Traffic by the numbers for May 23 to 27, 2011

Danny Williams says that the provincial government would see a $10 million return on its $500,000 subsidy…that is, if they spent.

If they could make $10 million by spending a half million, it would be a no brainer.

But they won’t.

Heck, if the numbers looked like that, multi-millionaire Williams would be spending his pocket change and fighting to keep others out of it.

So logically we know Danny’s claim is a massive pile of shite.

Even if the Angry Old Man’s numbers don’t add up, folks – and they never, ever do - you can bet these are the top 10 stories at Bond Papers for last week:

1. Meet your newest frankenparty:  the Bloc NDP
2. What am I supporting today?  asks Abbass
3. In which Dunderdale blunders…again
4. Dunderdale using rigged deck against public on Muskrat Falls
5. Tit rejects suck:  no taxpayer cash for hockey franchise after all
6. Dundernomics 101:  how to lose money
7. A tourist in her own land
8. Show us the tit and we’ll such:  AHL franchise edition
9. Dunderdale and her desperation
10. Dunderdale in action:  one Homer moment after another

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More give-aways, sez Williams

Talk about pissy.

Danny is not happy over the provincial government’s refusal to fund his latest pet hockey project.

The multi-millionaire thinks taxpayers should give public cash for free to his little project because “the numbers add up”. That’s not surprising since the multi-millionaire businessman made public subsidies for business a key part of his “no more giveaways” policy while he was Premier.

Of course, if the numbers actually added up, Williams’ proposal would not a single copper of public money of the kind he apparently now wants and previously championed.

Here’s how the Telegram quotes Williams:

“I’m a hockey fan and I believe in this, and I’m a business person and I believe in driving the economy,” he said. “But you know, different premiers have different agendas, and that’s all I can say. It’s not fair for me to second-guess her on that basis, if her decision was based on a good, proper due diligence. But my understanding is that it was less than 24 hours before this was turned around."

Funny thing for Danny to point out at the end, don’t you think?  After all, your humble e-scribbler noted exactly the same unseemly haste on the Hill to distance themselves for Williams’ little “ask”.

The Dunderbunnies may have gotten to the right answer – no public cash for rich private sector corporations and individuals – but they certainly got there with 24 hours of getting the cash ready for a hasty hand-over.

And not surprisingly, Danny is pissed off and letting everyone know it’s personal.

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Tit rejects suck: no taxpayer cash for hockey franchise after all

On Day One, sports minister Terry French was laughing and chuckling as he talked about the possibility he’d be forking over cash to help his former boss bring a hockey franchise to Mile One stadium.

French knew a fair bit about the request but – as this quote from CBC shows – he didn’t have anything concrete:

I haven’t seen what they are looking for yet. I know they’re obviously looking for something. They tell me they will need the province involved in some way, shape or form

You can find much more on the story, including quotes from Danny Williams in the Telegram coverage:

“People want hockey here in the province, and basically I was involved in it before, so you know the people have asked me to get involved to see if we can bring a team here,” Williams said.

“If, in fact, the city and the province want the team then, you know, I can get it for them. But if they don’t want it, then it’s not going to happen, “ Williams said.

He said a travel subsidy from the provincial government — in the range of $500,000 annually — could potentially be a deal breaker.

By Day Two, French looked a lot less smiley.  Based on no more concrete information than he’d had the day before, the new answer to the hockey subsidy was “no”:

"We decided that we wouldn't go down that road," said French outside the house of assembly in St. John's.

"[We decided] that committing money to a professional hockey team was not the right place to be. We had said no to people previously so the decision was easy."

Williams is reportedly “deeply disappointed”.

So what happened?  That’s a damn good question.

Both opposition parties rejected the idea flatly from the start, noting that the provincial government had turned down health-related requests claiming they didn’t have the cash. Public opinion hadn’t firmly settled on the issue  - as a CBC streeter suggests – but if any national trends are a good judge people aren’t too keen on giving cash to professional sports teams.  The Tories own polling shows that health care is a major issue for the public so perhaps that connection by the opposition was enough to frighten them off the subsidy idea.

