The Sir Robert Bond Papers

04 July 2011

You say potato, I say road apple

Kathy Dunderdale thinks it’s all much ado about nothing.

Dunderdale commented in response to a Telegram editorial that noted a set of reports prepared for Nalcor on the Muskrat Falls mega-debt project were not as Dunderdale as previously described them.

All pish-posh and trivial.

“Semantics”, she called it, as if the meaning of words - what semantics is really about - was a trivial thing.

In the House of Assembly this past spring, Dunderdale met questions about the cost of the project with claims that the project had been blessed by what she called “independent audits”. Take this exchange with Yvonne Jones on March 29 as typical:

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

…

I ask the Premier today: Will you tell us how it is possible to build a steel transmission line across the Province today for less money than it would have cost thirteen years ago?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

…

More than that, Mr. Speaker, we have had two independent audits of the methodology used by Nalcor to ensure that the process is as good and the information as good as can be had at this point in time.

The Telegram got hold of a copy of one of these “independent audits” and found that the thing wasn’t independent. One of the people involved worked or had worked for Nalcor on the Muskrat project.

What’s more, the thing wasn’t an audit. The Telegram quoted directly from the report where the authors say “this is not an audit”.

That isn’t all.

The thing also wasn’t a review of the financial aspects of the project that addressed the validity of the projects cost projections.

And it also wasn’t a review of the premises on which Kathy and Nalcor’s Ed Martin are justifying the project. These guys doing the review didn’t look at the long term trending in energy prices, the possible implications of high oil prices on electricity costs, replacing Holyrood or alternatives to building this project at this time in this way.

What they were doing is checking to make sure the crowd at Nalcor hadn’t forgotten anything as they headed down the road to a destination they’ve already committed to hitting.

This a perfectly legitimate function and good on the Nalcor crowd for consulting experts in doing things in which the Nalcor team has pretty much zero experience.

But – and this is a big but – there is a huge difference between what Kathy Dunderdale said the reviews were, what she apparently implied they were and what they actual were. The difference in meaning is like finding out, as the hapless burghers of Ontario found out when they flicked Ernie Eves’ Conservatives from office, that they weren’t in good financial shape as they’d been told. Instead they were in the hole to the tune of five or six billion extra.

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02 July 2011

Trade talks with Europeans = “doing a back-room deal with a group of serial rapists”

What your humble e-scribbler said:

this guy could be an accident waiting to happen.

Wait no longer.

After musing about breaking his major campaign promise to the people of his riding, noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary decided to inject himself into another discussion on a subject he knows nothing about, namely international trade talks between Canada and the European Union.

The comments turn up on his blog, something he may well be forced by jack Layton to shut down very soon [hotlinks in the original]:

Why should Newfoundland and Labrador be concerned about the Harper government’s secret free-trade negotiations with the European Union?

Because they could screw us to the wall.

The same Europeans nations that fished out/raped the Grand Banks are negotiating a deal with the Government of Canada.

And no one reports to Parliament on the status of negotiations.

In other words, Canada is doing a back-room deal with a group of serial rapists.

How scary is that?

How scary indeed.

Well, it is pretty scary when a member of parliament cannot even report accurately and factually on things that are already well established. This is a guy, after all, who is expected to render thoughtful judgment on all sorts of issues ranging from the taxes you pay to the criminal law in Canada.

So if he doesn’t know basic stuff, then it is a pretty good bet his lack of information has a good chance of coming back to bite you and me on the ass.

The talks aren’t secret. The national media have been reporting it for years. So too did the local media in Newfoundland and Labrador all during the time the former investigative reporter was plying his trade. They even carried a story on it this past March, noting that the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador had joined the talks.

Evidently, they weren’t so secret after all.

Then there’s the issue of blaming Europeans for destroying fish stocks on the Grand Banks. That’s a line pushed by Cleary’s buddy Gus Etchegary. The only problem: it is a load of codswallop. The Europeans, Japanese and – you guessed it – Canadian companies including one Cleary’s buddy used to help manage all had a hand in driving cod to the brink of extinction.

As for reporting to parliament, the federal cabinet shows up in parliament every day the House of Commons sits. When Cleary is in his desk in the House, they are all the people to the left, right and immediately behind that fellow the Speaker keeps calling “the Right Honourable the Prime Minister.”

Each day, people around Cleary get to ask questions of those ministers. If they wanted, they could even ask about these talks because – as ministers of the Crown – they are directing the talks. If Cleary wanted, he could ask about them so they could report on the talks. They might not give him intimate details – negotiations are usually confidential – but they will confirm the talks are going on. In other words, they aren’t secret.

