Same old same old. #nlpoli

You will not be able to slide a sheet of paper, sez your humble e-scribbler, between the three parties in the general election.

They will be pandering for votes and promising an orgy of public spending.

And so far they are right on track.

The provincial Conservatives unleashed their Blue Book, likely named because it is starved of the oxygen of an original thought.

You can tell a party has been in power too long by the size of its campaign platform.  They run out of ideas.  They think that you can overwhelm people with verbiage and bullshit rather than stand behind a few ideas laid out plainly.

The Tories hit 75 pages, not counting the cover this time around.  Flip back and look at Roger Grimes’ monster manual that the Liberals produced in 2003 after 14 years in power.

Same idea.

It’s just taken the Tories seven years to exhaust their imagination reserve.

Now they are down to promises to think about doing something eventually.

Like public sector pensions:

• We will develop a long-term plan to reduce our unfunded public pension plan liabilities in a responsible manner by making set periodic payments.

Seven years in office and $4.0 billion in cash tied up in short-term investments and only now they will develop a plan – over an unspecified period of time – to try and fix the problem of unfunded pension liabilities.

Meanwhile they accuse the Liberals of being evil spenders for making a commitment to do something.

Interesting concept. 

You see government is already dealing with the unfunded liability right now.  They pay it out of general revenue, as the liabilities come due each year.  The Liberals proposed to do the same thing. Putting money into a fund to cover it off out of interest is one way of handling the pensions issue.  meeting it out of general revenue every year is another.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives promise to continue running things as they have.  That is hardly comforting to those who have paid attention to what they’ve done thus, as opposed to what they’ve claimed to do.

Meanwhile there are lots of plans to make plans. 

Wonderful stuff that since you cannot really hold any political party accountable for such vague and meaningless commitments as '"we will start working on writing down some ideas that we might implement if we ever have enough money…”.

And if there isn’t that, there’ll be stuff that adds up to precious little:

We will encourage schools to continue to draw attention to the successes and leadership of students and teachers at public assemblies and through other means in the school.

They forgot to say that they will do it now with New Energy!

The oil and gas section of the plan recycles old Tory commitments since 2003 and in one case – the natural gas royalty regime – carries one the Grits started in the late 1990s.

The fisheries section looks suspiciously familiar, right down to the pledge to create a fisheries loan board.  And like the Liberal commitment, the Tory one deliberately puts the words in lower case letters so that people might not confuse it with a Fisheries Loan Board.

Perhaps the funniest aspect of the Conservative platform – after the section on continuing a commitment to accountability – is the idea the whole thing will cost less than $200 million.

If the fisheries section is where the Tories and Grits are the same, then managing the money  is where the Tories and the Dippers share a common cause.

Any platform that includes the construction of a multi-billion megaproject and massive amounts of other capital spending by an administration that is notorious for its inability bring in anything on time and budget cannot deliver anything for a mere $137 million.

You cannot slide a sheet of paper in between the three parties in this election.  What differences there might be are purely a matter of degree and semantics.

No wonder so many people are frustrated and unmotivated to vote.

People want change and the parties are just offering four more years of the same old, same old.

- srbp -

The Further Adventures of The ‘Stache #nlpoli

He shaved it before.

SRBP lit up the missing caterpillar from his top lip.

Jerome Kennedy grew it back.

Earlier this year, he lopped it off again.

Well, he didn’t grow it back this time, folks. .

That’s a screen cap from Thursday’s launch of the Conservative Party’s campaign policy book.

Jerome was conspicuously close to the Conservatives’ interim leader.

Conspicuous.

Just like the Tories were conspicuously in a region of the province where their support is soft in order to unveil their platform.

Conspicuous, just like the Liberals are when decided to unveil their policy book in St. Anthony.  Almost as far away from the Avalon as you can get and still be on the island,  in an area where seats could change hands from Blue to Red and really close to Labrador where other seats can change hands.

Incidentally, anyone who doesn’t know where sinantny is can just ask Fairity O’Brien.

- srbp -

Some old habits must die really hard: Telly edition #nlpoli #nlvotes

In the last couple of days of the 1989 election, the Telegram featured a set of poll results done by a local company. 

The poll showed Tom Rideout’s Tories in front of the Clyde Wells Liberals by quite a margin.

Small problem of accuracy:  the Telegram didn’t mention that the polling firm was also the PC party pollster.

The company’s name was Omnifacts.

The Liberals issued a news release using their own rolling poll results that turned out to be way closer to the result than the Tory one. The title on the release was “Partisan polls should be identified”.

A version of the story turned up in a couple of Claire Hoy books and in both accounts Hoy’s supposed Liberal Party insider is someone who evidently didn’t understand how the Liberals were conducting their polls or what happened.  If the Liberals made up the numbers, as Hoy’s uninformed informant claimed, then they got the results pretty close to accurate.

Way more accurate say, than any given CRA poll over the past five years.  The Liberal poll showed the Libs on top by 3.5%.  In the end the popular vote was almost dead even, with the Tories slightly on top.  CRA missed the 2007 election by a country mile.

Anyway…

Fast forward 21 years and the latest iteration of the same firm – MQO or Market Quest Omnifacts – released another political poll this week.

In the Telegram story on page three of the Wednesday edition, the story starts out by referring to an “independent poll”.

