left-wing parties in this country at he federal level already got together to form the Bloc NDP.

Then read his ideas on what the party needs to do to come back.

He’s got that right, too.

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Election 2011 Witticisms

With a Conservative majority, odds are good senate reform will move along in the near future.

That could resurrect the idea of a Triple E senate: equal, elected and effective.

Add to that, according to one tweeter, that Peter Penashue’s win in Labrador could lead to a Triple P senate later in the year once Senator Bill Rompkey retires in a few weeks’ time.

Triple P?

Don’t look so confused.

 

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St. John’s South-Mount Pearl: some first observations #elxn41

1. Jack Layton is the new member of parliament for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.  Remember those signs?  It wasn’t an accident the most visible sign was Jack Layton four bys.
2. Strategic plan.  Well-executed.  The NDP targeted this riding at a national level and drove the local plan according to the national need.  Their local communications materials played down the local candidate and played up the key messages that nationally targeted the issues research showed were important.  The local radio spots were classic local NDP:  top quality in every respect, right down to only mentioning the candidate when they had to.  otherwise they were right on the strategic point.
3. Warning:  Steep learning curve ahead.  Ryan Cleary may be the guy in the seat but there is no guarantee he understands how he got there.  His first media comments – talking about a provincial orange tide in October – tells you he has no idea who voted for him and why.  His second comments about priorities – fisheries inquiry – shows he really doesn’t have a clue as to how he got there.  This guy could be an accident waiting to happen.
4. You can’t hide him forever.  The follow-on to that is a warning to New Democrats that they can’t keep Ryan under wraps forever. In the run-up to the election, he didn’t have a platform to give him a high profile and with it his characteristic propensity to say things he inevitably would regret. That was a key to winning the seat.  The NDP brain trust better work hard on Number Three and hope it works before Number Four cuts in.  Go back and watch him during any of the debates during the campaign and you’ll see what an up-hill fight someone will have to get this guy ready for the Big Time.
5. Everyone missed it.  Outside of the campaigns, no one likely had a clue on voter trending in the riding.  Your humble e-scribbler ran with the pack on this one, labelling it a race that was too close to call.  We all got it wrong. 
6. The Blue Goes Orange.  What we all missed was the extent to which people who usually voted Conservative in the riding headed off to the NDP.  Not only did the Liberals lose votes, another block of voters who sat out in 2008 came back with a vengeance and headed for the NDP and Conservatives.   But it is important to know that Coady held the core Liberal vote over time.  What she lost were obviously the blue people who, especially in 2008 followed orders and went for the Liberals.  Left to their own devices they flooded to the Orange Team.
7. The NDH Play was a bust.  Remember what your humble e-scribbler said about provincial Tories not playing the Dunderdale game?  Well, here’s your proof.  If the awesome Tory machine in SJSMP had really backed the federal Cons with the vengeance some people would have you believe they did, then they could have elected the lead from Weekend at Bernies.  As it is, Loyola Sullivan tanked badly.
8. Look what happened last time.  Siobhan Coady was as organized as she has ever been and as aggressive as she could get.  Her campaign team deserves kudos for their efforts on the ground.  Unfortunately, Siobhan doesn’t seem to have figured out who she was really running against, ever.  Her messaging made that pretty clear what with the recycled 2008 talking points.  It’s really too bad.  Siobhan could have made a significant mark.

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The Dunderdale Referendum Election #elxn41

Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her team of provincial Conservatives decided to throw their weight behind the federal Conservatives in this election.

Talk about your epic fail.

Kathy made this a referendum on her Muskrat Falls policy, her leadership and her political potency.

Only one of her candidates took a first place finish.  Peter Penashue beat Todd Russell in a squeaker.

In Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, a last minute announcement in Corner Brook gave a flimsy cover for four cabinet ministers to get to the west coast to help Trevor Taylor against Liberal Gerry Byrne.  Waste of time and taxpayer-funded travel.

And in Avalon, where former incumbent Fabian Manning came frustratingly close, he can take the credit for most of that vote.  He worked hard after losing the seat in a close run in 2008 and Manning would have waged a tough campaign without provincial help.  Of course, he did get help, some if quite strong from people like Jerome Kennedy. It just wasn’t enough.