And if Cleary and his buddies have a problem, then they can raise their concerns in the House and in the media and maybe provoke some discussion about it.

So in six sentences, Cleary gets off to a rotten start and that’s before we consider the issues that are at stake for Newfoundland and Labrador if the talks fail.

Instead he has opted to shoot his mouth off based solely on an opinion derived entirely from – you guessed it – obvious ignorance.

In the greater scheme of things, the House of Commons has seen its fair share of these self-important blowhards over the decades. Usually, they tend to frequent provincial politics in these parts but every now and then one of the little darlings gets into a position where they can display their profound ignorance on a national scale.

Cleary will likely delight the punters. The tinfoil hat brigade will cheer him on as he rants about things he – and they – evidently know nothing about. So much for looking after the best interests of his constituents and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Bloc NDP may have a few days of embarrassment. But since Cleary has already confirmed your humble e-scribbler’s first prediction, we can go a step farther.

It is only a matter of time before the new Chief Spokesperson of the League of Professional Victims launches into a tirade on another of his favourite targets: the nefarious, perfidious and generally odious crowd from Quebec and their efforts to take control of Labrador and destroy Newfoundland.

Perhaps Cleary will tell his fellow Bloc NDP MPs what he told macleans.ca:

“I don’t think I have a big mouth. I just have something to say and I’m going to say it.”

Oh to be a fly on the caucus room wall after he flings that crap at every fan in sight.

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AG finishes term with more fumbles

Outgoing auditor general John Noseworthy held to his pattern of making less-than-accurate claims or claims without evidence, this time with respect to the offshore regulatory board.

Noseworthy’s claims and the accurate information from the board are in a story available at the Telegram website.

In his latest accusation, Noseworthy said he did not have full access to the offshore board records. Fact is, he did. What Noseworthy couldn’t get was proprietary information belonging to the oil companies.

“We invited him in. He had sent four people in, they were here for four months conducting an audit. He had full access to the board,” [offshore board CEO Max] Ruelokke said.

But Ruelokke said Noseworthy’s staff did not have access to information provided to the board by oil companies — which the companies deem to be proprietory [sic]— and that’s because of section 119 of the Atlantic Accord Act.

The act states companies have to approve the release of the information to any third party.

“When we asked (the companies) to do so, on behalf of the auditor general, they refused to do that. So we couldn’t release it to him,” Ruelokke said.

The distinction is significant.

Your humble e-scribbler has raised questions about Noseworthy’s attack on the board – and that’s what it has been – from the beginning.

The most recent post on the topic raised the question of why Noseworthy had failed to produce a report or bothered to update the public on it since he launched his public attack on the board in 2008. Maybe Noseworthy’s most recent unfounded accusation was an effort to deflect attention away from his own shortcomings.

While Noseworthy enjoys local “media cred’ – that is, they will never, ever question any of his pronouncements – the retiring auditor’s record is far from pristine.

Noseworthy missed millions in House of Assembly overspending that continued well into 2006. The accurate figure turned up in some fairly simple analysis done by the Green commission.

Despite having access to financial records kept by the comptroller general, Noseworthy did not once report on the obvious overspending in some House of Assembly accounts until after his auditors stumbled across irregularities in 2006.

From the rings to spending by individual members of the legislature to the actual rules in place during the period, Noseworthy or his crew simply didn’t do the homework in many cases to know what they were looking at. That didn’t stop him from making claims that were baseless or that lacked evidence.

And to cap it all, Noseworthy still hasn’t completed the tasks set out for him in a 2006 cabinet order. Instead he substituted his own commentary on individual member’s spending in an incomplete report he issued to wide media coverage.

And on that one Noseworthy also missed one fairly obvious problem in the House scandal: diversion of public money for partisan purposes. It’s obvious wrong and there was way more to it than just the $11,000 he did report. Three times that turned up during subsequent criminal trials of former members of the House. And while Noseworthy couldn’t have reported that while the investigations and trials were under way, it was the most fundamentally corrupt practice he should have seen raised in his original audits.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Noseworthy focused on trinkets. In one news conference, Noseworthy said that he and his staff “did not find” any rings. That led many to believe initially that the rings did not exist. They quickly turned up, however if one looked. Obviously, Noseworthy and his staff didn’t look.

In perhaps the most bizarre case, Noseworthy replaced his actual recommendations for a report on government operations and substituted one he never made. He then reported compliance with his invented recommendation in a review he produce of government compliance with his reports.

The matter gets to be all the more serious when you realise the subject of the original report was an apparent lack of adequate management of public money handed out to private sector companies.