That’s an interesting word choice.

MQO is part of a related group of companies that goes under the business name M5.

As Nalcor confirmed again for SRBP on Wednesday, the M5 Group is the agency of record for the provincial government’s energy corporation.

In effect, that would make MQO Nalcor’s pollster.

When asked by SRBP if MQO was doing work for the Tory Party or the provincial government or Nalcor, an MQO spokesperson said that “[w]hether or not the company currently has projects in play with the organizations you mentioned, I’m unaware.  It’s not something that MQO’s researcher’s would confirm for me due to client confidentiality.  In fact, the same is true for the entire group of m5 companies.”

 

- srbp -

The Hebron Give-Away #nlpoli #nlvotes

If the province’s New Democrats form the next provincial government, they’ll have to look somewhere else besides the Hebron oil project for their three percent surtax on crude oil.

Under the 2008 Hebron fiscal agreement, then Premier Danny Williams and his natural resources minister, Kathy Dunderdale agreed to a clause that prevents the government from introducing any new oil revenue charges besides royalties for the life of the Hebron agreement.

Clause 9.1 states that “no additional tax, levy, fee or charge shall be imposed by the Province solely on a Development Project or on the
Proponents solely in relation to their interest in the Lands.”

The term “development project” means:

(i) exploration, development and production of oil resources from the Lands;

(ii) ancillary thereto, the production of gas from the Lands for use solely for the purpose of production of oil from the Lands, not for commercial production and sale; and

(iii) the ownership, construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning and abandonment of all the assets in which the Proponents hold an undivided interest in relation to such activities.

While Hibernia has a good few years left in it, Terra Nova and White Rose won’t last as long.  That means we can only count on having two oil fields in production offshore.  As revenues dwindle and government spending pressures mount, there might be a day when a future provincial government would need to look at how it taxes resources for the benefit of the people of the province.

Thanks to the provincial Conservatives the future government will be screwed over when it comes to Hebron.  They’ve  given away the provincial government’s power to adjust the way it collects rent on behalf of the resource owners – you and your humble e-scribbler – for this lucrative non-renewable resource.

That’s in addition to the royalty giveaway up the front end that the Conservatives attacked before they got into office and when oil prices were low and then gleefully agreed to once they had the power and oil prices skyrocketed.

And even that is in addition to the clause in the Hebron deal that compels the provincial government to side with the oil companies on any regulatory changes the companies think might hurt their interests offshore.

That one – incidentally – is a give-away of incalculable proportions.

Anyway, someone at the NDP office needs to get out the calculator and rework the financial part of their election platform.

While he or she is doing that, the rest of us can wonder what other details they missed entirely in their amazingly low cost platform document.

And some other people will start wondering what else Danny and Kathy gave away without telling us.

- srbp -

Liberal commitments for Labrador #nlpoli

From Yvonne Jones’ Facebook page, posted shortly after midnight:

Full Liberal Platform being released tomorrow. Includes a full section on Labrador. Highlighting the committment [sic] to pave the Labrador Highway, designate the Strait of Belle Isle Ferry service as essential and putting a new ferry in place to serve the people of Labrador year round. The liberals [sic] will look at a fixed link for the Island -Labrador crossing along with committing to 21st century communications, including high speed internet and cell phone coverage for Labradorians and much more. Labrador should be a priority for all political parties in this campaign, after all we are raking in the big bucks for the governments these days.

- srbp -

A culture of entitlement #nlpoli #cdnpoli

In 2010, defence minister Peter MacKay used a Cormorant search and rescue helicopter from 103 Search and Rescue Squadron to fly him out of a fishing lodge on the Gander River, according to CTV.

"After cancelling previous efforts to demonstrate their search-and-rescue capabilities to Minister MacKay over the course of three years, the opportunity for a simulated search and rescue exercise finally presented itself in July of 2010," a DND statement said.

"As such, Minister MacKay cut his personal trip to the area short to participate in this Cormorant exercise."

However, military sources say no search-and-rescue demonstration was planned until the very day MacKay's office made the request to pick him up.

- srbp -

Day 3: #pandermonium roundup #nlpoli #nlvotes

Liberal leader Kevin Aylward promised Wednesday that as Premier he’d cave in and settle a class action lawsuit that is trying to pin financial responsibility for moose accidents on the provincial government.

The provincial Tories did their  pandering before the election with everything from fire trucks to moose fences.

NDP leader Lorraine Michael promised that her party would cut some tax on gasoline. The CBC story doesn’t make it clear which tax Michael was talking about. The NDP platform doesn’t make it clear either, referring only to the tax on tax.

But it sounds good and that’s really all old-fashioned pols like all the rest are looking for when it comes to the pure pandering parts of their platform.

- srbp -

The Public Sector Pensions thing explained #nlpoli #nlvotes

People can’t understand the racket over provincial pensions, what the Liberals proposed, what the CBC reported but hasn’t explained and what the provincial Conservatives are attacking the Liberals over.

Here’s a simple explanation of the math, the policy ideas and the problems with what’s happened.

The Background

The issue is about some retired provincial public servants whose pensions are not indexed to inflation and who continue to receive the same amount today they received up to two decades after they retired.

These pensioners have been pressing for a cost of living increase for most of the past 20 years.