The dramatic flip-flop suggests the provincial Tories are extremely jittery in an election year.

Now politically, there is usually no problem with flip-flopping on issues so long as you flip or flop in the same direction as the electorate.

The problem comes when flipping and flopping becomes a habit or when you say one thing one minute and something else the next.

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What am I supporting today? asks Abbass

Happy Valley-Goose Bay mayor Leo Abbass thinks it is just smurfy that his provincial Conservative friends won’t be spending money on a new prison in central Newfoundland.

According to voice of the cabinet minister:

Happy Valley-Goose Bay's Leo Abbass … is in favour of using the money for programs, services and housing, rather than for building another prison.

Abbass’ commitment to social programs would explain why he supported the federal Conservatives in the recent federal election and their agenda of building more prisons.

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In which Dunderdale blunders… again

Premier Kathy Dunderdale – the one who likes to accuse opposition leader Yvonne Jones of not knowing what she is talking about  - does a good job of setting the record straight.

Well.

Seems that when she referred to the Menihek power station in Labrador as something that was owned by Quebec and bought by Nalcor for a dollar?

Not exactly.

Seems the plant was owned by a company operated in Labrador, namely Iron Ore Company of Canada. 

And as labradore notes, the real issue here – aside from further evidence of the Premier’s fundamental incompetence – is why Kathy Dunderdale and her colleagues kept the deal secret for five years or more.

When was she planning to tell the people of Newfoundland and Labrador about it?

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Dundernomics 101: how to lose money

In the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Premier Kathy Dunderdale displayed her keen insight into the intricacies of public finance and economics:

We are in the open market and in the spot market and sometimes we sell high and sometimes we sell low. What we need to ensure, Mr. Speaker, is that on average we are doing as well or better than we were selling the power to Hydro-Québec, which has always been their plan.

Ummm.

Yeah.

Well, no.

Not unless you are a complete moron, of course.

There’s just no polite way to say it.

The important thing is to make sure the price you get for the power is averaging more than the cost of producing the power in the first place. 

If the power costs a dollar to make and you are selling in any market – the spot market or to Hydro-Quebec  - for less than a dollar you are losing money.

Losing money is a bad thing at the best of times.  If you are talking about losing billions and billions and billions of oil dollars that belong not to you but to the poor benighted people of Flower Hill and Flower’s Cove then it is something way out beyond the baddest sort of bad that there is. 

And if you are talking that sort of complete shite with the legacy of Sprung and Churchill Falls and all the other bad ideas borne of the same sorts of fundamental ignorance you just displayed, then you should not be allowed to balance your own personal cheque-book let alone run the province. 

It is that frickin’ simple.

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Show us the tit and we’ll suck it: AHL franchise edition

Tourism, culture and recreation minister Terry French told the House of Assembly on Tuesday that he expects to receive a request from the municipal corporation that runs Mile One stadium for cash to help lure an American Hockey League franchise to the city. Check the CBC online story here.

Former Premier Danny Williams – a multi-millionaire  - is reportedly part of a group that wants to bring the Manitoba Moose from its current home in Winnipeg to St. John’s. Update:  While CBC says Williams is keeping a low profile, the Telegram seems to be getting access to him.

French said he learned of the request from St. John’s city councilor Dan Breen. Interestingly enough Breen didn’t make any reference to looking for provincial tax cash when he spoke with CBC Radio’s St. John’s Morning Show.  In fact, Breen likely left the impression with listeners that the city wouldn’t be backing a franchise if it involved taxpayer cash.

"We want to have an anchor tenant," Breen said."We want to do it within the subsidy, and we're committed to doing it within the subsidy that we're offering to St. John's Sports and Entertainment at the current time."

The city gives Mile One Stadium a $1.25 million annual operating subsidy in addition to other financial support. 

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A tourist in her own land

Lisa Moore writes fiction for a living.