Noseworthy has never explained the discrepancy in what he reported originally and what he claimed happened later on. Nor did Noseworthy report in his self-assessment that one of the companies covered in the original report had gone bankrupt in the intervening two years.

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That Was The Canada Week That Was

Political mythology was the top of the reading list here at Bond Papers in the days leading up to Canada Day.

The top post noted that a national Conservative insider complaining about political myths was a bit like Aesop bitching about fables.

The second most popular post brought some evidently embarrassing attention to local lover of political myths who went out for the Olympic medal in political bullshit by making what he himself subsequently criticized as ridiculous comments.

The third post noted some problems with a local news story on the same political controversy that the second post covered. You’ll find another critique of a local news story in the one on gouging consumers that ended up tied for the fifth spot on the Top 10 list.

Not done with the political mythology theme, readers also loved the fourth place post. Another in the Dundernomics series made a penetrating insight into the obvious: Premier Kathy Dunderdale can’t seem to get her story straight on Muskrat Falls.

The rest of the stories on the list – with one exception – are all about Kathy Dunderdale and Muskrat Falls. The exception, the story at Number 8 on the list, is about a huge energy story in Vermont that involves a local company that just happens to be one of the largest private utility companies in Canada.

It also went pretty much unreported by media in this province.

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01 July 2011

Innu vote overwhelmingly for something

The Innu of Labrador voted overwhelmingly in favour of something on Thursday.

News media are calling it the “New Dawn” agreement and say that the vote approves the Lower Churchill development, gives Innu compensation for Churchill Falls and does a few other things.

Not the least of those other things is “pave the way” for Muskrat Falls.

Beyond that, details are sketchy.

Kathy Dunderdale, seen at left waiting to receive communion outside the House of Assembly, took time out from her junket to Europe to issue a news release about the vote. The release contained no details on the deal.

What exactly are we talking about here?

A very good question, grasshopper.

In late 2008, Danny Williams announced something called the New Dawn agreements.

You can find a news release on it, as well as a link to a document signed by the provincial government and the Innu nation. Labradorians might find the accompanying map – the one detailing Innu land – to be a bit more interesting than anything else.

Supposedly it was the last step before a final agreement set to be finished by the spring of 2009. That release had lots of interesting details in it, including reference to privatising Churchill Falls.

Local media didn’t report on the details very much.

Okay.

That’s an exaggeration.

They didn’t report the details at all.

And then suddenly it wasn’t the end of negotiations.

Like poof, the Innu had to negotiate again.

They cancelled a vote scheduled for January 31, 2009 in the face of so much opposition to the deal the Innu Nation leadership had no choice but stop things cold.
Lots of talks and rumours of discussions followed but at no point did anyone discuss – nor did anyone report – anything on what the Innu and the provincial government were talking about.

Even last November, the Innu were the most noticeable cloud raining on Danny’s “I am outta here” parade.

From an American consular briefing note leaked earlier this year, we know that Emera balked at the first discussions about something called the Lower Churchill project. In the end, Danny Williams gave away a whole pile of stuff in order to get them to show up for his surprise retirement announcement.

So what did the Innu get for all their hard bargaining from the guy who was that anxious to get out the door of the Premier’s Office he gave Emera 35 years of free electricity, discount electricity above and beyond that plus a share of transmission revenue in Newfoundland and Labrador no other company has, all in exchange for building a power line across the Cabot Strait?

Emera didn’t have to negotiate half as long as the Innu to get their free gifts.
And they didn’t have a legitimate claim to own the land and resources everyone wanted to develop.

And that was after Williams used the legislature to seize generating plants from other companies just because he could.

T’would be nice if someone turned up some details and told the rest of us what the Innu voted on.

Like say, is this the final deal and will it pave the way for Muskrat Falls. Or is it - as Dunderdale’s news release says plainly - a “non-binding agreement” that will form the basis for future talks and an Innu land claims agreement? In other words, this vote doesn’t pave the way for anything except more talks.

This is a wee bit more important to the future of the province, after all, than the name of Danny Williams’ latest hockey team.

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The Tops for June

Muskrat Falls.

Provincial Tory political fortunes.

Those are the two main themes running through the most popular posts for June.

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30 June 2011

A tisket, a tasket

You gotta love subtle minds, especially subtle political ones able to see nuances of meaning or the possibility you could rub your tummy and pat your head simultaneously.

That would be most definitely not like the political geniuses of the last decade - Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale - who always saw the world as consisting of two polar opposites: what they wanted to do, and the pathway to complete destruction. With Danny, his tendency to gainsay got to be especially funny since he was known to wind up arguing with himself on some major issues like Equalization.