Here’s what the Liberals proposed on Monday:

A New Liberal Government will provide a one-time 2.5%
increase to Public Sector Pensioners and subsequently, annual increases equivalent to CPI, to a maximum of 2%.

We will  establish an arms-length Review Commission to examine long term, just and equitable solutions following the principles of fairness and natural law. [Paragraphed for clarity]

That first bit is clear enough.  The second bit is important.  Keep it in mind for later.

On the day the Liberals announced that policy, CBC contacted the provincial finance department for an analysis and for some inexplicable reason, the department offered a comment on a political issue in the middle of an election campaign.

CBC reported that:

…the Department of Finance told CBC News that the Liberals' plan would add $1.2 billion in additional liabilities to the pension plan.

You can find links to two CBC stories at this recent SRBP post

By Wednesday, provincial Conservative leader Kathy Dunderdale was saying:

Premier Kathy Dunderdale calls the Liberal Party's plans to provide a one-time 2.5 per cent increase to public sector pensions, and annual increases up to 2 per cent, "frightening". Dunderdale questions Kevin Aylward's ability to balance the books. She says the full 2 per cent indexing would add about $1.8-billion to the unfunded liability.

That’s from VOCM.  The story might be disappeared within 24 hours of this post.

The Liberals counter that the proposal will cost an additional $13 million or so to the existing annual public sector pension spending or so the first year and an additional $10 million every year afterward, maximum until the to review commission reports and government acts on the recommendations.

Discussion

The major difference in the Liberal and Conservative argument is over annual cost versus total liability.

A check with the Liberal campaign found that they used the latest annual report of the provincial pension investment committee.

Then they looked at the total payment in 2010 of $532 million and change.  That’s right there on page four of the report.

Now right off the bat that includes administrative costs and refunds to people who’ve taken their cash and gone elsewhere. The Liberals actually started with a figure higher than the actual pension payments in 2010 of $494 million but let’s take $520 million which is the actual budgeted pension benefits payment this current year.

If you do simple math, you will find that 2.5% of $520 million is $13.0 million. In the first year, the Liberal pledge will cost the $520 million already committed plus another $13 million or $533 million.

In the worst case scenario, the maximum subsequent add-on will be 2% of the year before. The figure in the next year would be $533 plus  two percent of that ($533 + $10.66 million). 

One question to consider is how much that will cost over time.  Well, how long is a piece of string?

Let’s take 10 years as our length of time. 

If you work that out over 10 years, what is costing you $520 in 2011 will cost you roughly $636 million in 2021.  That’s $116 million more than today.

In 2031 – or 20 years from now - the annual price would be a little over $250 million more than the government is paging out today.

The Conservatives – and the finance department – refer to the public liability.

What they are doing is taking all the extra money, the 2.5% and the 2.0%, and then they are adding up all the extras over time to give you a number.  Their liability number is the extra spending added up over time.

Based on this example, their figure of $1.8 billion would be the cumulative total of the extra money in about Year 17.  Why they picked that number is a mystery because so far no one has explained anything.

Issues

What you have here is exactly what is supposed to occur during an election campaign.  One party is proposing something.  people are going to criticise it.

People need to look at this proposal and discuss it in all its merits or de-merits.  the people doing that should be the politicians and the general public.

Public servants shouldn’t be weighing in on this stuff. As a matter of principle, it is wrong. 

It gets particularly troubling when you consider that the comment officials gave to CBC deliberately chose to put forward a large – and therefore frightening – number when it becomes associated with words like liability and debt.

It becomes disingenuous when the finance officials failed to note – apparently – that you can do the same thing with any government spending.  total up the cumulative increase in anything and you can get a scary number.

The question is whether the people who are making the decisions have full, and accurate information in front of them so that they can make an informed chose.  What is in the public domain right now from CBC and the finance department is misinformation.

.And therein lies the second problem.

The CBC, like all news media, have a duty to inform their audience.

On this one, so far, no one has done anything to inform anyone about the pensions issue. Covering the “he said, she said” doesn’t cut it. 

And it really doesn’t cut it if the news media outlet went in search of a comment in the first place and – in the process – injected themselves into the political fray.  It’s one thing to observe and report about the game.  It’s another thing to throw a puck on the ice. 

What you’ve got now is not an informed discussion of the policy issue and its merits. You’ve got a confusing melee in which the ruling Conservatives are getting a free ride:  they haven’t had to explain themselves.  They can simply build off the implicitly objective third party critique coming via the CBC.

Meanwhile, has anyone asked the finance department to figure out the public finance liability in the NDP election platform?

- srbp -

Advertising group has Tory, Nalcor ties #nlpoli

MQO, the market research company that released an opinion poll on the second day of the provincial general election, is part of a group of marketing and advertising companies with ties to the provincial Conservatives and Nalcor, the provincial government’s energy company.

M5 is the agency of record for Nalcor, a spokesperson for Nalcor confirmed for SRBP on Tuesday.

Craig Tucker is listed as managing director of M5 on the company’s website.

In 2004, then premier Danny Williams announced Tucker’s appointment to the board of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. Hydro was the predecessor of Nalcor. It appears Tucker left the board when Hydro became Nalcor.