Then consider that the federal Conservatives – most of them former provincial cabinet ministers – all campaigned on the argument that you needed someone on the government side or else you’d starve.  It’s an argument the provincial Conservatives have used relentlessly since 2003.  They’ve waged a relentless and very old fashioned campaign of favouring districts they held and punishing opposition districts for things like road paving.

Voters across Newfoundland and Labrador  - including a raft of provincial Conservative voters - rejected that flatly.

The two changes in the province, one in St. John’s South -  Mount Pearl and the other in Labrador, have other implications that are worth their own posts.

But for now, the first-blush reaction to the federal result in Newfoundland and Labrador is that it doesn’t bode well for the province’s Conservatives.

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Dunderdale admin pours more cash into Corner Brook paper mill

On top of the millions in subsidies it has already provided to Corner Brook Pulp and Paper (Kruger), Kathy Dunderdale’s administration announced on Monday that it would pay $4.3 million over three years  to help workers at the mill upgrade their skills.

The only logical step next is for Kathy Dunderdale and her cabinet to give Kruger a receipt for the whole shooting match.

After all, taxpayers basically bought the mill piece by piece.

In related news, an economics professor at Memorial University thinks these sorts of subsidies don’t work:

[Michael] Wernerheim has high praise for the province's forest management strategy and for wanting to lay out a new path for an industry in decline, such as supporting smaller operations, like saw mills, and putting a greater focus on forests as ecosystems. 

But he found the government spends too much time, effort and money on continuing to support failing ways to protect jobs in the newsprint sector. 

"These short-term initiatives to protect jobs can retard the restructuring of the industry that we all want to see happening," he said.

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Bin Laden is dead!

From the New York Times account:

In a dramatic late-night appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that American military and C.I.A.operatives had finally cornered Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who had eluded them for nearly a decade. American officials said Bin Laden resisted and was shot in the head. He was later buried at sea.

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Change is in the air… or maybe not #elxn41

In Election 2011, perhaps more so than any other recent election, people can see the shortcomings of national opinion polls.

They may capture an overall national picture but with horrendous margins of error and often limited information about voting behaviour they are all but useless in trying to project seat counts and even party standings. It’s not a problem facing one pollster;  it’s across the board.

You can also see the shortcomings of media commentary, especially as the electronic media seems to rely almost exclusively on reporters interviewing other reporters. There was a fine example of that last Friday on the CBC Radio Morning Show. There were penetrating insights into the fairly obvious: Avalon and St. John’s South-Mount Pearl might change hands.

And even some true head-scratchers like a version of the threehundredeight.blogspot.com seat projection that had Random-Burin-St. Goerges going Tory. John Ottenheimer coming on strong?  We’ll see.

There were also coments about “splits” and generalizations about how it all comes down to the “ground game”. That’s politico speak for getting vote to the polls. Again, it’s a bit like describing the intricacies of brain surgery by referring to a copy of Gray’s Anatomy of the human body.

What would have distinguished Friday’s commentary from the run-of-the-mill fare was any concrete information on what the campaigns actually look like on the ground.

And that’s where the local story starts to get interesting.  Anyone who believes that  Kathy Dunderdale’s people will be turning out en masse for the federal Conservatives, it just ain’t so. Some provincial Tory members of the House of Assembly have been working hard personally. Some have been doing only the minimum they had to in order to get by. A few more than Ed Buckingham have done exactly shag-all.

Now that may not be what you hear if you ask a Tory insider directly but the evidence of what actually happened will be clear once polling is done.

And as for the rank and file workers, that’s a whole other story. Kathy Dunderdale cannot direct them any more than Danny could actually get the blue people to vote Liberal in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl last time.  She quite obviously couldn’t lure them back from the New Democratic Party in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, let alone brow-beat them threaten them or otherwise produce the outcome some people might have been expecting.

This will NOT be a reverse ABC.

This very much will be a referendum on Kathy Dunderdale.  If Fabian Manning wins Avalon, it is a seat he won largely on his own.  If no other seats turn blue, the Dunderdale failed.  And if the Tory vote doesn’t shoot up to levels along the lines of what they saw in 2004 or 2006, then Dunderdale failed.  Monday could be a very bad night for Kathy Dunderdale.

Knowing what is happening on the ground will also tell you what odds there might be that some sort of NDP surge might have a wider effect on ridings in this province.  The national New Democrats have targeted the South.  It is getting money and bodies. They appear to have taken a strategy of minimising their candidate’s profile and played up Jack Layton very strongly.  If they are half as organized on voting day as they appear heading into the last day,  Ryan Cleary will give incumbent Siobhan Coady a very hard run for her money.  He might win.  It is close.