The latest example is Kathy Dunderdale’s comments to the Telegram editorial board. In the latest offering from that rich gold mine, Steve Bartlett tells us that Kathy Dunderdale has no time for any talk of a sovereign wealth fund.

For those who don’t know what that is, a sovereign wealth fund* would be what they do in smart countries, like Norway, to make sure their oil money continues to benefit the country long after the last drop of oil is gone.

Basically, the Norwegians put a bit of their oil wealth into an investment fund and let it make more money for them. They do lots of other things with their oil money, like build roads, bridges, tunnels and schools and such. But they put some of it aside for a rainy day.

Now bear in mind the Norwegians have a shitload of oil and natural gas. They are not really in danger of running out in the near future and there is always a good chance that all the exploration going on offshore Norway will turn up a few more gushers.

Still, they still thought it might be wise to start a rainy day fund.

You know.

Just in case.

And now several billion or trillion dollars later, they are doing just fine.

Some people have suggested the same idea here. The most recent one is Wade Locke. Kathy thinks it is foolishness:

"People talk about a legacy fund all the time and we respond to that by saying, 'That's our legacy fund, the investment in infrastructure.' Because unless you have roads and wharves and hospitals and schools, your economy can't grow," she says.

There’s that binary thinking again. No chance of doing more than one thing. Sovereign wealth fund or infrastructure. The word “and” is not in Kathy’s vocabulary.

One of the many things Kathy missed is that all those roads and wharves and hospitals and schools don’t really produce any money to pay for their own upkeep. That’s especially true in a province like this one where the economy has grown increasingly less diverse over the Tory term of office. So it is great to spend a bunch of money on all that lovely infrastructure but if that is all you have done with the cash, you really haven’t done much in the long run.

The sensible answer would be to do several things with the oil money. Invest some. Spend some. Pay down debt with some. Build some infrastructure with some.

What Kathy and her mates have done is put all the province’s financial eggs into one basket. It’s basically the same thing the Tories did with their own political leader: one egg to rule the basket. Sadly, when the time comes and the egg goes, as it inevitably will, all you wind up with is the sad case of …well…an empty basket.

And who really wants to be left with a basket case?

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* Paragraphing change and rewritten sentence to make it clear that the sentence after this mark wasn’t a comment made or or attributable to KD.

29 June 2011

Fortis, Gaz Metro in war for Vermont utility

Newfoundland and Labrador-based Fortis (CA: FTS) isn’t alone in its bid to buy Central Vermont Public Service.

The CVPS board announced on June 27 that the company has authorized talks with Gaz Metro on Gaz Metro’s unsolicited acquisition offer. Gaz Metro is offering $35.25 per share. That’s slightly better than Fortis offer of $35.10 per share, which the CVPS board accepted in late May.

CVPS is the largest electrical utility in Vermont.

Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin thinks the Gaz Metro offer is better for the state given that Gaz Metro already owns an electric utility and a natural gas utility in the state.

Fortis isn’t happy with the unsolicited offer from a rival. The company wouldn’t comment on the story earlier in June with Canadian media but Vermont Public Radio quotes Fortis chief financial officer Barry Perry as saying:

"It is a hostile bid. In the utility sector, hostile bids are not normal. They're rare, in fact. So, usually you end up negotiating a transaction, the board selects a party and that's the end of it. The party is then required to get it approved by the regulator and the shareholders of the company. In this case GMP did decide to go hostile. It is a little unusual."

Under the agreement with Fortis, CVPS could wind up paying Fortis US$19 million if the deal with the company falls through.

If it is successful, Gaz Metro would create a new utility that includes a share of the state’s transmission assets. VPR reported that as part of the merger, Gaz Metro would create a public trust comprising 30% of the shares in the state transmission utility. The trust would reportedly generate $1.0 million a year in income.

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The price of a loan guarantee

Ontario is planning to build two new nuclear reactors to meet the province’s energy needs in the near future and finance minister Dwight Duncan signalled on Tuesday that the Ontario government will be looking for help from the federal government.

The example he cited?

You guessed it: Muskrat Falls.

“They are certainly backstopping Newfoundland in exporting power to the United States,” he said. “Now I guess the question to them will become as we move forward, what are they going to do for Ontario?”

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Wealth transfer

As nottawa noted on Tuesday, the net effect of a provincial tax cut on electricity and a rate hike for the province’s Crown energy company isn’t what might appear at first glance.

First, there’s not going to be a drop in cost for consumers, as some might have thought. He based the calculations on a monthly bill of $300 per month before taxes:

$339.26 is greater than $339. The government isn't giving you a discount this October at all. In fact, your monthly bill is actually going up. So much for "reduc(ing) the cost of living for all consumers". And on a year-over-year basis, they're sticking it to you slightly more, because the increased rates take effect this month, while the as-yet-imagined HST discount won't start until October.