According to a 2005 CBC story, Tucker co-chaired the Conservative’s 2003 election campaign. That CBC story was about a $150,000 contract that M5 landed from the provincial government to promote the $2.0 billion transfer deal with Ottawa signed in January 2005.

M5 has also been an active contributor to the Progressive Conservative party in the province.  From 2003 to 2010, the company gave  $29,200 in political donations to the PC party according to information from the province’s chief electoral officer.

SRBP contacted Karen McCarthy, the media contact on the MQO news release, via Twitter and later e-mail.  McCarthy is president of M5PR and is listed on the M5 website as senior vice-president, communications.

SRBP asked:

Is M5 doing any work currently for Nalcor, the prov gov and/or the PC party. If so, what is it doing?

McCarthy replied:

MQO Research conducted the poll on the NL election over the past weekend independent of any other organization.  The company is a “research force” in the Atlantic Region and feels a responsibility to report on issues of interest to people in the four Atlantic provinces.  The company has done work for many governments, corporations and others throughout the region since its inception.  Whether or not the company currently has projects in play with the organizations you mentioned, I’m unaware.  It’s not something that MQO’s researcher’s would confirm for me due to client confidentiality.  In fact, the same is true for the entire group of m5 companies.  I can speak for the company of which I am President.  m5pr is not doing any work for the PC Party, Nalcor or the Province.

- srbp -

Undisclosed risk: NDP version #nlpoli #nlvotes

Sometimes you have to read something over and over just to make sure you didn’t misunderstand.

Like say this line from CBC’s online story of the NDP election platform launch:

In total, New Democrats are promising $142 million in new spending — $74 million from what it  called "efficiencies" and $68 million from a petroleum royalty surtax of three per cent.

The Telegram version is not quite so emphatic that the entire NDP platform is so inexpensive. They make it clear the pledges cover the first year only.

And when you look at the New Democrat platform, that’s the one thing that leaps out at you:  they’ve only costed one year.

Then you notice that while they talk about five pledges, there are a crap load of other things in there that are apparently something other than pledges.

What they are – maybe statement of good intentions -  is another matter.

And what they cost is a mystery.

Some of them could wind being quite costly.

Like say the pledge to increase the presence of government services in communities.  That sounds suspiciously like the Liberals’ plan in the late 1990s to shift stuff into places other than St. John’s.  The Tories carried on the same idea. It’s been very costly in a number of ways, not the least of which has been the increased size of the public service beyond what is actually needed in a province this size.

Or how about:

Plan a universal, publicly-funded and administered homecare and long-term care program.

Sure it says “plan” but plans have a way of becoming more than that once people catch on to the idea. The plan is only limited to year one.  What happens in years two, three and four?

Then there’s the commitment to yet more hand-outs, bail-outs and policy cop-outs:

• Introduce a provincial adjustment fund to assist employees and communities affected by industry downsizing or closures.
• Partner with industry to expand shipbuilding in the province.
• Assist in forest industry diversification for domestic and export markets.
• Increase primary and value-added production of agrifoods for local and  export markets through aid to small-scale production, processing and marketing.

None of that will be cheap.

None of that is costed in the NDP promise book.

And then there’s the gem:

Ensure that development of Labrador’s resources, including Gull Island and Muskrat Falls, is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and beneficial for the people of the province, especially the people of Labrador.

Muskrat is viable because the punters like you and me will pay full freight for it.  The NDP platform statement is a cleverly worded dodge.

Some of the NDP ideas are good ones. 

The pledge to undo the things Lorraine backed before that restricted public accountability and limited access?  Good thing.

Initiatives for people with disabilities, for newcomers?  Good and good.

The costs likely wouldn’t be high and the benefits are almost incalculable.

Other bits just show a lack of imagination:

Conduct a review to assess the need for electoral reform.

Anyone who has been even half asleep in this province the last couple of decades will know that one doesn’t need study.

It needs action.

You can likely put that vague statement about electoral reform down to the fact that the NDP’s financial backers aren’t keen on reforming things like the provincial political finance laws.  hard to imagine a political party with the word democratic in its name that is wishy-washy about electoral reform.

But there it is.

Just like the cost of electing an NDP government isn’t.

- srbp -

Ceeb spins story for Tories #nlpoli

Rather than correct a mistaken early report on the cost of the Liberal party’s pension proposal the CBC online decided to torque the story against the Liberals.

In a story on the Liberal election pledge to give retired public servants a 2.5% increase followed by 2.0% per year, the CBC included a claim from the province’s finance department:

Meanwhile, the Department of Finance told CBC News that the Liberals' plan would add $1.2 billion in additional liabilities to the pension plan.

That’s not accurate and the CBC didn’t explain what the finance officials meant.

The follow-on CBC story looked like this.

After a couple of paragraphs of Tory talking points, the Ceeb story didn’t deliver any facts to back up Dunderdale’s claim or explain the finance department’s assessment.

Instead, CBC included more detail on Aylward’s announcement.

And right at the end – where news stories stick the least important information – you get the Liberal’s accounting of costs.

Aylward said increasing payments to a long-neglected group will cost more than $13 million in the first year, and about $10 million extra for each additional year.

Even those readers who trudged on to the end would have already been told repeatedly that this promise is foolhardy and expensive.

And the combined effect of both stories sets readers up to be skeptical of the Liberal explanation before they even got to it.

- srbp -

New Poll. New Result #nlpoli

Quick.