For some inexplicable reason, someone thinks this qualifies her to write some special appreciations of  the world as it actually is, offered up as anything but fiction.

Like her 2005 documentary that compared Iceland and Newfoundland in Hard Rock and Water.  She based the piece on the simple – and simply preposterous – construction “Iceland = independent = prosperous/Newfoundland = not independent = not prosperous”. 

The whole idea was ludicrous well before events within three years of her documentary proved Moore’s thesis spectacularly wrong.  But that did not stop her from scaring up a few bucks to make the thing. Nor did it stop the Duckworth Street cognoscenti from flocking to see it and talk about its deep insights at the pubs and coffee shops they usually habituate.

Meet your newest frankenparty: the Bloc NDP

An assessment in the Globe and Mail of the political parties and their voter profiles concluded that:

the NDP constituency has gone from being overwhelmingly English speaking and more diverse than the national average to mostly French-speaking and less multicultural.

Sounds like calling it the Bloc NDP would be a good name for Canada’s newest frankenparty.

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Dunderdale using rigged deck against public on Muskrat Falls

Whenever anyone moans about the 1969 power contract with Hydro-Quebec they can thank the last four Premiers of Newfoundland and Labrador – from Beaton Tulk to Kathy Dunderdale – for guaranteeing Hydro-Quebec’s unaltered command of Churchill Falls power.

In order to hide her own financially disastrous Muskrat Falls megaproject from public scrutiny, Kathy Dunderdale is using a cabinet order issued in December 2000 when Beaton Tulk was the placeholder Premier between Brian Tobin and Roger Grimes.

Take a look at the order – Regulation 92/00:

3. Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is exempt from the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 and the Public Utilities Act for all aspects of its activities pertaining to the Labrador Hydro Project as defined in section 2.

But how is the Labrador Hydro Project defined?

That’s where you get to see the gigantic mess that Tulk started and the rest have continued.

The exemption order doesn’t just apply to the Lower Churchill and all the transmission facilities associated with it, as most people assume.

Nope.

Here’s the very first thing included in the definition of  the “Labrador Hydro Project”:

… generation and related facilities at Churchill Falls , Labrador

In one clump of eight words, cabinet destroyed any power the Public Utilities Board had under the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 to manage electricity in the province to make sure that ordinary citizens get the cheapest possible electricity. 

Under the EPCA, 1994,  the PUB was supposed to be able to review electricity generation in the province to make sure consumers don’t get wallet-raped in order to have heat and light to their homes.  Newfoundland Power or Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro could ask the PUB to review demand and supply in the province.

As then-Premier Clyde Wells put it in 1994:

[The Electrical Power Control Act]  authorizes the Public Utilities Board to redirect any power - any power, no exceptions - to meet the needs of the people of this Province. Not expropriating anything from anybody. It is to manage the power that is generated in this Province in such a manner as to first and foremost meet the needs of the people of this Province. It makes no specific reference to Upper Churchill. It makes no specific reference to power companies. It makes no specific reference to any individual generator of power.

But with Churchill Falls exempt from the Act, those sections of the Act that would protect consumers are useless.

Kathy Dunderdale can get on open line and talk all she wants about legal opinions that warn against using powers under section 92a of the Constitution Act, 1982.  Truth is there is no risk:  there are no powers since she and her current cabinet colleagues decided to to uphold the December 2000 exemption.

Tulk and his cabinet may have signed them away, but every cabinet since then has endorsed them.  Kathy Dunderdale and her cabinet are actually proud of their decision.

It gets better, though.

In the fall of 2000, the provincial government issued a series of orders that exempted every major hydro-electric project on the island portion of the province from the EPCA.  Those exemptions still exist even though several of the projects are now owned entirely by Nalcor as a result of the 2008 expropriation bill.

What that means for consumers is that Nalcor alone can decide what it wants to do with those sites. Even if there was plenty of electricity available for Nalcor to meet provincial needs at the lowest possible cost without building Muskrat Falls, there is no way the Public Utilities Board could force Nalcor to halt the megaproject and do the sensible thing.