Second,

all of those millions of dollars … that are going "back" into the hands of taxpayers represent millions less on the government's books in the form of tax revenue. But an equivalent or slightly higher amount is now flowing from rate payers into NALCOR's coffers, where it can be safely spent with far less public scrutiny. (Like this, for example).

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Taken up by the ferries

With a tender call to build six more ferries,the provincial government is still not finished sorting out problems with its last ferry contract.

Earlier this year, Kiewit Marystown delivered two ferries originally contracted in 2008 at a cost of $50.5 million. They were supposed to be delivered in 2009 and 2010. The final delivery price was $27.5 million each.

The issue of cost-over-runs on the contract cropped up last week in an interview human resources minister Darin King gave to CBC’s David Cochrane. King also said the provincial government has been trying to sort out construction of a third ferry at Kiewit but the ideas was hung up over cost escalations.

According to the 2008 news release, the provincial government was supposed to purchase the engine for a third ferry in 2008 at a cost of $2.0 million. They were also supposed to start design work on a fourth, larger ferry.

The ferry project dates back to 2005. When the provincial government announced the Kiewit deal a quarter of the work was supposed to go to a yard in Clarenville. Before work got underway, the Clarenville shipyard dropped out of the deal.

If the figures in provincial government news releases are accurate, the two ferries came in only 10% over budget. That’s actually low compared to cost over-runs on other provincial government tenders.

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Gouging consumers on gas

So the gas pumps in the province are prone to error in favour of retailers, as CBC reports.

Well, sort of.

We don’t know how many gas pumps there are in the province but CBC reports that of the 962 examined over a two year period, nine percent didn’t pump accurately.

Of the nine percent, 56% erred in favour of the retailer. Logically, the remaining 44% didn’t pump the right amount but the consumer benefited.

But do the math on that to understand if you had a “decent chance” of not getting the right gas amount as the CBC story asserts.

Fifty-six percent of nine percent of 962 works out to be 48.

48 out of 962.

That works out to be 4.9%.

So at any time you are buying gas, about five percent of the pumps across the province could be reading incorrectly in favour of the retailer.

Four percent of the pumps will make mistakes in your favour.

Gasoline watchdog George Murphy thinks that federal government officials should inspect every gas pump in the province twice a year in order to stop this. Taxpayers would bear the full freight for that, most likely.

Seems like a bit of overkill given the number of errors is relative small.

If you want to stop gouging consumers, it would be far easier and far less costly to consumers if we simply got rid of the gas price fixing scheme the provincial government runs. People like George Murphy agitated for that in order to protect consumers.

As it turned out, the government price fixing scheme gouges the people pumping gas into their cars 100% of the time. The only people who benefit from it are gasoline retailers and the provincial government and they benefit from the price fixing scheme 100% of the time.

Five percent chance you could lose some money versus 100% chance of getting hosed.

There’s gouging and then there’s gouging, obviously.

That’s math anyone can follow.

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Dundernomics 101: Dazed and confused

There’s a Tellytorial - editorial at the Telly – that is worth reading if you missed it already.

It’s the one from last Saturday that began by noting that the Conservatives are ploughing ahead with the Muskrat Falls project because they got a mandate for it in 2007.

Missed that little gem from four years ago, didn’t you? As the Telegram notes, you surely aren’t alone.

Then there’s the bit where Premier Kathy Dunderdale says she’s confident an external “audit” and the public utilities board will back up claims that she and the Nalcor brass are making about the project. No surprise there: the audit isn’t really an audit, the utilities board has been given basically set up to deliver what Nalcor wants it to deliver and neither will examine the assumptions on which Dunderdale and her predecessor – Danny Williams – gave the green light for ramping up the public debt. The fix, as they say, is in.

But the part of the editorial likely to really make you uncomfortable is the bit where the Telegram editorialist notes that Dunderdale is full steam ahead on the megadebt project yet at the same time:

in one part of the meeting, Dunderdale said governments across the country are getting stung by all manner of projects coming in vastly over budget — often by as much as a third or a half again as much as original budgets had outlined. At the same time, she argued that a contingency plan built into the Muskrat Falls project would handle any overages, even though the contingency set aside for the project is only 15 per cent of the project’s cost.

That’s pretty much what your humble e-scribbler has been saying about these sorts of projects in other parts of the world and about the administration Dunderdale’s been a part of since 2003.