Where’s Kathy Dunderdale today?

A new poll by advertising agency M5’s opinion research firm will give you a clue.

The poll replicates the actual numbers for CRA’s August omnibus when both are adjusted to remove the distortion of reporting voter choice as a percentage od decideds.

The MarketQuest Omnifacts poll showed the provincial Conservatives with 42% of respondents, the New Democrats at 23% and the Liberals at 145 with the undecideds at 20%.

The margin of error was plus or minus 4.9%, 19 times out of 20.

The CRA corrected numbers were 40 Tory, 18 Dipper,  and 16 Grit with 26% undecided.

Run that through the Amazing SRBP Vote-a-matic and you get a possible seat result of:

• PC:  38
• Libs: 4 to 7
• NDP:  3 to 6

So contrary to what Kathy “New Energy” Dunderdale said on Day One of the campaign, the polling shows the Tories will lose seats.  The question is more one of where they’ll lose them and to whom.

if you want an idea, consider that on the basic math of it the Tories have gone from 70% of votes cast to 53% of decided voters.  Bear with this for a second and switch back to using the numbers everyone else is using.

That’s a drop of 17 points since the last general election.

If you look at the seats the Tories won by a margin of 17% or less in 2007, this is what you get:

• Lake Melville
• Bellevue
• Labrador West
• Bay of Islands
• Torngat Mountains
• Humber Valley
• Isles of Notre Dame

On the face of that list right now, your humble e-scribbler would add an extra New Democrat in Labrador West to a future House of Assembly with the other seats being ones where the Liberals are historically strong and would likely pick up.

That would give you 10 Liberal seats total and that’s outside the Vote-a-matic forecast range. Just remember that this is a highly inexact subject.  What you can take away from it are places to look for further signs or information. And after all, when the poll results have a variation of five percent give or take, you are really not dealing with scalpel-like precision anyways.

For those who want to quibble, too, that this result would show the Liberals gaining more seats with fewer votes than the New Democrats, you need to appreciate that this set of observations on seats is based on taking polling and applying it against history, against what happened before.

Add to that the concept of vote efficiency and how it works in the current system.

The best example to use is the 1989 general election.  The Tories got more votes, but the Liberals took 34 seats on election night.  The Tories, for example, tend to show very well in polls.  They rack up tons of support in districts in St. John’s but once they’ve gotten enough votes to win the seat every one after that is a waste.

Well, it’s a waste from the standpoint that they didn’t need it to win.

Meanwhile over in another district – most likely off the northeast Avalon – the Tories are starving for votes.  The Liberal vote is distributed such that lots of votes don’t get wasted racking up margins beyond what you need to win.

Same thing applies, essentially, for the NDP.  They’ve got a couple or three pockets of strong support. It’s been enough to win two seats, historically.  And that’s about it.

Historically, you’d translate those polling numbers out and get a result in which the Tories could drop seven seats to the other two parties.

You likely won’t see this from the conventional media, but then again, the conventional media can’t get much beyond the superficial horse-race commentary.

All you can do, dear reader, is take it all in,  weigh it out and make up your own mind.

Oh yes. 

And notice where Kathy Dunderdale is today.

Labrador.

- srbp -

The NDP and Regressive Social Policy: education #nlpoli

those who are interested in education policy and the current election campaign will be fascinated by a chunk of one conversation that broke out on Twitter Sunday. 

Two of the participants were Mark Watton, former Liberal candidate in the Humber West by-election earlier this year and Brad Evoy, a New Democratic Party supporter and former vice president (academic0 of the Grenfell campus Student Union in Corner Brook.

They were discussing NDP policy that would make post-secondary education in Newfoundland and Labrador free to any students.

This is an edited version of the conversation, but one that tries to preserves both the flow of the exchange and the thrust of Evoy’s position.  Evoy starts off on accessibility and then morphs into a wider argument:.

Watton:  Just because something costs money, doesn't mean it is inaccessible. …a viable investment i.e. one which individuals, as well as the state, can make.

Evoy:  That's mighty well and easy for you to say, Mr. Watton, but it is not so for many NLers.

Watton:  on what basis do you make that statement?

Evoy:  Again, individual investment should not prohibit what is best for our common good. …Aside from knowing those who suffer under debt loads and turn away from PSE due to cost? … So there is some with the ability to be affluent, that doesn't mean all can….Question now, would you even dare suggest the same for Primary and Secondary Education… As in our society some level of PSE is now as needed just as well as those, in many fields…would it not be better to remove personal wealth from the equation all together? … Is it not more equitable for students to be judged on their merit and pay tax when…...they are all established well enough to do so? That's the idea here….Some form of PSE is quickly becoming an employment baseline...... in many professions. We require skilled persons in our economy.

Watton:  so if something is an employment baseline the state should pay for it for everyone?

Evoy:  Aren't we already doing so from the period when high school was exactly that? …And, again, it's a baseline for many professions and some won't have the academics…

Free or low tuition has been a popular idea for decades.  The arguments in favour f it usually centre on accessibility for people from lower income families.

The only problem for people who make accessibility their foundation is that there isn’t any substantial evidence to support the claim about accessibility and free tuition.