Once a line to Nova Scotia flows through, Nalcor can ship discount power out of the province from its island generating sites and force local consumers to use super-expensive Muskrat falls power all thanks to decisions dating from the fall of 200 and endorsed by every administration since.

So the next time Kathy Dunderdale talks about independent reviews or asking the PUB to do anything, just remember:  legally, the regulatory deck is stacked against consumers.  The whole thing is a giant set-up to favour Nalcor and its corporate partner Emera.  Beaton Tulk may have started it, but Kathy Dunderdale and the current cabinet have made it their own.

Just in case you think Kathy Dunderdale doesn’t like Hydro-Quebec, just remember that she and her predecessor spent five years trying to get HQ to take an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill. 

And she never said boo to anyone until long after her secret efforts failed.

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Victoria Day Weekend Traffic Report

Here’s what people were reading at Bond Papers last week:

1. Dunderdale and her desperation
2. Dunderdale to hide important Muskrat details from scrutiny/oversight
3. Dunderdale in action:  one Homer moment after another
4. No Dunderdale in Tory battle of Kilbride
5. Dunderdale flips and flops:  Muskrat Exemption Errata
6. Speaker Dunderbunny shows his bias again
7. Dundernomics 101
8. Talk radio on agenda for national political science association
9. Dunderdale opts for mid-level bureaucrat for CEO
10. Long awaited report still under wraps

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Shocker: Marois wrong on Penashue

Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois thinks federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue can’t be fair to Quebec.

Marois thinks Penashue is in conflict because of Old Harry and Muskrat Falls.

“We will not accept giving advantages to Newfoundland to compete with Quebec and our hydroelectricity,” Marois said, noting Hydro-Québec has never received financial support from Ottawa.

“Mr. Penashue is from Newfoundland,” Marois said. “One of the first questions is the Lower Churchill. We hope the prime minister will realize there is a conflict.”

Pauline needs better advisors.

Peter Penashue is not from Newfoundland.  He is from Labrador. 

There is a big difference.  For one thing, Peter is not tied to the sort of misery-guts rhetoric that Danny Williams used to trot out every once in a while when he felt a bit more dyspeptic than usual.  Nor is Peter likely believe the sort of tin-foil hat foolish about boundaries and such that some other like to get on with.

Peter is not beholden to Kathy Dunderdale and the rest of her Dunderbunnies for anything.  He’s crossed them before and he will do it again if need be.

Peter has other interests and other issues.

And as federal intergovernmental affairs minister, Peter answers to a completely different set of political interests than the crowd in St. John’s anyway.  Kathy Dunderdale has exactly zero cred with the current federal government. 

She can suck up to the Prime Minister all she wants.  The sorry fact is that her political impotence has been noted.

So if Pauline Marois had any clue at all, she’d have laid off the cheap and easy comments aimed at a federal cabinet minister who has some connection to political forces in her own province that she might want to connect to herself as the next provincial election draws nigh in Quebec.

And all of that is before we even to get to dealing with her comment, according to the Gazette, that “Penashue will also be involved in deciding the disputed boundary between Quebec and Newfoundland.”

Simple answer:  he won’t.

So maybe Pauline needs to get some better advisors, people who actually have a frickin’ clue about what is going on outside VDQ.

Peter Penashue is actually someone the Government of Quebec can deal with sensibly and without all the Sasquatch Hunter crap she thinks Penashue represents.

Just sayin’.

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Dunderdale in action: One Homer moment after another

Danny Williams used to talked in Sarah Palin-like terms about all the reading he did.  He could never say what it was he was reading but apparently he felt the need to let us know that – lawyer and Rhodes scholar that he was – reading was something he had down.

Kathy Dunderdale likes to make fun of Yvonne Jones for supposedly making mistakes.

Now in Danny’s case you could forgive him the odd failing  - and it is odd as in bizarro - like an insecurity about literacy.