One potential factor to cross off your list:  Loyola Sullivan.  His angry old Rain Man routine simply turned people off.  His ego campaign – big round Loyola heads in front of a flag – simply looked ridiculous. 

Outside of St. John’s,  the Avalon is likely the only riding that will go blue and the NDP have resorted to names on ballots in every other riding other than the South. Miracles do happen but with no money and no organization, the orange people don;t stand much of a chance. 

As for the Tories, they will come in second in every seat off the Avalon. Certainly in Labrador, John Hickey has been campaigning hard for a senate seat, errr his federal friends, but odds are that Peter Penashue won’t be the new Tory member of parliament for Labrador.  Stay tuned on the senate seat.

Take that sort of stuff as a good indicator of what could be happening elsewhere.  In Quebec, people are telling pollsters they love the NDP. Problem is that the NDP only had the resources and committed the resources to Quebec that reflected their earlier appraisal that they could maybe hang on to one seat. Unless they have suddenly turned up hordes of volunteers in the past few weeks, they will have a devil of time turning those stated intentions into actual marks on a ballot. 

Again, stranger things have happened, but don’t be surprised if election results tonight coming out of Quebec don’t live up to advance billing.

The two places to watch nationally outside Quebec are the Greater Toronto Area and British Columbia. The Conservatives have targeted their energy into ridings  where they can turn them over and they could wind up squeaking out a comfortable minority or even a slim majority.

Change could be in the air.

But then again, it might not be.

You’ll only know for sure once the whole thing is done.

- srbp -

April Showers Traffic for 2011

A fascinating month of April for traffic at ye olde e-scribbler’s corner of cyberspace shows a wind range of stories.

There’s the surprise first place honours for a post about rather sleazy piece of editing in order to fabricate a political attack.  One media outlet got suckered into using it.

Not surprisingly, most of the posts in the Top 10 in April are about Muskrat Falls and the possible implications of the federal election on Kathy Dunderdale’s leadership.

The really amazing thing is that a post on the last day of the month hit Number 10.

If you think this is all curious stuff, though wait until next month.  There’s a federal election on Monday and then the provincial government has to struggle through three more weeks of the provincial legislature (plus its a polling period) before they can head off to the summer campaign runs.

2011 will be an amazing political year across Canada.

1. Invented story:  political appointee and CBC attack government political opponent
2. A new Sprung greenhouse in the wilds of Labrador
3. Average NL family to pay $1000 per year more for Muskrat Falls power:  former PC finance minister
4. Another cheaper, greener alternative to Muskrat Falls
5. Buckingham not only local Tory to buck Dunderdale line on Harper
6. NTV/Telelink poll:  close, closer, no cigar and a referendum on Dunderdale
7. Conservative householder a multilevel bust
8. Dipper sleazeball tactics refuted
9. One big happy Conservative family... maybe
10. A little perspective, people

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A little perspective, people #elxn41

Nanos Research produces polls that are usually deadly accurate for the entire country.

But…

If you look at the regional breakdowns it rapidly becomes obvious that the regional numbers are useless for anything but wanking material for the twitterati.

You’ve likely seen a lot of references to “statistical ties” when people talk about polling during this election.  Well, at the regional level, the margins of error have been so wide sometimes that all parties have been in a “statistical tie” for most of the campaign. 

For example, Nanos’ April 28 Atlantic results at an MoE of about 10 percentage points.  Basically, that means it is possible the actual result is somewhere within a 20 point spread.  In BC the range is about 16 or 17 points. 

You’ll find that Ipsos’ April 29 poll has exactly the same basic problem.

And speaking of wank material, your humble e-scribbler could not pass up the opportunity to point out that Jack Layton’s over-the-top performance with reporter’s about a Sun media report suggests there is something here the guy is definitely up-tight about. 

And it isn’t the pain of having to face unfounded accusations.

Obviously this pales in comparison to the persistent smear job at least one NDP candidate has been mounting against an opponent.  That’s just hypocrisy, the NDP stock-in-trade.