Take a recent study from Ireland as typical.  Kevin Denny of the Institute for Fiscal Studies released a paper in may that looked at the impact of the Irish government policy that wiped out tuition fees in 1996. His conclusion is that eliminating tuition fees had no effect on university attendance by students from lower income families.

What did it do?

The only obvious effect of the policy was to provide a windfall gain to middle-class parents who no longer had to pay fees. [p. 14]

In a footnote Denny indicates there is some reason to believe that these families wound up shipping their children to private schools.  that would likely have had the effect of improving their academic performance which further disadvantaged children from lower income families in the competition to enter university.

Overall, while the numbers of students from low incomes went up after 1996, so too did the number of students from other  family income levels.  The effect was such that the proportions of students in university did not change significantly for the better with the elimination of tuition fees.

Flip back up to Evoy’s comments for a second and look at this bit:

would it not be better to remove personal wealth from the equation all together? … Is it not more equitable for students to be judged on their merit and pay tax when…...they are all established well enough to do so?

The effect of free tuition is the opposite, according to Denny.  It doesn’t take personal wealth out of the equation.  Rather, free tuition delivers a windfall to those who could already afford to send their children to university or who can afford it moreso than those on low incomes.

Incidentally, you can find similar conclusions to Denny’s work in other studies.  A 1990 paper by Benjamin Levin titled  “Tuition fees and university accessibility” noted that university students in Canada tended to be from families where one or both parents had university degrees.  University graduates earned, on average considerably more than non-graduates.  As such, free tuition would tend to provide a disproportionate advantage to those who were better able to pay for education anyway.

That’s without considering that the cost of a university education in this province is already unconnected to the actual cost of the education.  This is especially true in medicine and the other professions where incomes are higher and the ability to repay substantial loans would be much better than say a typical Arts graduate. 

And the other thing these studies have in common is that they found that other factors  - besides tuition fees - affect access to post-secondary education.

If accessibility is the goal, there are other ways to deal with it.  Levin argued that targeted programs were a better way to go.  Means tested grants, for example, or changing the ratio of student loans and grants based on student financial circumstances would help to ensure that students from low income families would not be disadvantaged because of fees.  In the professions, governments can do more of what they do now with a variety of cash incentives as well as provide means-tested grants.

What’s most interesting about the New Democrats and free tuition is the ease with which they have adopted what is essentially a regressive social policy. 

While New Democrats like Evoy talk about accessibility and how the party represents “ordinary” Canadians,  their solution is a blunt tax cut or subsidy approach that appears to be better suited to Conservatives. That’s especially striking in the case of free university tuition where research shows that eliminating fees doesn’t improve accessibility. 

It does, however, provide financial advantage to people who are already better able to pay tuition or people who would be better able to pay in their future career.

The NDP.

Not Tommy Douglas’ socially progressive party any more.

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Dippers on point for first CBC political election panel #nlpoli

Give the new Democrats’ Dale Kirby full marks for nailing natural resources minister Shawn Skinner hard over the blatant abuse of taxpayers inherent in having two partisans step down from their cabinet appointments to work on the Tory campaign.

Kirby, Skinner and Liberal Barry Snow made up the partisan panel for David Cochrane’s election show On Point.

The pair – Ross Reid and Len Simms – will slide back into their six figure salaries without so much as a hiccup to their pensionable time. The practice of sticking partisan loyalists into cabinet appointments destroys the impartiality and professionalism of the public service.

Skinner flopped sadly by claiming the pair were following policy and Snow imploded by siding with Skinner over the gross abuse of public money.

That was Snow’s second goof inside 60 seconds.  He started by blithely dismissed talk of Danny Williams and the patronage scandal as nothing proper to talk about.  He missed the political angle that Kirby jumped on to stick the knife in either on the one patronage angle or the other.

Kirby sank the whole thing by challenging Skinner to commit that the two hacks wouldn’t get their plums back.

Snow dropped the ball again when Cochrane handed him an easy one about Navigant and Muskrat Falls.  People were hoping that at the end of day, Snow had something to say besides “at the end of the day.”

He didn’t.

Kirby jumped on the “shocking lack of transparency” from Nalcor. 

Skinner had some talking points to use in response but nothing new.

As a final question, Cochrane asked Snow how paying for the fishery restructuring given that the Liberals planned to cut gas tax as well.  Snow started with ‘at the end of the day” and pretty much blathered from there.

Kirby hammered the memorandum of understanding that remains sitting on a shelf. He didn’t give any Earth-shattering new commitments but Kirby delivered some quotable lines.

At the end of the day, the Liberals will need to do a lot better than this if they want to remain competitive. Give him some briefing notes an some basic coaching and Snow might recover.

The Tories are weak.  They are an easy mark for even a modestly prepared opponent.

NDP scored big on the panel because they were ready and political.

The only downside for the Dippers and the upside for the Grits and Tories is that the On Point audience was probably pretty small.

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The Damn-Fool Fisheries Policy

Yesterday’s man delivered yesterday’s ideas and claimed it was the future.

Liberal leader Kevin Aylward unveiled his party’s fisheries platform on Friday.  As a historical document, it would be wonderful for an election from 1975. But in 2011, the colourful pamphlet serves only to remind everyone just how far out of touch its authors are with the province and its people 20 years after the collapse of the cod stocks.