But Kathy Dunderdale just lampoons herself time after time after time.

Take this exchange in the House of Assembly on Thursday.

When asked about her plans for appointing former Nalcor board chairman John Ottenheimer to his old job or maybe a new one, Dunderdale couldn’t resist trying to sound condescending:

Mr. Speaker, sometimes you have to be like Theseus with his ball of wool in the maze to follow the logic of the Leader of the Opposition. I do not know how you can reappoint somebody to a new position. Anyway, I think I got the gist of what she is asking, Mr. Speaker.

Dunderdale then offered that she would have no “compunction” about giving John another job seeing as he is such a great fellow.

And incidentally, John Ottenheimer is a gentleman of  great ability.

So it is odd that she would have any compunction at all.  Look up the word.  There’s no shame in doing so.  Your humble e-scribbler had to double check the meaning. 

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as a “pricking of conscience.”  Miriam-Webster gives a similar set of meanings but one that makes it clear the word is tied to an awareness of guilt at having done something inappropriate.  While Dunderdale said she would have no compunction  -  that is no sense of guilt - it is not exactly a common word.  Nor is it a clear way of saying what she seems to have meant in referring to Ottenheimer.

What she meant to say is that she would not hesitate.  She would gladly reappoint him again because he is so eminently qualified.

What she did was use a 50 cent word, apparently to try and sound smart, and in the process did what is essentially a case of damning with faint praise.

D’oh!

Then Kath used the word again.

In another comment, she said that opposition leader Yvonne Jones had no compunction about making a statement of fact that is factual.  Dunderdale was trying to accuse Jones of something else but, as tends to happen when Kath puts on airs, she tripped up in her own twists and turns of logic and her continual miss-statements of fact.

In this case, Dunderdale had a classic Homer Simpson moment by claiming that the Holyrood generating plant produced 37% of the province’s electricity in 2009.  The actual figure was 17.8%.

 D’oh!

That wasn’t Dunderdale’s only string of head-slappers.

Jones made a crack that Dunderdale liked to pattern herself after the federal Conservative leader, a man who is notoriously unpopular among people in this province including provincial Conservatives. 

Dunderdale replied:

Well, Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying that I thank the Leader of the Opposition for saying that I follow in the steps of Mr. Harper and what happens to Mr. Harper happens to me, because I guess we are on path for a majority government in October.

D’oh!

But wait.

There’s more.

Jones asked why Dunderdale was going to block the Public Utilities Board from reviewing the Muskrat Falls project.

We are not, says Dunderdale, a few days after her natural resources minister confirmed she was.

That blocking was done in December 2000.

Dunderdale is bringing the PUB back in, according to the Premier’s tortured logic, even though Dunderdale herself has already said the PUB would not have the ability to review the Muskrat Falls proposal as they should under the Electrical Power Control Act because since she had decided not to amend, rescind or otherwise change that exemption issued in 2000.

In the tangled maze that is a Kathy Dunderdale argument, no ball of string could help anyone find their way through its twists and turns.  The only thing one can do is tumble around and be amazed that at the enormous pile of bull that sits at the centre of it.

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Dunderdale opts for mid-level bureaucrat as CEO

Not so long ago the province’s chief electoral officer was a career public servant usually of deputy minister rank.

Then Danny Williams decided he preferred partisans in what is supposed to be a non-partisan job.

With the unfortunate death of former Conservative Party president Paul Reynolds,  Premier Kathy Dunderdale had a vacancy to fill.

Her choice?

The current assistant chief electoral officer and director of election finance at the provincial elections office.

No sign of any change to current sorry state of the electoral office, but all the same, let’s wish Victor Powers well in his new job.

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Long awaited report still under wraps

The Danny Williams administration hired former Supreme Court Justice Bill Marshall to do a couple of reviews for them.

In 2005, they asked Marshall to review inland fisheries enforcement.

In 2008, the opposition asked about the report in the legislature.

They didn’t get much of an answer three years after Marshall started his work.