The current provincial administration is routinely over budget and behind schedule on everything it does. The latest example is a plan to build a bunch of new ferries for the provincial coastal service. Already years behind schedule, the current administration torqued everything related to the launch of the first two hulls of a planned series to update the aged fleet. Turns out, though, that the project is not only years behind schedule, it is also significantly over budget such that it is causing problems for the remainder of the program. People didn’t find this out – by the way – until human resources minister Darin King spoke to CBC’s David Cochrane last week about labour problems at the Marystown shipyard.

Flip back to the Muskrat project though.

Current estimate for the project is $6.2 billion. Increase that by 50%, the likely over-run given Dunderdale’s comments to the editorial and experience with the current Conservative administration. You are already at about $10 billion and that’s roughly the size of the provincial government’s current liabilities.

Consider, though that the estimate of $6.2 billion isn’t realistic in the first place. Nalcor and the provincial government are basically citing figures for 2011 that are exactly the same as ones first floated in the late 1990s. Put a bit of inflation on that number at you’d be at $10 billion or more as a realistic starting figure.

Now add 50% and see what you get.

Scary, isn’t it?

When you are done with that and your breathing returns to normal, notice that Kathy Dunderdale acknowledged to the Telegram editorial board that these sorts of projects tend to go over-budget by up to 50%. Your humble e-scribbler has been saying that for years. others have said the same thing.

So… the Premier and critics of the project agree on both the likelihood of over-runs and how bad they’ll be.

Then recall this Dunderdale quote from a recent speech:

May I suggest you look at the motives of the few vocal naysayers who are working so hard to find flaws in what is easily one of the most exciting developments in North America.

Maybe you should.

And while you are at it, look at Dunderdale’s motives in pushing the megadebt project despite the very obvious and massive flaws in her proposal that even she acknowledges.

If you look at both, it should be pretty easily to see who is dazed and confused and who thinks there’s a better deal waiting to be had than the one the Premier and her supporters are flogging.

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28 June 2011

The federal government is out to kill you

If you want an example of the sorts of irresponsible, partisan rhetoric that usually gets wound up in some types of issues in this province check out a post at a local blog.

It’s titled in an appropriately hysterical way, given the subsequent comments:

“They will not be happy until we are as extinct as Northern Cod.”

Yes folks, the local Quisling hunter is back with his claim that the federal government is on a campaign of genocide against the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Normally your humble e-scribbler would ignore this sort of garbage but it is such a fine example of the sort of political myths that Tim Powers complained about recently that it’s worth singling out. And what’s more, both Tim and the Quisling Hunter share a common political hero who, not surprisingly, also loved political fairy tales.

These days in Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s par for the course: no facts to make the case? Make ‘em up, instead.

According to the post,

The decision to close regional sub-bases and consolidate has been in the works for nearly twenty years, just as the federal government has been automating and decommissioning light houses for the past thirty years.

He then cites a 1996 crash at Stephenville airport as evidence:

In it's findings, the Transportation Safety Board found that the St. John's FSS operator did not have the actual Stephenville wind direction and speed. The wind velocity he passed to the crew was from the latest Stephenville observation and was 040° at 17 knots, within the tailwind landing limitations of the aircraft. The actual Stephenville wind of 040° magnetic at 20 knots with gusts to 22 knots exceeded the aircraft's maximum allowable tailwind component for landing.

Had there been local air radio and weather staff, those pilots would have had accurate up to date information.

They might very well be alive today.

My point is that abandoning regional facilities like St. John's can, and in fact, has cost lives in the past.

And then the finish:

Emotional, partisan rhetoric is not going to force Ottawa mandarins to change their minds. The reality of the dangerous conditions that our men and women toil in to retrieve fish, deliver and pump oil, and transport goods is as foreign to the bureaucrats on Wellington Street as our dialects and unique phrases.

This closure is just the latest evidence of a continued lack of understanding and sensitivity in official Ottawa towards the economic, social, and safety needs of this province.

They will not be happy until each and every one of us are as extinct as the Northern Cod.

Big problem?

Well aside from the oxymoronic appeal to emotional, partisan rhetoric right after acknowledging that it won’t work on bureaucrats, that is.

The big problem is that Transportation Safety Board report on that crash investigation didn’t finger local air, weather and radio staff. Nor did it give any basis for getting to that conclusion.

You can find the report on line at the Transportation Safety Board website. It is easy to read; TSB reports are in plain English.

Notice that there is no link to the report in the post. That should be your first clue that something is amiss. take a look at the description of the tailwind information, though and that’s where things go off. The TSB found that the tailwind given by the St. John’s air controller worked out to 10 knots. That’s the actual recommended limit for that aircraft type. The observed conditions on the ground at the time – according to the TSB - worked out to 12 knots.