The central problem of the fishery today is that stocks have been decimated by decades of overfishing as a result of government policies that encouraged too many people to enter the fishery than it could sustain economically or environmentally without hundreds of millions annually in federal and provincial government subsidies.

The Liberal policy for the fishery of the future is to return to the very policies that led to its current sorry state in the first place.

One can scarcely imagine anything more stupid. 

Take the cod stocks, reduced to the point that by 1992 the federal government had to shut down the fishery that brought Europeans to this place 500 years ago.  There were no fish left, at least for any commercially viable industry.

The cod numbers – the biomass – are not appreciably larger in 2011 than it was in 1992.

Well, armed with that knowledge, the Liberals want to increase the total allowable catch for the endangered cod to more than double its current level.

There is not a shred of scientific evidence to back them up.

None.

Common sense would tell you to stop fishing altogether.

The Liberals are having none of that sort of talk.

They want to double the current slaughter.

They are not content to let professionals get the last codfish from the sea. The Liberals want to widen the Damn Fool Fishery to boot. 

And to ensure they can find every last fish, the Liberals want to continue the current Tory policy of spending provincial cash on “fisheries science.”

On the surface, it sounds like a good idea – more knowledge is good – but if you look at the end purpose, you realise what the Liberals want to do. 

Conservation and sound management are not the objectives the people who wrote this policy had in mind.  If it was, they wouldn’t advocate resuming the cod slaughter. This is a plan to find the last fish so someone can split it and freeze it into a block for export with taxpayers footing the bill for most of it.

And when the fish are gone, they’ll be on the sea snails,  the sea cucumbers and the krill.

The Liberals want to set up $250 million for what would likely be a batch of make-work projects. They call it a Fisheries Investment and Diversification Fund but those are code words, to be sure. 

The “employment rebate” for processors is nothing more than committing taxpayers to cover the salaries of fish plant workers in businesses that would not survive economically without more government handouts.

Worst of all, the Liberals want to bring back the Fisheries Loan Board.

To understand the significance of this, you have to go back to the 1970s.  With the 200 mile limit in 1977 cam policies designed to increase the number people in the fishery.  Fish that used to be taken by foreigners were available only to Canadians once the 200 mile limit came into effect.

Both the federal and provincial governments abandoned plans to reform the fishery.  Instead they created policies to draw more people into the industry.  In 1976, there were 13,376 fishermen in the province.  By 1980 there were 33,640.  Total federal and provincial subsidies added up to about the same as the landed value of the catch.

The Fisheries Loan Board – provincial money for boats and gear – went from $12,488,000 in outstanding loans in 1976 to $43,796,000 in 1980.  Most of the money was never repaid.

But as far as the goal of getting more people into an already over-stressed industry, the FLB was a stunning success.

The Liberals even resurrect the old chestnuts of co-management and joint management.  And for good measure they repeat the asinine commitment to pay for federal jobs and add a new commitment to support Ryan Cleary’s quest to have taxpayers foot the bill for his education, a.k.a. the judicial inquiry into the fishery.

They don’t need an inquiry. Read anything by Memorial University economist William Shrank. He can tell what happened to the fish and why.  A 1995 article in Marine Policy, titled “Extended fisheries jurisdiction:  origin of the current crisis in Atlantic Canada’s fishery” is as good as any.

As for new ideas, the Liberal policy has none. 

There’s just a vague reference to making sure the aquaculture industry has government financial support and that the Liberals will make sure that projects don’t harm the environment.

To be fair to the Liberals, and to the architects of their policy like Beaton Tulk, the Tories and New Democrats are pushing variations on the same pathetic theme.

But for people looking for some solution to the problems plaguing the fishery and the people who depend on it today, the province’s three political parties have basically left them with nothing to look forward to.  What’s worse, if any of the political platforms make through to government policy, taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of wasted spending.

We know it is wasted because none of the ideas will work.

We know they won’t work because they failed in the past.  Either that or,  as in the case of joint management, for example, they are solutions that might have helped 30 years ago or more.  But the problems they were supposed to fix simply don’t exist any more.

Today we face new problems created by the sorts of policies some people in the Liberal Party think are solutions to the problems those same policies created.

They couldn’t be any more wrong than they are.

On Friday, yesterday’s man delivered yesterday’s ideas and claimed it was the future.

He couldn’t have been any more wrong.

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White Knuckles

Voting is Open Now… for NL Blogger’s Choice Awards!

If you are looking for a catalogue of local blogs there is only one place to go;  the Newfoundland and Labrador Blog Roll.

It’s the well-tended baby of Stephen Eli Harris,  a local blogger himself.

you’ll find the current blog list on the left hand side of the page.  Be warned;  it’s long.  There are lots of you out there in Newfoundland and labrador with something on your mind.  And the topics are diverse.  Everything from politics to food to babies.

While you are there, take time to check the NL Blogger’s Choice Awards and vote for the blogs you like in the different categories.  Remember:  it’s one vote per day. And you can vote every day until the end of September.

Sir Robert Bond Papers is nominated in the Political/Commentary Blogs category alongside The Fighting Newfoundlander and The Rural Lens.

towniebastard is up for the Mixed Bag category and gas and Oil is up for the Travel/Business prize.

SEH managed to pick out three blogs based on his criteria of design, longevity and frequency of posting.  It is an honour to be in the running but when you check the three competitors in this category, you will see, the choice will be tough.