On Tuesday, justice minister Felix Collins got another question in the House of Assembly on the missing report.  Here’s what he said:

we received the report from Justice Marshall some time in late fall 2010. I am not sure of the exact date. In November or December, I think it was. I would have to check my notes on that.

Five years later.

Must be quite the tome.

But wait;  it gets better.

Collins explained that “because of the merger of wildlife and inland fish at this point in time and the transition that is going, we are still considering the report in that context.”

In other words, because the situation Marshall was supposed to report on five years ago doesn’t exist any more, we may have to think about this all again.

And for good measure, Collins tossed in this gem: 

We will release the report or the information from the report in a timely fashion.

This administration came to office in 2003 with a pledge to release reports within 30 days.

It took Bill Marshall five years to submit the report.

Collins has had it for more than five months.

And he still can only say he might just release some information from the out-of-date report at some unspecified time in the future.

Yes, friends, this is what Collins and his boss think counts as open, transparent and accountable.

Oh yeah, update:  There’s no word on whether Marshall finished the report into the prosecution service. That one’s been underway since June 2006.

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Dunderdale and her desperation

Kathy Dunderdale is trying desperately to hide  details of her Muskrat Falls megaproject from public scrutiny.

You can also tell she is trying desperately not to look like she is desperately trying to hide details of the project from public scrutiny.

You can tell she is desperate because as soon as word leaked out that she was trying to keep the Public Utilities Board from examining whether or not her pet project is the cheapest way to meet the province’s energy needs – Dunderdale’s major claim on the project – Dunderdale quickly claimed she would let the PUB pronounce on its cheapness even though she had already decided they would not have the time they ought to have – by law – to do their jobs.

And then in her desperation, Kathy Dunderdale drops this sort of foolishness onto the public record:

We have been open, we have been transparent, we have been accountable — something they knew nothing about when they were trying to develop the Lower Churchill…

To quote a famous politician Kathy might know:  nothing could be further from the truth.

Kathy Dunderdale and that famous politician spent five years trying – secretly – to lure Hydro-Quebec into taking an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill.

Five years.

Totally secret talks.

Dunderdale participated in both the secret talks and in hiding the talks from the public.

Some people know because Kathy Dunderdale spilled the beans, much to the chagrin of that famous politician, during an appearance on a local radio talk show long after it became plain that Hydro-Quebec just wasn’t interested in Kathy and her friend and what they had to offer.

The rest don’t know because none of the province’s conventional media reported Dunderdale’s stunning admission 18 months ago or at any time since.

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Dundernomics 101

All Dunderbunny Speaker Roger Fitzgerald has done is ensure the word “dundernomics” gains wide circulation.

Here’s what it is all about:  via The Independent.

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Speaker Dunderbunny shows his bias again

Roger Fitzgerald is undoubtedly one of the most incompetent Speakers ever to hold office in the House of Assembly.

He is also one of the blatantly biased Speakers to hold the chair.

That’s saying something given his chief rival for the ignominious historical achievement is his predecessor, the pompous, biased and incompetent Speaker Harvey Hodder.

As if his bias an incompetence weren’t enough, Fitzgerald displayed naked contempt for parliamentary practice recently by turning up at not one but two partisan events. 

He showed up at a Conservative nominating meeting during the recent federal election.  Not content with that bit of churlishness, anyone attending the recent provincial Conservative coronation for Kathy Dunderdale could see Fitzgerald hanging out with his buds.

Fitzgerald proved his bias and incompetence again on Tuesday with an unprompted ruling that a word was unparliamentary.

Here’s the way Hansard recorded his intervention during a session when his patron, the Premier, got increasingly hot under the collar over questions about why she is trying to hide aspects of the Muskrat falls deal from public scrutiny:

There has been language used in the last two days in Question Period by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition which is clearly unparliamentary when she references a certain type of economics and references a member’s name describing that process.

I ask the hon. member, that in the future if she would be kind enough not to be using unparliamentary language and reference her questions in a different way.

The word Roger didn’t like was “dundernomics.”