That’s still 20% beyond the maximum tailwind for the type but at no point does the TSB connect the difference in weather conditions – reported versus actual – as being a factor in the crash. The claim the pilots might have been alive had someone been in the tower is pure fiction.

You’d see that by reading the whole report. Investigators found the aircraft in the middle of the airfield, upside down and with its landing gear retracted. It appears the aircraft struck the runway while the pilot tried to abort the landing and go around for another try. The TSB notes there was no explanation why the pilot tried to land with a tailwind at the aircraft’s limits while he could have approached with a modest headwind.

What you have here is someone taking a case and bending it to fit the desired outcome. Aside from the date, the aircraft type and the fact it crashed, pretty well everything else the post author claims about the mishap is just wrong. The conclusions are equally out-to-lunch.

The post fits, though, with all the wild claims made about the shifting of the jobs from this particular centre to Halifax where the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre has been running for years. It also sits alongside the host of other mistaken beliefs, whether it is about incomprehensible dialects, bizarre place names, the supposed closure of coast guard operations in the province full stop or that federal bureaucrats are out to commit genocide in Newfoundland and Labrador.

That’s the thing about political myths: rationality has nothing to do with it. In fact, rationality is the enemy of a political argument built on fables, fantasy and fairy tales.

But that’s what you get in Newfoundland and Labrador these days.

That and the myth mongers wondering why no one outside the province takes them seriously when they make all these improbably claims.

- srbp -

Get me re-write!

The headline on the story is catchy:

Inquiry needed on centre closure: advocate

At the start of second paragraph you find out that the advocate the headline writer is referring to is Merv Wiseman. He is described as “Long-time Canadian Coast Guard employee…”.

But Merv isn’t just an impartial bystander in this little drama and he is a wee bit more than an “advocate”.

Wiseman is the shop steward for the union local representing the workers whose jobs are being moved to Halifax. You don’t find that little tidbit until paragraph three.

In other media reports, Merv has been identified as one of the people affected by the coast guard decision.

Here’s the existing fourth paragraph and the logic Wiseman uses in calling for a provincial public inquiry:

"We've had provincial inquiries, provincial and judicial inquiries before because of marine tragedies. Here's an opportunity for the government now to show some real leadership."

Is the CBC story accurate? Not by a long shot. Of course, if they had described Wiseman accurately, his claim would be a lot harder to sustain. Try this on for size.

Instead of “advocate” in the headline, substitute “union rep”.

And instead of the existing front end of the story, try this:

The union representative for coast guard workers whose jobs are being relocated to Halifax wants the provincial government to launch a public inquiry into the implications of the federal government’s decision.

Then drop in the existing third and fourth paragraphs.

Big difference in the story, wouldn’t you agree?

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A room with a view of the pork barrel

The provincial ambassador’s office in Ottawa costs the better part of a half million a year to run, hasn’t had an ambassador in it for the better part of the past two years and so Premier Kathy Dunderdale will keep it open because it is so effective.

The office serves a great purpose when it’s functioning the way that it should,” she told a Telegram editorial board [last] Wednesday. “And it’s important to me that we maintain that.”

The thing is the office hasn’t served any purpose except to demonstrate how completely useless it is or how crap Premier’s have been in finding people to occupy the sinecure.

The first incumbent - former Liberal cabinet minister, former wannabe Conservative candidate, former Liberal candidate and soon-to-be-former radio talk show host Bill Rowe – stayed in the job for about half a year and accomplished exactly squat before packing it in and coming back home.

Rowe – who left politics in the late 1970s after a political scandal about leaked police reports – wrote about his complete waste of tax money in Ottawa in a book that became a national best seller last year. The book is a litany of slapstick moments like making taxpayer’s foot the bill for shipping his used snow-tires to the nation’s capital or his inability to get Danny Williams’ political and public service bureaucracy to cough up a Blackberry and a laptop for weeks on end.

Your humble e-scribbler has described the book as an insider’s account of events the author wasn’t inside the room for.

As Rowe documents, Danny Williams offered Rowe a key position in the new administration before the 2003 general election. Rowe stayed in his job on-air during the election and took up his ambassadorial appointment as Williams’ personal representative to Hy’s early in 2004.

The second incumbent - former Memorial University professor John Fitzgerald - reportedly spent most of his time not meeting with federal officials, that is when he wasn’t hanging out in the Commons visitors gallery. His tenure in Ottawa coincided with Danny' Williams’ endless feuds with Ottawa for something or other and after a certain point he reportedly had a hard time getting in to see anyone. Regular readers will recall him as Our Man in a Blue Line Cab.

Fitzgerald quietly left Ottawa when his contract ended. Williams gave him another contract in St. John’s in the classic patronage holding pen of the protocol office. His official title is “special advisor.”