More importantly, though, Jack’s grumpiness and use of bizarro third person references with passive voice sentences sounds like an attempt to mentally distance himself from something he finds difficult to address:

"Absolutely nothing wrong was done; there's no wrongdoing here…”

People don’t speak about nothing at all in this way.  The story deserved a contemptuous sneer.  Instead it got treated to a swooning counter-attack but not a personal one. 

Who did absolutely nothing wrong?  Hard to tell.  And that’s an odd counterpoint to a TV spot in which Layton promises he personally won’t stop until the job is done.

Imagine how Jack will handle it if he starts reading Gilles Duceppe talking points in Question Period as leader of the Bloc NDP.

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Traffic for the WTF Election #elxn41

There’s a decent chance that Canadians will wake up on Tuesday morning having traded Stephen Harper and his crowd of federal Conservatives for Jack Layton leading a raft of new members of parliament many of whom were only names on a ballot before Monday.

Just think about it for a minute.

The entire country winds up where Ontario was in October 1990.  People woke up across that province, looked around and realised that a whole bunch of them had marked their ballot for the Dippers figuring that they were the only ones doing it.  It was a province-wide 11-beer beautiful moments too many of have discovered we had on the morning after the night before.

This one could make the Guinness book of records for most people doing a simultaneous forehead slap.

In more modern language, this could become “The WTF Election” as Canadians look at the news Tuesday and wonder what-the-f**k everyone else was thinking when they got to the polling station.

Nobody can say that elections are boring and no one should ever complain about democracy in action.

People get exactly the government they deserve, every time.

And they also get to tell us what posts are most interesting here in this corner of the cyber-universe.  This week is no exception:

1. Conservative householder a multi-level bust
2. Bloc NDP would change party’s NL position
3. Advance Poll turn-out comparison
4. The choice is clear
5. The cost of doing business:  Muskrat Falls version
6. The peter principle
7. “The prize is worth the fight”:  Hearn rebuts Skinner on Muskrat Falls
8. US diplomatic cable reveals Emera trepidation about talks with Williams on Lower Churchill Falls
9. Attack of the fluffy bunnies
10. Nail ‘em up I say

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Dipper sleazeball tactics refuted #elxn41

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The choice is clear #nlpoli #elxn41

This is one of those political pictures destined to go down in history.

In years to come, they’ll refer to it as one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Like posting the picture on Facebook from Las Vegas of you, drunk, a pair of panties on your head, taking a leak in the middle of some street on that wild post-graduation trip.

You know the one.

Kathy Dunderdale now has one of those pictures. Every household in the province will likely have one by Monday, courtesy of Kathy’s new buddy, Stephen Harper.

It’s hard to know if she was drunk with Harper’s charm,  if all the trappings of having a job she never, ever dreamed she could get went to her head or she just started to believe she really is all that and a bag of political potato chips.

But whatever the reason, there’s no taking this sucker back.

Come the fall, you can bet that this is just one picture Kathy Dunderdale will see over and over and over again in any place where voters can see it.

 

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US diplomatic cable reveals Emera “trepidation” about talks with Williams on Lower Churchill

A cable from the American consulate in Halifax relays concerns that Emera had about negotiations with Danny Williams on the Lower Churchill.

Dated 15 January 2010, the cable is a summary of a meeting between the American consul general and James Spurr, a senior executive with the Nova Scotia-based company. The cable is available from Wikileaks.

Emera and the Lower Churchill: "Are we being used here?"

--------------------------------------------- ------------

¶4. (SBU) Closer to home Spurr talked about another possible venture for Emera: transmitting power from the proposed Lower Churchill River project in Labrador to New England. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland-Labrador (N-L) have an MOU to explore this option which would require the construction of sub-sea and overland power lines to transmit the power. Money issues aside, there would be technological challenges to overcome in this scenario. However, Spurr emphasized that with Emera's experience in dealing with transmission systems, natural gas pipelines and its knowledge of regulatory processes, it would not be an impossible feat. The unknown factor, as Spurr explained, is N-L Premier Danny Williams. Spurr explained that N-L had been the victim of bad resource deals in the past which have left Williams very cautious if not suspicious in his business negotiations. Given that legacy, Spurr remarked that he and his senior colleagues are equally cautious in dealing with the premier, with knowledge it makes more financial sense for N-L to do a deal with Quebec than with them. In fact, Spurr indicated he wouldn't be surprised if William ended up doing just that, and leaving Spurr and colleagues to speculate that Williams might be using them to exert more pressure on Quebec to offer a better deal for N-L.