Opposition leader Yvonne Jones used it exactly once during question Period on Tuesday.

The facts are recorded in Hansard and as such, it is an unquestionably accurate rendering of the proceedings. The House of Assembly, like all Westminster style parliaments, has judged it so.

To be fair to the Speaker, there is no defined list if what words one can or cannot use in the House. Parliamentary practice in Canada, though, holds that unparliamentary language means the:

use of offensive, provocative or threatening language in the House is strictly forbidden. Personal attacks, insults and obscene language or words are not in order.

Dundernomics is not obviously in any of those categories.

The word – used just once, you will recall – did not disrupt proceedings or increase the heated temperatures in the chamber, the sort of result one might expect to bring a Speaker’s intervention.

And Fitzgerald certainly couldn’t object – as he apparently did – because the word uses the name of a member of the House.  As others have pointed out, Fitzgerald stayed rooted in his spot for years as Tory after Tory after Tory violated the century old (at least) parliamentary tradition to mention a certain member by name and to praise every portion of his anatomy as if he embodied the second coming of the Divine One.

Fitzgerald’s continued presence in the chair is an insult each day to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.  His performance is an ongoing display of contempt for parliamentary democracy.

 

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Dunderdale flips and flops: Muskrat Exemption Errata

Simple subject.

Mondo inaccuracies.

Ginormous confusion

Tuesday was not a good day for anyone trying to figure out what the provincial government is doing with Muskrat Falls.

First of all, let’s go with the basic stuff. 

CBC reported on Monday that the provincial government will use a 1999 amendment to two laws in order to exempt the Muskrat Falls project from scrutiny by the Public Utilities Board.  Specifically, the PUB won’t be able to look at Muskrat Falls and determine if it is the lowest cost project as provided in the Electrical Power Control Act (1994). CBC’s report included confirmation of the exemption from the province’s natural resources minister, Shawn Skinner.

That part is pretty clear.

CBC’s report on Monday and Tuesday night made a couple of references to changes to legislation tied to the Lower Churchill project. Take this one from the online story as an example:

The exemption actually dates back to 1999, when Brian Tobin's Liberal government passed legislation exempting any Lower Churchill project from PUB oversight.

*Insert nasty horn sound effect*

It is hard to imagine being more obviously wrong.

As your humble e-scribbler recounted in another post, the change Kathy Dunderdale and crew are relying on happened in December 1999.  Tobin’s project was pretty much dead by that point although the politicians still talked about it like the corpse could move.

Then-energy minister Roger Grimes made it clear the changes to the Public Utilities Act and the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 were intended to cover other projects  - not the Lower Churchill at all - that might have to come along to fill a gap if the line from the Lower Churchill to the island didn’t happen before the island needed extra power.

That ties to Kathy Dunderdale’s claim in the House of Assembly:

It was their government that exempted the Lower Churchill proposed project of Premier Grimes and at least two of the people opposite to have an exemption from regulatory review.

She’s talking about an order-in-council, apparently:  a cabinet decision.

But then Dunderdale claimed that previous Liberal administrations had exempted every hydro project since 1995.

Minor problem:  the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 didn’t allow for any exemptions at all.  In fact, the 1994 legislation set the provincial energy policy and gave the PUB the power to make sure that, among other things, their decisions “would result in power being delivered to consumers in the province at the lowest possible cost consistent with reliable service…”.

The PUB got the power to reject a project, order producers to build the lower cost project or even reallocate power from existing projects like Churchill Falls to meet provincial needs.

Exemptions don’t fit with that commitment to protect consumers and to exercise proper control over provincial resources in the public interest.

You can tell Dunderdale was mightily confused on this whole matter because a few minutes after she made the claim about exemptions when exemptions didn’t exist, she said that:

“Mr. Speaker, not only in 1999 did they bring in the legislation allowing for an exemption; in 2000, they produced an Order-in-Council that exempted the Lower Churchill from review by the PUB, Mr. Speaker.”