Before Bill Rowe, the provincial government never maintained an office in Ottawa. The job of dealing with the federal government fell to officials and ministers, including the Premier. And more often than not over the past 30 years there has been an office called Intergovernmental Affairs intended to deal specifically with – you guessed it – relations between and among governments in Canada.

So there you have it. The office has been vacant for more time than it’s been filled, a point labradore makes succinctly. And when it has been occupied, the incumbents apparently accomplished nothing.

And yet the current Premier wants to keep spending money on an office that has never worked because it is great when it works.

Says more about Kathy Dunderdale’s judgement than anything else, apparently.

- srbp -

27 June 2011

Payback is a mother: Conservative edition

“…rationality has little to do with political myth making…”

Tim Powers, Conservative backroom guy and Ottawa lobbyist, wrote that in a recent post over at the blog space he has alongside Rob Silver at the Globe and Mail.

He was venting some frustration over some political smoke being blown at his friend the Prime Minister over a handful of jobs at a call centre that the federal government wants to shift from St. John’s to Halifax.

Political opponents of the federal Tories have tried to make the debate about the Prime Minister and their manufactured view that he has some sort of disdain for the province.

Political myths have absolutely nothing to do with rationality, facts or any other sign of higher mental function that is supposed to distinguish humans from pond slime.

We are not talking of the rather harmless fairy tales like chopping down cherry trees. We are talking about beliefs about people or events that are simply not true.

Tim is right: there are a bunch of people who would have you believe that these 12 jobs are yet another sign that Stephen Harper and his band of knuckle draggers just don’t understand [insert the topic here]. They will screw Newfoundland (and Labrador) sometimes out of malice, sometimes out of stupidity. But those nasty Conservatives will screw “us”

There is no evidence for any of it, of course. But that doesn’t matter. political myths, as Tim noted, have nothing to do with rationality. Still, that hasn’t stopped a few thousand people from believing it as surely as they believe in sunshine.

A lot of people in Newfoundland (and Labrador) believe Stephen Harper is some sort of demon merely because Danny Williams told them so a couple of years ago. That idea was at the heart of his now legendary “Anything but Conservative” campaign during the 2008 federal election.

To savour the truly dry cosmic humour in that,one has to know a bit of back-story. Danny Williams’ is a political legend. That is, so much of what people think about him and what they believe he accomplished as a ,politician is simply a matter of myth. As your humble e-scribbler noted when the old guy skedaddled out of politics last December, the tributes to him praised him for :

things he never did;
things other people did but credited to Danny
things that never happened, and,
stuff he did but that still had to roll along enough so people could see if they were good, bad or indifferent.

And that was all they included.

Take the Muskrat Falls deal that Tim mentions in that same column. Danny grabbed a bunch of people together and had them scribble names on an agreement to keep talking about maybe coming up with a deal. He didn’t actually sign the final deal that will actually see a couple of dam and a bunch of hydro lines built in Labrador. But that hasn’t stopped reporters from praising it then and now even though it really doesn’t exist at the moment beyond a lot of talking.

Tim helped to bolster the Danny myth - or a fairy tale Danny was spreading - on more than one occasion. And that, as they say, is really what really makes Tim’s post a delicious display of Karma in action. This lack of rationality…

unfortunately does a great disservice to the serious discussion that should be taking place about marine rescue co-ordination on the East Coast.

Indeed it does, Tim. And on everything from the provincial government’s sorry fiscal state to the Muskrat falls debt project, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador have been done serious harm by the myths foisted on them by Powers and his political friends in the province.

The danger for the Conservatives is that the myth is becoming the symbol, which could present major challenges for the federal government with the province in future.

Absolutely true, again, Tim Powers, but the verb tense is wrong. Danny the Myth cemented the symbol years ago. What we are seeing today is just a sort of cosmic payback being visited on the Conservatives who after 2001 in this province never met a myth they wouldn’t monger.

Karma is a bitch.

Looks good on ‘em.

- srbp -

25 June 2011

Fortis fighting two tin-pot bureaucracies

Newfoundland and Labrador based Fortis is seeking compensation for electricity production assets seized by two governments half a continent apart.

The company is seeking payment for its interest in a Belize electricity company seized this week by the government of that tiny central American country.

It is still locked in talks with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for the 2008 seizure of its assets in that Canadian province.

Odds are Belize will settle up first.

- srbp -

Saturday Snickerfest

After her communion scrum, Premier Kathy Dunderdale led reporters in a brief prayer in which she asked for divine help to get her out of the political quagmire she’d made for herself over the call centre jobs.

- srbp -

Traffic that transcends the overpass

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