That would have been a pretty savvy guess for Emera, given that in September 2009 Kathy Dunderdale revealed publicly that she and Williams had tried unsuccessfully for five years to lure Hydro-Quebec into taking an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill.

Conventional news media in Newfoundland and Labrador have never reported Dunderdale’s comments or made any other references to talks with Quebec despite the audio of Dunderdale’s comments being readily available.

In 2010, as part of his political exit strategy, Danny Williams signed a term sheet with Emera that could lead to development of a dam at Muskrat Falls. Under the deal, Emera will receive 35 terawatt years of electricity from Muskrat Falls in exchange for the cost of building a transmission line from Newfoundland to Cape Breton. In a conference call with reporters at time the tentative deal was announced, Emera executives’ comments suggested they had balked at earlier versions of the deal in part because the cost of power from Muskrat Falls was too high.

The current proposal is based entirely on the sale of power within Newfoundland and Labrador at full cost plus a guaranteed rate of return for the provincial government energy company. Premier Kathy Dunderdale acknowledged in the House of Assembly earlier this year that Muskrat Falls power will be too expensive to sell outside the province except at discount rates.

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Conservative householder a multi-level bust

Someone on the mainland decided to design a campaign householder for the federal Conservatives.

Pretty picture.

Nice little headline there.

You can tell the person is not from the province where it got dropped this past week.  There are two rather obvious  - and related - problems.  See if you can guess what the problem is.

No?

The name of the province is Newfoundland and Labrador and that’s Problem One.

Bigger problem is that in Labrador – where this thing is going as well as on the island – there is considerable opposition to the project because it is all about power for Newfoundland…

and shag-all for Labrador.

Stunned enough that the provincial Connies conned their federal Connie cousins into backing something that only 3% of people think should be a major priority for the province.

Stunneder still is the fact that the Pavement Putin of the Permafrost and his crowd are attacking Liberal Todd Russell’s opposition to the project as if that was somehow going to work against him come polling day.

Stunnedest of all, the Harper Bunker drops this little gem across the province, especially in Labrador where it will go over like the proverbial fart in church.  Todd Russell will be laughing all the way to the polls.

There are no wounds as painful as self-inflicted ones.

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Economy not sizzling in Tom Marshall’s home town

Finance minister Tom Marshall has always had a curious relationship with reality.

He likes to talk about debt reduction, for example, but he never really does anything about it, or as in his plan for Muskrat falls, he actually wants to increase the public debt by upwards of 50% of its current size.

When Marshall delivered the most recent budget – and set a record for public spending in the process – he told reporters that “our economy is sizzling right now.”

Tom must be referring to Bermuda or Barbados or wherever it is he takes the sun during the colder months.

He certainly isn’t talking about his own district of Humber East.

The Western Star reported on Thursday that the major container line serving the province is dropping Marshall’s home town of Corner Brook from its destinations.

Capt. Sid Hynes told The Western Star Thursday afternoon that export freight from Corner Brook has dropped by around 70 per cent and imported cargo has declined by about 30 per cent in the last five years.

Exports down by 70%.

Imports down by 30%.

Since 2005.

Now it surely doesn’t take an expert to tell that this is not an economy that is sizzling.

Anyone who claims it is sizzling might be fried though.

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The cost of doing business: Muskrat Falls version

Building the gravity base structure and drilling production wells for the Hebron project are now estimated at $8.3 billion, according to news stories on Wednesday.  In its story, The Telegram cites documents filed as part of the Hebron consortium's development application.

That's two thirds more than the original estimate of $5.0 billion.

Okay.

So if a project estimate prepared by people highly experienced in these types of projects and who have a keen interest in cost control has climbed by 66% in such a short period, odds are good that we can also change any cost estimates for a bunch of people with a lot less experience in building gigantic projects.

Like say Nalcor, a company that has, contrary to its own claims, shag-all experience in megaprojects.

They tell the world that a dam on the Lower Churchill river and a bunch of transmission lines will cost exactly the same as it would have in 1998:  roughly $6.2 billion.

Yeah, sure, buddy.

Put a Hebron cost multiplier on that sucker and you get $10.2 billion. We have not even factored in any inflationary impact.

But that is bad enough.

We are not done yet.