A vote for these humble e-scribbles would be greatly appreciated.

And don’t forget, the national blog awards are coming up next month.

So vote, early, vote often and if you are so inclined, vote Sir Robert Bond Papers.

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Classical gas #nlpoli

Former Conservative policy advisor Cabot Martin knows a thing or two about energy.  The guy worked in the energy department in the 1970s and was involved in every major policy development in oil gas and electricity in the province for over a decade.

He’s got an op-ed piece in the Saturday Telegram that questions the wisdom of developing Muskrat Falls when the American markets are being shifted by cheap natural gas. Unfortunately, the thing isn’t online. The closest you can get is a reference in the editorial.

The editorial discusses the potential use of natural gas to replace Holyrood instead of Muskrat Falls.  The Telegram editorial and the Navigant report, released this week on behalf of Nalcor, mention a 2001 natural gas study done for the provincial government.

The gang at Navigant missed another important report study on the feasibility of bringing natural gas ashore from the Jeanne d’Arc basin.

2005.

Done for NOIA, the offshore oil and gas association by Dr. Stephen Bruneau.

Regular readers of these scribbles will recall this point from a post in July that discussed the natural gas option:

A 2005 discussion paper prepared for NOIA by Dr. Stephen Bruneau looked at six options for getting additional electricity for the island grid. Bruneau concluded that development of only 60% of the known gas reserves at Hibernia, White Rose and Terra Nova would give enough natural gas to power a Holyrood size generating plant at full capacity, 365 days a year for over a century.  That would displace 500,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year.

Bruneau estimated the cost of a pipeline to bring the gas ashore to be $300 million. Another $400 million would build a natural gas generating plant, with another $112.5 million needed to build a short on-land pipeline and build natural gas handling facilities at sea.  Total cost would be less than $1.0 billion.

Nalcor didn’t study natural gas because it didn’t want to study it. 

They didn’t want to study it because their political masters had already directed them to pursue any development of the Lower Churchill.  Nothing else entered their collective skull.

The Conservatives and Nalcor started the most recent LC project in…wait for it…2005, the same year Bruneau did his work for NOIA.

Even as Danny Williams was launching down the road to the Muskrat mess, others were talking sensibly about alternatives to meet the province’s needs.

Three things to take away from this:

1. Nalcor did not make a decision on how best to meet consumer electricity needs in the province at the lowest cost for those consumers.  They followed political orders to build the Lower Churchill.  Period. Everything else got tossed in the bin.
2. Natural gas is a cheaper, viable alternative to Muskrat both for domestic needs, for electricity export and for industrial diversification.  Bruneau’s 2005 study put the cost at about a $1.0 billion.  Cabot Martin estimates $3.0 billion.  That’s still half the official estimate for Muskrat Falls. And frankly, since the official estimate of $6.2 billion is about 40% below the real cost they should be starting with, natural gas only gets better the more you know about Muskrat.*
3. People with way more experience in provincial energy policy that Kathy Dunderdale, Danny Williams and Ed Martin combined all think Muskrat is a big mistake.  Cabot Martin is just the latest.  Who would you trust:  the people who delivered the province’s oil industry or the gang that expropriated an environmental cesspool of a paper mill, by accident?

Think about it.

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*edit for clarity of reference to 40% and Muskrat.

Traffic without Danny Rolls

Danny Williams had no roll in this week’s traffic.

No buns.

No loaves either.

But as it turns out he had a big role in the posts that went to the top of the week’s list of the 10 most popular scribbles.

Just like he had a big role in pushing Liz Matthews as vice chair of the offshore regulatory board.

And that’s the top post from last week.

1. Williams set to offer comms director plum patronage job
2. The first big political story of the campaign
3. To you with affection from Danny
4. An ex-Premier scorned
5. Dipper candidate screwed by Tory election law mess
6. The Popeye Algorithm
7. @cbcnl using Nalcor lobbyist as election commentator
8. Privacy commish sues Dunderdale gov over “political” e-mails on gov comps, phones
9. Good to the last vote:  Grit version and The Arrogance Factor
10. Good to the last vote:  NDP paints own caricature

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There’s independent and then there’s Navigant #nlpoli

Nalcor chief executive Ed Martin told a CBC audience on Thursday that the Navigant report meets the joint review panel’s requirement for a complete, independent review of Kathy Dunderdale’s plan for saddling the provincial taxpayers with high electricity prices and unbearable debt.

Martin’s full of shite.

Like his claim that the report was independent.

The Navigant report is not independent.

Took five seconds to write.

One way you can tell Martin’s spewing crap? 

The Navigant guys who wrote the report used the word “independent”  89 times in an 79 page document.*

Another clue?

Kathy Dunderdale spent some ungodly amount of time on Open Line on Friday trying desperately prove Navigant wasn’t a set up.

Want another?

Then Tom Marshall called and had a go at the same thing.

Five seconds to claim. 

The better part of 30 minutes* for two senior cabinet ministers to try to disprove.

Methinks they protest too much.

To go back to Martin’s claim about the Navigant report and the joint panel requirement, here’s a table showing what the joint review panel recommended, what the public utilities board will be doing for its “independent” report and what Navigant just did:

Not the same.

Not even close.

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* typos corrected.