1995 or 1999? 

Which is it?

Then there’s this contradiction from Skinner’s confirmation that the PUB will not be looking at this project to determine if it is the lowest-cost option:

We have engaged the PUB to review and to determine whether that is the case as well and make that information available to the people of the Province, Mr. Speaker.

So apparently the PUB will review the project but it also won’t review it.

Huh?

Let’s see if more accurate information surfaces in the next few days.

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Dunderdale to hide important Muskrat details from scrutiny/oversight #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale may like to tell people her Muskrat Falls project is the lowest cost option to supply the province with electricity but she is planning to use  changes to the Electrical Power Control Act and the Public Utilities Act made in 1999 to hide important details of the Muskrat Falls deal from public scrutiny.

Under the 1994 Electrical Power Control Act, the Public Utilities Board had a mandate to ensure that power generation came from the lowest cost option available to whatever company was proposing a new power source. 

As well, the PUB itself could direct a power company to supply energy destined for export to meet provincial needs.  That included recalling power from Churchill Falls beyond the power covered by the 1969 contract with Hydro-Quebec.

In 1999, Brian Tobin’s administration amended the two acts in 1999 to cover a situation in which the provincial might have to find additional electricity to meet anticipated demand on the island but didn’t have an a transmission line rom the Lower Churchill project to the island. 

Then energy minister Roger Grimes explained the entire situation in debate on the amendments in the fall 1999 sitting of the House of Assembly.

The [ 1994] legislation absolutely required that the only way Hydro or anybody else could consider bringing on new sources of electricity was to go to the PUB and prove that it was the least cost power, the lowest cost. That is the only thing allowed to be considered under the present legislation.

He then added:

…there will be circumstances where we will need electric energy - it will have to be generated because we do not have it available at the present time - sometime in the next decade or longer, while we are waiting for an in-feed from Labrador. If the only way you can bring it on is to go through a proposal where it has to be lowest cost, then there may be circumstances whereby a development that needs to occur because it is in the best interest of the Province, either for continued social development or continued economic development, that we need to be able to consider something, even though it might be marginally a little higher in cost than some other options that could occur that would not fulfill the immediate need but would provide energy to the grid but not necessarily fulfil an immediate need.

Of course, the situation changed dramatically in the dozen years since Grimes shepherded the amendments through the legislature. 

Despite that, however, the Dunderdale administration will be using the exemptions to make sure the Public Utilities Board doesn’t examine the project to see if it really is the lowest cost alternative. CBC’s David Cochrane reported the exemption story on Monday night but later tweeted this correction/clarification:

On Muskrat: exemption doesn't apply to PUB rate setting process. It applies to PUB cost benefit analysis. Means no public hearings. 1/2

Govt says it will consult PUB on project. But its oversight function will likely be restricted from its normal reach 2/2.

- srbp -

Great Gambols with Public Money Update:  Having broken the exemption story on Monday, David Cochrane added some important details on the St. John’s Morning Show on Tuesday.

The biggest new point:  government is rationalising the exemption by claiming the projection is outside the mandate of the PUB.  The board is supposed to set electricity prices and regulate the industry, according to the debriefed account of government’s line. This project is about economic development and the poor old PUB shouldn’t be bothering with those things.

That’s bullshite, of course.  The board is supposed to be regulating the industry to make sure consumers are getting the lowest cost power.  By exempting Muskrat from scrutiny,  Kathy Dunderdale and her cabinet are specifically and deliberately keeping the PUB from doing its job of protecting consumers.

More importantly, the exemption rationale confirms that Muskrat Falls is definitely not the most economical way to bring new power to the island. 

Now the project is being sold as “economic development”.  Using the Sprung Greenhouse rationalisation, that’s government code for a project that makes no economic sense whatsoever.   Every provincial government in this province that wanted to build something that turned into a financial disaster insisted that the thing was about economic development and therefore worth all the spending, cost over-runs etc.

Taxpayers can get ready for a disaster of historic proportions.  All the signs are there.