According to Premier Kathy Dunderdale, Muskrat Falls power would cost 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour to produce.  That is based on the project cost of $6.2 billion.

So if we can reasonably increase project costs by 66%, you can increase the cost per kilowatt hour by a similar amount.

Do the math.

It isn't pretty.

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Advance Poll turn-out comparison #elxn41

For the vote geeks out there, take a gander at this lovely chart showing turn-out in advance polls held in federal general elections from 2004 to 2011 for each of the ridings in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of the media reports have compared the 2011 advance polls votes to 2008.  That would be a misleading comparison since the federal Conservatives suffered from an unusual problem due to the Family Feud.  If you look at the two before that, you can get a better feel for recent trends.  2006 was a year of change nationally and it marked the last time the provincial Conservatives actually worked closely with their federal cousins.

Here’s what you can see:

Turn-out is up in every riding but the magnitude of the change is more dramatic in some cases than others. 

The easy number is in St. John’s East.  Lots of media reports have noted it had the highest advance poll turnout at 4474.  That corresponds to a 56% increase over the next largest turn-out in 2006. The rest of these numbers compare 2011 to the next largest turn-out.

St. John’s South-Mount Pearl is up 91% compared to 2006.

The lowest change in turn-out is Bonavista-Gander-Grand Falls-Windsor, up 2.3% compared to 2004 and Random-Burin-St. George’s, up 3.5% from the same election.

Avalon is showing a 47% increase compared to 2006.  That’s almost exactly the change in Labrador (48%).

What does it all mean?

That’s hard to tell. 

Look at the anomalies first.

On the face of it, there’s no reason why St. John’s East should show such a dramatic increase in total number of votes cast. The incumbent appears to be safely in his seat.  There is no heated contest in the riding.  While it looked potentially like a harder fight before the writ dropped, the reality has been that incumbent New Democrat Jack Harris could be vacationing in Las Vegas with his future Quebec caucus-mates and he’d still slaughter his competition. If there was some sort of surge toward the NDP, this would be a real sign since the seat is already orange.

Ditto Labrador.  There’s no sign of any dramatic change in the riding.  When you look at the riding with almost exactly the same rate of change – Avalon – it gets weirder.  

Avalon is the scene of a vicious fight between Scott Andrews for the Liberals and former Conservative incumbent Fabian Manning who Andrews beat in 2008. One would expect numbers there to be up way compared to another year when they had a hard-fought contest. 

So while those three seats looking odd, the other four seats,  the voter turn-out pictures look like what you would expect.  In the ridings where there’s been a really small change in turn-out, there’s no sense of a hard contest and the change in turn-out reflects that.  The numbers for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte are up, but only 25%.  Again, that reflects a strong Conservative campaign, most likely, but it is hardly a sign of big change. In the absence of any other signs of revolution, this vote change looks relatively normal.

In St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, the blood feud between the New Democrats and incumbent Liberal Siobhan Coady has been intense since before the election started.  Seeing turn-out up by 91% is no surprise in what appears to be a tight race between two highly motivated and highly organized teams. The Conservatives don’t seem to be a factor, at least if the only publicly available poll is anything to judge by.  Any jump in turn-out is likely not coming from the Rain Man’s effort to get back in elected politics.

- srbp -

Pavement Putin of Permafrost falling down on the job #elxn41

CBC news reports that residents of Labrador are complaining about the poor state of provincial highways in their part of the province.

"It's insulting that they think it's fine the way it is and that we should accept it the way it is," said [Kristin] Pardy.

Hmmm.

Makes you wonder what John Hickey has been doing with himself.  He holds down a cabinet portfolio responsible for Labrador Affairs. 

Hickey – who once launched a law suit against former Premier Roger grimes for something Danny Williams said – is rather proud of the roads in Labrador.  When Hickey hasn’t been trying to claim to have contracts with the federal government that don’t exist, he’s been known to pose for publicity shots featuring him shovelling pavement.

The simple answer to what Hickey has been up to is shovelling something other than pavement on behalf of his federal Conservative buddies. 

You can find a clip of Hickey that someone posted to twaudio of one of Hickey’s lengthy calls to local talk radio on behalf of his buddies from up-along.  He’s in the middle if you really feel the need to listen to a provincial cabinet minister who has clocked more time campaigning for the federal Conservatives since 2003 than any other current member of the provincial Tory caucus.

That might be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

- srbp -